IJ study archive

Notes on Infinite Jest

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TL;DR

One of the earliest (late-90s) close-reading fan documents on IJ, a terse plain-text file of theories and open questions. Its signature contribution is the "endogenous DMZ" theory: Hal's body synthesized DMZ itself from the mold he ate as a child, triggered by marijuana withdrawal — no one dosed him. Also an early collection of the John Wayne/AFR evidence, Avril-as-Quebecois-agent hints, and the Hamlet parallels. (Note: the long-cited URL dfan.org/jest.html is dead; the text survives at dfan.org/jest.txt.)

Key claims

  • How Hal acquires his speech impediment: Hal's body synthesized DMZ, perhaps provoked by marijuana withdrawal. Evidence chain:
    • p. 10: "'Call it something I ate'" directly precedes the story of Hal eating the mold; the mold is itself mold-on-mold ("darkly green... speckled with parasitic fungal points of yellow, orange, red").
    • p. 170: DMZ "is synthesized from a derivative of fitviavi, an obscure mold that grows only on other molds."
    • p. 1064: DMZ doesn't show on a G.C./M.S. — Struck found it in "an obscure Digestive-Flora footnote"; it shows only as "a slight case of imbalanced yeast." Schmidt: Hal ate the fitviavi mold years ago and it's living in his digestive system.
    • p. 33: the medical attaché's specialty is "maxillofacial consequences of imbalances in intestinal flora" — the intestinal-flora/yeast motif again.
    • Hal's symptoms match the DMZ'd convict who tried to speak and was heard singing Ethel Merman tunes: he says one thing, observers perceive another.
  • Location of the Entertainment: the master is in JOI's head. A microwaved head could leave a skull (Hal's p. 250 account doesn't say it was obliterated); Gately's p. 934 dream and Hal's p. 16 memory both center on digging the head up ("the important thing was buried in the guy's head"); and the "professional conversationalist" scene (p. 992 endnote) has Himself ranting about materials "identical to the... mise-en-scene appropriation card and priapistic-entertainment cartridge implanted in your very own towering father's anaplastic cerebrum."
  • John Wayne: covert Quebecois ties. Day's plagiarized AFR/le Jeu du Prochain Train article (p. 1060) names the lone non-jumper "Bernard Wayne" of the Papineau region; Wayne's father is an asbestos miner (p. 262); in Hal's p. 16 memory Wayne stands watch "in a mask," and the AFR wear masks (p. 486).
  • Avril: continuing Quebecois ties. "Avril I." = "April 1" in French; April 1 is the day the attaché receives the HAPPY ANNIVERSARY cartridge (p. 36); Himself's "crazy" assertion about Avril and thirty Near Eastern medical attachés (p. 30) rhymes with Hal's p. 957 knowledge of her affairs; the third Quebecer at ETA, Poutrincourt, is missing on exhibition day (p. 965).
  • Hamlet inventory: title quote (V.i, via fn 337/p. 814); Poor Yorick Entertainment; Gately's dream-Joelle asking "if they knew him, the dead guy with the head" ("I knew him, Horatio"); Hal reading the Riverside Hamlet (p. 171); Hal's "Heroic Stasis in Broadcast Entertainment" essay as Hamlet's non-action; Tavis/Avril as Claudius/Gertrude.
  • Name-play: Marathe ~ Marat (murdered revolutionary); Antitoi = "anti-toi" (against-you); Luria P.'s surname given once as "Perec" (Georges Perec, OuLiPo, La Disparition); A. R. Luria the Soviet neuropsychologist of brain injury; Madame Psychosis = metempsychosis, fitting the Entertainment's death-and-rebirth content.
  • Open questions he flags: the Entertainment's contents differ between Molly Notkin's (p. 787) and Joelle's (p. 937) accounts; why the wraith activity clusters around Stice; who Hal sees in the snow on p. 867; Hal's "11-18-EST0456" display on the morning of Nov 20 as possible DMZ time-misperception; the seller of the DMZ to the Antitois (p. 481) — answered via Tim Ware: it's Sixties Bob (p. 927).

Themes

  • Communication/solipsism (saying one thing, being heard as another — the Merman-tunes problem as the book's central horror); addiction (withdrawal as trigger); family (Hamlet machinery); Quebecois separatism (Wayne, Avril, Poutrincourt).

Cross-references

Notable passages

"It's my belief that Hal's body has itself synthesized DMZ, perhaps provoked by his marijuana withdrawal." — Schmidt, opening line

"Digestive-Flora: Hal ate the fitviavi mold years ago, and now it's living in his digestive system." — Schmidt

"That's all the data I have, but if you ask me, he's up to something." — Schmidt on John Wayne

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