Infinite Jest

Hal watches the film while high on drugs and eating chocolate. He relates the events in the film to his own academic knowledge of history and Entertainment Studies, particularly the advertising industry and its struggles to modernize. Now, Hal knows, broadcast television is dead and media is spread through film cartridges that allow viewers to “more or less 100% choose what’s on at any given time” (416). Without home television as a place to advertise, the advertising industry festooned commercials on every available surface. Cars, planes, and every flat surface became a billboard. One of the executives of the dying advertising industry became President Gentle’s campaign manager.

Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (April 30-May 1)

On the mountainside, Marathe and Steeply talk about the most pressing issue: how to descend from the mountain in the dark. Neither man wants to reveal his plan to the other. Marathe—who uses a wheelchair—pretends to sleep while Steeply stands beside him, confused as to how Marathe even ascended the mountain. Their conversation drifts to the ideologies of the terrorist groups. According to Steeply, the Wheelchair Assassins lack a clear, coherent set of principles. They are, he insists, completely divested from politics or attainable goals. Marathe responds with his criticisms of American consumerist society and the alienation it causes. All Americans care about, he says, is instant gratification. Marathe thinks about his tragic past, in which both his brothers die by suicide by throwing themselves in front of American trains. Their deaths now motivate Marathe to make a happier society at the expense of individual freedom. To him, delayed gratification is better than the alternative offered by American culture. He thinks about his wife Gertraude who—because she was born close to the toxic pollution of the Great Concavity—was “born as an infant without a skull” (429). He defends his group’s right to share the Entertainment with America by referencing free speech and Americans’ belief in the importance of individual freedom. Steeply rejects the idea that the deadly Entertainment can be compared to something like alcohol. 

The narrative explains that, following the founding of O.N.A.N., Eric Clipperton spent some time as the top ranked youth tennis player in the country. Though his gun-toting victories had been deemed illegitimate in the United States’ old ranking system, the conversion to an O.N.A.N. model did not account for his unique play style. Clipperton arrived at E.T.A. after this incident and demanded to speak to James Incandenza. He used his gun to fatally shoot himself in front of James, Lyle, and Mario. Mario attended Clipperton’s funeral. Though he was crying, he could not help but also laugh. He remembers cleaning up the room where Clipperton shot himself. The room is now used as a disciplinary tool by the E.T.A. staff.

Don Gately works at Ennet House as an in-house staffer. He also has a custodial job at a nearby homeless shelter. His employer deliberately hires people in recovery jobs because he can pay them less. Many of the people who come to the homeless shelter are people he knows from rehab programs or from life on the streets. Don talks to his colleague about their ambition of running a women’s shoe store.

Clipperton was not the only tennis student who died by suicide. Another junior tennis player drank cyanide after a tournament victory. After finding his son, the boy’s father tried to apply mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He only succeeded in swallowing the cyanide from his son’s mouth. The boy’s mother then applied mouth-to-mouth to her husband. She died, too. Eventually, the entire family died in this manner. Now, all tennis academies have a full-time counselor on staff to check for students’ “possibly lethal reactions” to success on the tennis court. However, E.T.A.’s Dr. Dolores Rusk is regarded as useless.

In the audience at the screening of Mario’s film, the students become restless. On the screen, President Gentle becomes increasingly absurd and criminal.

Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment

Don Gately attends a July meeting of the White Flag recovery group. He stands up to talk, describing his shame that, for all his involvement in the program, he still does not believe in God. Much to his surprise, the audience cheers his speech. People congratulate him on talking about a difficult topic. For all of the discussion of abstinence and recovery, the pain and shame of the process are often overlooked during these sessions. Don thinks about his father and his stepfather, both of whom abused his mother while he watched. He remembers seeing his mother, who was addicted to alcohol, so drunk that she blacked out, after which point he would take her alcohol and use it to get drunk himself. She struggled with addiction and her health. She attended recovery groups but relapsed many times. Now, she has been committed to a psychiatric hospital, and Don cannot bring himself to visit her regularly.

Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (Very Late October)

In a recurring nightmare, Hal feels his teeth break apart in his mouth. Mario frets about Madame Psychosis—whose real identity, Joelle, is still a secret—and her prolonged absence from the radio. While she is away, a personality named Miss Diagnosis took over but proved unpopular. No one knows whether Madame Psychosis would ever return. Now, the station plays “weird static ambient musics” (450) to fill Madame Psychosis’s slot.

Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (November 9)

During a lengthy description of the students’ training schedule, the narrator hints that Charles Tavis, rather than James, is actually Mario’s father. As the students train on the courts, sipping from paper cups to keep their mouths salivated, Schtitt shouts that the students are too “sluggish” (458). Because he is injured, Hal is permitted to lower his intensity. Schtitt shouts at him anyway, then accuses LaMont Chu of allowing his obsession with becoming a famous tennis player to distract him from training. Hal recommends that Schtitt allow the students to adjust to the late November weather, but Schtitt dismisses his concern. If the students cannot adjust, he says, then they should live their entire lives outside to prepare them for the brisk weather. The older students must explain Schtitt’s ramblings to the younger students. The coach recalls how, as a young boy in Germany, he learned to live inside the tennis courts by spending months at a time in the training facility. The students are free to leave, he says, but they must remain fully committed while they remain at the academy.

While he drives to the supermarket, Don recalls how his driving license was suspended when he was in the depths of his alcoholism. The judge issued him a DUI and he chose to go to Ennet House rather than serve time in jail. At the time, he believed that finding drugs and alcohol in Ennet House would be easy. Pat is also a patient at Ennet House and was once a “young and pretty and wealthy socialite” (465). A divorce and several visits to rehabilitation facilities were not enough to make her give up alcohol; a stroke finally forced her to sincerely seek recovery. By the time she arrived at Ennet House, the stroke meant that she needed to use a wheelchair, though she is slowly recovering. She was one of the patients who was willing to eat a rock to prove her commitment to recovery. Don and Pat have a long-standing friendship.

Don still remembers his absolute shock when, four months into the Ennet House recovery program, he no longer felt “the agonizing desire to ingest synthetic narcotics” (466). Though he is not a religious man, he adopts the affections of religion because they seem to work. According to common wisdom shared by the people in the rehab groups in Boston, the meetings are like mixing a cake. People need to relax, follow the step-by-step process, and then they will get a cake. Don is not a particularly good cook, but he is the chef at Ennet House. Despite the low-quality food he cooks, no one complains to his face. The food is often disgusting, but the residents lie and assure him that it is delicious.

Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment Outcropping Northwest of Tucson, AZ, U.S.A., Still (Pre-Dawn, May 1)

Marathe and Steeply continue their discussion. Steeply describes an experiment that took place in Canada in the 1970s. In the experiment, scientists implanted electronic devices in the brains of patients with epilepsy as an attempt to cure the condition. Marathe understands the equipment because his father’s pacemaker was modeled on the same technology. Earlier experiments conducted on animals showed that, when electrical currents were sent into the pleasure centers of animals’ brains, the animals would be addicted to the shock therapy. The “cats, dogs, swine, monkeys, primates, even a dolphin” (471) would kill themselves by repeatedly pulling the lever that sent electrical currents into their brains. Hundreds of people volunteered for the human version of this experiment. As a result of the unexpected popularity, the scientists conducted a secondary study on the “regular young people—Canadian young people” (473) who were willing to potentially kill themselves in the pursuit of mindless pleasure. To Steeply, the eagerness of the volunteers can be compared to people’s experience of watching the Entertainment. He warns Marathe that the leader of the Wheelchair Assassins, M. Fortier, may be unleashing something on the world that he does not understand.

Don thinks about how he has not had sex with anyone for two years. Now, aged 29, he struggles with a sudden and unexpected onset of sexual arousal. Living with addiction for so many years, Don has “never had sex sober” (478).

Don drives to buy ingredients for dinner and passes a video rental store run by the Antitoi brothers, members of a Quebecois separatist group. He does not consider the Antitoi brothers, Lucien and Bertaund, to be particularly threatening, and he worked with them in the past when he was a thief. They were good friends with Guillaume DuPlessis before DuPlessis was murdered by Don in a botched home invasion. To the Antitoi brothers, DuPlessis is a martyr whose murder was politically motivated. The brothers run a failing film rental store. Lucien notices that two men in wheelchairs have entered the store; he immediately recognizes that they are members of the Wheelchair Assassins. Suddenly, he realizes that the men in wheelchairs have surrounded the store. He becomes scared, and when he reaches for his gun his pants accidentally drop to the ground. Lucien clutches his gun and greets the men in wheelchairs while trying to cover up his exposed body. Though Lucien is from Quebec, he cannot speak French. The leader of the Wheelchair assassins takes Lucien’s gun and—still speaking in French and ignoring that Lucien has soiled himself—asks about the Entertainment, believing that the brothers have recently acquired the notorious tape. When Lucien does not answer, the men search the store. They dangle from the ceiling with specially made suction cups fixed to their stumps. One of the men kills Lucien by shoving a broom down his throat “with a crunching pop” (488). Lucien’s soul is freed from his body, and he feels himself travelling through the air, passing over the Great Concavity—which he, as a French Canadian, refers to as the Great Convexity.