A Chance to Occur
Interpretations of Infinite Jest from the school of mindfulness
November 8. We are in the middle of the first snowfall of the season, here, in Colorado. I am watching it from my window as I write this. Meanwhile, I am about 2/3 of the way through my second reading of Infinite Jest, the majority of the plot of which takes place in exactly the same season of the year (that is, the first two weeks of November; many are the descriptions of the onset of winter).
Though the book’s broader situation in time is obfuscated, by extrapolating from some of the provided background the events can be understood to be taking place in the 2020s, i.e. right now, more or less, which would have been about 30 years in the future from the time the book was written. There are many details from the world of IJ that stand out to the 2024 reader. Half of the population works from home, and home grocery delivery is commonplace. Video-calling was also popular for a while, but, in a development that has yet to manifest itself in actual reality, a grotesque circus of self-consciousness involving the use of custom-made masks (the sole purpose of which being to make a person appear more attractive during video-call) has led to the return of audio-only calling as the most popular style of communication.
But the most striking detail of the future/present world of Infinite Jest would have to be Infinite Jest itself, that is, the eponymous metafictional film—a film so compelling that once you have laid eyes on it it becomes the only thing you care about. Victims of the film become entranced, fixed in place in front of their InterLace viewers (entertainment devices that have replaced televisions, which function in a fashion very similar to that of modern streaming services like Netflix), devoid of all of their previous cares and ambitions; they would rather soil themselves then leave even for a moment, and eventually die of starvation happily in front of the screen; or otherwise are forcibly extricated from the viewing but then forever thereafter catatonic with grief.
It’s over the top, as are most of the details from the novel (the many addicts’ miserable stories related in the book are so over-the-top miserable as to almost become funny), but DFW clearly intended Infinite Jest or “the Entertainment” to function as a metaphor for his concerns around cable television, which concerns he wrote and spoke about often. Had he not killed himself in 2008, I can only imagine how severe his concerns regarding social media, the attention economy, and endless algorithm-fueled scrolling content e.g. TikTok would be. Because these things are instances of a sort of Entertainment far more compelling than cable television, which we seem to be happy to consume endlessly.
I once read Infinite Jest (talking about the book again, now) described as “a solution to the problem it depicts.” Why is IJ so long (it’s over a thousand pages, when you count the notes, of which there are a few hundred pages, and many of which contain critical background and even actual plot)? Why is it so expansive (the number of characters is staggering—something on the order of a hundred—and the book includes lengthy descriptions of tennis games and theory, Boston AA dogma, the fictional political environment and factions, video-call self-consciousness circuses, and the mean value theorem)? And why all that for what is essentially a nonexistent ending?
IJ is incredibly long and expansive and has no ending because its purpose is not to be entertaining, satisfying, or self-contained, the way content on cable television (or TikTok) is. Its purpose is precisely to not be those things. Its purpose is to be there for you to actually engage with, as much as possible, and reward the attention you give it (as I’ve said before, the mark of good literature is that it rewards the attention you give it). Viewed this way, its size is one of its virtues. And the fact that it has no ending means that its value has to come from the actual daily experience of the book rather than the feeling you are left with when you put it down.
Books, and especially books like Infinite Jest, are opportunities for a sort of meditation. Reading a book is not fatally compelling entertainment. Calling it entertainment at all is a stretch, if we’re being honest. It’s not something that captures your attention; it’s something that you have to direct your attention to—which sometimes requires great effort. This is the point. In meditation, you pay attention to your breath, but your breath is not the point; the training of your attention is the point. Why did DFW include the hundreds of notes which are often extraneous but also are critical often enough that you have to make sure to read all of them, forcing you to interrupt your focus of the main text and flip to the back of the book and then strain to re-direct your attention at the main text again? Why, just why, couldn’t he have left out all of the notes that were unimportant and put the notes that were important in the main text, or at least have made them footnotes on the same page as the main text instead of endnotes at the back of the book, so that you are always doing all this flip-flopping and you end up reading with two bookmarks?: Simply because it gives IJ disruptions in its stream of text similar to the disruptions that are constantly buffeting the stream of your consciousness, demanding your attention; you must redirect your attention to the main text while reading much in the same way you must redirect your attention to your breath after becoming lost in thought while meditating. A book is an opportunity to train your attention; to focus on things less compelling than TikTok for extended periods of time, and return your attention to these things when it is disrupted.
The lead drill instructor at the tennis academy goes on a rant after the students complain about the cold during morning drills:
“Too cold to demand the total, yes?… Too cold for tennis at the high level, yes?”
…
[Student:] “I guess we have to learn to adjust to conditions.”
“Is what I am not saying… I am saying, is always something that is too. Cold. Hot. Wet and dry. Very bright sun and you see the purple dots. Very bright hot and you have no salt. Outside is wind, the insects which like the sweat. Inside is smell of heaters, echo, being jammed in together, tarp is overclose to baseline, not enough of room, bells inside clubs which ring the hour loudly to distract, clunk of machines vomiting sweet cola for coins. Inside roof too low for the lob. Bad lighting, so. Or outside: the bad surface. Oh no look no: crabgrass in cracks along baseline. Who could give the total, with crabgrass. Look here is low net high net. Opponent’s relative’s heckle, opponent cheats, linesman in semifinal is impaired or cheats. You hurt. You have the injury. Bad knee and back. Hurt groin area from not stretching as asked. Aches of elbow. Eyelash in eye. The throat is sore. A too pretty girl in audience, watching. Who could play like this? Big crowd overwhelming or too small to inspire. Always something.
His turns as he paces are crips and used to punctuate. “Adjust. Adjust? Stay the same. No? Is not stay the same? It is cold? It is wind? Cold and wind is the world. Outside, yes? On the tennis court the you the player: this is not where there is cold wind. I am saying. Different world inside. World built inside could outside world of wind breaks the wind, shelters the player, you, if you stay the same, stay inside… Not ever I think this adjusting. To what, this adjusting? This world inside is the same, always, if you stay there. This is what we are making, no? New type citizen. Not of cold and wind outside. Citizens of this sheltering second world we are working to show you every dawn, no? To make your introduction.”
…
“Yes? In that world is joy because there is shelter of something else, of purpose past sluggardly self and complains about uncomfort. I am speaking… of the temperance world. You have a chance to occur, playing. No? To make for you this second world that is always the same… Yes? Is this adjusting? This is not adjusting. This is not adjusting to ignore cold and wind and tired. Not ignoring “as if.” Is no cold. Is no wind. No cold wind where you occur. No? Not “adjust to conditions.” Make this second world inside the world: here there are no conditions.”
Looks around.
“So put a lid on it about the fucking cold,” says deLint…
This is what the book is really about: the world inside. Giving yourself a chance to occur, in this world inside, which is always the same. The content of the novel consists of intimate, sometimes gruesome depictions of worlds inside; the question it provokes is how to make these worlds inside acceptable places to live. The experience of the novel points to the answer: engage in the practice of honing your attention, soften your grasp on distractions, eradicate the self. As DFW intended it, this experience exists in contrast to the experience of watching cable television; this contrast is ever more stark, now, against the experience of social media and algorithmic content: a background of Entertainment of a magnitude which is another degree of infinite.
But you don’t have to read Infinite Jest to engage in this practice. All forms of content exist on a spectrum with TikTok on one end and Infinite Jest (or maybe like Thoreau) on the other. Anything on the right-hand side of let’s say Stephen King is probably doing your attention-mechanism some good. This is why reading fiction is more important than it ever has been. And of course, you could meditate. If you train your attention-mechanism enough, you might find that even previously utterly boring things are endlessly compelling, like the snow falling.