Nothing Happened (the Open City version of \"Signifying Nothing\")

source

TL;DR

The first-published version of the story Wallace later collected, retitled, as "Signifying Nothing" in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999). It appeared as "Nothing Happened" in Open City No. 5 (1997). This note treats the Open City text as a textual VARIANT of the collected story (the archive already holds the Brief Interviews text) and records what differs between them. A young man, about to move out of his parents' house, is ambushed by a vivid memory of his father wordlessly waggling his penis at him in the rec room when he was a small child; he confronts his father, who responds only with a look of total disbelieving disgust; the son breaks off contact for a year, then reconciles over a family dinner. The differences from "Signifying Nothing" are almost all small copyedits, plus one added sentence — but they show Wallace tightening the story between magazine and book.

Key claims

The variant status. "Nothing Happened" (Open City No. 5, 1997) is the earlier, differently-titled version of "Signifying Nothing" (collected in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, 1999). Same narrator, plot, and voice; the book retitles it and makes minor revisions (see Variant comparison).
The story. A 19-year-old narrator, packing to move out, is seized by a "detailed and solid-seeming" memory of his father waggling his penis in his face when he was eight or nine. He confronts his father in a rented van; the father says nothing and gives him a look of pure disgust; the son, enraged, cuts off contact for over a year. He gradually reasons his way to "anything is possible" — perhaps the father genuinely blocked the incident out — and reconciles at the family's traditional birthday restaurant.
The title. The collected title echoes Macbeth's 'a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing'; the magazine title "Nothing Happened" instead foregrounds the narrator's refusal to let the incident mean anything.
Survival. The magazine text survives through a fan-maintained Infinite Jest web archive, which attributes it to Wallace and dates it to Open City No. 5, 1997; it was never reprinted under this title.

Theories & evidence

Wallace's own fiction advances no theory about Infinite Jest; what follows records a single continuity of preoccupation between this story and the novel.

CONNECTION: A father and son who cannot communicate about the thing between them — the wordless look, and "anything is possible" as the only reachable meaning

Crux: communication-solipsism
Early text: The confrontation is a total failure of communication: the father "does not say anything, however, this look he gives me says it all"; the son can extract no meaning and settles for a shrug at the limit of the knowable — the moral, he decides, of any incident that strange is "anything is possible." [Open City text]
IJ echo: The Incandenza father-son silence — most sharply the professional-conversationalist episode, in which the disguised James Incandenza, convinced his son never speaks, cannot hear Hal talking right in front of him (scene 005, pp. 27-32).
Weight: shared-preoccupation
Notes: The rhyme is the impossibility of father and son making contact about what matters between them, and the retreat into wordlessness (the story's father answers only with a look; the novel's father cannot register his son's actual speech). "Signifying Nothing" is a Brief Interviews story, not an Infinite Jest text; the continuity is oeuvre-level, keyed to the existing oeuvre-scoped communication-solipsism slug, not to a novel crux.

Variant comparison

Differences between "Nothing Happened" (Open City, 1997 — this note's source, its readings given in double quotes) and "Signifying Nothing" (Brief Interviews, 1999 — readings given in single quotes). Nearly all are minor; listed most to least substantive.

Title: "Nothing Happened" → 'Signifying Nothing'.
An added beat. The book inserts, after the son first says he could have killed his father, a two-sentence swing of shame-then-rage absent from the magazine: 'For a second, I felt like I wished the van would open up and swallow me whole, I was so embarrassed.' followed by 'But, just split seconds later, what I felt was I was so totally pissed off I could have killed him.' Open City goes straight from "I felt like I could have killed him" to the analysis of his anger.
The father's gesture at the reconciliation: Open City has him "drew one of his hands back jokingly"; the book has him draw back one of his 'fists'.
The son's dazed state: Open City "in a haze, in like a cloud"; the book 'in a haze, in, like, a daze'.
The intrusive thought while dodging: Open City "having totally weird thoughts"; the book 'totally bizarre thoughts'.
The father's manner: Open City "a little bully-like"; the book 'bully-seeming'.
The closing line: Open City ends the father's joke with an exclamation, "Get the fuck outta here!"; the book ends it with a period, 'Get the fuck outta here.'
Minor: the book adds a parenthetical '(Our family is not Italian.)' at the restaurant and calls it 'mostly dark, wooden decor' (Open City: "mostly dark decor"); the magazine's two remaining "little sister" mentions become 'littlest sister' (making the book's usage uniform); ages "eight or nine" become numerals '8 or 9'.
Styling, not attributable as revision: the two texts as they survive online also differ in quotation style (the magazine transcription uses double quotes and underscore emphasis; the book transcription single quotes and no emphasis marks) — conventions of edition or transcription rather than demonstrable authorial changes, so no styling difference here is counted as a revision.

Themes

Communication and its failure (a father and son who cannot speak the thing between them); family (the rupture and the reconciliation); memory and its unverifiability ("anything is possible"); the inexpressible (the look "that says it all" because words cannot). These are the Brief Interviews register — hideous or unspeakable material handled in flat first-person monologue — adjacent to, not inside, Infinite Jest.

Cross-references

bi-title-cycle — the title-story cycle of the 1999 collection in which the retitled "Signifying Nothing" appears ("Signifying Nothing" itself sits outside that B.I. interview cycle).
signifying-rappers — Wallace/Costello's shared-title lineage is unrelated, but the archive's other "Signifying" item; do not conflate.
In the novel: scene 005 (J.O.I. as professional conversationalist, failing to reach the young Hal, pp. 27-32).

Notable passages

Verbatim quotation is from the Open City text (this note's source); readings from the collected "Signifying Nothing" appear single-quoted in the Variant comparison.

The memory: "I suddenly get this memory of my father waggling his dick in my face one time when I was a little kid."
The failed confrontation: "He does not say anything, however, this look he gives me says it all", the son unable to extract a word from him.
The reconciliation's last line: "and I pretended to look down and make a face, and we all laughed. It was good."