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June 19st 2026

Infinite Jest Log #2

Something I really like about this book is that, since it's the future where Canada and the US blend together, there's usage of kilos, centimeters, etc. It's a small thing that goes a long way. I've also been busy so this blogpost may be less coherent than the last. The last chapter I read was the one where Mario gets pulled into the thicket by Millicent so I'm only about... 1/9th through this book about two months into reading it. Awesome.

I may have been wrong about the erratic way of writing being a way of showing Hal's distress through his life, that's just the way the book is written. Would've been kino if that were actually the case, though. Something I know is actually there is that the three brothers are representative of the production of fiction: Best case scenario (Orin), supposed failure (Mario), and technically good but isn't remarkable in every single way (Hal). Orin's the work that's so good, it abandons its author and becomes bigger than Himself. Mario is a well meaning and sweet boy, but his entire purpose to E.T.A is showing everyone their mistakes (like how a "bad" work can show a viewer what not to write). Hal has the entire dictionary memorized and talks about extremely isoteric shit, but he has hangups about actually expressing himself in a real way (ties really well into his habit of hiding his love of weed).

There's a Maggot Baits tier scene of a guy's house being robbed while he's sick and he gets gagged with a whole description of how his snot choked him to death and then his body rots in his home. I just thought that was interesting. Kate Gompert reads like a lot of depressed people I've met who have this idea that they're the Most Depressed person alive and nobody can ever come close to their depression, but I also understand why she feels that way. She does get to hear shit like "your addiction isn't THAT bad because at least it's not meth". This is the kind of thing that pushes a person into deeper addiction becaue they feel the need to prove that they're truly sad. It's a really terrible self fulfilling prophecy all around. I can imagine her more vividly in my head than any other character in the book because she really does feel like someone real I've met.

The scene of Hal watching what was basically "Play Tennis Better" propaganda where the viewer is intended to superimpose their head onto the guy in the video hit me pretty hard. Basically hammering into his brain that he needs to be a robot that does things perfectly even though he knows he can't, all while he's supposed to be relaxing. His friends are in other rooms doing shit like using a rope to floss giant teeth and talking extensively about farting (the books third or fourth fart scene at this point). Hal is unable to relax without his dope and he starts to believe E.T.A's got a conspiracy to make him and all the other students HATE them so they can bond better. He cannot imagine bonding with anyone outside of simply complaining about his circumstances, despite the fact that his peers are doing so just fine. Something intersting is that after this rant, Hal begins to think about how much he hates Ingersoll because the boy reminds him of himself (not capitalized I'm talking about Hal here) and then Blott asks if he's okay and the narration is like "Hal's eyes are watering because of weed withdrawl". Nah... That boy is crying.

I feel really bad for Mario in the sense that he's not exactly There physically for anyone who talks to him. It's blatantly said in the Schtitt chapter but in the chapter with Millicent I ended up feeling even worse. She sees a man she can't imagine anyone being attracted to and then starts molesting him because she knows he's not really gonna fight back. Her negative view of herself completely overrides anything Mario tries to say to her, probably the least sexy depiction of sex I've ever seen in anything ever. I think it's funny that when Hal finds them doing this shit he apparently isn't too shocked and doesn't mention it, but he IS high.

There's too many tennis boys in this tennis boy book, I keep losing track of them. They also have names like Troeltsch. Their appearences aren't really described so I'm kind of just imagining them as the same guy with different shirts on that just say their names. Besides Ortho, I imagine him being bald. Pemulis too, I'm imagining Lord Gaugau from Towelket human form.

Steeply and Marathe... I kinda ship them tbh. They're researching the Infinite Jest. I don't really have much to say about them honestly because the Incandenza family is the most interesting part of this book to me. I know it all ties together eventually, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

May 21st 2026

Infinite Jest Log #1

Normally I would wait to post my thoughts on a book after I finished the thing front to back, but I feel this is a special case. I fear I'll forget my intial thoughts, and plot points from the book, if I wait too long to say anything about it. Infinite Jest's extreme length supersedes the actual content of the book, because when I opened it I went "This guy plays tennis? What the fuck?". And then I was presented with probably the most relatable character I've seen in my life.

If you like audiobooks like I do, MAKE AN EXCEPTION HERE! Hal's distress is presented in the way the first two chapters are written: The first being laden with writing mistakes that wouldn't be picked up if you listened to it, and then second being a run-on paragraph with no breaks. These things are really important to understanding Hal. There's the implication that while he was attempting to explain his poor english grades, he was crying his eyes out and unable to actually say anything comprehensible. His pride is what gets me, because he refuses to believe that he's a depressed addict and copes by thinking about how he ate some mold in the basement as a child. Whether or not this is an actual event from his childhood, or his way of saying that the desire for weed was always inside of him, I don't know yet. When I actually finish this book I'll be able to say. There's a scene where he's a child again and talking to a therapist that he refuses to accept is a therapist, and starts to believe his father is trying to test his conversational skills.

Something else that gets me about him is that he seemingly gets addicted to anything he enjoys, not just weed. While talking to the therapist, he says that his raquet is made out of the same material as the entertainment cartridge his late father made. To me this symbolizes that Hal is addicted to the feeling of being good at tennis, which goes back to his pride of not wanting to admit something is wrong with him. He's a really good portrayal of a person with this kind of issue because admitting you have a problem is the only way you can get out of it, but he can't even do that. I got pretty sad thinking about him, because I have this deep desire to see him become well but I know that with the way the chapters are titled, Year of Glad likely comes last chronologically.

I find him way more interesting than the other characters, if I'm going to be honest. I've read a single chapter about Prince Q, another about Wardine, and another about Orin. Prince Q has a lot of the same issues as Hal but is addicted to Toblerone instead of weed. Maybe it's the way he's presented as an adult baby, but it's harder to sympathize with him over Hal. Mostly because Hal is shown to get detained and then thrown into the psych ward after sobbing in front of people. Sure he's described as making "beastial noises", but I prefer not to take that literally because trust me schools will treat you like detritus if you ever cry in front of their workers. The Wardine chapter was like liquid AIDS to my eyes, and made me wonder if DFW's method of writing the way the subject of the chapter would write was actually a good thing. With Hal was at least intriguining but here it was a cruel reminder of the fact that I have an eye condition that makes it hard to read sometimes. Orin's pretty intersting too. He claims not to have any of his mother's contamination OCD after seeing a dead bird fall into the jacuzzi he submerged his leg into, but then he strategically suffocates roaches in his bathroom because he doesn't want to touch or smash them. A cruel part of me went "lol pussy" internally when he mentioned his fear of flying roaches, because those were the roaches that crawled out of MY drain when I showered as a kid. Though, Hal was afraid to kill a spider a few chapters back when he was going through a bad withdrawl. Maybe, like the addiction issues, they both inherited this from their parents?

I have to wonder if this book respects the audience at times, though. Orin and one of the women he took home for sex are watching an entertainment cartridge where a schizophrenic is described as being insane for thinking that he's going to be kidnapped, injected with shit, put into a machine, and then tortured. Then, he is injected with shit, put into a machine, and then tortured. And I thought "Okay, this is on the nose enough" but then the book makes the point to say his worst fear is happening to him. I already know that! It was only a few sentences ago that this was said!

Because of this book's theme of eterntainment brainwashing people into being zombies/babies/etc, I'm not gonna binge this like I do with Lem's work. This is the only non-essay DFW work I've engaged with in any way, so I can't say for certain, but I feel this book is meant to be picked up once every day and put down after a chapter or two. So I have no idea when I'll finish this book, but when I feel like it I'll come back here and write my thoughts.

April 9th 2025

Roadside Picnic (With Spoilers)

I initially started Roadside Picnic several months ago, but ended up dropping it briefly after finishing the 2nd chapter. After playing Look Outside, which has an extremely similar inciting incident, I suddenly remembered I never finished the book and picked it up again. It's a book that starts off like you're going on a tour through Hell, except you follow the tour guide home. And then you follow him into his inner thoughts. And through his domestic problems. The main character, Redrick, is a total asshole but you can definitely sympathize with him given what a terrible life he has set up for him. His line of work is going through the dangerous remains of his hometown and selling the items he retrieves from it. Every other person like him, referred to as "stalkers", bring disaster anywhere they go. Red indirectly led to the death of a friend of his while searching those ruins, and his wife gave birth to a child who's brain detriorated as she grew up. It's no exaggeration to say that Red lives in Hell. I feel like the book is equally about the human response to the artifacts left behind by aliens and a character study on Redrick, especially with how the book ends on him reflecting on his life.

This is just my own speculation, but I believe that Red died at the end of the book, right after he repeats Arthur's wish. He and Arthur were described as detiorating from the accident they'd just gotten into, and Red's thoughts become increasingly more disorganized the closer they approach the golden wishing ball. He's growing dehydrated and drinking alcohol instead of water too and can't think of what he wants from it despite entering the zone to fix his daughter's brain damage. I interpreted Red shouting Arthur's words as him becoming so delerious that he kinda just loses it before passing out from exhaustion, and since nobody is there to save him, he dies. It feels apt for Red, because the zone has surrounded every aspect of his life, so what other place better for him to die?

December 8th 2024

Solaris (2011 audiobook) Review with Spoilers

When listening to the album "Fantastic Planet" by Failure, the track "Solaris" stuck out. As I do with tracks that stick out, I look up lyrics and read them as I listen. Even though the Failure track based on this book spoiled it, I still decided to read it as the concept was interesting to me. As of typing this, I quite literally just finished listening to the audiobook and loved it. I've been talking nonstop about it to my friend, and I'm going to compile some of my thoughts into this post. Like I said, spoilers will be here. It feels impossible to talk about this book without spoiling something.

Solaris is a book about a giant single celled organism and the guys (Snaut, Kelvin, and Sartorius) studying it, it's so gargantuan that it covers an entire planet and is stated to physically push its orbit around the two suns that it circles. Throughout the book the reader learns more and more information about it through Snaut, Sartorius, and the academic journals that Kelvin reads. Kelvin is vaguely warned of something forboding by Snaut immediately after learning from him that the man he came there to meet (Gibrarian) has killed himself. Kelvin then spends nearly the entire book hallucinating his dead wife.

A lot of people have interpreted this book over the years as a love story, but as the book goes on I started to wonder how anyone got that interpretation, or why they'd want it to be a love story. This is a story about scientists studying something that's simultaneously studying them, both parties hurting the other without realizing it. Because how could an ocean think? Well, this one can. It probably thought the same about Sartorius, Kelvin, Giza, Gibrarian, and anyone else who stepped foot on Solaris years before them. Harey, Kelvin's late wife, appears to him in such a perfect manner that he has no reason to think it's NOT her. Even though she clearly isn't her, with Kelvin sending her into space the first time he sees her and her tearing down a spaceship door as an average 20 year old woman. I got frustrated with Kelvin while also understanding him almost the entire book as he talked about how "Harey" felt like Harey, even though he knew she wasn't Harey.

There's red flags before this that tell you that Harey isn't even real, like her being unable to leave Kelvin's side, the fact that when he goes to sleep she literally stops thinking, the fact that she appeared again after being blasted into space, and Kelvin himself stating that she's not real early on in the book. The saddest thing in the book to me is that even knowing this, Kelvin told her she had already replaced the real Harey. I already knew the twist when I started reading, so it didn't surprise me, but it did allow me to really look at the words Harey was saying throughout the book and keep that in mind.

Solaris, the alien creature that humanity has unknowingly been "communicating" with, never intended to actually hurt anyone, and just did so trying to understand them. It's not a malicious being, and as an alien it has no way of truly understanding us the same way we have no way of understanding it. I think that's what the book is about, at least. I really, really enjoyed this book and never felt bored during it, even during the more sciencey parts that went over my head. A lot of things are left to imagination, and I think it's better that way.

I recommend listening to the audiobook if you don't speak Polish, it's the only direct English translation as far as I know and have no idea what the older versions changed. I omitted a lot of things i wanted to say as not to turn this into a retelling of the entire plot.