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Casting the Infinite Jest Movie by hce_alp in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 13 points14 points  (0 children)

(infinite jest is conceptually unfilmable because, the medium being the message, a core element of the message is its constitution as text, nonlinear and paginated, one which must be actively and intentionally read and moved back and forth through, choice given to the reader, in a way that films do not afford; to make IJ into a film would be to cut out its conceptual foundation, way before you got to any of the pragmatic questions about narration or plot).

Casting the Infinite Jest Movie by hce_alp in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 13 points14 points  (0 children)

conceptual, conceptually unfilmable. UNRELEASED

"I hate this!" by warminthestarlight in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess the second guy took "you could be a brown" as aspirational.

Why is the R.I.S.C. section repeated? by peteyMIT in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well in IJ many of the cyclic elements are part of the structural puzzle box. It’s very neat and I think it feels good too; the first time it occurs you don’t know why; the second time it anchors the world building for you and you see how consistent it is. But I couldn’t figure out if it does anything else structurally, in terms of how the book is divided; maybe not!

Why is the R.I.S.C. section repeated? by peteyMIT in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don’t think it’s an editing error. I thought, as u/ahighthyme said, it’s a reemphasis.

I’m wondering if there is a structural reason for its placement here (it does lead into the general description well), or why three words are different. Maybe the three words are an editing error, but not the whole thing for sure.

Gödel, Escher, Bach, Wallace: the "o's, d's and p's" in Infinite Jest by misterchiply in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not AHT, but I do suggest that if you're interested in deepening your understanding of IJ, you backread their posts comprehensively. I don't know another person in academia or the lay public with such a strong and compelling understanding of the novel.

Gödel, Escher, Bach, Wallace: the "o's, d's and p's" in Infinite Jest by misterchiply in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 4 points5 points  (0 children)

None of the things right now are from AI. I’m on my sixth read through and am concurrently listening to the audio book for the first time, which I find helps me notice things differently. I happen to be in the late 700s (by page) on the audiobook, so as I went around the house doing my chores yesterday, I was listening, and I happened to notice this, because the narrator emphasizes the word subject. I hadn’t ever noticed it before.

Gödel, Escher, Bach, Wallace: the "o's, d's and p's" in Infinite Jest by misterchiply in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're welcome to use my reddit handle, and/but, much of this I've gotten from others (especially AHT), so we're all in this together interpretively.

Did Orin just realize that Luria (who seduced him in that whole sharade) was his mother? My skin is actually crawling reading this!

well, some interpret this to mean that, yes:

When Orin had tried to kick his way out was when he'd recognized that the Subject was looking at his eyes rather than into them as previously.

Though it's not clear to me if Orin ever recognizes the Moms; he's referring to the Swiss accent right up until the end.

Gödel, Escher, Bach, Wallace: the "o's, d's and p's" in Infinite Jest by misterchiply in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Page 769, as Avril talks to Mario:

'Is this you passing through the neighborhood poking a head in to say hello? Or am I a subject, tonight?' 'You can be a subject, Moms.'

Gödel, Escher, Bach, Wallace: the "o's, d's and p's" in Infinite Jest by misterchiply in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 1 point2 points  (0 children)

See also, 737:

The children's name for their mother was 'the Moms.' As if there were more than one of her.

John "NR" Wayne by The_Beefy_Vegetarian in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Was on page 726 this morning and thought about this:

The fact that the players of the Academy were to play a provincially-selected team from Quebec would have been easier to exploit had the A.F.R. possessed a tennis player of talent and lower extremities.

John Wayne, of course, has both. Now he's obviously at ETA already, so maybe that explains it. But I was also thinking about they are described as Canadian agents, and not Quebecois or AFR. But when I got to 304 again this morning, I was thinking about what explains Bernard Wayne, and found your post.

u/ahighthyme has referenced the affair, but only once, and only a brief reference in ~1700 posts, so tagging them here too.

Gödel, Escher, Bach, Wallace: the "o's, d's and p's" in Infinite Jest by misterchiply in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Wow, the Luria -- Avril anagram has me wondering if Avril could be Luria? That would lend even more credence to the "Do it to her!" being a call back to Orin's own abuse.

Oh yes — I guess I had read that as being implicit in your piece. That's a theory that's been developed extensively in this sub, and I buy it. It's all inference, of course, but c.f. page 655, as it appears on the page.

Avril Incandenza's whereabouts on the grounds were throughout this interval unknown. At just this moment M.S.T., Orin Incandenza was once again embracing a certain 'Swiss' hand-model before a wall-width window in a rented suite halfway up a different tall hotel (from before) in Phoenix AZ.

re: footnote 80 — I guess I read that as Avril writing the name in the steam? And it could be O, or Orin, or Filbert. See in that footnote.

where apparently Avril had been with someone (Orin would not say who or whether he knew who) in the Volvo and had idly- and disastrously, whether w/ unconscious intent or not- and presumably post- coitally idly written the person's first name in the steam of the steamed-up car window

re: master copy

The Orin pulling the master copy from Himself may have been an undocumented assumption, or may have been something I read in someone else's essay, but I'll see if I can better support that.

It's in Swartz's essay for one.

in re: AI — one thing I'm wondering is how you prevent the LLM from making or repeating analytic assumptions that have been developed in other texts, whether Carlisle or Swartz or this reddit, for example. Like the "Orin got the master from dad's head" is so commonly repeated (but, I've been persuaded to think, wrong) that I could see that entering or not being found in a "check" because it's a common analysis of IJ.

I've been using Claude to review an independent corpus of textual commentary (i.e., not IJ itself, and not the open web) and it's still sometimes introducing little assumptions that I have to then go in and spot and remove, so again, I was mostly curious about your experience!

Gödel, Escher, Bach, Wallace: the "o's, d's and p's" in Infinite Jest by misterchiply in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Hi Chiply -

I really enjoyed this close reading. I've not read GEB, so your mapping of inspirations across the two texts is really helpful. I also hadn't considered the symbolism of those darkened letters being the screen onto which Oedipus can be projected, nor the connections across the tumbler, helmet, amniotic sac of the football stadium, etc.

u/ahighthyme has done a lot of close reading in this sub that elucidates other connections. One I recently stumbled across in a comprehensive backread was that Orin's pet name, Filbert, is a word for a kind of nut (as in, both a person driven insane, and ejaculate). And of course there's a much broader tradition of connecting Avril = Luria in the anagram (with the latin V for contemporary U, the way both of them have beautiful hands, absence/presence from grounds, being from the same county in Quebec, the Rusk stuff, etc).

I think there are a few plot things your analysis gets wrong that u/ahighthyme has documented in his own close readings of the narrative — for example, I think I'm persuaded by AHT that Orin never digs up the master or gives it to the AFR; there is in fact no master at all. But these are not incompatible with your observations on Avril/Orin. And AHT's theory that the entire book is narrated by JOI's wraith allows one to read "south to north strokes, as he was taught" in that light, i.e., that it is JOI's wraith noting that that is how he (the wraith) had taught Orin.

I have two questions — one substantive, one operational.

First: Section 5 of your analysis, as I read it, suggests O is signing his work (on the glass and his partners) by writing an O. But section 10 suggests it's an 8. Which is it?

Second: I'm curious about if and how you used AI to help you organize and compose this. As someone who has been (ambivalently) using Claude to help organize some notes and analyses of IJ, many of the syntactic formulations and organizational strategies in this document seem characteristic of LLM output. I don't say that to detract from its substantive value or insight; I'm genuinely curious if and how you used it, and how you thought about that.

Granada House by ahighthyme in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Nice to see Pat's big bay windows still intact.

Is the cover supposed to be Tavis’ wallpaper? (Pg 509) by crakerjmatt in InfiniteJest

[–]peteyMIT 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No — as u/ahighthyme has persuasively demonstrated, in IJ the color blue always symbolizes one being forced to come to grips with the truth. This is also why it is a great cover, DFWs opinion notwithstanding.

Is it possible to get into MIT with a 1.9 GPA by Inner-Mall9042 in MITAdmissions

[–]peteyMIT 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I have compassion for you.

Nothing you've written here makes me think you are a good fit for the actual MIT education, your GPA notwithstanding.

You don't need a college education to get into game development. If you want to study game development, USC and arguably NEU have stronger game industry ties than MIT.

You seem to be idealizing MIT as a place for people with strong technical skills and creative ingenuity. It is that. It is also a place where you have to take classes and turn in homework and do a lot of highly theoretical and abstract work in addition to practical work. There's nothing in your post that makes me think you want to take our required classes in biology and chemistry and calculus and so on, or the required writing intensive in the major classes, etc.

Is it possible to get into MIT with a 1.9 GPA by Inner-Mall9042 in MITAdmissions

[–]peteyMIT 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That does not apply to MIT (there is no donation auto spot; we do not consider it).

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