who narrates IJ (wraith-JOI, Hal, plural)
This asks who is actually telling Infinite Jest, with one striking proposal that the narrator is JOI's wraith. It is contested because the novel's roaming, impossibly-knowing narration invites the idea of a single hidden author, while the best counter-arguments and a manuscript trail point instead toward Hal or a plural, composite voice.
Scenes
- Scene 001: hal admissions interview
- Scene n024: joi filmography
- Scene 064: hal orin phone joi suicide
- Scene n234: orin steeply interview
- Scene 162: gately wraith figurants
- Scene 170: hal horizontal vr5
- Scene 175: fackelmann scam wraith returns
- Scene 179: hal accomplice blizzard weston
- Scene 183: locker room loach saga
Adjudication
This crux has an adversarial ledger: James O. Incandenza's Death. The per-reading verdicts are below.
Theories on this crux
| Reading | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Minor structure & design cruxes | favored |
| JOI's wraith is the in-universe author/narrator of Infinite Jest | strained |
Discussed in
- Community book club 2
- Community book club 3
- Community book club 4
- David Foster Wallace: Fiction and Form
- Dialogizing Postmodern Carnival: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest
- I Hate Infinite Jest ep. XXXII (pp. 938–981, the end) — guest Tim Eastwood: the ending-theories finale — the Lyle-toothbrush DMZ walkthrough, the single-quote narrator argument, and the Marathe ER identification
- IJ Book Club Ep. 02: Are they addicted to the process, the secrecy, or the drug? — early-pages session, Orin's phone call through the pump room
- IJ Book Club Ep. 03: To sleep, perchance to dream? — early season-1 panel on the Gately/DuPlessis burglary, JOI's biography, Kate Gompert, and a first tour of the filmography (pp. ~55–79 + endnote 24)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 04: Hatred of the work is just part of the work — Schtitt & Mario, Tiny Ewell, the first Marathe–Steeply desert section, and the ETA locker room (pp. ~79–121)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 05: Stop her! She stole my heart! — Mario and the U.S.S. Millicent Kent through Helen Steeply's Moment article (pp. ~121–144)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 08: When does routine become ritual? — the Feral Prodigy film, the Ennet House drop-in transcripts, and the Madame Psychosis broadcast scene (pp. ~170–193, archive-derived)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 09: All good parties have a line for the bathroom — Ennet House grounds, the halfway-house wisdom list, tattoos, DMZ logistics, and Joelle's last party (from p. ~193, page ref ASR-derived)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 12: Cattle Ranching East of Atlantic City — the Ennet House introduction worked (pp. ~270–283): narrator fingerprints, the ETA/AA training-wheels mirror, the Lenz/Fackelmann rhyme
- IJ Book Club Ep. 15: Quick question, Mike — Is the map the territory? — the shortest Marathe/Steeply interlude (p. ~317), then Eschaton whole (the I-Day debacle + n. 123)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 18: Not Quite Strictly Sober — Clipperton, the advertising essay, the long Marathe/Steeply night (pp. ~407–442): the lexical-fingerprint method arrives
- IJ Book Club Ep. 19: Silent and Dim and the Same Temperature He Is — Gately's home life, the P-terminals, the MF-cup climax (pp. ~438–480): the in-utero ending reading
- IJ Book Club Ep. 20: Taken Ill Shortly After Coming Home From Work — the Antitoi murders from inside the shop, the 1963 mattress scene, the NA marijuana meeting (pp. ~480–508)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 21 (S2 opener): Diddle Check? — the blue waiting room, the surprise urine test, and the Marathe/Steeply dawn (pp. ~508–~530)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 22 (S2 Ep 2): The Back-Door Slip — the government-side samizdat briefing, the Avril/Wayne tableau, Lenz & Green, the hand-model scene with endnote 234, and Arslanian's fusion lecture (pp. ~548–575)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 26 (S2 Ep 6): The Founder Let You Guys on the Grounds — the Hal–Stice exhibition as the book's Mousetrap, the narrator's axe against Steeply, the Avril blind spot, the Bain letters (pp. ~651–673)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 28 (S2 Ep 8): Ever felt like PT Krause, but looked like PT Krause? — Poor Tony resurrected, the anhedonia core, and the wraith learns where the DMZ is (pp. ~689–706)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 34 (feed-titled S2 Ep 4, in practice the season-2 finale): Kevin cries for all of us — Pemulis's dismissal (endnote 332) and Hal's Inner-Infant meeting (pp. ~795–808)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 35 (S3 Ep 1): Mama Ewell at a speculum party — Gately's resurrection: the breathing ceiling, Ewell's bedside confession, and the gospel according to Calvin Thrust (pp. ~809–827)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 36 (S3 Ep 2): A Garden Variety Wraith — live close-read of the first full wraith scene (pp. ~827–836)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 37 (S3 Ep 3): Wait — the wraith's confession, Gately's Mrs. Waite/death dreams, the mirror-bus plan, Hal's first-person return (pp. ~832–848)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 38 (S3 Ep 4 by feed position): Full of the sound and fury... — the off-the-board roadmap session: the head-dig as settled fact, JOI's save-Joelle scheme, the hole-communication mechanism, and the who-is-the-plant fight (no new pages)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 39 (S3 Ep 5): Ablutions, eh? — the toothbrush walkthrough delivered at last: Joelle at Gately's bedside, abiding between heartbeats, and the wraith-and-Lyle DMZ dosing mechanism argued in full (pp. ~854–mid-860s)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 40 (S3 Ep 6 by feed position): Dilaudid-colored Sky — the toothbrush fight arrives: Tim's duck-symbolism decode of the Stice window scene, the is-Hal-really-laughing dispute, Lyle the unreincarnated prankster, and Gately's Demerol dream (pp. ~876–891)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 41 (S3 Ep 7 by feed position): Meaning from angle of incidence redux — the narrative changes on the page: unfiltered Gately, Hal horizontal in the viewing room, the wraith's misleading account of Hal's speech, and a live three-copy punctuation hunt (pp. ~891–900)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 42 (S3 Ep 8 by feed position): Harold James and Michael Matthew have a spat — Gately's football boyhood decoded (the Quo Vadis endnote, the misspelled-words file) and the Hal/Pemulis viewing-room stand-off (pp. ~902–911)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 43 (S3 Ep 9): In the Mind of DW Gately — live close-read of the Fackelman flashback and the two-wraiths visit (pp. ~910–933)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 44 (S3 Ep 10 by feed position): Cosgrove Watt was a pro, but he was not very good. (sic) — Fackelman's last binge as a narrator problem, the Joelle–Steeply interrogation transcript walked line by line, and Hal's toothbrush carried right past the panel (pp. ~934–945)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 45 (S3 Ep 11): ACCOMPLICE! — the club reads the film straight through: the AIDS-twist plot walked beat by beat, the Lyle-as-Himself's-accomplice wink landing at its exact dosing-morning placement, and Hal's snowed-in excavation of his own memory (pp. ~944–950)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 46 (S3 Ep 12): You Ain't Gonna Learn What You Don't Wanna Know — endnote-24 filmography walkthrough + Hal on the floor (pp. ~948–951)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 47 (S3 Ep 14 by feed position; untitled beyond the numbering — feed blurb: Does anyone know?): The ER woman is Marathe argued in full, the left/right handedness code, Hal's secondhand childhood on the viewing-room floor, Mikey as the last addict interlude, and the A.D.A.'s ninth step (pp. ~954–964)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 48 (S3 Ep 15): Are These Idiots Still Talking? — the pre-exhibition locker room, Barry Loach and the sauna death, Orin under the tumbler (pp. ~964–972) — with the Ep. 49 (S3 Ep 15a) next-day addendum
- IJ Book Club Ep. 50 (S3 Ep 16, the feed's final episode: The voice down the hall was weeping like its heart would break): one page and twelve sentences of Gately's last section — the St. Elizabeth's baptism assembly, the ice-bath dispute, the dosing war reignited, and the whole novel floated as Himself's own made-up composition (pp. ~972–974)
- IJ Book Club S2 Ep. 10: The Way We Construct Meaning from Reality — the Poor Tony chase, the AFR provenance chain, Joelle's teeth dream, the finger-saw matrix (pp. ~719–736)
- IJ Book Club S2 Ep. 11: The Vapors — endnote 304 close-read (Struck's plagiarism, le Jeu du Prochain Train, Bernard Wayne) and Joelle cleaning at Ennet House (fn 304 + pp. ~732–~747)
- IJ Book Club S2 Ep. 3: So It Goes — the Lenz/Green walk to the dog-killing, Bruce Green's backstory, Mario's Ennet House night (pp. ~575–589)
- IJ Book Club S2 Ep. 7: Different Types of Sight — the match from the gallery, Matty Pemulis at the Man o' War, Hal in the viewing room (pp. ~673–~689)
- IJ Book Club S2 Ep. 9: That Man with the Rubber Fist — Tim E.'s system session: the toothbrush dosing theory, the Lyle/JOI reading, Joelle's CA meeting, Lenz and the scuttle chain (pp. ~706–~720)
- Infinite Cast Part 107: Don's hospital nightmare (pp. 837–845) — commentary segment (~21 min): the wraith-as-narrator DM, the Entertainment as shell-opener, Gately in the crib
- Infinite Cast Part 41: endnote 110 pt 1 — commentary segment only (~9 min): the ONAN history dump, dialogue-as-talking-past, the narrative voice as the Incandenzas
- Infinite Notes — co-(re)-reading notes for Infinite Jest
- Mapping the Zone Ep. 03: Mmmyellow? — monthly IJ read-through, pp. ~105–198 (Marathe/Steeply temple, videophony, the garage monologue)
- Mapping the Zone Ep. 04: I just need to put the book down and go for a walk — monthly IJ read-through, pp. 198–306 (Joelle's overdose, the Schacht match, Ennet House, Orin's backstory, Poor Tony)
- Mapping the Zone Ep. 05: Like Last Time, Only Moreso — pp. ~306–410 (Troeltsch, Mario/Avril, Marathe/Steeply, Eschaton, Boston AA, Mario's puppet film, Lyle)
- Mapping the Zone Ep. 06: Il ne faut plus qu'on pursuive le bonheur — pp. 410–503 (Marathe/Steeply, Clipperton, Gately's routine, the Antitois, the mattress)
- The Eschatological Imagination: Mediating David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest
- The Great Concavity Ep. 27: Jill Braithwaite — Infinite Jest and Paul Tillich: sin as estrangement, salvation as existential process (recorded ~mid-March 2017)
- Where's Wallace? Infinite Jest's Return to Reality
- \"At the edges of perception\": William Gaddis and the encyclopedic novel from Joyce to David Foster Wallace
- an online forum — full-history archive digest