DMZ

I've been thinking about the implications of Hal's possible ingestion of DMZ (dimetridazole) and what illuminating significance this might have. I figured some clues from the text might become more noticeable given more knowledge about the drug, so I did some more-than-cursory research online. It turns out there's really not much to find, at least not about its use in humans. I found nothing at all to suggest its psychoactive effects, nor any relevance to direct human consumption, not even a suggestion thereof. Just about all I could find were implications for its use in animals, including studies on its use as an antiprotozoal and antifungal treatment in birds and pigs. Among those data is ample evidence that it is in fact toxic to animals (i.e., causes death). In fact it looks like most governments have outlawed its use in food-producing animals. Take this statement from the Australia's Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, for example:

In 2002 the APVMA (formerly the NRA) began a review of dimetridazole because of concerns relating to occupational health and safety, residues and toxicity. This action was based on the withdrawal of dimetridazole from use in food-producing animals in several countries.

In 2007 the APVMA released the Dimetridazole Review Report and Regulatory Decision (PDF, 629kb). The APVMA’s findings were that use of dimetridazole in food-producing animals posed a potential risk to human health.

To reduce the risk to the public the APVMA cancelled the use of dimetridazole in food-producing animals, and amended the labels of products used in non-food producing situations to include new safety directions and warning statements.

Given all of this information, it's alarming that any human would choose to take this drug or that it would even be available on the street (like DFW notes, it's near-impossible to find... but it would seem to me it should be actually impossible). Its psychoactive (i.e., having an impact on the brain) effects in humans seem doubtful to me, other than maybe a toxic delirium. (Confining oneself to horizontality and imagining being in a sarcophagus seem consistent with toxicity, I suppose.) Of course, its antifungal properties make sense in the context of IJ and Hal's childhood mold consumption, but who removed the drugs from where they were hidden? JOI's ghost? Hal? Did Hal really take the DMZ? I need to go back and read more of the details from earlier in the book about DMZ and the boys' plan, although I doubt there's much concrete evidence of anything.

Incidentally, I've been trying to figure out the significance of the Wardine passage early in the book, and Mikey at the end. I might be missing something. Anyone else have some ideas?

The storm after the storm

Now that I've finished the book my new obsessive entertainment is Googling everything David Foster Wallace and Infinite Jest. I need to abandon the computer entirely to escape this addiction, which hasn't been working well. I've found a lot of great things, of which I'll share just a few:


An archive of some of DFW's personal writings, manuscripts, etc. Apparently his posthumous novel The Pale King is scheduled for publication April 2011.

An exhibit called "A Failed Entertainment: Selections from the filmography of James O. Incandenza" which happened early this year at Columbia. I so wish I could have attended! I wonder if we can find the films anywhere. Here's a review from The New Yorker.

A video (Part 1) of some boys playing "Eschatong" (Eschaton ping-pong... in the snow), weird and fascinating to say the least. Part 2 gets pretty complicated.

A brief analysis by Anelise Chen (The Hydra) that argues for Gately as the book's hero. I hadn't quite thought of it this way before but I agree with her points. Here's a little bit:

There is a real moment of transcendence, and I’m not joking, when Gately eventually resorts to thrusting out his bad arm to attack the balls of a doctor to stop him from offering him drugs, which Gately knows he won’t be able to refuse. We feel this immensity of pain, both physically and psychologically, but somehow, suddenly, everything about life is redeemable. Because in the worst of odds against himself, Gately has decided through this one gesture that life is worth not giving up on.

Back to the cold sand, gonna watch the tide come and go and wait out the storm.

Heroes and anti-heroes (or no heroes at all?)

All of a sudden it occurs to me that Infinite Jest owes far more to Hamlet than just its title. Far, far more. Since I haven't even thought about Hamlet since sophomore year of high school and have no idea where my copy is (or whether I even owned one), I found the graveyard scene online (Act V, Scene i) and read up. Here are just a few things I noticed from this particular scene:

The superfluous irony of both requires little elucidation, of course, but there are plenty of other references and odd similarities.

In Shakespeare, Hamlet and Horatio visit the graveyard and see the gravediggers preparing a grave for Ophelia, which is when Hamlet sees the jester Yorick's skull and delivers The Line (you know). There is obviously a direct parallel between this scene and Gately's dream of digging up James O. Incandenza's grave with a "very sad kid" who "moves his mouth but nothing comes out" (934)--Hal, apparently. Joelle appears and asks whether Hal and Gately knew him, "the dead guy with the head" (same page).

Furthermore, in speculating about Ophelia's death in Hamlet, one of the gravediggers uses the term "se offendendo": a misuse of the correct Latin se defendendo. This seems to be a purposeful statement about the legal paradox of suicide: Is killing oneself a self-offense or self-defense given that the murderer is also the victim? This error appears throughout IJ as well. I found one example where Ewell makes this error (814), which corresponds to footnote 337 (p. 1076) in which DFW explicitly references Hamlet:

Latin blunder for self-defense's se defendendo is sic, either a befogged muddling of a professional legal term, or a post-Freudian slip, or (least likely) a very oblique and subtle jab at Gately from a Ewell intimate with the graveyard scene from Hamlet--namely V.i 9.

The implications of this mistake in IJ are not only legal but social/cultural/psychological. Take Kate Gompert, for example, who sees death as the only escape from her emotional burden. If she were to commit suicide, would it be a criminal offense, or could one soundly argue it to be an act of self-defense? Like Kate Gompert, Ophelia is "incapable of her own distress" according to Queen Gertrude (IV.vii).

Again, in IJ, Joelle attempts suicide at Molly Notkin's party. Might Joelle also embody a role similar to Ophelia's? A clue might be that in Hamlet, Laertes suggests that Ophelia will become an angel, and we see Joelle in Gately's dream with wings at the graveyard.

I found this excerpt from Hamlet's soliloquy at the graveyard also relevant, in which he comments on the eternity of life after death, as men live on in objects (think James O. Incandenza and his final film, the Entertainment, otherwise known as Infinite Jest):

Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of
earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he
was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

Finally, there is the scene's end in which Laertes is enraged after Hamlet proclaims his own love for Ophelia, whereupon King Claudius reassures Laertes that they will get revenge. Revenge is a common theme in Infinite Jest as well. I have in mind all of the political controversies, and recall that it is also mentioned explicitly, though I can't remember the context. ("Revenge is best served chilled"--I can't manage to find this in the book right now, but I know it appears more than once).

In general, Hamlet's obsession with death throughout the entire play is paralleled by DFW's obsession with death throughout IJ. A lot of the same ethical and spiritual dilemmas raised in Shakespeare are surely relevant to Infinite Jest. In fact it might be naive to read it without Hamlet as a prerequisite. It seems quite convenient actually: What other work could a contemporary author assume that almost all Americans have read? As far as I know Hamlet is a requirement in most high schools.

Last but not least, as blaring as it is, I feel it has to be said: Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy from III.i is riddled with relevance to IJ and DFW. I'm reminded again of the themes of suicide and revenge that appear in both works. Many of the characters in IJ could easily deliver this speech. I might as well just paste it here for convenience:

To be or not to be– that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep
No more – and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to – ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

That's all I've got for now. Admittedly I still have 30 pages unfinished in IJ, so even more revelations may await! Morning comes soon.

Hamlet and Infinite Jest

We've discussed this in class, but here is the quote from Hamlet with the title:

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!"