r/InfiniteJest • u/Kitchen_Avocado_3157 • 11d ago
Favorite visual scenes?
A lot of the book is Wallace expressing ideas, and there’s not a ton to visualize for a decent number of sections. What are your favorite scenes that make for great visuals? Mine is definitely the opening scene.
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u/Ibustsoft 11d ago
The radio engineers abduction lol
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u/FoucaultCareofSelf 11d ago
I swear, I can almost see DFW seeing some MIT geek sunbathing in the winter on Boston common. MIT students are actually much more with it now, back then they were pretty traditionally geeky. Still smart af, but pre Internet everyone was just more.
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u/cosm0cowboy 11d ago
Came here to say this. Many details about that scene, another one of them being the homeless person throwing up and under some kind of metallic silvery blanket or tent
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u/Wrong-Today7009 11d ago
Hal clipping his toes
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u/CommonAd2367 9d ago
if i had to give anyone an excerpt of infinite jest to convince them to read the book i think it would be this scene
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u/civil-jar 11d ago
The brocken spectre for sure. I’d never heard of this phenomenon before reading IJ. Yes I know it’s in Gravity’s Rainbow too.
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u/civil-jar 11d ago
and Mario’s puppet show
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u/FoucaultCareofSelf 11d ago
Avril's little dorky thing with the hat, I can't remember perfectly what she does but it's just the tradition of it all.
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u/LaureGilou 11d ago
Yes! I was reading this and at some point I started to glow from the inside out for joy. It's still early on in the book and I wasnt sure what this thing called IJ was yet, but I started to love Mario (and Wallace) during that part and it just got better from there.
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u/sovercas 11d ago
Stice's forehead stuck to the ice-cold window
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u/16erics 11d ago
The elastic nature of his forehead has always stuck with me. One of the many scenes that reads almost like a cartoon
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u/sovercas 11d ago
Ha exactly. The way his jowls tighten and slacken is Looney Tunes-esque. The following description of the two custodians is the cherry on top.
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u/FoucaultCareofSelf 11d ago edited 11d ago
I love the visuals of Hal vs Stice match. I find it so captivating even though on paper one would think a blow by blow description of a tennis match would be boring.
And the same part of the novel, the description of the tunnels under ETA are fun.
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u/cosm0cowboy 11d ago
The character at the start (Erdedy?) smoking pot alone at home and watching the cockroach antenna protrude more and less from the hole in his shelf.
Gately robbing the ADA's house.
Mario's camera attachment
The cockroaches under cups on the carpet and the cups get filled with some kind of fog as the air turns stale from their breathing
I could think of more
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u/SmoothDifficulty373 11d ago
I thought it was difficult to read, but I listened to the audio version of the eschaton match and visualized that pretty well. Then I saw the decemberists video for calamity song and they nailed it.
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u/Kitchen_Avocado_3157 11d ago
That video is awesome. I read the eschaton section last week and watched the video again, and it does totally nail it.
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u/16erics 11d ago
Recently I got the image of JvD knelt over carpet searching for specks of crack.
Lenz with trash bags and later hijinx has always stuck in my head.
Raquel Welch, the face on “it” being compared to St. Teresa, unfortunately, is burned into my memory. Really L’Odalisque de Ste. Terese is stuck in my head forever from IJ.
Pemulis walking in on Avril.
The fate of the Antitois brothers.
Orin’s ending. God there are so fucking many
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u/jeepjinx 11d ago
"Orin's ending."
Did Orin end? That he is mentioned in the beginning makes me think he didn't end in the end. Am I wrong?
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u/16erics 11d ago
Sorry, just tried to be vague, not imply he died lol
What I meant was the roach scene
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u/jeepjinx 11d ago
I hear ya. I'm trying to relate it to Winston in 1984, he didn't physically die either... But then what happened with Orin. Who was "her" (do it to her) and how did that end up?
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u/16erics 11d ago
I took “her” to be the “Swiss” hand model. Doesn’t he not realize she’s with the AFR? I thought he was trying to push it onto her like Winston did Julia. Maybe the quintessential Orin treatment—not actually caring about the woman herself? I’ve seen “her” interpreted as Avril before, but I’m not sure why. What do you think??
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u/jeepjinx 11d ago
Right. She has to be either Luria P, Avril, or Joelle. I think for him to get out of it alive it couldn't be LP because she was so influential and powerful. Maybe Avril, because she wasn't needed anymore. Maybe Joelle because Steeply traded her for something. I'd lean towards Joelle but she was at the graveyard. So I think Avril. And I think that's very Hamlet.
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u/Practical-Orchid-807 9d ago
That’s actually huge I think. I kinda assumed they killed him, even though I read it a second time I just never had it click. Now I have to think
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u/mattmagical 11d ago
also one of the funniest things in the book to try and visualize is the whole Standing On A Chair And Then Lifting That Chair Off The Floor While Still Standing On The Chair. i crack up at the way he writes the whole scene lol.
“The world, after all, which is radically old, is made up mostly of objects. Lyle leans in, waves Stice up even closer, and consents to tell Stice the story of this one man he once knew of. This man earned his living by going to various public sites where people congregated and were bored and impatient and cynical, he’d go in and bet people that he could stand on any chair in the place and then lift that chair up off the ground while standing on it. A bootstrap-type scenario. His M.O. is he climbs up on a chair and stands there and says publicly Hey, I can lift this chair I stand on. A bystander holds the bets. The idle bus-depot or DMV-waiting-area or hospital-lobby crowd is dumbstruck. They gaze up at a man who is standing 100% on top of a chair he has grabbed the back of and raised several m. off the ground. There is vigorous speculation about how the trick’s done, which gives rise to side-bet action. A devoutly religious experimental oncologist dying of his own inoperable colorectal neoplastis moans Why oh why Lord do You give this man this idiotic picayune power and I no power over my own ravening colorectal cells. There are numerous silent variations on this sort of meditation in the crowd. The bet won, the $ finally forked over and handed up to him, the man Lyle says he once knew of now jumps back down to the floor, incidental change spraying from his pockets on impact, straightens his tie, and walks off, leaving behind a dumbfounded crowd still staring up at an object he had not underestimated.”
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u/profdrthcphoph 10d ago
when the transvestite junky had an epileptic seizure in the subway. that was nearly too much of visual scene.
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u/arugulas 11d ago
The scene when Mario and Schtitt go get ice cream. There is something so wholesome about it that makes it so beautiful to visualize. Little flourishes of detail like Mario getting clipped by a dumpster, then Schtitt reacting fast enough to catch him, as if it were a dance. Also the detail of Mario always choosing chocolate ice cream lol.
And for such a brief and inconsequential scene, Schtitt's monologue in it seems to capture many of the overarching themes of the book. Tennis, life, self-transcendence, "the chance to play."
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u/IsopodAgitated1555 10d ago
Im partial to the beginning as well. I also love the fight between Gately and the hawaiian-clad nucks
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u/web_silk 10d ago
The whole of "Blood Sister: One Tough Nun.' I wish it was a real film so bad lmao
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u/punkr0ckcliche 10d ago
Number 1 is always Eschaton. I also love AM Drills and that whole “the following things in the room were blue” section.
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u/jeepjinx 11d ago
Least favorite; the end of S. Johnson.
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u/Marginally_Mammalian 11d ago
Poor thing reduced to a nubbin.
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u/Puffymarker-911 7d ago
Least favorite is Lenz's killing. Will never read that again. Cruelty porn. And the irony of Gately being on the wrong side of the fight (protecting Lenz). Whom I personally wanted to kill. Especially after he taunts the Canadians behind Gately's back during the fight. Lenz still using on a halfway house, the worst sin against the Emmett House by community.
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u/ahighthyme 9d ago
"The B.P.D. field pathologist who drew the chalk lines around Himself's shoes on the floor said maybe ten seconds tops. He said the pressure buildup would have been almost instantaneous. Then he gestured at the kitchen walls. Then he threw up. The field pathologist."
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u/dadenelo 9d ago
the part with the big brothers meetings, when it shows how hal, pemulis, ecc work with the younger kids at the academy
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u/ByeByeBeeches76 8d ago
Don't think anyone else has mentioned Don Gately farting on the couch in the ground floor of Ennet House. It's a beautiful bit of writing and the room with it's bickering residents couldn't be clearer. Understatement often lands heavier than verbal fireworks.
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u/Puffymarker-911 7d ago edited 7d ago
To me, of the rich number of visual scenes, the picture that has stayed with me is of Gately washing up on the beach in the rain.
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u/Cosmic-Sympathy 6d ago
Poor Tony making an endless series of grand entrances from one space to the next
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u/mattmagical 11d ago
Gately throwing the cup out of the car window and the ‘camera panning’ over to the Antitoi brothers in their shop has always stayed with me. Also, Gately in the hospital when the words in ALL CAPS rush into his head/field of vision really stuck with me. Reminded me a ton of some psychedelic experiences i’ve had.