Infinite Jest

by David Foster Wallace

  Hal spits Kodiak tobacco juice into an old rocket-emblazoned NASA glass on the bedside table, idly and for no special reason riffling through densely packed letters tri-folded and packed upright, a kind of Rolodex of different mementos and postal correspondence Mario’s rescued from wastebaskets and recycling bins and dumpsters and quietly saved in shoeboxes. Mario has no problem with Hal perusing his closet’s stuff. Mario’s closet has a canvas strap instead of a knob. Ideally there would also be a bucket of very cold water, and Hal would move the bad ankle from one bucket to the other and back again. A whistle sounds from down near the girls’ West Courts. Someone little in the hall outside the closed door shouts ‘Guess again!’ to someone else farther down the hall. None of the Hush Puppy box’s snail-mail letters are to or from Mario. Mario’s bed is loosely, unanally made. Hal’s bed is unmade. Hal and Mario’s mother had done her undergraduate Honors work at McGill on the use of hyphens, dashes, and colons in E. Dickinson. The Epsom-water whitens his calluses. Unlaundered bedding swims around him. The phone twitters. Am ple make this bed, or Am ple make this bed. The phone twitters again.

  A MOVING EXAMPLE OF THE SORTS OF PHYSICAL-POST MAIL MRS. AVRIL INCANDENZA HAS SENT HER ELDEST CHILD ORIN SINCE THE FELO DE SE OF DR. J. O. INCANDENZA, THE SORT OF CHIRPILY QUOTIDIAN MAIL THAT — HERE’S THE MOVING PART — SEEMS TO IMPLY A CONTEXT OF REGULAR INTER-PARTY COMMUNICATION, STILL

  20 June Y.W.-Q.M.D.

  Dear Filbert, a

  It’s been a quiet week here on Mount Gawdforsaken b — today is perishing hot, windless, quiet as a tomb, lush and pretty. Every floral unit on the grounds has its pistil aprick and petals atremble in a truly shameless fashion, for the bees are about. The whole hill hums drowsily. Yesterday, your Uncle Charles was accosted on the north path by a bumblebee that he alleges was so enormous it sounded like a tuba, and he dispatched Mr. Harde and the grounds crew with skeet rifles and orders to ‘…bring the Sikorski-sized bugger down.’ I shall spare you details of the subsequent misadventures of the grounds crew, two of whom are now recovering satisfactorily.

  The paucity of decibels here is due in part to all six A-teams’ departure yesterday for Milan, with Gerhardt, Aubrey, Carolyn, and Urquhart at the pedagogical tiller. It seems not so many moons ago that we were seeing you, Marlon, Ross, and the rest off on the European clay junket. I recall pressing the maternal beak to the terminal window’s glass, trying to make my Filbert out somewhere behind the airplane’s impossible little bullet-hole windows. I cried like a fool every time, as of course I did all over again yesterday, embarrassing everyone but Mario, who also cried.

  As for me, I’ve swotted and wakked all morning, cranking up your Uncle Charles’s videophone and trying to cajole the editors of various supermarket trade publications to run M.G.M.’s c latest plea for amending Less to Fewer in those !*#!*# Express Check-Out lanes. One old editorial codger said that he’d dearly love to help me out but that his newsletter was devoted exclusively to issues of promotional display. When I suggested that a little comic relief in the form of the L ——>F bulletin might not be amiss, he chortled. Chortling is good. We like chortling. However, I did manage to twist the arms (harder to do telephonically than one might think) of Produce Weekly, Star Market’s Quarterly Register, and PriceChopper’s Shelf and Cart, so the wheels of adjectival justice continue, albeit creakily, to turn.

  The very last gobbet of Academy news is that your Uncle Charles had his blood cholesterol tested late last week. Though the verdict rendered was no worse than a rather unperspicuous “Normal to Upper-normal” (sic), the penultimate modifier has caused, as you might anticipate, much pacing and high-decibel whingeing, as well as vows of eternal xerophagy from here on out. Your Uncle Charles has already, for some months now, made a practice of swallowing three teaspoons of fish-liver oil just before he hurls the administrative skeleton bedward for the night. Your brothers have taken to trekking over on slow nights to watch him swallow his oil, purely out of enthusiasm for the faces Charles makes as the stuff goes gulletward. I e-ordered the poor man a low-lipid, artery-friendly cookbook as a sort of Whatthehell present the day the results came in, and your Uncle Charles has already pored over the thing and marked several yummers. We’re to have a swot at cabbage patties tonight, fast-laners that we are. I do suppose the poor man will find a way to ladle rice bran d into his toothpaste before this spasm of angst subsides. Bless his heart — as it were!

  My, this machine does let one maunder on. I’d best get back to harrying grocers. One of this fall’s matriculates e is the son of a man who’s apparently become an immensely wealthy Telegrocer f in the Upper Midwest, so perhaps the Express Lane-Solecism issue will simply disappear in these here parts as well.

  It goes without saying that you are of course wearing your halo and mouth-guard at all appropriate times and eating at least one green, leafy vegetable per day.

  Oh — ’twas won derful to hear about the arbitration and contract. Mr. deLint read a detailed account and told us all about it. Proud, as ever, to know you.

  Miss You and Love You Lots,

  and c.

  AND AN EXAMPLE OF THE INVARIANT RESPONSE THESE PIECES OF MAIL ELICIT

  Dear Ms. Incandenza,

  Due to the large number of mail the New Orleans Saints® are so fortunate enough to receive from all across the 2nd InterLace Grid g , we regrettably say ORIN INCANDENZA #71 can not answer your letter in person, however, on behalf of the New Orleans Saints®“ORIN” has asked me to say Thank-You for your message of support, and best wishes.

  Inclosed, please accept a special, color 20 × 25 centimeter personally autographed action photo of ORIN INCANDENZA #71, as our way of saying Thank-You and how important you're letter has been to us.

  Cordjally,

  Jethro Bodine

  Assistant Mailroom Technician

  And c.

  ‘Mmyellow.’

  ‘Presenting Speedy Seduction Strategy Number 7.’

  ‘Orin. Happy Inter-Day Eve. E Unibus Pluram and so on. Still dodging the disabled?’

  ‘A proviso up-front, Hallie: Number 7 never misses.’

  ‘And not every Dickinson poem is singable to ‘Yellow Rose,’ O. Sorry to disappoint you. For instance like “Am ple make this bed — Make this bed with awe ” isn’t even iambic, much less quatrameter/trimeter.’

  ‘Just a theory. Just tossing it out for the machine’s consideration.’

  ‘A practice to be encouraged. This particular theory’s unfortunately a dink. Plus I don’t think you quite meant proviso.’

  ‘Number 7 remains a no-miss proposal, though. Picture this. Obtain a ring. As in a wedding band. So you present yourself to the Subject as visibly married.’

  ‘You know I hate these Strategy calls.’

  ‘Also of course works if you really do happen to be married. In which case you’ve got a ring already.’

  ‘I’m sitting here soaking my ankle, O.’

  ‘The object being to present yourself to the Subject as married, as in happily married, and you engage her in a conversation in which you make a big deal of how head-over-heels in love you are with your wife, how wonderful she is, the wife, how blue and clean the pilot-light of passion still burns in the central heating system of your love for her, your wife, even after all these several years you’ve been hitched.’

  ‘I’m sitting here looking through an old box of letters to kill just a very few minutes before a bunch of us climb in the tow truck for Pemulis’s annual I.-Day-Eve town-painting.’

  ‘But as you’re saying all this to the Subject, your manner is nevertheless indicating that you’re attracted to her.’

  ‘It’s poignant somehow that you always use the word Subject when you mean the exact obverse.’

  ‘But it’s not like flirtatious or salivious, your manner. More like just strongly involuntarily attracted. Almost as if hypnotized against your will. Your manner can indicate this just by following the Subject’s conversational movements and changes of posture or facia
l expression in that sort of vacant intense way a hungry person watches somebody eating. Following the movements of the fork as if memerized. With, of course now, the occasional flicker of pain and conflict in your eyes, at the fact that here you are involuntarily memerized by somebody other than your serapic wife, which the point —’

  ‘Time. Yo. I think you mean seraphic. I also think you meant lascivious and mesmerized.’

  ‘You know what your problem is, Hallie?’

  ‘I have just one problem?’

  ‘But hang on until you see that 7’s worth not making me digress away from, though. Because the point being to get across how it’s an incredible tribute to the Subject’s overwhelming female charms that you can even really even see her, the Subject, since you’re so in love with your wife you barely even see most women as even female anymore, much less be involuntarily attracted to the Subject, much less have maybe the thought of infidelity skitter no matter how involuntarily across your devoted mind. And it’s not like you’ll have to volunteer any of this directly. The Subject’ll draw the observations on her own. That’s the point of the conflicted flickers in your memerized eyes, or at the most an involuntary tortured groan, a quick bite of the knuckle of the forefinger.’

  ‘A heel of the hand to the forehead or something like that.’

  ‘Get your manner down just conflicted-looking enough and the Subject herself’ll actually start drawing you out on this fact, the involuntary attraction that’s so painful to you and so flattering and tributary to her.’

  ‘So wait. This is like a conversation where you’re affecting all this flickering and groaning? Like you mean a cocktail-party-small-talk conversation? Or do you just brandish your fake ring at some girl at a bus stop and start a tortured tribute to your seraphic wife?’

  ‘It takes place anywhere. Venue-adjustable. 7’s portable and never-miss. The point is to maneuver the issue of your devoted attracted conflicted pain to the point where you can appear to almost sort of break down and can ask the Subject in all tortured sincerity if she thinks your involuntarily finding her so visibly female and attractive makes you a bad husband. Display vulnerability and ask her to evaluate the like integrity of your heart. Seem desperate. Your whole married self-concept shaken. Practically beg the Subject to reassure you you’re not a bad-hearted man. Plead with the Subject to say what she thinks it might be about her charms that could drive your serapic wife even momentarily from your heart. You present the attraction you feel for the Subject as this involuntary identity-threatening soul-searing-type crisis you just desperately need her help with, the Subject’s, person to person.’

  ‘Sounds very moving.’

  ‘And if it so happens you really are married, the additional advantage to 7’s pitch is that you and the Subject both, however briefly, get to believe it. The pitch. The involuntary passionate doomed knight-errant-type pitch.’

  ‘And of course, O., the Subject just happens to be married herself, often with small children, putting her directly in your crosshairs.’

  ‘A matter of what’s the word personal preference and taste that doesn’t impact 7’s surefire no-miss quality one way or the other. It’s the doomed involuntary conflicted good-man’s-downfall-type quality that no Subject can seemingly resist.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Ainsi, then.’

  ‘Well O. the thing’s sick. It’s even sicker than 4. Was it 4? The one you said that Loach inspired, where you’d supposedly just that very day dropped out of Jesuit seminary after umpteen years of disciplined celibacy because of carno-spiritual yearnings you hadn’t even been quite in touch with as carno-spiritual in nature until you just now this very moment laid eyes on the Subject? With the breviary and rented collar?’

  ‘That was 4, yes. 4’s pretty much of a gynecopia also, but within a kind of narrower demographic psychological range of potential Subjects. Notice I never said 4 was no-miss.’

  ‘Well you must be a very proud young man. This is even sicker. The fake ring and fictional spouse. It’s like you’re inventing somebody you love just to seduce somebody else into helping you betray her. What’s it like. It’s like suborning somebody into helping you desecrate a tomb they don’t know is empty.’

  ‘This is what I get for passing down priceless fruits of hard experience to somebody who still thinks it’s exciting to shave.’

  ‘I ought to go. I have a blackhead I have to see to.’

  ‘You haven’t asked why I called right back. Why I’m calling during high-toll hours.’

  ‘Plus I feel some kind of toothache starting, and it’s the weekend, and I want to see Schacht before Mrs. Clarke’s confectionery day in the sun tomorrow. Plus I’m naked.’

  ‘I’m surprised you were even there. In person. I was expecting the Disembodied Voice and asking you to call back ASAP on this. What is it out there, 1600? Why aren’t you outside hard at play? Don’t tell me Schtitt started cancelling P.M.’s for I.-Day Eve.’

  ‘I tagged this kid Pemberton in the eye up at net. It was inadvertent. We were only four games in. He hit a big soft fluffy goose of an approach and I was trying to handcuff him. I hit it at him only to handcuff him. He never even got his stick up. Right in the left socket. It made a sound like a champagne cork. A prorector named Corbett Thorp said he thought Pemberton might have detached a retina. Something sure seemed detached. He was walking around in diminishing circles like he’d been hit with a mallet.’

  ‘You sound really, like, remorse-riddled.’

  ‘Kitchens and heat, O. I’ve taken my share of balls in various spots. And whence bizarre metric theories about Emily Dickinson all of a sudden, by the way? And what’s up with the lurking figures with wheelchairs?’

  ‘You’re a Top-Ten junior stickman suddenly now this year, Hallie, what’s Schtitt doing giving you a cloth mouse like Hugh Pemberton to bat around anyway?’

  ‘You remember him?’ ‘Who could forget a kid that looks like he’s curtsying when he serves? With the white visor and the little amber glasses? That kid’s been hanging from the bottom of the ladder by his nails since he was nine.’

  ‘It’s been carnage all week. Schtitt’s playing the C teams against the A’s. It’s for the C’s’ development, Donni said. Also because today word’s down from the tower some of the staff thought some of the A’s looked tentative against Port Wash.’

  ‘They despise tentativity.’

  ‘I think they want us just short of cocky for the Fundraiser and then the WhataBurger, where Wayne’s got a chance to knock this Veach kid off the pole.’

  ‘Let’s not forget you though either, H. I can get down for at least the WhataBurger semis if you get there, if you want incentive.’

  ‘As in in person, O.?’

  ‘Word is you’re worth watching now.’

  ‘Word?’

  ‘I keep my ear to the cement, Hallie.’

  ‘At least for very short Subjects, I’d imagine.’

  ‘We take off for the Patriots that Friday, what is that like the 27th or -8th, but it’s a Saturday afternoon game. I can be down there by midday Sunday if you’re still in the thick.’

  ‘You’ll probably need to wear some sort of sign around your neck so I know it’s you.’

  ‘…’

  ‘So then you’ll be up here just as we’re down there, oddly, playing.’

  ‘It goes without saying you’d give me the advance skinny if anybody I didn’t want to see was by any chance flying down there with you guys.’

  ‘The C versus A thing’s been more like grotesque than confidence-building. Guys are taking out stress in kind of twisted ways. Struck beat Gloeckner in 40 minutes and then made a show of revealing he’d had 3-kilo ankle-weights on under his socks. Wayne made van Slack cry right there in front of everybody.’

  ‘Word is Wayne has exactly one gear.’

  ‘Then Thursday Coyle had his left wrist tied to his right ankle and was still beating this new kid Stockhausen until Schtitt sent Tex Watson down to tell him to
knock it off.’

  ‘So but the reason I’m really calling, Hallie.’

  ‘And you’re being evasive about the dread about the disabled. The like rolling stalkers.’

  ‘I haven’t seen wheel one in days. I’m thinking possibly this was a kind of very shy sort of fan club of people without legs that look up to me —’

  ‘Grotesque entendre, O.’

  ‘— as, like, the ultimate leg. They use different ruses to follow me around and never come close or say anything because they’re really shy because they don’t have legs. So now my mind’s resting easier.’

  ‘Now if the roach- and spiders-at-heights fears’d subside you could really hold the head high.’

  ‘So the reason I’m calling.’

  ‘I already said I’d let you know when and if. No sightings of any journalists. Your Moment profiler.’

  ‘I’m actually glad I got you in person. I was going to ask you to call me ASAP.’

  ‘I’m pleased to call you a sap whenever you like, O.’

  ‘That’s below you. And I can hear you still chewing that grisly shit. That shit’s going to make your lower jaw fall right off. I’ve seen it happen down here, believe me. And you’re wondering why the tooth problems all the time suddenly.’

  ‘Snuff’s saliva-stimulating. It’s actually oral-hygiene-enhancing, when you factor in all the extra brushing. The caries are Himself’s legacy. You know that. The Himself whose root canals put Dr. Zegarelli’s kids through Andover.’

  ‘This basically nonsocial call, H., is because I need your feedback on some issues from these half-dozen or so very complex and far-ranging and in-depth conversations I had with a certain Subject.’

  ‘Not the mobile-home person, surely.’

  ‘Whole different ballpark of Subject. The Dickinson theory I have to admit came from these conversations.’