Waking up from his zoo dream, Hal says “I’d felt for almost a week as if I needed to cry for some reason but the tears were somehow stopping just millimeters behind my eyes and staying there” (851). In other words, Hal may be on the verge of actually feeling something that could pass for real emotion. When Hal says he couldn’t remember ever actively hoping for his tennis matches to be canceled, I interpreted this not so much as a pulling away from something, but rather a movement towards something – his individual ‘self.’ Consider some of the other ways in which Hal has changed: he’s not squeezed a tennis ball in days; he wonders if using Bob Hope is not just a high point of the day anymore, but its actual meaning; he realizes that callers wouldn’t hear Hal on his answering machine but rather “a digital recording of me rather than me” (854). It seems, to me at least, that a real Hal is emerging.

And when Ortho Stice has kertwanged his forehead to the icy glass in the hallway, the Darkness asks Hal if he’s been crying. (For whatever reason, it seems there is alot of that going on at ETA at this point in the story.) But as readers, we really can’t whether or not Hal has been crying but so the point is that maybe he’s starting to let down his defenses but is not like aware of it yet. This notion of inner-outer incongruity is reinforced when Hal seeks out the custodians to get some warm water for Stice’s head. Kenkle describes Hal’s look as “mirthful” even though Hal has sought them out because he’s worried about his friend. Hal doesn’t feel happy, yet that is what’s written on his face. (Or is it?)

Then there is the panic attack. Hal laying on his back on the carpet of Viewing Room 5, overwhelmed at the idea of having to eat a butt-load of chicken when he gets to whatever university he’ll be playing tennis at. How do you spell depression? In this excerpt, Hal says “It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end” (900). I suppose there are at least two ways to look at the new Hal. Either: A.) He’s falling apart, heading for a meltdown, about to crack up; or B.) He’s starting to actually feel things inside as if he is a human being and not a machine.

Quite a radical departure for the kid who clipped his toenails and was virtually devoid of emotion while telling his brother the grisly details in finding their dead father. Does this seem like the same kid who was bent on duping his grief counselor?

So when I read the story of Randy Lenz’s dastardly deeds a second time, I had my wife, our three cats and two dogs in mind. To recap: our boy Lenz, a recovering coke addict, starts hoofing it home alone after AA meetings. It is moving “nightly through urban animal territory” (540) that he begins to act out his impotent rage and powerlessness. He begins by demapping a rat that is eating off a mustard tray near a dumpster. Next, he gets his jollies by trapping cats in Hefty bags. Because he is a pathetic junky who always needs to “up the anty” so to speak, Lens eventually fixes his inhumane gaze on unsuspecting canines.

I had forgotten how disturbed I was when Lenz slit that dogs throat outside the Hawaiian-themed party with Bruce Green looking on from a distance. I could go on and on about how he is the first addict to actively do harm to others rather than just himself. But as a shout out to my betrothed I would like to go out on a limb and suggest that the penalty for cruelty to animals should be more severe.

Maybe it has something to do with innocence and that, in spite of all our faults, all domestic animals do is remind us of what is meant by unconditional love. Maybe that’s why this scene pisses me off so much.

The first thing I noticed is that footnote 208 refers the reader to a chapter of Himself’s biography entitled, ‘The Awakening of My Interest in Annular Systems.’ Being that Hal is the kind of kid who gets in a taxicab and tells the driver ‘to the library and step on it,’ I can only assume that Hal has read his father’s story. In other words, he would have the benefit of knowing not only how James Jr. first became interested in annular fusion, but also of the cold indifference to which Himself witnessed his own father’s death. Creepy.

There were parts of this scene that left me feeling like I was sitting in the theater at a horror flick. I had this sense of impending doom that stemmed from that gosh darn glass of tomato juice. I was waiting for Hal to set the glass down, spill the juice and get reamed by his old man. Turns out my fears were of no import. But it occurs to me, on second reading, that I might have been waiting for James Sr.’s blood to spill.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around James Sr.’s attire in this excerpt. White wig, white tunic. Is DFW casting him in the light of a Greek philosopher? This is all part of James Sr.’s work attire. I know Wallace was all about forgoing irony and all, but in James Sr. we have perhaps the biggest dickhead on the planet cast as the Man from Glad. If that aint irony I’ll eat my hat.

The device of the squeaky bed really serves a bigger purpose in this section. James Sr. believes that the frame is the source of the problem, whereas both Hal and his mom think it is the mattress. When James Sr. says “‘So, we want to move all this crap out of the way, entirely,’” (493) I read that as DFW’s handling of the father-son issue—Sr. is trying to gain a deeper perspective on the issue. And when Sr. suggests that ‘new mattresses are outrageously expensive’ I interpreted this as his realization that trying to bridge the gap between father and son comes at a heavy cost. After the mattress is dragged into the hall, James Jr. spread his arms and took the pact of the mattress with his chest. On some level, I see this as father-to-son transaction, a passing of the torch.

In this passage, there is a line that stands out as seeming to have greater thematic significance. James Sr. states, “There was a brief second of confusion at the doorway as each of us tried to step back to let the other through first” (497). On the one hand this could be read as a simple awkward moment between father and son. However, the doorway could also be construed as an embodiment of truth. In this context, father and son are pausing to acknowledge the inherent difficulties of their relationship, the roles they fulfill for each-other, etc. It’s an existential moment, perhaps.

There was also a moment in this passage that serves as connective tissue to an earlier reference. Having exposed the frame of the mattress, James Sr. exclaims “’There’s even a fucking smell’”(498). Immediately, my mind harkened back to sensory details of Hal smelling his father’s head getting cooked in the microwave.

Overall, I think this section speaks to the recurring motif of the estrangement between fathers and sons. It occurs to me that the deaths of James Sr. and Himself both have a sacrificial element to them. James Sr.’s death lead Himself to the science behind annular fusion. Himself’s death was not entirely in vain either (note: I don’t want to spoil it for yall).

One could make the argument that DFW’s fatherly sacrifice is a modern example of Jesus dying for the sins of man. In this interpretation, the bolts from the frame represent the spikes on the cross and James Sr. slumping over the iron frames could be viewed as the crucifixion.

Part of my problem was that I was trying to relate what we’ve been reading in class to my memoir project. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about research topics from the perspective that I could somehow relate it to my advanced writing project in the spring. I’ve come to the conclusion that my topic may relate to my own writing thematically, but that I might need to ix-nay the explicit memoir connection. C’est lavie!

And so I begin where I probably should have started in the first place, with the father-son theme. As I stated in my previous blog, this is a recurring motif that I am interested in tracing more throughly through Infinite Jest. In terms of the final research paper, I am wondering how the father-son dynamic has been portrayed in other classic texts. Does Wallace’s portrayal subvert classical representations? In conducting my research, I suspect I will have to give a shout out to Freud’s Oedipal Complex. Yet, I know that this angle is delimiting—passe even—and that there are other perspectives to consider.

Any suggestions you-all have for me will be greatly appreciated!

It never struck me as being out of the ordinary that Hal’s Uncle accompanied him on their visit to the Arizona University. Yet, upon reflection, it occurs to me that that obligation would usually belong to a parent. Then again, familial relations for Hal et al might be described as anything but normal. When we first meet Himself, for example, he has disguised himself as a professional conversationalist. He has rented office space, donned a disguise and summoned his 10 year-old son all in an effort to have a conversation with him. Having the benefit of literary hindsight, I still wonder about the conditions that warranted such a strange father-son encounter.

More clues emerge via a late-night conversation between Hal and his older brother, Mario. Mario asks Hal about his views on God, and the discussion inevitably turns to Himself’s death. Mario asks, “How come the Moms never cried when Himself passed away?” and suggests that she appeared happier after their father was gone (41). As a reader at this point in the story, we can infer that everything was not kosher between Mom and Pop Incandenza. What led to their schism remains to be seen.

We are provided with more of Himself’s back story when we learn his own father “decided to go down to his Raid-sprayed basement workshop and build a promising junior athlete the way other fathers might restore vintage autos or build ships inside bottles” (63). We learn that Himself is so successful in tennis that he is able to finance his doctorate in optical physics. Furthermore, Himself’s efforts, in part, lead to the development of cold annular fusion and “approximate energy independence for the U.S. and its allies” (64). For the last five years of his life, Incandenza, who founded the Enfield Tennis Academy, drinks heavily and devotes himself to making documentaries until his untimely suicide at age 54.

But perhaps the most provocative father-to-son passage (from a Freudian standpoint anyhow) occurs when James receives his first tennis lesson from his father. Hal’s grandfather begrudges Marlon Brando big-time, and it now occurs to me that his descriptions of the actor – how he touched objects “as if they were part of him” and his purported “animal grace” – may contain homo-erotic elements. Jim’s father suggests the lesson is a rite of passage, yet the entire affair seems more like psychotherapy than father-son bonding. As the scene unfolds, we realize that Hal’s grandfather is trying to live vicariously through Jim and that he has some residual angst over his own father (who said he would never be great). Jim’s true motives become apparent when he tells his son, “I’m so scared of dying without ever being really seen” (168). Recalling the details of his fall on the tennis court, he tells Jim how he “ended in a posture of supplication,” and that he was carried off like a “boneless Christ.”

Paternal. Biblical. Heavy. A rite of passage, indeed.

I guess what intrigued me most about the show were the conditions that led to its creation. In the Entertainment Weekly article it said that the project was “conceived in the heat of the writer’s strike,” and that it was produced quickly once the beautiful picketers were called back to work. Assuming that this show was the first of its kind, I wonder how long it would have taken another video blog to emerge had there not been a strike. If necessity is indeed the mother of invention, it appears Joss Whedon was the first to tap the crude (pun intended). If the servers crashed and over 2.2 million people viewed it in the first week , I suppose that means the show was a hit. The question is: why?

I don’t suspect this is simply a matter of taste, although I suppose it is possible that some folks tuned in to watch a new rendering of a played-out scenario. So, was it the music? I will admit that the song lyrics were catchy and funny, but I don’t know if that was enough to attract a bazillion people in such a short period of time. Was it the characters? I do not consider myself qualified to comment on the quality work of thespians Harris, Fillion and Day, but I don’t guess that their individual (or collective) presence elicited such a response. The producer? I for one thought Joss Whedon was a country singer. No, none of these reasons will do.

If pressed for a definitive answer on the subject, I would point to the power of word-of-mouth and its manifestations in our new, tech-savvy world. That, combined with our almost pathological need to be entertained can make for a groundswell. Are we on the cusp of an entertainment revolution? Will the Internet ultimately usurp the boob-tube and the big screen in motion picture supremacy? Stay tuned…

It’s not 1978, and this aint Fantasy Island, but it sure feels like it.

Okay, so perhaps it is a sad commentary on my age that I was nearly Walt’s age when Tattoo began racing up into the bell tower to point out the buzzing Cessna full of adventure-seekers. Yet, the appropriation is too uncanny to pass up. It seems to me that ABC simply re-purposed Fantasy Island in a modern context and called it Lost.

Of course, there are obvious differences. The modern incarnation is a bit bloodier, what with flight passengers getting sucked into turbines and school teachers blowing themselves to smithereens with dynamite. The Oceanic passengers didn’t ASK to be brought to the island, they crashed. And there is a prevailing multicultural spin on the whole kit-n-caboodle which was missing from the earlier version (see: Korean sub-titles, an obese hipster dude and a post-modern Kahlil Gibran with curly locks). Somehow, things seem more intimate in the newer version, too. Less hokey moralism, more realism.

If you’re still unconvinced that Lost is a re-branded product from the Age of Disco, consider the case of John Locke. Locke’s original plan was to experience a Walkabout in the Outback, but when the plane crashed, his legs were suddenly healed—a miracle he could never have imagined. As the story progresses, he is so smitten with the island’s transformative powers that he is certain that it has summoned each of them to fulfill their individual destinies. This exact sentiment was espoused by Mr. Roarke, the debonair Latin orchestrator of fantasies, 25 years ago.

Personally, I like the newer version better. For, as Loudon Wainright III, one of my favorite folk singers says, “It’s okay to steal because it’s so nice to share.”

That being said, I enjoy the intellectual stimulation that a good flick can provide. I must admit, however, that I have never thought about narrative structure in film, nor had I heard the term “Mind-Game” as denoting a particular genre. But after watching Zodiac, I believe it meets the criteria for Thomas Elsaesser’s first motif. In his first example, he writes, “A protagonist participates in, or is witness to, events whose meaning or consequences escape him: along with him, the film asks: what exactly happened? There is a suspension of cause and effect, if not outright reversal of linear progression…” 

This is the plight of Robert Graysmith.

I have many questions about both the genre and the movie. For starters, is it really a mind-game if it is reflective of actual events from history? In other words, couldn’t the casual observer read the book and be equally perplexed? Or, has the director infused various diversions into the movie to throw us a wrinkle? Specifically, I am thinking of the birthday reference in the movie. Every time the Zodiac killed someone, Toskie wishes his partner, Armstrong, a happy birthday. We find out later in the film that the purported Zodiac told Melvin Belli’s maid that it was his birthday before he went out and killed again. (I held out hope that Armstrong was the killer until it became painfully obvious that he had ridden off into the wild blue yonder to be with his family.) And what of Bill Vaughn? Doesn’t the fact that he has a basement implicate him for something dastardly? (After all, nothing good EVER happens in movie basements).

I’m not sure how much I subscribe to the film medium lending itself to the puzzle dynamic. To really discern a pattern, you would either have to watch the movie multiple times, or keeping hitting the “pause,” “rewind,” and “play” buttons. That seems like a lot of work. In a text, however, it makes sense: you can leaf back through the pages and link the evidence of whodunwhat in the story.

And what about that look that Graysmith gave Arthur Lee toward the end of the movie? Was it somehow revealing of the primary suspect’s guilt?

If Lee had been wearing a cowboy hat, would it have turned into a love story?

I wish the same could be said for The Uses of Enchantment, where, instead of lightly seasoning her novel with ambiguity, author Heidi Julavits serves it up like a party-sized Subway sandwich. She force-feeds us 354 pages of circumlocution, and in the end we can only speculate whether young Mary Veal was ever abducted and sexually abused. It’s not that I need resolution. But as a reader, I seriously have to ask myself if it was worth the ride. I mean, in theory, I believe it is a worthwhile endeavor to try to piece together truths in an ambiguous narrative. However, in order for me to “play along,” other factors must also be present (like plot development, for instance). Apart from an exhaustive brand of cat-and-mouse psychobabble, not much happens in this story.

 But that is only part of what gives me agita.

 In terms of character, the women are catty, the men are a bunch of putzes, and everyone is out to advance his/her own agenda. (Particularly galling are the “professional” motivations of Biedelman and Hammer). What’s more, the characters are emotionally stunted, and appear more concerned with rebuking others than embracing some form of self-truth. Take Mary’s adult character. Julavits observes, “Expressing indignation, or sarcasm, or anger was the only way of exhibiting love in her family, and really what was so wrong with that?” (350) Hello!? I could, perhaps, better digest (sticking with food motif) this sentiment had not our main character spent the better part of the novel seeking posthumous tokens (morsels?) of affection from her dead mother. In the end, it would seem that shitting all over your loved ones isn’t really tantamount to telling them you love them.

For the record, I must admit that there wasn’t much I could identify with in this novel. After all, it is a story written by a woman, primarily about women. But does my aversion make me a sexist a-hole or somehow taint my reaction on an experiential level? That I’m thoroughly enjoying Eat, Pray, Love would suggest otherwise. Still, I was shocked to read that this novel “turned into a gripping page-turner” for Jason Pettus. This reviewer for the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP) described the experience as “an emotional mindf–k that will still be caught in your brain weeks after you finish.”

 And here I thought it was merely authorial subterfuge.

Stalin sent Communist saboteurs and minorities to Gulag labor camps.

And, for 30 years, Trujillo had first dibs on the daughters of the Dominican Republic.

The last of this infamous trio of thugs casts a dark pall over the entirety of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Diaz describes him thus:

A portly, sadistic, pig-eyed mulato who bleached his skin, wore platform shoes, and had a fondness for Napoleon-era haberdashery, Trujillo (also known as El Jefe, the Failed Cattle Thief, and Fuckface) came to control nearly every aspect of the DR’s political, cultural, social, and economic life through a potent (and familiar) mixture of violence, intimidation, massacre, rape, co-optation, and terror… (2)

Disco jokes aside, Trujillo might be the baddest Third World leader you never heard about.  In reading the novel, however, I found myself anxiously awaiting the parts of the narrative where his reign of terror went unchecked. I suspect I am not alone in my fascination with dictators. In fact, in an April, 2008 Slate magazine article, Diaz himself stated, “I’ve always been drawn to [them]. My father was a Little League dictator. That really affected me, his control-freakery, his impunity, his arbitrary unreasonable power.” Useful in explaining authorial intent, perhaps, but what about the rest of us?

The case of Jesus de Gelindez might help to illuminate our preoccupation. Gelindez wrote a disparaging dissertation detailing Trujillo’s ruthlessness, and when El Jefe was unable to buy the document, he had Gelindez kidnapped and brought back to the capital. That he “found himself naked, dangling from his feet over a cauldron of boiling oil” (97) is a testament of the dictator’s power, but also his creativity. Whereas a bullet to the head would have been more expedient, killing Gelindez in such a manner added to the myth of Trujillo.

Likewise, Abelard Luis Cabral’s circumstances reinforce the absolute power Trujillo wielded over his subjects. When Abelard’s daughter “caught a serious case of the hips-ass-chest,” (216) the doctor chose to conceal her from Trujillo, an act that was “tantamount to treason” (217). In the context of this discussion, how Abelard got sold down the river is beside the point. What is noteworthy, however, was the torture that was inflicted upon Abelard: La Corona. The tightening rope around Abelard’s head “turned him into a vegetable” (251). Again, points for thinking outside the box.

Yet, I suspect it is something more than staged, gruesome deaths of innocents that draws us to dictators. I don’t want to believe that the human spirit is so sadistic that we delight in the misery of others. But on some level, perhaps hearing about these stories from afar adds meaning to our own lives (the “I-might-have-cancer-but-at-least-I-have-my-human-rights” phenomenon). Or, perhaps we bring a more prideful attitude about our democratically elected leaders to bare (the “my-leader’s-better-than-yours” syndrome). Taking the more literary tact, perhaps there is a disconnect between the deeds of evil men and their inclusion into a fictional narrative, that the form somehow softens the blow.

Or, maybe I don’t want to know the answer.