Welcome!
We are going to start on a slow burn. This week everyone should be reading Cantos I-XVI and Infinite Jest chapters 1-5 (ending with Mr. Green on p39 of my edition).
Some questions to start, more to come:
What is the purpose of a disjointed narrative?
How do the interplay of cultures (attic-western-Asian in The Cantos and prep school-trap house-Arab diplomat-ghetto in Infinite Jest) work with or against the disjointed narratives? How do they work as a novel versus an epic poem? Why?
What is the purpose of allusion and what is the difference between classical allusion (as most often seen in The Cantos) and pop allusion (as most often seen in Infinite Jest, though they're both peppered furiously with both)?
I like the questions but will skip them at this point. I wonder if any noticed the section on the narrator waiting for marijuana and the fact that it was only two paragraphs. I don't believe it's very important to the overall story but I found it interesting.
ReplyDeleteI've also noticed that DFW really likes writing two words right beside one another and in the section I mentioned there was a little role that continuosly began with "He'd had". Basically, "He had had" and it has a certain oral quality to it. Any thoughts?
Hi All,
ReplyDeleteA couple more points/ideas/questions about the opening of IJ.
To elaborate on Mike's question a bit more, why start the narrative with the silenced Hal? The first chapter is a quite fantastic bit, that also establishes the family history/power/influence as well as mentions for us several of the key players in the narrative.
What I love about this opening is Hal's inability to speak for himself. If you look back at some of DFW's earlier work, especially the novella, Westward Course of Empire Makes its Way, he was fascinated with narrative frame, in particular the disingenuous nature of the accepted pact between author and reader in contemporary fiction. Hal is perfectly articulate except in voice, trapped by the narrative that is built around him, yet most of the novel concerns or is colored by his account/understanding of the world (the reader knows things when Hal knows things, sometimes before if we are more observant (but of course then who is doing the observation?)). Hal is more intelligent than he is represented but the narrative is too clumsy to contain him. DFW forces us to look at the narrative as an essential element in the veracity of the world he constructs.
There are also of course the Shakespearian overtones. Hamlet's last act is to order Horatio to speak for him. Hal's introduction puts him in that position. We will see this developed more though the story with the absence that is the tape. Hamlet remembers Yorick's jests but their visceral impact has faded only the memory of joy remains....taken to the extreme this is the essence of addiction...and away we go.
MG
Add to this Pound's insistence on using other voices (Sordello, Kung, more when I'm not on my cell phone) and the question of voice, presented by the 19th century's theoretical writers (esp Keats, Wordsworth, Emerson, and on the application end Whitman and Dickinson), and you have the real meat of the convergence of this twain:
ReplyDeleteExactly what does "voice" do in literature and why is Hal's broken at the beginning? Why do The Cantos begin with the man of many turns, Odysseus, whose narrative is overrun by The Narrator by the final ten lines or so?
How are these characters lost in the narrative and what does that say about us readers?