Preliminary thoughts on 'infinite Jest'
I first finished the book about a week ago. It ended so abruptly, almost mid-sentence, or mid-thought.
What a journey it has been. But the journey isn’t over yet.
As I read the last words describing Gately washed up on the beach looking at the sea, I felt empty.
Not emotional emptiness or sadness, nor was I feeling a sense of depletion. I just didn’t think of anything.
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In the following moments though I did start to feel an unconventional and one of a kind gut punch. It wasn’t the kind that traditionally made you feel uneasy, making the inside of your stomach swirl like a washing machine, no. This was more like a slow gut punch, slowly coalescing into existence, turning my innards like a viewer's mind in a slow-burn Tarkovsky film. Then came the uneasiness, the almost panic, paranoia. That’s it. That’s all there is. Of course this was farthest from the truth as one can get. The novel, for me, is recursive. It's a function that calls upon itself with every iteration, revealing minor truths the more iterations it does. The 'problem' is it's a never ending function, and by that it's infinite, so the entire complete 'truth' or 'endgame' will never raise its head from the pages' depths. So yes, the annular qualities of this behemoth made me sprint back to page 1 and read the opening pages again, and lo and behold – some truths did emerge, or rather understandings, of the situation depicted there. The whole perspective changes. You now know a lot more, you possess information acquired through the reading process, you're taught, educated. The novel purposely starts as if you know everything about the characters, but at first you don’t and feel lost and maybe betrayed. In this sense it very much reminded me of 'The Witness', which also employed the same strategy – the artist doesn’t waste your time with build-ups and artificial world building. It's all there to begin with, nothing is withheld from vision. Everything is there to digest and absorb straight from the get go. I like how great works of art treat you like an actual person and respect you by NOT holding your hand throughout. 'This is unbelievably hard to follow' I remember saying to myself over and over for the first 150-200 pages, and one time I even told Sigi that somewhere down the line I was expecting to reach a page that'll say something along these lines: "Ok dear reader, you trudged through those unbearably incohesive mess that is the first 100 pages. This was all a test to assess your resolve and endurance. The real story begins now". Sure, none of that came to pass, and I'm so glad it didn’t. The following days were somewhat sad. I was feeling alone. The book was my friend. It was always with me, wherever I went, tucked safely in my backpack, and I could always reach in and get lost within it. And even though I know it's not really over, I keep feeling somber and morose. Also I keep thinking about DFW's suicide, and that makes me feel sad.
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I'm hovering above all of this, ready to fly. I made friends for life. Their journeys in this existence will be with me as long as I live, intertwined with my own consciousness. I am grateful.
