“We were aware that the visible earth is made of ashes, and that ashes signify something. … And we see now that the abyss of history is deep enough to hold us all. We are aware that a civilization has the same fragility as a life. … Everything has not been lost, but everything has sensed that it might perish.”

–Paul Valery
from “The Crisis of the Mind”

Specialized knowledges pervade the book—tennis, recreational drug use, optics, burglary, even punting (surely the most narrowly specialized position in football). But one of the more (in)famous elements of “research” in the novel is the filmography Wallace includes in endnote 24. In the age of IMDb, we might be apt to forget that the filmography is (or was) actually a highly specialized and intensely laborious feat of archival research, but the almost eight-and-a-half pages of James O. Incandenza’s collected works should surely remind us that a filmography is actually the product of research, and not Googling.

Yet there was, of course, no research necessary for composing this “artifact”—having no basis in reality, everything in it is a pure product of imagination. Yet Wallace never seems comfortable simply acknowledging that the imagination that produced it is his own. In just about as many ways as possible, Wallace continually disrupts the filmography with secondary or tertiary commentary to let us know that he’s looking at it from the outside too: I kept waiting for that click where the self-distancing irony would drop away and, as with Borges or Pynchon or Bolaño or even (especially) Auster, you get a real note of dread or mystery where the author seems to have been finally convinced of the reality of his artifice. Even in the last entry, which is about The Entertainment itself, there are three skeptical footnotes embedded.

And a bit later concludes:

Most of Infinite Jest, I think, does not do this approximate deconstruction act; the bulk of it is what can be defined as specialist realism—which I think is actually a broadly popular mode of writing. I don’t think very many people mind writerly ostentation by itself: there are simply far too many popular authors who are grossly ostentatious for this to be the case. And readers of all kinds are capable of showing enormous patience with heavily-detailed and at times rather tedious passages of questionable importance to the overall novel. “Specialist realism” is not terribly problematic to most readers, and is often even considered enjoyable. (Consider, here, Wallace’s enthusiasm for Tom Clancy: there is not as great a distance between the two as one might think.) This mode of writing, however, sometimes slips into a different mode of writing that is indecisively subversive—a lukewarm irony that I think turns nearly everyone off. This is present, too, in Infinite Jest, and in order to have a conversation among people who really like the book and people who can’t get through it, I think it’s necessary to begin by separating this lukewarmness from the specialist realism that actually makes the novel so captivating.

Wallace may have had very well-thought-out, very theoretically smart reasons for trying to have things both (or more) ways, for trying to be indecisive, but there are lots of things which are really theoretically well-grounded which are simply annoying. I’m sure there are folks who think that the lukewarm ironical mode is really brilliant and is actually the most brilliant thing about the novel. I’d be happy to hear those arguments, but I want to make clear that I don’t really find this lukewarmness all that much of an obstacle to enjoying the book. So please, don’t confuse me with attacking Wallace or “hysterical realism” or any of that stuff.

The interesting question is how intentional the “lukewarm irony” (not sure I like the term; I have nothing better… and I think Wallace was jesting with the list that mentions Clancy, though the point still stands, but in a way I’m not sure matters much). I guess I’m squarely straddling the fance. Is it intentional? Just about every bit of it. Could Wallace have achieved the kind of distance that Borges did? I don’t think so. I think that inability is a fundamental characteristic of the fiction because it was a fundamental characteristic of Wallace’s philosophy– of language, of story and of life.

What was fascinating about Wallace’s work– to myself and many others– was this absurdly heightened self-consciousness, which many of us share, paired with such incredible gifts, which most of us don’t. In this respect Wallace’s life might have been a train wreck. But a beautiful (why do I keep thinking of Ballard’s Crash here?) sometimes elegant one. Wallace crashed. We all do. But what a way to delve deep into what I believe to be an inescapable part of the (excuse me for this) postmodern condition! Borges would be a very different writer were he writing now. In fact, I’m not sure he could be Borges at all. And I think he’d agree, though he might– Pierre Menard style– create a better Borges than Borges himself.

Just some brief reading notes on the rest of Book II of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Callisto
Another Jovian rape and another victim who pays the price. Unlike Phaethon, who is the personification of hubris, Callisto appears to do nothing wrong except find herself unable to fend off the most powerful of the gods. Be that as it may, Ovid does fault her trust in Diana:

“…she [Callisto] was Diana’s soldier,
and no nymph pleased the goddess more than she did,
there on Mount Menelaus: but influence
cannot be counted on to last too long.”
(II:571-574)

We’re going to see the theme of a son hunting his transformed parent in much more gruesome form soon.

Coronis (the Raven)
Alaska is the land of Raven myths. Tlingit culture, in particular, is informed by a mythology referred to as the Raven Cycle and the Raven is—depending on the story—either the Creator of the world or a trickster. In this myth the Raven is Caronis, transformed by Athena into a crow to escape the obsessive clutches of Neptune:

“I called upon the gods and men for aid,
but no one was around to hear my cries;
a virgin’s plight aroused the virgin goddess
and she delivered me: I stretched may arms out
and they began to darken with pinfeathers;
I tried to tear the clothing from my shoulders
but it was feathered, rooted in my skin;
I strove to beat my bare breasts with my hands,
but found that I had neither hands nor breasts.
I tried to run but now I glided over
the unrestraining surface of the sand,
and soon I soared aloft, high in the air…”
(II:803-814)

Ovid also works in a lesson that I found echoed in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations in a different form. As Ovid puts it:

“All birds should be reminded by my loss
not to seek trouble by loquacity,
and not to bring bad tidings to the boss”
(II:784-786)

I wonder if Ovid’s is the first of the raven myths to be recorded? The ubiquity of the raven as a central figure of myth across a wide variety of cultures is noteworthy.

The name Coronis is also interesting… the Carrion Raven (rather than the Common Raven) has the scientific name (Corvus Corone), derived from the latin “caro” meaning “meat.” A connection?

Aglauros
Ovid is fond of extended metaphors. I sometimes get the feeling that he’s showing off a bit, but why not? I enjoyed this example, which opens this segment:

“The winged god gave them the once-over
as they returned, and, altering his flight plan,
made after them in a wide, sweeping arc,
as when that swiftest of all birds, the kite
has glimpsed the entrails of the sacrifice–
but while the priests are crowded round, it fears
to fly too near, yet fears to fly away,
so hovers high above its longed-for prey;
just so the nimble Mercury in flight
made circles over the Acropolis.”
(II:988-995)

It’s fitting that Aglauros—who vows she “will not move” until Mercury has been thwarted—is turned to stone, a transformation described in another marvelous passage:

“…a chill crept down her extremities
and pallor drained her body of its color;
as cancer, that incurable disease,
spreads its roots widely while it makes its way,
infecting healthy tissues from unhealthy,
so lethal winter gradually came
into her breast and closed the passages
of life and slowly suffocated her;
she no more tried to speak, and if she had,
would not have found a passage for her voice.
       Her neck was turned to rock. Her features hardened
until she sat, a bloodless effigy;
nor was that stone white, but stained as by her soul.”
(II:1130-1142)

Jove and Europa
I have to admit that this segment made me laugh and shiver at the same time. There’s something off in the eroticizing of Jove-as-bull, but it’s so over the top that I had to laugh:

“He is as white as the untrampled snow
before the south wind turns it into slush.
The muscles stand out bulging on his neck,
and the dewlap dangles on his ample chest;
his horns are crooked, but appear handmade,
and flawless as a pair of matching gems.

[…]

At first she [Europa] fears to get too close to him,
but soon approaching, reaching out her hand
and pushes flowers into his white mouth.
      The lover, quite beside himself, rejoices,
and as a preview of delights to come,
kisses her fingers, getting so excited
that he can scarcely keep himself from doing it!”
(II:1174-1189)

And, as usual, Ovid slips in a piece of sage advice:

“Majestic power and erotic love
do not get on together very well
nor do they linger long in the same place…”
(II:1161-1163)

There is no reason to worry about me.

I thank all of you for your time and attention over the past four years!

I think I may have lost my companions on the voyage through Ulysses, a loss I am feeling most keenly after reading this and the previous sections… I would love to know what they make of them.

Episode 15 is loooong, by far the longest of the book. And it reads, to me, as one long Freudian meander in the minds of Leopold and Stephen. The episode is a long, intermingled series of drunken hallucinations by Bloom, Stephen and an fictional other whose presence allows each to reflect on scenes and words they couldn’t have seen. The impossibility of the perspective– from a logical perspective– is mirrored in the impossibility of the play itself as one that could be staged, being rife with stage directions that couldn’t be implemented and descriptions that the staging and dialogue could never convey to the audience… when they aren’t novelistic rather than dramatic.

A few examples:

(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)

(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown mortuary habit. His green eye flashes bloodshot. Half of one ear, all the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)

ZOE: Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she captures his hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of secret monitor, luring him to doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard.

(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.)

THE MALE BRUTES: (Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro) Good!

Parallels with the Circe section of The Odyssey aren’t particularly clear to me beyond the hallucinations being like the enchantment of Circe. The hallucinations and dream-episodes are heavily Freudian– Bloom’s hallucinatory episodes are largely full of sexual guilt, the most significant of which finds him transformed into a female pig, dominated by “Bello”– a male version of Bella, mistress of a brothel; Stephen’s work darkly around his torment regarding God. At first the division between Bloom and Stephen’s hallucinations is clear, but it becomes more difficult to tell the two apart, each having in their own dreams ideas and thoughts of the other as well as scenes and images they weren’t privy to. This points to, I think, that these may in part be a kind of hallucinatory dream of Ulysses the novel itself, as an attempt to represent as wholly as possible an entity.

It’s a bit hard to tell what “really” happens in this episode. Bloom follows Stephen and Lynch, temporarily loses them when he steps off at the wrong stop, and stops to buy a snack (pork, which he feels guilty about purchasing at all, much less eating) that he feeds to a dog before wandering to the brothel, where Stephen’s presence is confirmed by a prostitute named Zoe.  Stephen, who is already there, is drunk and gives Bello more money than is needed even for he and Bloom, before dancing drunkenly and finally smashing the chandelier with his walking stick in an attempt to fend off his mother’s ghost. Bello calls the police and tries to charge Stephen too much, at which Bloom intervenes. When the police arrive Stephen is physically accosted at which point Bloom again tries to help him, getting knocked unconscious.

The point of recapitulating the material plot is to show how it reinforces a central theme: Bloom becoming closer and closer to Stephen, seeing in him his lost son, and trying to protect him while Stephen is only partially aware of the gravity of Bloom’s feelings, being too consumed with thoughts of his mother and his spiritual difficulties. Bloom saves Stephen twice, more or less, only to end up on the floor, his wits knocked out of him, dreaming of his lost infant son.

The trade of war is over, there are no more battles,
but simple murder is still in.
The No God, Time, creeps his way,
universe after universe, like a great snapping turtle
opening its mouth wagging its tongue
to look like a worm or leech
so deceived hungry fish, every living thing
swims in to feed. Quarks long for dark holes,
atoms butter up molecules, protons do unto neutrons
what they would have neutrons do unto them.
The trade of war has been over so long,
the meaning of war in the O.E.D. is now “nonsense.”
In the Russian Efron Encyclopedia,
war, voina, means “dog shit”;
in the Littré, guerre is “a verse form, obsolete”;
in Germany, Krieg has become “a whipped-cream pastry”;
Sea of Words, the Chinese dictionary,
has war, zhan zheng, as “making love in public,”
while war in Arabic and Hebrew, with the same
Semitic throat, harb and milchamah, is defined
as “anything our distant grandfathers ate
we no longer find tempting– like the eyes of sheep.”
And lions eat grass.

–Stanley Moss
from The New Yorker, Dec. 2008

Through a chain of circumstances too complicated to recount, I discovered a Paper Cuts Blog playlist by Nick Hornby, perpetual resident on my “reliable favorite authors” shortlist, in which he alluded to collaborating with a favorite musician of mine: Ben Folds:

4) Jen and Justin, Ben Folds. You can’t hear this song at the moment, and I’m hoping you never will. … One of my side-projects this year (and it’s been more fun than I want to admit) is to attempt lyrics for Ben Folds’s next album, and even if nothing comes of it, I have learned more about the craft of songwriting from the e-mails I’ve been getting than from just about anything I’ve ever read. Most of the time I’ve been sending over words that he’s going to try to set to music; occasionally we’re working the other way around, and I’ll try to fit a lyric to an existing melody. This tune has one of Folds’s most heart-melting choruses, which, considering his melodic gifts, means it’s as pretty as a pop song can be.

I do hope to hear some of these songs. A bit of searching and I ended up at Hornby’s blog (I had no idea he had one!), where he confirmed that the collaboration continued:

…I’m writing the lyrics for a Ben Folds album, which he’s recording in Dublin in December. I wasn’t going to mention this, on the presumption that it will never happen, but my writing partner seems confident enough to have talked about it already, and if he thinks something will come of it, then (deep breath) so do I.

Hornby goes on to answer those who might wonder why Folds wants anyone to write lyrics for his next album:

Ben, as you may know, is quite capable of writing his own lyrics, but I think he fancied a rest, and anyway he, like me, wants to have as much fun as he can in his chosen medium while there’s still fun to be had. Ben got in touch after I’d written about Smoke in 31 Songs/Songbook, which is how I ended up contributing a song to ‘Has Been’, the mad and great William Shatner album he produced.

I’ve never heard of Songbook, but after a quick perusal it went right on my “must get ASAP” list– Hornby writing from the heart on music is second only to Hornby writing about books (am I the only one who read The Believer primarily for Hornby’s– and the Polysyllabic Spree’s– “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column?).