Week 8 (528-619)

Greetings from Disneyland. I'm on vacation, getting to spend a little time curled up with Infinite Jest after weeks of working. In the hopes of trying to get us back to schedule, I am posting the pages for this week, but remember it doesn't matter where you are in the book now, you can always make a contribution to our discussion. As an experiment for this week, instead of putting down talking points, I'm going to put a couple random passages from the reading and I'll ask you to post your reactions and insights based on either the current reading or any of your previous reading. So here we go:

Lenz says the Ennet graduates who often come back and take up living-room space sitting around comparing horror stories about former religious cults they'd tried joining as part of their struggle to try to quit with the drugs and alcohol are not w/o a certain naive charm but are basically naive. Lenz details that robes and mass weddings and head-shavings and pampheleteering in airports and selling flowers on median strips and signing away inheritances and never sleeping and marrying whoever they tell you and then never seeing who you marry are small potatoes in terms of bizarre-cult criterion. Lenz tells Green he knows individuals who've heard shit that would blow Green's mind out his ear-sockets. (559)

And another:

Having no choice now not to fight and things simplify radically, divisions collapse. Gately's just one part of something bigger he can't control. His face in the left hadlight has dropped into it's fight-expression of ferocious good cheer. He says he's responsible for these people on these private grounds tonight and is part of this whether he wants to be or not, and can they talk this out because he doesn't want to fight them. He says twice very distinctly that he does not want to fight them. He's no longer divided enough to think about whether this is true. (612)

Happy reading and be sure to leave any thoughts and comments you have!