In the David Foster Wallace Archive: Part 1/3

source

TL;DR

A 2016 blog account of a five-hour visit to the David Foster Wallace papers at the Harry Ransom Center, in which the author (an art blogger writing as RR) photographed roughly fifty pages of Infinite Jest manuscript and typescript and matched them to the published first few hundred pages. It is one of the very few firsthand descriptions of the novel's draft states in circulation, and it records several concrete book-versus-manuscript facts: an early cover sheet to agent Bonnie Nadell titled "First Two Sections" whose opening did not begin in Tucson in the Year of Glad; a cut-marked "Preliminary Throat Clearings" front section with a Blake epigraph and OED definitions of addiction; an earlier, autobiographical incarnation of the professional-conversationalist scene in which Hal is named "David" and dated April 1, 1974; a chain of scratched-out subsidized-time year-names before the final one; a "Las Meninas"-titled variant of the Wardine section written in Arizona graduate school; and the medical attaché's ethnicity shifting from one-quarter to one-half "ethnic Arab" across drafts. It advances no theory scoped to a novel crux — the material is compositional testimony — but it is prime primary evidence for how the book's opening pages were assembled.

Key claims

The author spent five hours with the DFW archive at the Harry Ransom Center, examining "heavily notated typescripts and other fragments from the birth of Infinite Jest", and afterward matched about fifty photographed manuscript pages to the corresponding pages of the current print edition.
A cover sheet to Nadell: there is "a cover to writing sent to his agent, Bonnie Nadell, titled `First Two Sections'" and then "Infinite Jest," and "this work does not start in Tucson in the Year of Glad" — i.e. the Year of Glad admission-interview opening (scene 001, pp. 3-10) was not yet the start of the book. The cover bears the standing warning "INTENDED ONLY FOR THE RETINAS OF PEOPLE TO WHOM IT'S EXPLICITLY SENT".
A "Preliminary Throat Clearings" front section, typed but marked "Cut?" by hand, containing the dedication (which survives in modified form), a Blake epigraph from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell reading "Sorrow brings forth," and Oxford English Dictionary definitions of addict and addiction.
An earlier, autobiographical professional-conversationalist scene: the section that opens this early typescript is the scene of Hal visiting his father, James Orin Incandenza, disguised as a professional conversationalist (scene 005 in the published edition, pp. 27-32). The author reports finding "what I presume to be an earlier incarnation of the scene", in which the Hal character is instead called David, "and it is putatively dated, April 1, 1974". The post adds "DFW was 13/14 that year" — by Wallace's actual birth date (February 1962) he was 12 on April 1, 1974; the post's arithmetic is reproduced as written (see Accuracy notes).
The subsidized-time year was renamed repeatedly: one typescript sets the episode in the Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken, scratched out and replaced with the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar, itself scratched out, and finally the Year of the Tuck's Medicated Pad, which is what appears in the final text.
The Wardine section had a different subsidized year and an alternate title: the passage rendered in what the author calls "African-American Vernacular" that begins at print P37 with "Wardine say" (scene 008, pp. 37-38) was first earmarked for what the post styles "the Year of the Whisper Quiet Maytag Dishwasher" (the novel's own year list reads "Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster"; see Accuracy notes), crossed out in pen, with the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar written in — the subsidized year that now stands in the text. A separate version of the same scene is titled "Las Meninas," and a note at the bottom of its second typed page indicates it was written while Wallace was in graduate school at the University of Arizona.
The medical attaché's ethnicity changed across drafts: the last medical attaché, introduced at print P33 (scene 007, pp. 33-37), "went from one quarter to one half `ethnic Arab' as the drafts proceeded."
The teleputer description was revised in longhand: on the back of a typescript page are handwritten sentences that appear in modified form in the middle of print P35 (scene 007) — a description of the teleputer and the attaché's relationship with it — with adjectives, word order, and other changes made on the way to the final edition.
The author also paged through annotated books from Wallace's personal library (Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, Sontag's Against Interpretation, Baldwin's The Fire Next Time), and stresses the account is "just a glimpse" of a fragment of the materials, not an authoritative study.

Theories & evidence

The blog advances no interpretive theory about the novel's meaning; its content is compositional testimony. The two blocks below record where that testimony bears directly on open questions about how the book was assembled — in each case the value is the firsthand draft evidence, not an argument the source makes.

THEORY: The Year-of-Glad admission-interview opening is a late addition — the book did not always begin there

Crux: late-additions
Stance: endorses
Evidence:
- [draft] The "First Two Sections" cover sheet to Nadell fronts a typescript whose opening "does not start in Tucson in the Year of Glad" — direct manuscript evidence that the scene-001 Arizona admission interview was not the original first section. [¶ bullets]
- [draft] The professional-conversationalist scene (scene 005) is the scene that "starts this part/beginning of the typescript", consistent with it having preceded the Year-of-Glad opening. [¶ bullets]
Notes: Compositional, not interpretive; the source narrates what it saw in the drafts and draws no conclusion about the novel's meaning. Independently corroborated by the archive's genetic-criticism record (den Dulk dates the admission-interview opening to the June 1994 Typescript Draft; see Cross-references) — recorded there as author/archival evidence, here as a firsthand draft sighting.

THEORY: The professional-conversationalist scene began as autobiography

Crux: conversationalist-frame
Stance: mentions
Evidence:
- [draft] An earlier incarnation of the scene names the boy "David" (not "Hal") and is dated April 1, 1974 — Wallace's own boyhood (the post says "DFW was 13/14 that year"; by his February 1962 birth date he was 12) — i.e. the scene's germ is autobiographical fiction. [¶ bullets]
Notes: The conversationalist-frame crux concerns the in-text reality of scene 005 (straight event vs. Hal's drug-distorted post-Year-of-Glad memory). The draft's autobiographical origin does not resolve that question; it is logged as a composition-history sighting only, not as evidence for either side of the reality crux. Matches David Hering's dating of the autobiographical draft to 1986, reported in the den Dulk study.

Themes

Composition and genesis (the novel's opening pages as an assembly of older, retitled, and relocated sections); the making of the book's Boston/Enfield world and its addiction frame (the "Preliminary Throat Clearings" dedication, Blake epigraph, and OED definitions of addiction); the meticulous, many-pass revision practice visible in the notated typescripts.

Cross-references

cafoscari-comparative-reading-ij-2021 — Allard den Dulk's genetic criticism of the same opening sections, drawn from the same Ransom Center containers: it dates the admission-interview opening to the June 1994 Typescript Draft, dates the autobiographical "David"/1974 conversationalist draft to 1986 (crediting David Hering), and records the Erdedy section's early "Three Protrusions" title. The strongest companion to this firsthand account.
moore-first-draft-ij and debraski-ij-cuts — the archive's other accounts of the novel's draft states and the cutting/adding history.
dtmax-every-love-story — the biography's account of the composition years and the Nadell relationship.
Scene anchors: scene 001 (Year-of-Glad admission interview, pp. 3-10), scene 005 (professional conversationalist, pp. 27-32), scene 007 (the last medical attaché and the teleputer, pp. 33-37), scene 008 (the Wardine section, pp. 37-38).

Accuracy notes

The post locates the professional-conversationalist scene "on P37"; in the published edition that scene runs pp. 27–31, and print p. 37 is where the Wardine section begins. The Wardine locator is right; the conversationalist one is most likely the author's slip.
"Year of the Whisper Quiet Maytag Dishwasher" does not match the novel's own subsidized-year list, where the year is the "Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster" (p. 223); whether the discrepancy is the draft's or the post's cannot be settled from this account.
"DFW was 13/14 that year": Wallace was born February 21, 1962, so on April 1, 1974 he was 12.

Notable passages

On the cover sheet: the document is titled "First Two Sections," then "Infinite Jest," and "this work does not start in Tucson in the Year of Glad."
The cover's warning: "INTENDED ONLY FOR THE RETINAS OF PEOPLE TO WHOM IT'S EXPLICITLY SENT".
On the conversationalist draft: the Hal character is called David, "and it is putatively dated, April 1, 1974".
On the attaché: "he went from one quarter to one half `ethnic Arab' as the drafts proceeded."