Infinite Jest

After leaving high school, Don slipped into the criminal underworld. While he did not start stealing right away, he was used as an enforcer for a criminal gambling syndicate run by a man named Whitey Sorkin. He forced people to pay their debts and threatened them with violence, though he rarely followed through on these threats. In this operation, he worked with a man named Gene Fackelmann, who also had addictions. Many of the “pathetic furtive guys” (913) with debts were reckless people who tried to gain Don’s sympathy with their sad life stories. Don realized that the men were addicted, though he did not yet connect this with the idea of drug addiction that would plague him in the future. During the irregular use of violent enforcement, Don and Fackelmann were nicknamed the Twin Towers by Whitey. While Don struggled with his “internal out-of-control slope of ferocity” (914). He only ever killed one man in this enforcement job and that was “essentially an accident” (1078). Eventually, Don and Fackelmann formed a crew with Don’s former schoolmate Trent Kite; Kite and Fackelmann often ran credit history fraud operations to fund their Dilaudid habits, while Don preferred traditional burglaries. One year, Don spent New Year’s Eve manufacturing counterfeit driver’s licenses. When he noticed a Boston University football game on the television, he broke down in tears. Two days later, he was arrested and sent to jail.

Michael Pemulis checks on the loose ceiling tile where he hides his illicit possessions.

After Whitey bailed him out of jail, Don became friends with a lesbian couple who were both addicted to cocaine. They taught him “serious full-time burglary” (917). At this time, Fackelmann had been scamming Whitey regularly by taking the money for various bets but not telling Whitey. When the bets inevitably lost, Fackelmann kept the entire stake for himself. Don felt “betrayed and abandoned” (918) that his former partner in crime kept such a secret from him.

Don’s reveries are interrupted by a new doctor and the attractive nurse. They discuss his condition as they assemble an unknown metal frame around his bed. As his mind becomes clearer, Don realizes that Joelle’s visit may have been a hallucination and the story about her past entirely invented. The realization reminds him of a woman named Pamela Hoffman-Jeep. She was “directionless and not very healthy and pale and incredibly passive” (924). They dated for some time; Don met Pamela because she was smitten by any man who did not sexually assault her while she was in one of her drug-induced moments of passivity. Don remembers that she spent most of her time laying down or asleep. While dating Pamela, Don remembers a man who tried to place a big bet on a football game, but due to confusion both the better and Whitey assumed they lost. The man won more than $100,000. However, Fackelmann did not tell Whitey about the confusion. He took the money and planned to buy a huge quantity of drugs that he could take to another city and sell. As soon as Fackelmann decided to cheat Whitey, he was “a Dead Man” (931).

Before Fackelmann could escape with Kite, he could not help but get high. Despite knowing that Fackelmann was in a fatal bind, Don—who was living with Fackelmann at the time—sat down with Fackelmann and shared the drugs, convincing himself that he was doing so to “keep Fackelmann company, like sitting up with a sick friend” (933). Don’s memories are disturbed by the strange feeling that his forehead is being licked. At first, he thinks the wraith has returned. However, the wraith is not in the room. Don’s health becomes worse. He slips into a fever and dreams about trying to dig up a grave with a sad teenage boy, implied to be Hal. Don knows that there is a skull in the grave with something important inside it. When Hal picks up the skull, however, he shrugs as if to suggest that they are too late.

Outside the hospital, Joelle listens to a woman who is implied to be Hugh Steeply, still disguised as Helen. Joelle is in danger, the woman says. Joelle is unsurprised.

Don remembers “truly bingeing” (935) on Dilaudid with Fackelmann. They took so much they almost overdosed. They ignored everything outside, including the ringing phone and the apartment buzzer. When they ran out of water with which they could take the intravenous drugs, they used their own urine. Gately falls down and knocks himself unconscious as he hears Pamela calling to be let into the apartment.

Joelle responds to the strange woman’s questions. She describes the Entertainment and James’s technical attempts to use lenses to recreate a baby’s perspective from a “crib’s-eye view” (939). Joelle is in two simple scenes. According to Joelle, James wanted to be sober but he struggled so much with staying sober that he eventually killed himself. Joelle does not believe that James ever finished the Entertainment. Any finished copy, she suggests, would be “buried with him” (940).

The narrative returns to Hal’s first-person perspective. Mario and a friend named Kyle Coyle watch one of James Incandenza’s early films, Accomplice! Cosgrove Watt was “one of the very few professional actors [James] ever used” (944), though he was not particularly talented. Accomplice! stars Cosgrove as a “beautifully sad young bus-station male prostitute” (945) who has a disturbing sexual encounter with an old man involving castration and potentially murder. Hal and Mario have long disagreed over the artistic merits of their father’s films, and only after their father’s suicide did critics start to evaluate his work. Hal watches news reports proclaiming the current snowstorm to be “the worst blizzard to hit the region since B.S. 1998” (947), a short time after E.T.A. first opened. Around this time, Hal remembers, his father first took an interest in making films. Though Avril dismissed her husband’s interest as a “passing obsession” (949), Hal believes that his father’s love of filmmaking endured precisely because he was not particularly successful. Hal shares his father’s tendency to flit between hobbies and interests. As Hal remembers his life with his family, he struggles to remember certain words and ideas. He remembers the period after his father’s funeral. Avril reacted to her grief by spending more time inside. She ensconced herself inside the Headmaster’s house and began to age rapidly.

Though Hal has a tennis match that afternoon, he decides he does not want to play. He could injure himself to avoid the match, thereby evoking compassion from people rather than disappointment. He remembers when his brother Orin found and screened a set of classic pornographic films for the older ETA students. One of the female students revealed his plan to the staff and Orin admitted everything to James, who told Orin that pornography might give Orin “the wrong idea about having sex” (959). Orin was no longer a virgin at this point, but he was surprised and slightly moved that his father still believed him to be so innocent. To Hal’s recollection, James was never as open or honest with anyone else. Hal believes this moment of openness was wasted on Orin, and he envies his brother. The moment would be better suited to Mario, Hal thinks, as Mario spent the most time around their father. Hal believes that Orin took that moment with their father for granted. According to Orin, James may still have been a virgin when he met Avril in his late-thirties. Orin knew that James’s relationship with Joelle was strictly platonic. Hal’s thoughts are interrupted by the vivid idea of his mother having sex with John Wayne; he knows that she has carried on a sexual relationship with the young Canadian tennis player ever since John transferred to E.T.A. Hal is not yet “able to identify a strong feeling one way or the other about the liaison” (957).

Worried that she is being pursued by the Wheelchair Assassins, Joelle makes a plan. She will ask Pat Montesian if she can hide in the Ennet House quarantine facility with Yolanda and Clenette and perhaps “convince her to dismantle the ramp” (958). The snow falls heavily and limits visibility.

Pat Montesian talks to an Assistant District Attorney (A.D.A.). The A.D.A. wants to speak to Don Gately; he is part of a recovery program “for codependency-issues surrounding loved ones who were cripplingly phobic or compulsive, or both” (961). The program requires him to “make an amend” (962) with people he has wronged in the past, and Don is one of those people. For years, he has hated Don and swore to send him to jail for anything. Now, he has seen the error of his ways. However, the A.D.A. is struggling to summon the courage to meet Don.

Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment; Immediately Pre-Fundraiser-Exhibition-Fête Gaudeamus Igitur (November 20)

From a first-person perspective, an unnamed character describes how E.T.A. students solemnly prepare to play at the fundraiser event. Each student has their own “auto-pilot ritual” (965) before any match. Due to the snowstorm, the matches must be played outside. No one has seen Michael Pemulis in some time. Rumors spread among the students about the arrival of “some sort of Special-Olympicish Quebec adult wheelchair-tennis contingent” (965). The narrator focuses on Barry Loach, one of the academy coaches, as he applies tape to Hal’s ankle. Hal’s facial expressions seem “unconnected to anything“ (966). Barry’s family is said to be cursed. As the youngest member of his family, he wanted to become a tennis coach, but he knew about his “staunch and beloved” (968) mother’s long-held dream that one of her children become a Catholic priest. Barry’s older brother dropped out of the seminary due to a crisis of faith, so Barry–desperate to prove his brother’s nihilism wrong–tried to convince his brother that humanity was good by dressing as a homeless person. Dressed in this manner, Barry reached out to people on the street. They all refused to touch him, but many people were willing to give him money. Barry was surprised to find that he made more money as a homeless person than at his job. He was also struck with a crisis of his own because so many people refused to touch him. After weeks of begging and after he was forced to drop out of his college coaching course, the only person who shook his hand was Mario Incandenza.

The Swiss hand model and the Wheelchair Assassins trap Orin in a giant “bathroom-type tumbler” (971). Despite his many attempts, Orin cannot break out. The Swiss woman—who is named Luria and who has also been having an affair with Rodney Tine Senior—stands with another person (implied to be Fortier) and watches Orin. They have drugged Orin, and he still feels the sedative’s effects in his system. They question him, demanding information about the Entertainment. When he cannot or will not tell them where the Entertainment might be buried, they release a swarm of cockroaches into the box. Orin screams out in fear. He calls for them to torture Luria instead of him. Luria and Fortier are unimpressed.

Still in his hospital bed, Don Gately suffers from a terrible fever. Even though his “only conscious concern was Asking For Help to refuse Demerol” (973), he cannot tell them about his fear of Demerol addiction. Drifting into sleep, he is never quite sure whether he is awake. He sees the A.D.A. outside his room, holding a hat. When he is asleep, he suffers from terrible nightmares. Don remembers waking up on the floor of the apartment where he took drugs with Fackelmann. Pamela was trying to climb a tree to enter through a window. One of Whitey’s enforcers smashed the window and opened the door from the inside. Then, a group of “small-time thug-types” (975) entered the apartment carrying the passive Pamela. Her shin bore an open wound. Telling Don to “kick back and enjoy the party” (977), the henchmen injected Don with “pharm-grade Sunshine” (979), a difficult-to-obtain and very potent drug. Don felt numb as he watched the henchman torture Fackelmann while injecting heroin into their own arms. The scene descended into chaos, and Don struggled to understand what was happening. A person vomited while the henchmen sewed Fackelmann’s eyes open. Don felt “obscenely pleasant” (981) on the drugs, which forced him outside of his own body. On a television screen, a film about violence played. Eventually, the drugs took over and Don passed out. He woke up later on an empty, cold beach under a light rain. The tide “was way out” (981).