David Foster Wallace Wiki - User contributions [en]

I

2014-08-02T07:14:38Z

Opalescentparrot: moved "A.E.C.-optics man" from James Sr. to James Jr. (its clear that Jr. is the one to which that refers).

'''I, Mrs.''' 
154; aka Avril Incandenza

'''Iaccarino''' 
231; Chaplin-archivist at Notkin's party

'''I.B.E.W. Local 517''' 
813; Ewell's father's union ("International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers")

<div id="ami">'''Incandenza, Mrs. Avril M. (Mondragon) T. ("The Moms")''' </div>
10; native of Canada; Hal's mother; "assignations with a certain unnamed bisexual bassoonist in the Albertan Secret Guard's tactical-bands unit" (per Himself), 30; affair with medical attaché, 30, 91, 1049; slipping "certain organic testosterone-regeneration compound distilled by the Jivaro shamen of the South-Central L.A. basin" into Hal's cereal (according to Himself), 30; "''agoraphobic'' workaholic and obsessive-compulsive" 42; working hard not to show her "maternal dread" 50; "black phobic dread of hiding or secrecy," "rarely travels above ground" 51; marriage to Himself, 64; "taught out at Brandeis where [DuPlessis had] done his residency" 91; teaches triad of required Grammars at ETA, 154; 187; "had this effect on older men" 286; "E.T.A. Dean of Academic Affairs and of Females" 288; smokes Benson & Hedges, 391; "The Black Hole of Human Attention" (Family Trivia) 521; "at 50+, is still endocrinologically compelling to males" fn.210/1035; Politeness Routine, 523; w/J. Wayne, 552; father was a potato farmer in Québec, fn.234/1041; style of "abuse" 1050; reaction to S. Johnson's demise, 1051; "views the recipients of [her] charity not as persons so much as pieces of exercise equipment on which [she] can develop and demonstrate [her] own virtue" fn.269/1052; AFR spy ?, 726; "the family's light and pulse and the center that held tight" 737; everyone at the table inclines toward Avril "like heliotropes" 745; chattin with Mario in her office, 762; grandfather's unlucky gamble on Delaware Punch, 765; drunk father, 766; "Death incarnate, 790; "engaging in sexual enmeshments with just about everything with a Y-chromosome" 791; "mother had been ethnic Québecois, her father Anglo-Canadian" 897-98; father was a binge-drinker, 898; "The Moms full name is Avril Mondragon Tavis Incandenza, Ed.D., Ph.D. She is 197 cm (6' 5 1/2") tall in flats" 898; "had Himself interred in her family's traditional plot in L'Islet Province" 907; "birth-mother had died in Québec of an infarction when [the Moms] was eight, her father during her sophomore year at McGill under circumstances none of us knew" 953; affairs with "Bain, graduate students, grammatical colleagues, Japanese fight-choreographers, the hairy-shouldered Ken N. Johnson, the Islamic M.D." 957; "has O.C.D. Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder" fn.234/1039;

<div id="hji">'''Incandenza, Harold ("Hal") James''' </div>
3; in Univ. of AZ Administration office in 11/Y.G.; "verbal scores that are just quite a bit closer to zero than we're comfortable with" 6; essays parroting his parents' interests, 7; "familiar panic of feeling misperceived" 8; "Call it something I ate" 10; mold-eating incident, 10, fn.234/1041; in an emergency room "almost exactly one year back" (from 11/Y.G.), 16; digging up his father's head, 17; "Is Himself still having this hallucination I never speak?" (Hal is 12), 29; interest in Byzantine pornography, 29, 950; "obsession with having nobody [...] know he's high" 54; drugs and, 67; "atavistically dark-complected" 99; pedigree, 100; ankle, 104; gets high daily, 114; "Blott and Arslanian are looking at him. 'Are you OK?'" 114; "a twinge in a tooth on his mouth's left side" 121; "60% of what he told Orin on the phone since Orin had abruptly started calling again this spring was a lie" 136; paper on modern v. post-modern hero, 140-42; "the catatonic hero, the one beyond calm, divorced from all stimulus, carried here and there across sets by burly extras" 142; bunks in subdorm A on 3rd floor of Comm.-Ad.; date of birth: 10/91, 155; about, 155; training, 172; "the window of opportunity [to take DMZ] looks to be 11/20-21" 217; discovered J.I. in microwave, 248; and the grief-therapist, 252; his tennis game, 260; "asymetrically hobbled on the care-too-much side" of tennis proficiency, 269; "the substance-compulsion's strange apparent contribution to Hal's erumpent explosion up the rankings has got to be a temporary thing, that there's like a psychic credit-card bill for Hal in the mail" 270; "feels at his own face to see whether he is wincing" 342; craves dope, tobacco & sugar, 395; "an almost obsessive dislike for deLint" 460; taking care of the blind kid from Philo IL who had "cranium-issues" 518; "at complete ease with" Stice, 521; lying on his back "photosynthesizing" 560; relationship to the Moms, fn.234/1040; near-loss to Stice, 627; "lifetime virginity is a conscious goal" 634; "a whole new and chemical-free Hal" 635; "Hal's in essence a torturer" as a player, 659; Pump Room hideaway sniffed out by kids, 668; his tennis game, 680, 682; chewing Kodiak, 686; "the sleek little show-offy kid" 745; ONANTA guy holding him and Pemulis by the ear, 759; dream of losing teeth, 770; "O.N.A.N.T.A. guy didn't really extract urine samples from us" 772; how people lie, 773; Mario tells him he, Hal, is sad, 782; shows up at Ennet House, 786; driving to NA group (he thinks), 796; "had become a steadily more and more''hidden'' boy, toward the wraith's life's end" 838; wraith's "youngest and most promising son was disappearing" 838; first-person, 851; zoo dream, 851; inadvertently showing hilarity (cachinated), 875; "My full name is Harold James Incandenza, and I am 183.6 cm. (6' 1/4") tall in stocking feet" 898; reciting random facts, 898; "Himself, for two years before his death, had had this delusion of silence when I spoke: I believed I was speaking and he believed I was not speaking" 899; "I was the meat in the room's sandwich" 902; w/Pemulis, 907;''thinks'' Pemulis is trying to get him to agree to take DMZ, 908; making cage of his hands, 909; "trying to align myself along some sort of grain in the world I could barely feel" 950; 3rd person narration, 964; at ETA Gala, Hal's face "assumed various expressions ranging from distended hilarity to scrunched grimace, expressions that seemed unconnected to anything that was going on" 966; DMZ-dream that he's the soldier and is "screaming for help and everybody's acting as if [he's] singing Ethel Merman covers [...] a quality of''loneliness'' " fn.321/1063;

'''Incandenza, James Orin, Sr.''' 
50; "former top U.S. jr. tennis player and the promising young pre-Method actor" 63; Hal's paternal grandfather; wife ("a shover and a thruster"), 157; 1956 Mercury Montclair" 159; father ("A golf man") and mother, 163; aka "Himself", 165; "the Man From Glad" 313; w/wife & squeaky bed, 491; Man from Glad, 492, 494; father was "the blank wooden man who [...] had 'driven' [JOI, Sr.] to 'the bottle' and unrealized potential and an early cerebral hemorrhage" 838;

<div id="joi">'''Incandenza, Dr. James Orin ("Himself")''' (b. c.1950; d. Y.T.-S. D. B., aka 2004) </div>
16; father of Hal; belief that son Hal does not speak, 29; committed suicide at 54; about, 63-65; buried in Québec's L'Islet County, 65; awareness of the Moms' affairs, 29-30; "gyroscopic balance sensor and''mise-en-scène'' appropriation card and priapistic-entertainment cartridge implanted in [Himself's] anaplastic cerebrum" 31; fear of black widows, 45; "A.E.C.-optics man" 82; Geometrical Optics Scholarship, 154; in 1960, 157; his films, 174; "reviews of his multiple-exposure melodramas" 175; 187; "his neonatal lens to blur things in imitation of a neonatal retina" 222; "Infinite Jim" 225; the completed assembly of what she'd appeared in [...] and doubts that any sum of scenes as pathologic as he'd stuck that long quartzy auto-wobbling lens on the camera and filmed her for could have been as entertaining as he'd said the thing he'd always wanted to make had broken his heart by ending up" 228; 229; "aka The Mad Stork, The Sad Stork, 238; working obsessively on the Entertainment, 249; suicide, 249-58; "half-full bottle of Wild Turkey found on the counter not far away, with a large red decorative gifwrappish bow on the neck" 250; "Himself's head had popped like an uncut spud" 257;''Homo Duplex'' (movie on "John Waynes"), 260 (fn.24/988); films, 297; his father's father Mario, 313;''The Man Who Began to Suspect He Was Made of Glass'' , 375; Found Drama, 376, (fn.145);''The ONANtiad'' , 380;''The Medusa v. The Odalisque'', 396, fn.223/1036;''The Joke'' , 397; and InterLace, fn.167/1031;''Annulateur'' , 490; and squeaky bed, 491;''Death in Scarsdale'' , fn.234/1039; "the victim of the most monstrous practical joke ever played" (sez Orin), fn.234/1041; "helped design these special holographic conversions so that the team that worked on annulation could study the behavior of subatomics in highly poisonous environments" 572;''Dial C for Concupiscence'' , 590; scopophile, never missed Boston's pond-draining, 622;''Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat'', 687-89;''Blood Sister: One Tough Nun'', 689, ("one of Himself's few commercial successes") 703-06, 710-14, fn.289/1053;''The American Century as Seen Through a Brick'', 695;''The Night Wears a Sombrero'', 704;''Low Temperature Civics'', 706; post-carrot anhedonic, 706;''Le Masque'' (as he was called by Avril I), 737;''Pre-Nuptial Agreement of Heaven and Hell'', 740, 742; unable to speak to Hal or Orin "without their mother's presence and mediation" 743; top collegiate tennis player, 743; referred to his films ironically as "entertainments" 743; funeral took place in "L'Islet Province of Nouveau Québec [...] featuring an interment, not a cremation" 790; "remained alcohol-free for the whole next three-and-a-half months [until] the date of his suicide" 790;''The Unfortunate Case of Me'', 792; as wraith in Gately's hospital room, 829-40; replicating "life's real egalitarian babble of figurantless crowds" 835; "spent the whole sober last ninety days of his animate life working tirelessly to contrive a medium via which he and the muted son could simply''converse'' [...] something so compelling it would reverse thrust on a young self's fall into the womb of solipsism, anhedonia, death in life" 838; "his most serious wish was:''to entertain''" 839; "used to see his father's ghost on stairways sometimes [...] black-widow spiders in his hair, too" 870;''Zero-Gravity Tea Ceremony'', 874;''Good-Looking Men in Small Clever Rooms ...'', 900; "joked about making something quote too perfect" 940;''Accomplice!'', 941; "had no interest in suckering the audience with illusory realism" 944; didn't use real actors, 944; Dancing Gland, 944; "remained obsessed with something until he became successful at it, then transferred his obsession to something else" 949; "hetero-hardcore''Möbius Strips'' and the sado-periodontal''Fun with Teeth'' " 954; afraid porno would give Orin "an impoverished, lonely idea of sexuality" 956; "made so many films titled''Cage'' " 957; "God and the Devil playing poker with Tarot cards for the soul of Cosgrove Watt" 971; "cartridge with the held-open eyes and dropper had been the one about ultra-violence and sadism" 981; "in the days prior to [Himself's suicide], a so-called 'word' appeared on a 'fogged' 'window' of Mrs. Inc's pale yellow Volvo" fn.269/1048; "loved [''The Cage''] and stuck little snippets of it [...] anywhere he could" fn.366/1077;

<div id="mi">'''Incandenza, Mario''' </div>
32; brother of Hal (1 year older); "Eighteen in May [...] designated function around [ETA] is filmic" 54; leptosomatic (frail), 79; "a born listener [...] Brady-kinetic" 80; "one of the short strange Himself-influenced conceptual cartridges" he makes, 153; Mario's "conceptual film-type project based on part of [the Riverside''Hamlet'']" 171;''Tennis and the Feral Prodigy'', written by Mario, 173; "fanatical listener/observer" 189; "his short and upbeat annual documentary" 265; birth & description, 312-17; J.O. Incandenza's "honorary assistant production-assistant" 314; his "kid's adaption" of''The ONANtiad'' , 380; with Clipperton, 410; birthday: 11/25, 589; Familial Dysautonomia ("can't feel physical pain very well"), 589; 625; dislike of flourescent lighting, fn.244/1044; "cross between a puppet and one of the big-headed carnivores from Spielberg's old special-effects orgies about reptiles" 746; shooting his documentary w/Bolex H64, 755;

<div id="oi">'''Incandenza, Orin''' </div>
9; Hal's oldest brother (by 9 years); punter for AZ Cardinals, 42; fear of roaches, 44; roaches under inverted tumblers, 45; flying with the Cardinals, 65; morbid fear of heights, 65; "dodger of flung acid extraordinaire" 223; being followed, 244; Eschaton game-master, 284; punter for B.U., 293; "interview" w/''Moment'' fragment, fn.145/1038; 565; Swiss Subject, 566; "Excitement-Hope-Acquisition-Contempt" cycle, 574; Swiss Subject is left-handed, 598; 11/11/YDAU, "once again embracing a certain 'Swiss' hand-model" 655; "a one-trick pony as a player" 661; "has come to regard the truth as''constructed'' rather than''reported'' " fn.269/1048; impression of Avril, 1051; A.F.R. believes most likely to have a duplicate master of the Entertainment, 723; pathological liar, 771; possible affair, as a child, with the Moms, 791; Gately watching him play w/Boston U. on TV, 916; imitation of Himself's mother in wheelchair, 953; in inverted tumbler (glass cage) being interrogated about the Master by Swiss hand-model (Mlle. Luria P.) (see also p.45), 971-72;

'''''Incision, The''''' 
233; film

<div id="Infant">'''''Infant, The'''''</div>
feral, 211; in the Concavity; worshipped by Rastafarians, 559, 562; "propitiate the outsized feral infant" in Himself's''Stand Behind the Men Behind the Wire'', fn.24/991; "oversized feral infant" fn.24/991;''Propitiating the Infant'', 562; fn.304/1055;

'''Infernatron viewer''' 
229; 877; Sorkin's, 930;

'''Infinite Jest''' 
36 (not yet named - 4/1/YDAU); aka "the Entertainment" (discussed by Steeply & Marathe), 90; "'anti'-Entertainment" 126; 2-D man in a wheelchair anti-ad, 224, 721; "a final''opus'' so''magnum'' he'd claimed to have had it locked away" 228; "Was the allegedly fatally entertaining and scopophiliac thing Jim alleges he made out of her unveiled face here at the start of Y.T.S.D.B. a cage or really a door?" 230; "the mother-death-cosmology and apologies she'd repeated over and over, inclined over that auto-wobble lens" 230; "cartridge-as-ecstatic-death rumor" 233; "The Face of the Deep" 238; "so bad he didn't want it released" 253; 318; 430; Bertraund Antitoi stole cartridges from wheelchair anti-ad, 483; A.F.R. and, 489; holography, 490; curious victims, 507; eyes "empty of intent" 508; spreading (early November YDAU), 548; opening sequence, 549; describing what happens to the viewer, 647-48; "It was unlikely that any one game figured much in the Entertainment" 658; DuPlessis copy "secured and verified" 724; "anti-''samazdat'' cartridge of F.L.Q.'s allegation" 752; Notkin's detailed description, 788; meeting re ads warning against viewing, 876; Joelle describing, 938-41; Master is buried with Himself, 940-41;''Infinite Jest (I)'' "first attempt at commercial entertainment" fn.24/986;''I.J. (V)'' "its Master cartridge either destroyed or vaulted''sui testator'', fn.24/993;

'''Iimura, Taka''' 
fn.24/986; Himself dedicated''Dark Logics'' to him

'''Ingersoll, Evan''' 
97; 11-year-old student at ETA, "eyebrowless" from Binghamton NNY; engenders dislike, 99; parents founded Rhode Island version of shopping by TP, 112; description, 114; roommate w/J.J. Penn, 335;

'''Interdependence Day, Continental''' 
31; held on November 8; 52; 221

'''InterLace TelEntertainment''' 
"two hubs of manufacture and dissemination in Phoenix, Arizona U.S.A. and Boston" 33; conceived of by Lace-Forché, 415; "4.8-mb PC-diskettes InterLace was marketing as 'cartridges'" 416; 648; Dissemination Grid, fn.18/985; "copyable Master cartridges require special OS-codes and special hardware to run [...] which keeps most consumers out of the bootleg-cartridge business" fn.301/1054-55;

'''InterLace Subscription Pulse-Matrix''' 
35; broadcasts "spontaneous dissiminations"

'''''Introduction to Montague Semantics''''' 
760; Dowty, Wall and Peters's seminal work, on the Moms' desk;

'''Irish Luggage''' 
541; slang for Hefty bags

'''Item''' 
608; slang for handgun

'''Ives, Burl''' 
86; rotund, bearded American folksinger & actor, "Ewell's radically downscaled" version of

'''I.W.D.''' 
221; dumpsters (International? Waste Disposal)

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Pages 736-755

2010-10-19T06:29:15Z

Opalescentparrot: /* Page 745 */ added information on Bazin and the personalistes

{{PbP Header}}

=Joelle Cleans Her Room=

==Page 736==

'''B.Y.P.''' 
maybe Berkshire Young Professionals?

==Page 737==

'''Pokie''' 
apparently a childhood nickname for Joelle

'''fifth wall''' 
usually a reference to the ceiling of a room

==Page 738==

'''futon''' 
being a couch that opens into a bed

'''amniotic''' 
taking place ''in utero''

'''greebles''' 
There is such a thing as a [http://www.reference.com/search?r=13&q=Greeble greeble], but probably not as Joelle means it. The real term, medically speaking, is "rheum."

"Greebles had been her [Joelle's] own mother's word for the little bits of sleepy goo you got in your eyes' corners." p. 738

'''basso''' 
having a very low voice

==Page 739==

'''Carefree''' 
a brand of sanitary pads

'''disdain''' 
dislike or hatred

==Page 740==

'''rancid''' 
rotten

'''oeuvre''' 
body of work

'''inbent''' 
directed inward

==Page 741==

'''Everclear''' 
a brand of pure grain alcohol

'''Shoats''' 
young pigs

'''Boosters''' 
members of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booster_%28sports%29 booster club]

'''H.S.''' 
high school

'''YardGuard''' 
a brand name of [http://www.yardguardmosquito.com/ insect repellent]

==Page 742==

'''Vittorio''' 
this would seem to be a museum name, but there is no museum by that name in the Boston area

'''herring''' 
i.e., a red herring — a distraction

==Page 743==

'''Legal Seafood up in Brookline''' 
[http://www.legalseafoods.com Legal Sea Foods], a chain that got its start in Inman Square, has a restaurant at 43 Boylston St., at the border of Brookline and within five miles of ETA.

==Endnote 309==

'''boniface''' 
an innkeeper

==Page 743 (cont'd)==

'''grouper''' 
a family of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grouper fish] including sea basses

==Page 744==

'''obtruding''' 
pushing something forward without invitation

'''tri-faceted''' 
three-sided

'''Albertan champagne''' 
an oxymoron — champagne comes only from the Champagne region of France

==Page 745==

'''Clift''' 
Edward Montgomery Clift (1920-1966) was an American actor.

'''two meters''' 
about 6.6 feet

'''heliotropes''' 
plants that turn toward the sun

'''Candela''' 
From the SI: The candela is the luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540×1012 hertz and that has a radiant intensity in that direction of 1/683 watt per steradian.

'''freezing point of platinum''' 
If the melting point of platinum is 3214.9 ° F, then at any temperature below this, it will be solid, i.e., frozen.

'''Bazin''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Bazin André Bazin] (1918 – 1958) was an influential French film critic and film theorist.

'''Thomist''' 
ascribing to the philosophy of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquinas St. Thomas Aquinas]

'''''personalistes''''' 
One of the main currents of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-conformists_of_the_1930s non-conformist movement] in France in the 1930s, the ''personalistes'' school's main organ was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Mounier Emmanuel Mounier's] jouranl ''Esprit'', in which Bazin published film criticism. The aesthetic theory of the ''personalistes'' was formulated by [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maritain/#Aest Jacques Maritain]. For a discussion of Bazin's relation to Mounier see [http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/bazin_intro2.html this article].

'''Sagan''' 
Carl Edward Sagan (1934-1996) was an American astronomer and host of a television show called ''Cosmos''.

'''Haplology''' 
the elimination of a syllable in a word when two consecutive, identical syllables occur, e.g., "probly" for "probably"

==Page 746==

''''the vapors'''' 
a euphemism for hysteria

'''Spielberg's old computer-enhanced celluloid things''' 
the ''Jurassic Park'' films

==Page 747==

'''Kahlua''' 
a coffee-flavored [http://www.kahlua.com/ liqueur]

'''blancmange''' 
a thick milk pudding

'''chickory''' 
usually spelled [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicory chicory], is used as a coffee substitute or additive in some places

'''thymus''' 
a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thymus bodily organ] that plays a role in immune function

=Marathe at Ennet House, cont.=

==Page 747==

'''subaltern''' 
a subordinate

'''"He had the great fatigue..."''' 
A less literal translation would be: "He was very tired..."

==Page 748==

'''"...to smack, to scag, and to H..."''' 
all the same thing, being street names for heroin

==Page 749==

'''bolt of death''' 
i.e., a deadbolt lock

'''Chit Chat Farms''' 
This is a real detox in Wernersville, Pa., about 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

==Page 750==

'''chez''' 
a French preposition meaning "at the home of"

==Page 751==

'''''comment-on-dit?''''' 
French: How do you say?

'''45 kph''' 
almost 28 miles per hour

'''''Caisse de Dépôt et Placement''''' 
French: Fund for Registration and Placement

=Joelle Continues to Clean=

==Page 751==

'''katexia''' 
Just like when Joelle referred to CA newcomers as "catexic" on pg 707, there's no word "katexia" in any American dictionary, although Freud used "katexis" to refer to the process by means of which libido energy is tied or placed into the mental representation of a personality, idea, or thing." What would make more sense in context is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cachexia cachexia], the weight loss and muscle atrophy caused by some chronic diseases.

==Page 752==

'''''Feeling Good''''' 
One of the key books on cognitive therapy for depression by David D. Burns, M.D., an American psychiatrist.

=Marathe's Intake, cont.=

==Page 752==

'''volubly''' 
to speak readily

'''M./Mlle.''' 
French: Monsieur/Mademoiselle, i.e., Mr./Ms., used because of Steeply's disguise

'''restenotic''' 
refers to restenosis, or the re-narrowing of blood vessels after initial stenosis

==Page 753==

'''spire''' 
steeple

'''''manche à balai''''' 
French: broom handle

'''''chanteur-fou''''' 
French: crazy singer

'''calculus''' 
here meaning simply "calculation"

'''Lopate''' 
The name is perhaps taken from Philip Lopate (born 1943), an American film critic.

'''''transpercé''''' 
pierced through

==Page 754==

==Endnote 315==

'''malentendu''' 
mishearing

==Page 755==

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