A Life Worth Living?

Though presented as ‘extraneous’ in the novel, the vignettes portray life-changing and life-destroying events.  They beg a sustained reaction – a reaching out.  Instead, they disappear, never to be heard from again.  Some stories rise to prominence in the novel until they become unbearable.  Once a character lapses into homelessness or continued addiction, Wallace ceases to follow them.

One of the novel’s underlying themes, and perhaps the ultimate dose of Demerol, is suicide.  Wallace’s own suicide in 2008 constitutes his final word on the questions of meaning and the mundane unresolved in Infinite Jest.  This haunting interplay of book and author – fiction and reality – suggest that the choices Wallace made in the narrative of ‘Infinite Jest’ represent choices that we make in our lives.

It’s difficult to engage the narratives of others when we are bound to the narratives given to us.  If we avoid those narratives, we ultimately focus on what our culture expects – employment (if we should be so lucky), paying bills, shopping for consumer goods, and chatting on Facebook.  These mundane activities, though often fraught with our own anxieties, are like Gately’s Demerol.  We up the dosage to forget the stories of others for fear of endangering our mundane reality.

‘Infinite Jest’ leaves us with a provocative question: do we choose to take the Demerol or are we already addicted?  Does it matter if we choose to follow the thread of others’ experience as opposed to the ones that we’re expected to be concerned with?  We choose – at first.  After a while, the drug becomes necessary.  For those of us who have the opportunity to practice the mundane as society tells us we should, it’s easy to become preoccupied – ‘doped’ with mortgages, promotions, and celebrity gossip.  It’s easy to go through life with our nose to the grindstone as the Demerol injection numbs our bodies and minds.  Encountering the prostitute, the homeless, or the sexually abused may disturb us, and drive us toward our Demerol with an addict’s desire, rather than prompt us to engage them in ways conducive to human community.

When we choose to avoid the difficult encounter, we reject the narratives of others, and in so doing reject the possibility of their importance in the world.  It’s hard to believe that in our complex life, the mundane could triumph so clearly and so often over the moving and the terrible.  Hal is a phenom, destined for tennis stardom.  But as he shows, by virtue of his addiction, his life as he perceives it is mundane – and Wallace presents it as thus.  Gately, meanwhile, struggles to find a foothold in mainstream society through his mundane routine at the halfway house.  This is life in ‘Infinite Jest’.

When I arrived in this seaside town in Florida, I thought life here was mundane.  I chose that perception, and thus was unable to see other harsher realities.  I overlooked the eviction notice on our neighbor’s door and the homeless man who sits on the wooden bridge that leads to the beach, which I traverse every day.

‘Infinite Jest’ raises the proposition of encountering, which its narrative then crushes with the mundane.  Taking up those encounters, instead of self-medicating, embodies the possibility of involvement beyond ourselves in the world.

 

Isaiah Ellis is a Religious Studies major in his Junior year at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX.  He grew up in Waco, Texas and spends most of his time outside of school reading and playing music.  This past summer, he researched Native American culture on a grant from the Mellon Foundation.