Infinite Jest - The First Hundred Pages - David Foster Wallace

Stephen Alexander Beach 

(1531 Words) 

I picked up Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace with excitement, given that I love the movie about his book tour, The End of the Tour, with Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg. The first 100 pages have not necessarily disappointed, though they are a bit darker and more depressing than I expected. This first 1/10th of the book features varied vignettes which introduce a variety of characters within the quasi-dystopian America of the future. Each of these short vignettes offers a character who is struggling on some level with serious existential question, most of which involve some type of drug use. There is a surprising number of references to drugs in these pages, from nicknames like "Bob Hope," to chemical compounds, to names of drugs I've never encountered before. It would be fair to say, though, that all of these characters of modern America are struggling, though, with deeper questions in life, or maybe we could say, the lack of answers to the deeper questions of life. 

The writing style of Wallace is very unique and creative, using style to paint a type of aesthetic feel for the reader. There are descriptions of scenes and people which are once are easily understandable, and at the same time employ a depth of vocabulary that has me stopping to look up word after word. There are not quite chapters, per se, but each of there are many breaks between the vignettes, jumping from character to character and back again. Each of the breaks is labeled by what year it is ... though instead of using numbering of years like we do in real life, each year is sponsored by a commercial company/product. "Year of Glad", or "Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment," or "Year of the Trial-Sized Dove Bar" or "Year of the Tucks Medicated Pads" or "Year of Dairy Products From The American Heartland". 

Here's a look at the different characters that are introduced in the first 100 pages: 

The Incandeza family who run the Enfield Tennis Academy, a live-in tennis boarding school. They are the main characters so far, with the father James, and mother, "The Moms", and having three sons - Orin, Hal, and Mario. Both of their parents were extremely smart university level academics, with their sons being quite successful as well. Their oldest, Orin, is a professional football player for the Arizona Cardinals. While he takes care of his body and plays well professionally, he is a serial sex addict who has no attachment to the women he uses. Hal is about to enter college, is a star tennis player, as well as extremely well educated, but has some issues socially which prevent him from being able to speak properly with others. He also has as secret marijuana addiction which he hides from everyone. And Mario, who is the youngest, and has a physical deformity with his hand. He cannot play sports, but has presented the most depth of thought from any of the characters. 

Next is a young guy, Erdedy, who takes off work to lock himself in his house to smoke weed. He has been trying to quit, but can never seem to kick the addiction. And so he goes on binges where he closes all the curtains and smokes for days on end. He also is a sex addict who simply ghosts women when he is done with them. 

Then there is a middle eastern diplomat entourage in the USA, and it focuses on one particular assistant who has a set routine each night of sitting in front of the tv, being served dinner by his wife, and "unwinding" from the day by watching his cartridges.... a type of TV addiction, so to speak. Well, it turns out that one night a week his wife goes out to play tennis and he has to take care of himself. So he desperately tries to find a new video to watch, and finds one delivered in the mail. The video entrances him to the point where he cannot stop watching. He wife later finds him dead in his chair with the video on loop. Later when others come to investigate, they too are entranced by the movie and cannot stop watching and all die as well. 

Next is a very short introduction to a girl in an abusive low income home, named Wardine, where there is physical and sexual abuse going on. Continuing on is another short anecdote of a 27 year old drug addict who has turned to a life of crime to fund his need for drugs. He disables peoples alarm systems and robs their homes. In this particular scene he ties up on old man and leaves him gagged, which ends up killing the man as he leaves with his stolen goods. Briefly we are then introduced to a young tennis player at the academy who comes down sick and is resting in his dorm room while taking cold medicine and having hallucinations. It is also mentioned about the drug use of other players at the academy, starting even at the age of 12. 

There is then Kate Grompert, a young woman on suicide watch in a medical clinic. A young doctor tries to talk with her and get her to open up, but what he finds is a woman who is so deeply depressed that every aspect of her life brings with it an unbearable dread-angst (she also struggles with drugs). "'All over. My head, throat, butt. In my stomach. It's all over everywhere. I don't know what I could call it. It's like I can't get enough outside it to call it anything. It's like horror more than sadness. It's more like horror. It's like something horrible is about to happen, the most horrible thing you can imagine - no, worse than you can imagine because there's the feeling that there's something you have to do right away to stop it but you don't know what it is you have to do, and then it's happening, too, the whole horrible time, it's about to happen and also it's happening, all at the same time.'" (73) 

At the tennis club there is Coach Schtitt, a post-war European who emigrated to the states and is a bit gruff around the edges, and yet Mario, who can't play, begins to form a relationship with him where they can talk about deeper issues. They talk about tennis theory, the United States culture, and life in general. Schtitt basically tells Mario that one must belong to a higher calling in life, regardless of the content of that calling, and the American myth of personal happiness. 

"... but who can imagine this training serving its purpose in an experialist and waste-exporting nation that's forgotten privation and hardship and the discipline which hardship teaches by requiring? A U.S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness: 'The happy pleasure of the person alone, yes?' 'Except why do you let deLint tie Pemulis and Shaw's shoes to the lines, if the lines aren't boundaries?' 'Without there is something bigger. Nothing to contain and give the meaning. Lonely. Verstiegenheit.' 'Bless you.' 'Any something. The what: this is more unimportant than that there is something.'" (83) 

Next we meet Tiny Ewell, a middle aged business man signing himself into a rehab clinic for alcoholism, and is put in a room with a man who is seemingly insane, staring with pleasure for hours at the air conditioner. Then we are taken to a construction site where we meet a worker named Marathe and a man dressed as a woman, named Steeply. They sit there and discuss the news of the new entertainment which caused the death of the middle eastern attaché assistant and others. "'The local constabulary were shall we say unprepared for an Entertainment like this.'" (90) 

Some Emerging Themes

Reflecting on the first hundred pages, it is clear that Wallace is bringing to the surface the issues of American culture which many others do not necessarily realize are issues. In The End of the Tour there's a powerful scene where DFW describes how he feels like an outsider because he has taken the prescribed American ways of living to their logical conclusions and sees where they end, in nothingness. And yet he feels as though others are not aware of these realities and continue on in a type of numbness. These pages certainly reflect the reality that many of the popular ways of living and dealing with life's existential issues that we exalt in America may themselves lead to our destruction. Certainly, it is clear that addiction, whether its to drugs or sex or success, is not, at the end of the day, an answer to a meaningful life. 

I also love the slight introduction to the entertainment to the "Infinite Jest" entertainment ... which kills. 

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1 - Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996.