David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 September 12, 2008) was an American author

r of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He was widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest,[4][5] which Time included in its All-Time 100 Greatest Novels list (covering the period 19232006).[6] Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years".[4] Wallace's unfinished novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011. A biography of Wallace by D. T. Max is projected for publication in 2012.[7]
Themes and styles

Wallace's fiction is often concerned with irony. His essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction",[32] originally published in the small-circulation Review of Contemporary Fiction in 1993, proposes that television has an ironic influence on fiction writing, and urges literary authors to eschew TV's shallow rebelliousness: "I want to convince you that irony, poker-faced silence, and fear of ridicule are distinctive of those features of contemporary U.S. culture (of which cutting-edge fiction is a part) that enjoy any significant relation to the television whose weird pretty hand has my generation by the throat. I'm going to argue that irony and ridicule are entertaining and effective, and that at the same time they are agents of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture, and that for aspiring fictionists they pose terrifically vexing problems". Wallace used many forms of irony, but focused on individuals' continued longing for earnest, unselfconscious experience and communication in a media-saturated society.[33] Wallace's novels often combine various writing modes or voices, and incorporate jargon and vocabulary (sometimes invented) from a wide variety of fields. His writing featured selfgenerated abbreviations and acronyms, long multi-clause sentences, and a notable use of explanatory footnotes and endnotesoften nearly as expansive as the text proper. He used endnotes extensively in Infinite Jest and footnotes in "Octet" as well as in the great majority of his nonfiction after 1996. On the Charlie Rose show in 1997, Wallace claimed that the notes were used to disrupt the linearity of the narrative, to reflect his perception of reality without jumbling the entire structure. He suggested that he could have instead jumbled up the sentences, "but then no one would read it."[34] According to Wallace, "fictions about what it is to be a fucking human being," and he expressed a desire to write "morally passionate, passionately moral fiction" that could help readers "become less alone inside".[35] In his Kenyon College commencement address, he describes the human condition of daily crises and chronic disillusionment and warns against solipsism,[36] invoking compassion, mindfulness, and existentialism:[37]
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.... The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going

to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.... The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.

Infinite Jest
Infinite Jest is a 1996 novel by David Foster Wallace that presents a dystopian vision of North America in the near future. The intricate narrative treats elements as diverse as junior tennis, substance abuse and recovery programs, depression, child abuse, family relationships, advertising and popular entertainment, film theory, and Quebec separatism. In 2005 Time magazine included the book in its list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.[1] The novel includes several hundred endnotes which explain or expound upon points in the story. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Wallace characterized their use as a method of disrupting the linearity of the text while maintaining some sense of narrative cohesion.[2]

Title
The novel's title is from Hamlet. Hamlet holds the skull of the court jester, Yorick, and says "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!" Wallace's working title for Infinite Jest was A Failed Entertainment.[3]

Setting
In the novel's future world, North America is one state comprising the United States, Canada, and Mexico, known as the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.). Corporations purchase naming rights to each calendar year, eliminating traditional numerical designations, with most of the book's action taking place in The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (Y.D.A.U). Much of what used to be the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada has become a hazardous waste dump known as the "Great Concavity" to Americans and as the "Great Convexity" to Canadians. The novel's primary locations are the Enfield Tennis Academy ("ETA") and Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House (separated by a hillside in suburban Boston, Massachusetts), and a mountainside outside of Tucson, Arizona. Many characters are students or faculty at the school or patients and staff at the halfway house; a conversation between a double agent and his government contact occurs at the Arizona location.

Characters
The Incandenza family

James Orin Incandenza, Jr., an optics expert and filmmaker (see "Filmography" entries below in "External Links"), is the founder of the Enfield Tennis Academy. The son of small-time actor James O. Incandenza, Sr. (who played "The Man from Glad" in the 1960s in the world of the novel), he is the creator of the Entertainment (also known as Infinite Jest or "the samizdat"), an enigmatic and fatally seductive film that was his final and most cherished creation. He used Joelle Van Dyne, his son Orin's strikingly beautiful girlfriend, in many of his films, including the fatal Entertainment. He appears in the book mainly either in flashbacks or as a ghost, having committed suicide by placing his head in a microwave oven. He is an alcoholic who drinks Wild Turkey whiskey. His nickname in the family is Himself. Orin also calls him "the Mad Stork" or (once) "the Sad Stork". Avril Incandenza, ne Mondragon, is the domineering mother of the Incandenza children and wife of James. A tall (197 cm), beautiful francophone Quebecer, she becomes a major figure at the Enfield Tennis Academy after the death of her husband and begins, or perhaps continues, a relationship with Charles Tavis, the new head of the academy and her either half- or adoptive brother. Her sexual relationships are a matter of some speculation/discussion; one with John "No Relation" Wayne is depicted. In one scene, James, speaking to Hal, refers to his "mother's cavortings with not one not two but over thirty Near Eastern medical attachs." She has a phobia of uncleanliness and disease, and is also described as agoraphobic. She has an obsessivecompulsive need to watch over ETA and her two youngest sons, Hal and Mario, who live at the school. Avril and Orin are no longer in contact with each other. Her nickname in the family is "the Moms". Hal Incandenza is the youngest of the Incandenza children and arguably the protagonist of the novel, the events of which revolve around his time at ETA. Hal is as prodigiously intelligent and talented as the other members of his family, but insecure about his abilities (and eventually his mental state). He has a difficult relationship with both his parents. He has an eidetic memory and has memorized the Oxford English Dictionary and like his mother often corrects the grammar of his friends and family. Hal's mental degradation and alienation from those around him culminate in his chronologically last appearance in the novel, in which all of his attempts at speech are incomprehensible to others. The origin of Hal's final condition is unclear, though hints in the text suggest that it is induced by a drug obtained by Michael Pemulis. Mario Incandenza is the Incandenzas' second son, although his biological father may be Charles Tavis. Severely deformed since birth he is macrocephalic, homodontic, and stands or walks at a 45 degree angle he is nonetheless perennially cheerful. He is also a budding auteur, having served as camera and directorial assistant to James, and later inheriting the prodigious studio equipment and film lab built by his father on the grounds of the Academy. Hal, although younger, acts like a supportive older brother to Mario, whom Hal calls by the nickname "Booboo". Orin Incandenza is the eldest son of the Incandenzas. He is a punter for the Arizona Cardinals and a serial womanizer, and is estranged from everyone in his family except Hal. It is suggested

that Orin lost his attraction to Joelle after she became deformed when her mother threw acid in her face during a Thanksgiving dinner, but Orin cites Joelle's questionable relationship with his father as the reason for the breakup. After Joelle, Orin focuses his womanizing on young mothers; Hal suggests that this is because he blames his father's death on his mother. [edit] The Enfield Tennis Academy

Students

Michael Pemulis, a working-class child from an Allston, Massachusetts family, and Hal's best friend. Wallace got the name from the folk-rock singer Dr. Michael Pemulis, who debuted in 1987.[4] A prankster and the school's resident drug dealer, Pemulis is also very proficient in mathematics. This, combined with his limited but ultraprecise lobbing, made him the school's first master of Eschaton, a computer-aided turn-based nuclear wargame that requires players to be adept both at game theory and pegging targets with tennis balls. Although the novel takes place long after Pemulis's Eschaton days (the game is played by 12- to 14-year-olds), Pemulis is still regarded as the game's all-time great, and a final court of appeal in game matters. His brother Matt is a gay hustler who as a child was sexually abused by their father. Ortho "The Darkness" Stice, another of Hal's close friends. His name consists of the Greek root ortho ("straight") and the anglicized suffix -stice ("a space") from the noun interstice, which originally derived from the Latin verb sistere ("to stand"). He only endorses brands that have black-colored products, and is at all times clothed entirely in black. In a three-setter, he nearly defeats Hal late in the book, and becomes a more significant character as his ability to deny selfhood is realized. It is likely that Ortho is being visited by the ghost of Himself. John "No Relation" Wayne, the top-ranked player at ETA. Wayne was discovered by James Incandenza during interviews of men named John Wayne for a film. He is frighteningly efficient, controlled, and machine-like on the court. Wayne is almost never directly quoted in the narrative; his statements are either summarized by the narrator or repeated by other characters. His Canadian and Qubcois citizenship has been revoked since he came to ETA. His father is a sick asbestos miner in Quebec who hopes that John will soon start earning "serious $" in the Show to "take him away from all this" (see "6 November YDAU, the meet with Port Washington"). Pemulis discovers that Wayne is having a sexual relationship with Avril Incandenza, and it is later revealed that Hal is also aware of that. Wayne may be sympathetic to, if not actively supporting, the AFR. Jim Troeltsch, a low-ranked player who is obsessed with becoming a sportscaster. James Albrecht Lockley "Jim" Struck Jr of Orinda CA, a friend of Hal's and a Big Buddy. He plagiarizes a term paper on Les Assassins des Fauteuils Roulants (found in footnote 304), which features the details of the deadly Jeu du Prochain Train. Ted Schacht, a sufferer of Crohn's Disease with a chronic knee problem. One of the less motivated players, anticipating a "dental career", he is also less dependent on substances than many of his fellow students.

LaMont Chu, one of the 14- to 15-year-old students at ETA. Chu consults "sweat guru" Lyle for counsel after he becomes obsessed with attaining the more superficial rewards of success in professional tennis and finds that his performance suffers from this obsession. His quixotic pursuit of fame has led some to suggest his name as a take-off of 'La Mancha'. Ann Kittenplan, an apparent abuser of anabolic steroids. One of the many players who becomes violently unhinged during the resident Eschaton tournament.

Prorectors

Mary Esther Thode, a rabidly militant feminist who teaches a Saturday course on Psychopathological Double Binds. Her students believe that she is probably clinically insane. Thierry Poutrincourt, who teaches a class in which Hal is enrolled on separatism and Quebecois history in Quebecois French.

[edit] The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House (redundancy sic)

Don Gately, a former thief and Demerol addict, and current counselor in residence at the Ennet House. One of the novel's primary characters, Gately is physically enormous, a reluctant but dedicated Alcoholics Anonymous member, and intricately (though not obviously) connected to both the Enfield Tennis Academy and the international struggle to seize the master copy of the Entertainment. During his middle-school and high-school years, Gately's size made him a formidable football talent, both offensively and defensively. During his period as an addict and burglar, he accidentally kills M. DuPlessis, a leader of one of the many separatist Qubcois organizations featured in the novel. Gately, like Ortho Stice, is visited by the ghost of James O. Incandenza. Joelle Van Dyne (also known as "Madame Psychosis" (c.f. metempsychosis), a stage name given to her by J.O. Incandenza which she later uses as an on-air name for her radio show "60 min +/") and "The Prettiest Girl of All Time (or P.G.O.A.T.)"), the primary figure in the deadly Entertainment. In the work, which is filmed through a wobbly "neonatal" lens, she is seen reaching down to the camera, as if it were in a bassinet, and apologizing profusely. This is said to trigger an addictive pleasure complex in the viewer, which makes even partial viewing of the Entertainment suicidal. She wears a veil to hide her face. She is a member of the "Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed (U.H.I.D.)", and is disfigured according to an account by the unreliable Molly Notkin. It is not made clear in the novel whether she is in fact disfigured; she herself states that she wears the veil because every man who sees her flawless face falls in love with her. She tries to "eliminate her own map" (that is, commit suicide) in Molly Notkin's bathroom via massive ingestion of freebase cocaine, which lands her in the Ennet House as a resident. Gately develops a strong attraction to Joelle. Kate Gompert - A cannabis addict who suffers from extreme unipolar depression. Pat Montesian - The Ennet House executive director. She is a recovering addict, a stroke victim with partial facial paralysis, and the wife of Mars Montesian, a Boston billionaire.

Ken Erdedy - A cannabis addict introduced early in the novel. Hester Thrale - A nail-biter with borderline personality disorder. Charlotte Treat - A former prostitute. Randy Lenz - Cocaine addict and obsessive compulsive, residing at Ennet House not to recover but to hide from both the police and a group of drug dealers involved in a tremendous simultaneous con. The stress of hiding, combined with partial withdrawal from cocaine, leads him to torture animals, which in turn leads to the novel's climactic fight scene. Bruce Green - The ex-husband of Mildred Bonk Green, he once lived with Tommy Doocey, a harelipped pot dealer for Erdedy et al. He is quiet. Later in the book, he accompanies Lenz on post-AA meeting walks back to Ennet House. Tiny Ewell - A lawyer of short stature. Geoffrey Day - A pompously verbose Ennet House resident and professor at a junior college. He enters rehabilitation after crashing his Saab into a department store. Previously, he wrote an article on the Wheelchair Assassins and their pre-adolescent train-jumping game. Calvin Thrust - A former porn star who was featured in several of James Incandenza's films. Emil Minty - A hardcore smack-addict punk with palsy and a tattoo of a swastika with the caption "FUCK NIGERS" on his left biceps, which he is encouraged by Ennet House staff to keep covered. Burt F. Smith - A drunk who lost his hands and feet after muggers beat him savagely and left him for dead during a snowstorm one Christmas Eve. He is 45 but looks 70. Once a Roman Catholic, he lost his faith in the church after it allowed his wife to annul their 15-year marriage.

[edit] Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents

Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (A.F.R.), known in English as the Wheelchair Assassins, are a Qubcois separatist group. (In keeping with other French words and phrases in the novel, "rollent" is incorrect.) They are one of many such groups that developed after the United States coerced Canada and Mexico into joining the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.), but the A.F.R. is the most deadly and extremist. While other separatist groups are willing to settle for nationhood, the A.F.R. wants Canada to secede from O.N.A.N. and to reject America's forced gift of its polluted "Great Concavity" (or, Hal and Orin speculate, is pretending that those are its goals to put pressure on Canada to let Quebec secede). The A.F.R. seeks the master copy of Infinite Jest as a terrorist weapon to achieve its goals. The A.F.R. has its roots in a childhood game in which miners' sons line up alongside a train track and compete to be the last to jump across the path of an oncoming train, an activity in which many were killed or rendered legless (hence the wheelchairs).

Only one miner's son has (disgracefully) failed to jump Bernard Wayne, who may be related to ETA's John Wayne. Qubcoise Avril's liaisons with Wayne and with the half-Canadian attach accidentally killed by Don Gately suggest that she may have ties to the A.F.R. as well. There is also evidence linking ETA prorector Thierry Poutrincourt to the group.

Remy Marathe is a member of the Wheelchair Assassins who secretly talks to Hugh/Helen Steeply. Marathe is a quadruple agent: the AFR thinks that he is a triple agent, only pretending to betray the AFR, while Marathe and Steeply know that he only pretends to pretend to betray them. He does this in order to secure medical support for his wife (who was born without a skull) from the Office of Unspecified Services. Late in the novel, Marathe is sent to infiltrate Ennet House in the guise of a Swiss drug addict.

[edit] Other characters

Poor Tony Krause (P.T. Krause), a drag queen formerly associated with Michael Pemulis's older brother, Matty, as well as Randy Lenz. Poor Tony is on a harrowing downward spiral of drug use and seizures. In August of YDAU Tony snatches a fashionable handbag containing a built-in (and connected) heart from a strolling heart patient. He smashes the artificial organ to get the battery. A medical attach in the service of a Saudi prince who eats only Toblerone. He goes home to his wife and sits in his chair to escape reality. He is the first character in the novel rendered insane by repeated viewing of the Entertainment cartridge. Hugh/Helen Steeply, an agent who assumes a transsexual identity for an operative role, with whom Orin Incandenza becomes obsessed. He works for the government Office of Unspecified Services, but is doing undercover work trying to get information out of Orin to find out more about the Entertainment. He talks to Marathe secretly. Gene Fackelmann (also known as "Fax"), a member of Gately's former bookmaking debt collection crew. Fackelmann was a Dilaudid addict whose behavior (particularly his involvement in a scheme involving Whitey Sorkin, Sixties Bob, Eighties Bill and about $250,000 U.S.D.) brings the pathetic nature of drug addiction to Gately's attention for the first time. The conclusion of the book focuses on his murder by Sorkin's hired muscle, Bobby C.

Plot
The plot partially revolves around the missing master copy of a film cartridge, titled Infinite Jest and referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat". The film is so entertaining to its viewers that they become lifeless, losing all interest in anything other than viewing the film. The video cartridge was the final work of film by James O. Incandenza before his microwave suicide, completed during a stint of sobriety that was requested by the lead actress, Joelle. Quebec separatists are interested in acquiring a master, redistributable copy of the work to aid in acts of terrorism against the United States. The United States Office of Unspecified Services (USOUS) is seeking to intercept the master copy of the film in order to prevent mass dissemination and the destabilization of the Organization of North American Nations. Joelle and later Hal seek treatment for substance abuse

problems at The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, and Marathe visits the rehabilitation center to pursue a lead on the master copy of the Entertainment, tying the characters together.

Subsidized Time
In the book's future, advertising's relentless search for new markets has led to a world where, by O.N.A.N. dictate, years are referred to by the name of their corporate sponsor. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Year of the Whopper Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-ToInstall-Upgrade For Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems For Home, Office Or Mobile [sic] 7. Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland 8. Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment 9. Year of Glad Most of the events in the novel take place in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (YDAU), and critics have debated which year this coincides with in the Gregorian Calendar. One theory is that YDAU is 2011. The most compelling evidence for this is Don Gately's age in the Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland (27).[5] Gately was 9 during the 1992 Los Angeles riots,[6] placing his birth around 1983. This identifies the Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland as 2010 and YDAU as 2011, meaning that Subsidized Time began in 2004. Critic Stephen Burn, in his book on Infinite Jest, argues that YDAU corresponds to 2009: the MIT Language Riots took place in 1997 (n. 24) and those riots occurred 12 years before YDAU (n. 60). Also, if the "2007" in "Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-ViewMotherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade For Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems For Home, Office, Or Mobile" refers to the pre-subsidization-style numerical date convention, then YDAU (which comes two years later) is 2009. It is also possible that YDAU is 2008, as Matty Pemulis turns 23 in YDAU (p. 682). Matty and Mike Pemulis's father immigrated from Ireland in 1989 when Matty was "three or four" (p. 683). If Matty had been three and four in 1989, he was born in 1985, which means he turns 23 in 2008. Also, James Incandenza was ten years old in 1960 (p. 157), which puts his suicide at age 54 in 2004, four years before YDAU (p. 142). And on page 63 the Enfield Tennis Academy is said to have been open as of YDAU for "three pre-Subsidized years and then eight Subsidized years," while on page 949 the character Hal recalls the March 1998 blizzard that came "a few months" after ETA opened. This means the Academy opened at the end of 1997 or very early in 1998 and Subsidized Time began three years later on 1/1/2001.

But November 4, YDAU, falls on a Wednesday (176) and November 8 on a Sunday (325). If Subsidized Time is parallel to real-world time, this means that YDAU would be either 2009 or 2015. Yet Thanksgiving of the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad (YTMP) falls on 24 November (793). Accordingly, YTMP has to be either 2005 or 2011, meaning that YDAU would be 2011 or 2017, respectively.[7]

Location
The fictional Enfield Tennis Academy is a series of buildings laid out as a cardioid on top of a hill on Commonwealth Avenue. This detail has certain thematic resonance, as ETA is in many ways the heart of the novel's setting, and a permutation of the American myth of a City upon a hill. Ennet House lies directly downhill from ETA, facilitating many of the interactions between characters residing in both locations. Orin lives in Arizona, the state where much of the dialogue between Helen Steeply and Remy Marathe takes place, and the student union of the Massachusetts Institute of Technologyin the novel the structure is built in the shape of the human brainis both the broadcasting site of Madame Psychosis's radio show and the location of a potentially devastating tennis tournament between ETA and Canadian youths. Enfield is largely a stand-in for Brighton, Massachusetts. Wallace's description of life in Enfield and neighboring Allston contrasts with the largely idyllic life of students at ETA. The real town of Enfield is now submerged under the Quabbin Reservoir. Wallace wrote the book while living in Syracuse, New York.[8]