Entropic stasis as the end of the world — the Solomon Stoddard jeremiad prefigures Infinite Jest's terminal-stasis…
echoes
From: Order and Flux in Northampton
- Early text: Stoddard's jeremiad foretells "the world's cold and
imminent end," "characterizing that end as a kind of grim entropic stasis"
harbinged by, among other portents, poor nutrition and dental decay, the
increasing infertility of modern woman, "the rise of the novel; the Great
Awakening itself"; and the plot delivers Dingle himself toward "breakdown and
tilted stasis," since "Love has turned the order of Barry Dingle's life into
flux". [c17-dfw1/dfw2]
- IJ echo: The novel's image of terminal, self-consuming stasis — the viewer
of the Entertainment reduced to inert, fatal bliss (the medical attaché settling
in before the unlabeled cartridge, scene 007, pp. 33-37; the viewers reported
out of commission altogether, scene 029, pp. 87-92) — and its broader dread of
a culture entertaining itself into paralysis.
- Weight: shared-preoccupation