This week I have been a little bit at a loss as to what to put down for the focus passages (unlike last week, I didn't just forget...). Unfortunately there were no conveniently located blatantly philosophical/social commentary passages from Marathe and Steeply to discuss. And so I was left with more nebulous feelings that there really is a lot going on in this Week's 100+ pages, but what is happening is not easy to pin down, and the questions this week's reading raises are not easy ones to answer, or even address.
One theme in the text that I found interesting is featured primarily in the first 50 pages, the idea of what it is like to live in a goal drive culture, when we do or do not attain or goals. What does it mean for life to have meaning? What happens when the meaning we thought we had assigned, or independently existed, turns out not to be there- when we get what we want and don't know what to do with it? Particularly this came into focus for me in this week ideas of "occurring", being erased (terminated p.687), as well as Hal and Kate's discussion of anhedonia and psychotic depression (p. 692-698).
I also really enjoyed the light shed on the Incandenza family by Joelle (particularly p. 736-747), especially as that analysis of the family was coupled with Hal remembering his father and his father's work and trying to glean some kind of understanding of the man Himself. The idea of the feeling in Jim's work is something that both Joelle and Hal seem fascinated by, and so we the readers get a lot of examples of Jim's films in this section, which seem rife (at least to me) with emotional significance, more perhaps than Hal at least is willing to grant the films. And this idea again brought up the lack of ability to communicate that the Incandenza family members have with one another, also brought sharply into focus by Joelle, and I thought, "There is something more significant here than merely the Kafka-esque tragedy of failed communication in people who are close to one another, and who inevitably reach a variety of bad ends". This made me remember reading a short story of Wallace's (which I may have already mentioned on this blog or in class) Good Old Neon which had as one of it's primary focuses the idea that what is truly happening, particularly the content of the conscioius self, cannot be fully related by the inadequare vehicle of language. At first reading this I wasn't sure that I agreed- but afterwards I undertook a series of personal experiments trying to describe linguistically what I was really thinking and feeling- it was simply impossible. I kept longing for some kind of Vulcan telepathy, so that I could just touch someone and express accurately all those vague ideas circling around my head for which there are no words. Maybe you know what I'm talking about, not because of my own specificity and rich description, but simply because you can Identify. I hadn't really thought of this concept of the relative destitution of language in the context of IJ, but perhaps that is at least part of what the Incandeza family is meant to represent...
On another note, I found the first section for this week really darkly beautiful, if perhaps not terribly conceptually significant, Day's violin resonating horror (648-651).
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Yikes, I just wrote a lengthy response to this post that was lost due to an error when I hit the submit button. I'm a bit discouraged (and short on time) to try to rewrite the whole thing, but maybe I can try to explain some of my ideas in class tomorrow. Here are some really brief notes on what I had written about:
ReplyDeleteDeLint & Steeply's conversation about ETA students as entertainers: sports events function foremost as entertainment in which the spectators are vital. This seems to be the first time in the book that tennis is explicitly described as entertainment for the pleasure of spectators and not from the perspective of the students.
The description of Day's hallucination reminded me of a woman with Bipolar Disorder who spoke in the Abnormal Psych class I took last year (Chloe you might have been in the same class?). she described a hallucination essentially identical to Day's, only not instigated by a resonating violin. She said it was the most terrifying and unbearable feeling anyone could imagine, so much so that death seemed the only possible escape.
Language as inadequate: I think you're definitely onto something with your insight about the Incandenza family as an example of dysfunctional communication. It seems that Avril represents language (her involvement in MGM, etc.) and Jim represents visual entertainment. Hal and Orin themselves are entertainers, and Mario like his father documents things visually, although his films tend to be more documentary than creative. The example we've brought up many times from the beginning of the novel where no one can understand Hal is important, as is his professional conversation with his dad in which Hal spouts off single words and their definitions, which ironically fail to convey any significant meaning in isolation. A vital essence definitely seems to be lost in translating thoughts to language. What about images? Do they have the ability to communicate something that language does not? There is of course the example in IJ of a lethal visual Entertainment that is so absorbing that it kills. Are there any comparably compelling and absorbing examples of language? I remember I brought up on the first day that disturbing visual images may have more of an impact on the viewer than disturbing scenes in literature, which was met with some controversy.
In response to the theme of goal drive culture, I completely agree with you. It's very interesting how DFW ties that into his super-jumbo-lengthy novel. We do live in a society where we have a purpose life which is maybe to fulfill our goals. If we don't have one...what does that make us? Usually those people will branded as a loser or whatnot or living life day by day. Correct me if I am wrong, Hal is trying to be the best in tennis and maybe that is his goal? Also you said what if we obtain what we wanted but don't know what to do with it. That saying reminded me of people who are well off..but then they have everything yet it can't satisfy them humanly. Did that make sense?
ReplyDelete"The description of Day's hallucination reminded me of a woman with Bipolar Disorder who spoke in the Abnormal Psych class I took last year (Chloe you might have been in the same class?). she described a hallucination essentially identical to Day's, only not instigated by a resonating violin. She said it was the most terrifying and unbearable feeling anyone could imagine, so much so that death seemed the only possible escape"
ReplyDeleteWow, that is one scary experience!