Viz. Wallace Week: Six Visual-Rhetoric Essays (UT Austin, 2012)

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TL;DR

A six-post Wallace-week run on viz. (the University of Texas visual-rhetoric blog), April 2012, timed to the DFW symposium at the Harry Ransom Center ("this week's posts will be dedicated to all things DFW"). Six different graduate contributors take DFW through a visual-culture lens. Two posts are directly about Infinite Jest — Marjorie Foley on the Decemberists' "Calamity Song" video as an adaptation of the Eschaton game, and Kendall Gerdes on the "visual (after)life" of the novel (Chris Ayers's Poor Yorick Entertainment fan-poster project, IJ merchandise, the wraith and the agency of ETA's objects). The other four range across the Kenyon speech's book form, Wallace's tennis/geography essays, "Big Red Son", and the Pale King research pamphlets in the HRC archive, and are mostly non-IJ context. The IJ-relevant material is descriptive/reception rather than argumentative — the posts mention the Eschaton set piece and the wraith rather than argue readings of them.

Key claims

Foley — the Decemberists' "Calamity Song" as Eschaton: "The subject of the video is Eschaton, a fictional tennis game played by Hal Incandenza" and his ETA peers. "Parks and Recreation's Michael Schur directs the video and somehow manages to nail down DFW's weird cheerful pessimism." Foley details what the video keeps (the multi-court global-thermonuclear game, Otis Lord's beanies, Ann Kittenplan's head-shot and ensuing brawl) and what it softens (the drug use, the violence, Kittenplan's ugliness). "While Schur and the Decemberists capture the fun of Eschaton and nuclear warfare… they obviously miss much of the despair that's at the heart of Infinite Jest."
Foley — a corrected detail (cite-as-written): a commenter signing "Nick" (plausibly Nick Maniatis of The Howling Fantods, though the comment itself is anonymous) corrects that it is the Big Buddies on the sidelines, not the playing kids, consuming the Gatorades and pot; Foley concedes the point while noting other implied drug use.
Gerdes — the visual (after)life of IJ: designer Chris Ayers's "Poor Yorick Entertainment" tumblr renders James Incandenza's filmography and the novel's world as purchasable movie posters (Blood Sister, the Whataburger Invitational, Johnny Gentle campaign art); "each of these images extend the world of the fiction into our non-fictional world." Gerdes owns an ETA t-shirt bearing SOVWAR Air Marshal Ann Kittenplan's name — "the only actual character in the entire novel to whom the adjective" "butch" is applied (Gerdes, p. 330).
Gerdes — the wraith and the objects: the post's title nods to the novel's "own haunting" — "the wraith, whose possible measure of very slow wraith-time agency could be responsible for the odd behavior of objects around ETA" — closing on Lyle's counsel to Ortho Stice: "Do not underestimate objects, he advises Stice. Do not leave objects out of account" (IJ p. 395).
Alyea — remediating "This is Water": the Kenyon speech became a viral email forward and then the 2009 Little, Brown book, in which "each of the 135 sentences of Wallace's speech (minus one--which we will get to in a moment) is given its own page." The omitted sentence is "They shoot the terrible master." — "a go-to line for the authors of many of Wallace's obituaries". (Non-IJ.)
Voss — "Play Ball": riffs on Wallace's "Big Red Son" praise of Las Vegas as "the least pretentious city in America" to complain about the Miami Marlins' new ballpark. (Non-IJ.)
Detweiler — "Wallace as Visual Experience": reads "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley" and "Federer as Religious Experience"; "Tennis figures prominently not only in Wallace's well-known novel Infinite Jest, but in his essays." (Mostly non-IJ; tennis/geometry through-line.)
King — "Hacking, Tapping, Jacking": the HRC Pale King research materials include crude fraud/sabotage pamphlets from "The Information Center"; "the character Toni Ware ends up using a version of one of these techniques on her mother's physically abusive boyfriend." Reads them through Ian Bogost on procedurality. (Non-IJ; Pale King archive.)

Theories & evidence

THEORY: The Decemberists' "Calamity Song" video is a faithful-but-softened adaptation of Eschaton — it captures the comic global-thermonuclear game while dropping the despair around it

Crux: eschaton-function
Stance: mentions
Evidence:
- [secondary] Foley maps the video shot-for-beat onto the Eschaton set piece (scene 073, pp. 321-342): the courts-as-globe, Otis Lord's crisis beanies, Kittenplan's head-shot and the brawl. [sec. Foley]
- [text] Reads the video as keeping Eschaton's "fun" but missing "the despair that's at the heart of Infinite Jest" — the ETA drug use, Hal's anxiety, the halfway-house horrors. [sec. Foley]
Notes: A reception/adaptation reading, not a claim about what Eschaton means in the novel; it sits comfortably beside the view of Eschaton as the novel's great comic set piece without arguing it. The Kittenplan characterization ("butch", p. 330; scene 073) and the Big-Buddies drug correction are recorded cite-as-written.

THEORY: The wraith's slow "wraith-time" agency may account for the odd behavior of objects around ETA

Crux: wraith-reality
Stance: mentions
Evidence:
- [text] Gerdes name-checks "the wraith, whose possible measure of very slow wraith-time agency could be responsible for the odd behavior of objects around ETA", and closes on Lyle's "Do not underestimate objects" (scene 084, pp. 394-395). [sec. Gerdes]
Notes: A passing invocation, not an argument — Gerdes uses the wraith/object motif as a frame for the essay's theme (fan-made objects extending the fiction into the world), not to adjudicate whether the wraith is real. Her rendering of Lyle's counsel is word-for-word the novel's text (scene 084, p. 395).

Themes

Visual rhetoric and adaptation (the Calamity Song video, the Poor Yorick posters); fan culture and the novel's material afterlife (merchandise, the ETA t-shirt); Eschaton and nuclear apocalypse (Foley); the wraith and objects (Gerdes); the Kenyon speech's book form (Alyea); tennis and geometry (Detweiler); The Pale King and the HRC archive (King). Only the first two are IJ-centered.

Cross-references

The Decemberists / Mike Schur "Calamity Song" video Foley analyzes is the same one name-checked in splitsider-roberson-dfw-comedy-nerd (Schur's IJ obsession) — the comedy-nerd and visual-rhetoric receptions of the Eschaton set piece meet here.
Chris Ayers's Poor Yorick Entertainment poster project and the IJ merchandise are a study in the novel's material afterlife — the fiction's world extended into purchasable objects.
Novel anchors: scene 073 (Eschaton, and Kittenplan "butch" at p. 330, pp. 321-342), scene 084 (Lyle's "Do not underestimate objects", pp. 394-395).

Notable passages

"The subject of the video is Eschaton, a fictional tennis game played by Hal Incandenza" (Foley)
"they obviously miss much of the despair that's at the heart of Infinite Jest" (Foley, on the video)
"Do not underestimate objects, he advises Stice. Do not leave objects out of account." (Gerdes, quoting Lyle, IJ p. 395)
"the wraith, whose possible measure of very slow wraith-time agency could be responsible for the odd behavior of objects around ETA" (Gerdes)