IJ study archive

Endings II: The Annulation-Text

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TL;DR

A philosopher's meta-theory of IJ ending-theories, from the end of Infinite Summer 2009. Paris names the space between p. 981 and p. 1 the "Annulation-Text" — a real but inherently unstable, polyvalent site of meaning, as opposed to the completed "Text-Object" — and argues plot-speculation is legitimate precisely when it loops back to enrich the text rather than fixing events. He then endorses two theories on their semiotic merits: Schmidt's mold/DMZ-synthesis and Swartz's Orin-has-the-master.

Key claims

  • The supra-text connecting p. 981 to p. 1 comprises about a year of Hal's (and others') lives; he dubs it the Annulation-Text because, in good annular fashion, the narrative develops there and returns to the book's beginning.
  • Opens with a useful inventory of what is actually unresolved at the Full Stop: AFR invading ETA disguised as a Quebec junior squad (p. 965); Hal making wrong facial expressions, phone messages unheard (pp. 942–43, 966); Gately being extubated (p. 974); Pemulis hunting his vanished DMZ (p. 965); Orin in the tumbler (p. 972); Mario unaccounted for; Kate Gompert weighing Marathe's offer to view the Entertainment (p. 782); Marathe at Antitoi Entertainment unaware Fortier plans to kill him (p. 846).
  • Methodological centerpiece — the Dumbledore argument: after a Text-Object is complete, the author "has No Right to read her text any more authoritatively than her readers" (Rowling declaring Dumbledore gay = illegitimate external intervention; her epilogue failed because it was "Projective," a mere where-are-they-now, not Annular). A complete world is not the same as a determinate world.
  • Distinguishes legitimate Annulation-Text reading from (a) "saving" the book from incompleteness, and (b) filling "the gaping hole that structurally enacts the novel's themes of emptiness and absence" (Detox). Quotes Gerry Canavan: the "teasing but doomed impulse towards closure, the fantasy that answers to all the mysteries exist somewhere inside the book," and "ending was never and could never have been what Infinite Jest is about; that's why it comes first." Full narrative closure would reduce IJ to a form of Entertainment — passive consumption.
  • Endorses theory 1, Schmidt's Mold Theory: internally-synthesized DMZ; earlier facial/articulation oddities were noticed mainly by JOI and "covered over" by the autist-savant gifts (dictionary recall); weed flattened expression entirely; withdrawal destabilizes everything. The point: our problem with meaning and communication "is not externally imposed... We are 'in here.' Our task is to tell our stories, as unironically as possible, as humbly as possible."
  • Endorses theory 2, Swartz's Orin-has-the-master (postal evidence, Berkeley viewings, AFR conflagration toppling Gentle) — while explicitly rejecting Swartz's wraith-steals-DMZ-and-doses-Hal mechanism and doubting Orin could "bargain" with the AFR. The point: Orin and Hal both live in cages — Hal settles into anhedonia; Orin smashes himself against the walls, externalizing despair onto Avril's lovers; neither escapes by avoidance.
  • Good theories are "semiotically charged": they revert back to the Text-Object and clarify its meaning by compelling attention to already-identified problems — "contributions to the construction of meaning," not fixed event-happenings.
  • Comment thread keeps the Gately-dies counter-reading alive: Brock reads the final beach scene plus p. 974's "upward movement deep inside" as death/surgery, with JOI and Lyle as wraith-escorts into the afterlife; "max" rebuts via the Poor Tony precedent and the fact that the text places the Fackelmann episode before Gately "did a bit," so the last of the book is not the last of Bim.

Themes

  • Entertainment/irony (closure-as-Entertainment); communication/solipsism (telling stories unironically as the human task); addiction (Hal's withdrawal); the annular structure itself as theme.

Cross-references

Notable passages

"The existence of an Annulation-Text is either upsetting or comforting, depending on the reader." — Paris

"Note that on this view a complete world is not the same as a determinate world." — Paris, on authorial authority

"There is a simple way to summarize my point in all this: reading the text for plot clues has been a helluva lot of fun... I will not become a hygienically compromised M.A.S.H.-type addict with notebooks filled with paranoid scrawls." — Paris

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