IJ study archive

DFW19: Wallace, Wittgenstein, and Religion (ISU conference panel, 2019)

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TL;DR

Two-paper ISU 2019 panel on IJ as religious literature. Paper 1 ("Everybody Worships: religious and para-religious experience in IJ") is the substantive one: AA and the novel's addictions as para-religion — structures that mimic religion's function but run asymptotic to actual self-betterment — with Mario as the lone sincere believer. Paper 2 (heavily accented, badly garbled ASR) runs Wittgenstein's religion-as-form-of-life through Ennet House. The Q&A (den Dulk among the questioners) usefully walks back paper 1's strongest claim. Auto-captions, paper 2 only partly recoverable; paraphrase only.

Key claims — para-religion paper (~min 1-22)

  • Frame: Thomas Tweed's definition of religion (confluences that intensify joy and confront suffering via human/superhuman forces) applied to a culture whose default setting is the absence of traditional religion (~min 2-4).
  • The p. 200 Ennet House wisdom-list ("God... speaks and acts entirely through the vehicle of human beings," parking spaces, etc.) read as "agnostic-soothing rhetoric": Wallace softens God-language with disclaimers because the book's subject is the human relationship with suffering as a spiritual predicament (~min 5-8).
  • Para-religion thesis: the Substances, entertainment, wealth — and AA itself — run "on a track parallel to" religion, partially mimetic of its function (better the self via a higher power), but asymptotic: they approach the horizon of intensified joy / confronted suffering without touching it (~min 8-10).
  • Strong version (stated ~min 12-13, walked back in Q&A): AA on her account is a closed system — in its attempt to overcome addiction it ultimately replicates addiction — leaving members trapped in a different system. In Q&A (~min 30-33) she softens this to: escaping one system in the novel lands you in another, and Gately's not-understanding is "thoughtless belief" — to which a questioner (recognizably den Dulk) objects that not-understanding tends to sit at religion's very core and that Gately's puzzling over why prayer works is itself contemplation; she largely concedes (~min 44-48).
  • Gately's capital-N Nothing quoted as the test case of personalized higher-power consumption (~min 13-15).
  • Mario as the antithesis (~min 17-19): comforted hearing somebody say God "with a straight face" at an NA meeting; "how can you not believe?" after watching Hal play — plus JOI Sr.'s "it was a religious moment" (the As of Yore garage monologue, our scene 049) as the family's body-religion: it would be wrong to call Mario's untraditional belief anything but sincere.
  • Ending gesture (~min 20-21): cites David Hering's observation that the novel's literal last words put the tide "way out" where Gately wakes — readable as the text gesturing toward a "way out" of the para-religious trap — you would be hard-pressed, she notes, to find a Wallace sentence that isn't calculatedly delivered. This Is Water's attention/awareness freedom offered as the actual solution the novel withholds.

Key claims — Wittgenstein paper (~min 23-44, garbled)

  • Tractatus-era Wittgenstein (the letter that the book's point is ethical and the important part is the unwritten one; the figure of running up against the limits of language; meaning lies outside the world) + later Wittgenstein (religion as practice/form-of-life, not doctrine — the recognition of sin, and redemption through faith, as actual occurrences, as the panelist relays the texts) applied to Wallace.
  • Broom of the System's Lenore/double-bind and the private-language argument (Wallace's own gloss, as she relays it: meanings imposed from outside one's own subjectivity by the community) as the route out of solipsism — truth lives in the collective dimension; Ennet House as the linguistic/religious community where this happens (loss-awareness, the give-yourself-away atmosphere, her point that disobedience amounts to kicking yourself out).
  • Wallace paraphrased (from interviews she cites): believing in something other than himself makes him less scared; AA meetings as the rare place where what-is-the-meaning-of-life questions are speakable — religion and AA united by the demand for an empathetic, authentic relationship with the other; the writer-reader reconciliation as the same gesture.

Themes

addiction-recovery (AA as [para-]religion), communication-solipsism (private language, community), family-hamlet (Mario; JOI Sr.'s "religious moment"), entertainment-self (worship of Substances).

Cross-references