49-63
06.29.09
4:02 am
The introduction to the living, breathing academy is another treat of astoundingly brilliant prose. That's how settings should be put forth. Merging this introduction with that of the academy's drug culture, along with its pervasive esoteric drug descriptions and the exclusionary lengths it leads Hal to, forever connects them in our mind, like the academy is this great living safe-house harboring all manners of isolated security. And then the introduction to Gately -- again. It seems to me that DFW knew so well what exactly he wanted out of each major characters that every section on them is supremely compelling regardless of what the particular activity in question. And consistent use of 'promotes' to refer to stealing? Oh Infinite Jest, how i love thee.
But there is this supporting cast. Which of course is fleshed out very well. They just provide you with sections that often feel empty in contrast. Start with that one on Erdedy. And now Troeltsch coming down with a virus. I mean they're fine and everything, but they seem almost like breaks from the novel, too long to simply develop character, but detached from the true, powerful action of the remainder. I just wonder if anything's ever going to happen with them. Or if i'll ever catch it.
-"Total utilization of available resources = lack of publicly detectable waste."-
-"Recreational drugs are more or less traditional at any U.S. secondary school, maybe because of the unprecedented tensions: post-latency and puberty and angst and impending adulthood, etc. To help manage the intra-psychic storms, etc. Since the place's inception, there's always been a certain percentage of the high-caliber adolescent players at E.T.A. who manage their internal weathers chemically."-
-"But so some E.T.A.s -- not just Hal Incandenza by any means -- are involved with recreational substances, is the point. Like who isn't, at some life-stage, in the U.S.A. and Interdependent regions, in these troubled times, for the most part. Though a decent percentage of E.T.A. students aren't at all. I.e. involved. Some persons can give themselves away to an ambitious pursuit and have that be all the giving-themselves-away-to-something they need to do. Though sometimes this changes as the players get older and the pursuit more stress-fraught. American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret."-
-"The amount of organization and toiletry-lugging he has to do to get secretly high in front of a subterranean outtake vent in the pre-supper gap would make a lesser man quail."-
-"and the guy was to say the least nonplussed to wake up and see high-filter flashlights crisscrossing over the unlit bedroom walls and bureau and teak chiffonnier as Gately and associate scanned for a wall-safe, which surprisingly like 90% of people with wall-safes conceal in their master bedroom behind some sort of land- or seascape painting. People turned out so identical in certain root domestic particulars it made Gately feel strange sometimes, like he was in possession of certain overlarge private facts to which no man should be entitled. Gately had a way stickier conscience about the possession of some of these large particular facts than he did about making off with other people's personal merchandise."-
-"Fluorescence has been banned in Quebec, as have computerized telephone solicitations, the little ad-cards that fall out of magazines and have to be looked at to be picked up and thrown in the trash, and the mention of any religions holiday whatsoever to sell any sort of product or service, is just one reason why his volunteering to come live down here was selfless."-
[archilochusColubris]
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