General Remarks

I enjoyed reading this book on vacation, but I don’t think it strongly represents what makes David Foster Wallace’s writing unique. Probably because it is DFW’s first novel that he wrote while he was still a master’s student. I don’t think he had yet discovered what made his writing unique. The content and themes were interesting and good, just the writing style didn’t scream DFW which is what I enjoyed so much about Infinite Jest. I honestly thought I was reading a Pynchon novel.

Notes

  • “Wonder Pass” at the Great Ohio Desert “G.O.D. [p.143]
    • p 54. “wasteland”, explicitly chose black sand to be sinister
  • The elderly are looking for their purpose in life again.
  • Second-order Vanity [p. 23]
  • Rick seems to find purpose in life through his love/obsession of Lenore
  • “a life… was in some sense not hers.” [p 637]
  • Lenore works for $4/hour. Does money not matter to her? that’s not a “system” that controls her?
  • Rick is controlled by his possessiveness of Lenore
  • Ying and Yang. Self and Other [p 90]
  • “Enjoy the Self while you can” [p 93]
  • Vlad the Impaler (bird) [p 96] talks [p98]
    • I didn’t fully internalize, but I feel like the bird is a symbol.
  • A missing book … “The book is your problem, in my opinion. Hasn’t Jay said you’re simply investing an outside thing with an efficacy to hurt and help and possess meaning that can really come only from inside you?” [p 104]
    • we are in control of what possess meaning in life.
  • societies and group pressure are the root of the problem [p 106] presumably because they help define what we should think is meaningful instead of this coming from the Inside
  • ’not having enough “control” over things’ [p 118]
  • Lenore pays her psychologist 2/3 of what she makes.
    • This is important to her [p 119]
  • “living is telling” if you have nothing to tell why live at all? [p 119]
  • “life is words and nothing else” [p 120]
  • “why is a story more up-front than a life?” [p 120]
  • “… no difference between a life and a story? But a life pretends to be something more? But it really isn’t more?” [p 120]
  • identity anxiety [p 121]
  • “telling automatically becomes a kind of system, that controls everybody involved.” [p 122]
  • “telling creates and limits and defines” [p 122]
  • “The Outside is getting in.” [p 136]
  • “It coats Self with Other” [p 136]
  • membrane [p 136]
  • the worlds they’ve been a part of from horse-and-buggy to moonshot [p 143]
    • How the Outside changes. placed in a new system
  • “which part of the broom was more elemental, more fundamental, in my opinion, the bristles or handle.” [p 150]
    • depends on what you are trying to do
  • “Meaning as fundamentalness… Meaning as use.” [p 150]
    • being used by someone
  • attach meaning to things [p 188]
    • the toad in her neck.
    • The fake leg [p 215]
    • “I am disabled”
    • “feed the leg”
  • attach meaning to looks
  • attach meaning to use
  • these are the systems we are a part of
  • “huge mirror we are all looking into " [p 224)
  • “A really important part of being here is learning how to lie. ‘strategic misrepresentation’” [p 238]
  • “You can’t be thingless” [p 240]
  • Escaping from the system (Lenore’s Grandmother missing) [p 247]
    • maybe she is the one who is found
  • “The barber… shares all and only those who don’t share themselves.” [p 248]
    • “we can’t ourselves be the object of our thinking [p 249]
    • “We are ourselves Other” [p 249]
  • “Christianity is … the offer of an irresistible reward in exchange for an unperformable service. " [p 282]
  • “Go with your feelings, is the vital thing.” [p 309]
    • let feelings, not thought, lead.
  • “We are helpless and inefficacious as parts of a system until we recognize the existence of the system.” [p 333]
  • “the world was getting small” [p 356]
    • all converging
  • “World is full of dedicated and excellent talkers” [p 399]
  • “The fire cannot be controlled … Everything falls into itself” [p 421]
  • “Out the door of the home flies a bird with its tail feathers on fire " [p 421]
    • what does the bird represent? the true self?
  • “I’d rather be talking.” [p 426]
    • when we’re talking we’re lying. We’re in control of what we want others to think
  • “forever, in discipline and negation.” [p 436]
    • I never got this.
  • “three-dimensional” [p 442]
    • I also didn’t get this. Three dimensions that define us?
  • “a partner is a worker” [p 458]
    • stronger individuals together. Group desires. No longer individual desires [p 461]