Tiger-tamer fantastique!

I feel like an adulterer, but I very much like the paragraph I used in a thread at wallace-l in discussing accuracy and fact in DFW.

But shouldn’t we always assume that DFW takes some license to construct paper tigers? I have always been happy to let some mis-representation lie in the genesis of such felines… as the artistry and acrobatics of DFW’s battling and eventual argumentative victory over such a beast is well worth it. I think it is a sort of Popperian (or, more accurately, a perversion of the Popperian) building-up of Goliaths for our David.

I have the very same twist to my face

Father plagiarizes mother plagiarizes

Sister plagiarizes brother plagiarizes

Uncle plagiarizes auntie plagiarizes

Everyone at the party plagiarizes

Meta-post on K Guilfoile’s not-so-secret secret

Over at Infinite Summer, Kevin Guilfoile inaugurates his Wednesdays (here) by noting that “fiction’s little secret” is that the author is counting on the reader to interpret and via interpretation sort of “creates” the book she is reading. Kevin states he is not a radical relativist but still… Now the point he is making highlights that he is not mourning the death of the author of Barthes. And his anecdote would surely make the post-structuralists happy. However, there is a very explicitly implied suggestion that “[DFW] is counting on [the reader to]” do exactly this. That DFW is calling for the death of the author (seriously, no pun intended). But DFW was relatively clear (or characteristically unclear) on his view on “authorial vital signs”—which seems to be in the “anti-death” camp. In “Greatly Exaggerated” (in the Harvard Book Review or in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again), when talking about the whole debate, he closes up by saying that “For those of us civilians who know in our gut that writing is an act of communication between one human being and another, the whole question seems sort of arcane.” So it would seem that what DFW is counting on us for is to be at the other end of what he is trying to communicate to us (and only that).

(I’m on the pro-choice side of the Barthesian debate, but DFW seems to have been in the pro-life one as opposed to Kevin’s pro-death. Except, characteristically, DFW might have managed to dwell in all camps.)

Infinite Jest as the source of all (of my) fiction

Over at Infinite Summer, the guides are telling us about where they got to Infinite Jest [IJ] (here, here). This post is about where IJ got me to.

In the mid-to-late nineties (and early ’00s) pretty much all I read was about maths or physics or pop-science (anything from Ian Stewart and Richard P Feynman to Roger Penrose and Murray Gell-Man to Douglas R Hofstadter to bios of mathematicians, physicists, etc—I mean, the really nerdy stuff). This started to move into history of science and maths and then philosophy of science and maths, and the darker stuff, including Russell, Wittgenstein, Kuhn, Popper, etc…

But, in the summer of 1998 (which was to me for many reasons my summer of _____ of any reminiscence-driving-movie-or-TV-show), fittingly, in the Boston area (quick-fire foreshadowing) I first saw IJ (having heard nothing of it as I knew nothing of fiction). At the Coop, the blue-skyed cover taunted me… After I found myself, by sheer coincidence,  reading Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and watching the movie on the same day (which was opening day), I began to wander into the philosophy of culture and, then, the fiction sections at the library and at bookstores. Jen Banbury’s Like a Hole in the Head proved a nice light start to my foray into the until-then unbeknownst. Then came Joel Rose and through the summer I walked into or, rather, ran at full speed into Douglas Coupland, Charles Bukowski, Elmore Leonard, Kurt Vonnegut, et al. I mean, my world really opened up via this hodge-podge of newer literature (which means I’ve read little of the classics, and have not caught up). That same summer I came upon Alain de Botton, who taught me how to read fiction (in How Proust can Change Your Life) and I read Catch-22 and became engrossed with the possibilities of the written language, and read more and began writing. (It was also then that I read Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker and decided that I would become an investment banker or the like…) And on every visit to the library or the bookstore, there sat IJ. And it taunted me. And it taunted me into all this fiction. And taunt it did.

About a year later, I was fully into the philosophy of science and dense maths and physics and had semi-abandoned fiction (as I no longer ran into the watchful tomes of DFW). I remember walking through Seattle and suddenly seeing those ominous clouds coming at me from every discount used book table in town. So I bought my first copy and kept it on the shelf (which was the top of my fridge), but thought about fiction again. Rainy season and then winter in the Upper Left Corner (and, on a minuscule budget) meant I had time (and little choice but) to stay in and read. And pick up a little fiction again… Coupland was a perfect companion given the setting, but then William Gibson came up (on top of more by the aforementioned and other stuff). Despite the continued obsession with maths and physics and computing and all that, I managed to get to Nick Hornby… And I started IJ for the first time. My brother saw it over Thanksgiving (yes, while recoiling from the WTO clashes) and said something like “what the hell is this?” I lost the copy… (and never got to another one as I was concentrated on getting myself out of Seattle).

Another year went by, and as I was searching for Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart’s The Collapse of Chaos I walked into Infinite Jest and decided to go back to fiction (getting a hold of my current Picador copy then). I loved it, and decided to lug IJ around to taunt me into reading fiction. It paved the way for Brett Easton Ellis and Michael Chabon and Paul Auster and and and……

My brother recently posted in his blog that he “recuerd[a] hace años ver a mi hermano cargar con el pesado Infinte Jest,” and then goes on to say that he gave me Everything and More for Christmas, thinking it was a “mathematician’s thing”. That Christmas I received a copy from him and another one from my mother. Both of them thinking of it as a text befitting my nerdiness and math-obsessed persona—not knowing that by then I was off maths and devoted to reading mostly fiction and some philosophy. They dedicated the tomes by saying that I “always [seek] more” and that it was up to me to “define [the] more”. Well, they (my brother, my mother, and the tomes) allowed me to seek and define the more as more IJ and more DFW. And I’ve been at it since…

(And I keep reading mostly fiction [and pop-/current-event-essays] and only veer—mostly to business books, admittedly—when I have placed my IJ somewhere where I can’t see the spine for some time.)

The Davids versus THE Goliath

My brother disputes my reading of Wittgenstein (W) in the comments to the previous post (here). And he’s probably right as I know little or nothing of philosophy… Still…

Three-hundred-fifty cities in the world
Just 30 teeth inside of our heads
These are the limits to my experience
It’s scary, but it’s alright
‘Cause everything is finite

So it would seem that, in “Finite = Alright” off of Feelings, David Byrne (DB, or David #2) follows Wittgenstein the earlier (W-1). But by the end of the song, “Things have an end, but feeling is infinite.” And that’s where am going to try and take 6.43, even if it is via tricky semiotic gymastics. (And I will not miss the opportunity to highlight that The Broom of the System does not end when it ends.) Is DFW (David #1) playing a mischievious 6.43 juggling act?)

“1 The world is all that is the case.” Right, I need start from there. But W-1 selbst suggests that the uniqueness of the world is in question. Further, the question is if the world (or worlds) is everything that is the case or everything that could plausibly be the case? I take the latter approach. What can plausibly be the case? What are the absolute constants? Well, the spin, color charge, etc… of a quark, or so the theory goes. So, everything that is plausibly the case is every plausible combination of constants for every quark (which am using for a placeholder for any sub-atomic particle and/or fundamental building block of the physical world).

Now, by construction, not everything can be the case (i.e. not every quark can have every characteristic) at the same time. So how can all plausible combos be? How can they “be” concurrently? Enter David Deutsch (David #3), who in The Fabric of Reality suggests that even simple interference experiments on photons show that we are not in the universe (as classically defined to be the whole), but in one universe. A universe is construed to really be just one of a multitude of universes, part of the multi-verse. Each time a “decision” is made, a universe splits into two branches. The macro example is that right now I exist in many universes within the multi-verse. In at least on of those, I am writing this post. Within it, I can “decide” to publish the post or not. When I make the choice, that universe will split into one where I publish it and one where I do not. Now, there are a multitude of universes where I reach that cross-roads, so the split is of multiple universes. This is the process via which parallel universes are created—each of which contains a Tomás (or doesn’t) that took a path through a chain of plausible choices. (One thing that has always amazed me, is that this esoteric physical thesis towards a Grand Unified Theory is used as the basis of The One, starring Jet Li… In some universes he is a bad guy and in some a good guy, and one bad Jet Li one day starts traveling through universes—which is theoretically possible, and actually allows some form of time travel, as long as it is onto a different branch—and killing his twins.)

(The micro example is that every time, say, a photon hits another particle, it does so in only in a portion of universes of the multi-verse. In the other portion, it is a shadow photon that does it. Basically, before the photon/shadow photon hit something there are x [which I know is infinite and uncountable] universes in the multi-verse. Now when they hit, there is a branching out into x+y universes, where x represents universe where the photon hit and y those where it is the shadow photon that does it. Or, another is that when a charm quark decays into an up or down quark, the multi-verse unfolds again. I am lame at physics, but am trying to say that decisions that split the multi-verse are “quantum decisions”.)

If this Tomás is constrained to what he is writing, then it does follow that the limits of language (or at least of the particular language he is employing) are the limits of the world. But in some universes, he is not constrained. In some universes there is a meta-Tomás that is writing about the Tomás writing. That provides a jump from one of W-1′s world to another. David Markson (David #4) actually manages to convince us that the Kate in Wittgenstein’s Mistress is the only one that is, and that her world is all that is the case. That is, until we realize that there is a meta-Kate. What appeared to constrain Kate in her own writing, i.e. her language, was not her language but the facts expressable by her constrained language which knows not of meta-Kate. Kate’s novel is constrained to the facts of meta-Kate’s writing. So Kate is and is not just a character in a novel, an the same goes for meta-Kate.

Which brings me back to David #1 (DFW) in The Broom of the System (TBotS)… DFW forces Lenore (within the novel) to ask herself whether she is just a character in a story. Whether the limit to her life is what can be said about it (with language). And Rick Vigorous implicitly asserts, in the end, that he is just defined by his ‘word’. But the point is that the limit to BotS is not language, it ends by not ending and language, or words, are not all there is as it is the lack of language, or words, that resolves Rick Vigorous’s implied view that he is constrained by them. And Lenore breaks out of her storied-life too. It is Lenore Senior then, that provides the quantum jump for Lenore to go from one world (where she is constrained by language and is just a character in a story) to another (where she exists, in Ohio, etc…). The search for Lenore Sr is the search for that which allows Lenore, or us, to jump into another world.

The search for Lenore Sr is the “good or bad exercise of the will” in 6.43. The point that I am trying to make is that within THE Tractatus, W-1 was already hinting at W-2 (Wittgenstein the later), if implicitly. The jump is the change in context, the change in the context that will define language (rather than language defining itself). And that change in context is the quantum decision that splits the multi-verse. Each quantum decision makes the world “wax and wane as a whole”. For David #2, it is “feeling” that is infinite despite our experience being finite. It is context that turns experience into feelings, into Water. For David #3, the limit to the world is the limit to quantum decisions. For David #4, language is the limit only in solipsism. For David #1, there is no limit to context.

Thus, 6.43 can serve to modify 1 into saying that “The world[s] [are] all that is [plausibly] the case.” Because it is the exercise of the will (any plausible quantum decision) that allows the world to wax and wane as a whole (to split the multi-verse). It is context that allows the scope of language, and thus the world, to change. It allows the unhappy man to turn his world into that of the happy one (because feeling is infinite, in spite of experience).

Consider the writer (13 September 2008)

As promised, here is something on DFW’s passing. I sent this email (I note that I sent it from a Blackberry, just in case it seemed lacking in self-consistence) on the morning of 13 September 2008 from Oaxaca. The picture from where all the clouds in the blog are taken from is from that day in Yagul… It was the knee-jerk, gut reaction, so…………..

From: Tomas.Lajous
To: undisclosed-recipients
Subject: Consider the writer
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2008 10:57:55 -0500

I received a couple e-mails with news of the death of David Foster Wallace (thanks). I’m amazed that people wake up sooo early on Saturday morning and read the paper… Hold that thought. I”m amazed that people stay up so late on Friday night AND read the paper (guys – get a date!)… I am very sad. I never thought the death of someone I’ve never met (though I did fantasize about becoming his pen-pal) would have such an effect. Would I have cried on end when Lennon was shot? Maybe. But this one, for some reason, resonates. (It is already curious that my friends sent me the e-mails.)

So I sit here, listening to the most befitting record for DFW’s death: Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Absolutely hi fi. Jimmy Tamborello has come up with the musical equivalent to footnotes—added to Conor Oberst’s magnificent songs. Assonance. Dissonance. Tempo changes. Self-referential production (the faders DO move when Oberst croons “and the faders move”). And the death-obsessed lyrics (“we hurry to our death”, as did DFW). All about the mid-west. I guess Omaha is not that different from central Illinois.

My brother is probably reading The Broom of the System. I gave it to him recently. Yesterday, packing for the weekend I grabbed a copy—we could talk about it over dinner in a few weeks (like we talked about the infamous McCain essay last week). But I put the book back on the shelf (leaving DFW and Belle & Sebastian’s lo fi behind) and brought business books and The Corrections, instead…

Where I’m at does not have a good DFW repository. And I have no computer. So I can’t wiki DFW as I wish I could. But I can try and remember. (On Friday I was looking through Vik Muniz’s memory paintings—oh, the beauty of the distortion. A question that I had is whether Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello figured that they were singing to a beauty that wasn’t there.)

Out with the truth. I’ve never read Infinite Jest. Well, I’ve read it many times. So, truth: I’ve never finished Infinite Jest. Like Sisyphus (or whatever he’s called, the guy with the big stone). I now for sure will, even if out of sheer will. But it’s one of my favorite books. A futuristic tennis academy has got to be grounds for great literature anyway you look at it. Or for brilliant footnotes (so that haven’t gotten through more than 300-400 pages means more like 500 when including these). Never fully read, it still rings so true. DFW clearly had an impact: I once wrote a love letter with footnotes. McCain became a-palatable-republican from a-republican, in my head. I’m a happy mook when it comes to understanding porn. I saw why my brother can’t own a TV (Sartori, eat your heart out). The blissful isolation and blank thought allowed me to become a bit of a runner. I now see much more clearly what a girlfriend meant when talking about David Lynch’s beauty. And no, am never going on a cruise.

In death I say that DFW was probably the best American writer of our generation (definitely NOT Dave Eggers). I am happy to have said it aplenty in life. Critics say he never committed to anything (the “I am both pro-choice and pro-life” essay….). He hid behind his incredibly ambitious and extraordinarily intelligent writing to never actually say anything. I disagree. He implied everything. He had a view on everything. And he either transmitted it or made one really think about it (and it is very clear that he hates much of what the middle-America he defines lives for). It did it for me.

I am going to do three things:
1. Go to the mid-west and think about middle-America.
2. Read Infinite Jest and re-read the rest of DFW.
3. Consider the writer, which we almost never do.

But am still sad.

Tomás

ι = 981 (the IJ constant)

This is a new version of the other part of my first comment at IS.

IS notes (here) that all IJ editions have the same number of pages (981). I had my doubts about the 981 constant as I have a UK Picador trade paperback edition. But lo-and-behold, it is 981 pages! I guess one of the beauties of IJ is that. The IJ constant? We could use a little ι (iota) to signify 981, THE “IJ constant”. It also works because ι is a definite descriptor in formal logic. We could formalize “there is exactly one number of pages for IJ and it is 981″ like “ψ(ι[ppIJ](φ[ppIJ]=981))” (though admittedly it gets confusing if we replace 981 with ι) or something… We never know, maybe DFW wanted the consistency (and we pay a little hommage to his being a logician).

Training for Infinite Summer

This is a new version of part of my first comment at IS.

After DFW’s death, I decided to re-read him (post on his death upcoming). My last DFW re-read was The Broom of the System (TBotS). It is so abso-fucking-lutely genius. Logic, language, Wittgenstein… So now I will read IJ within IS (as per this blog’s objectives), I give you my…

Looking forward to IS, I have started with multi-level training. I thought of beginning with the heavier-lifting and dwindling down to the easiest, in order to get to Sunday (21 June 2009, the start of IS) fresh BUT sturdy.

0. Prep – what will I need? (Forgot this in the IS comment.) I went through Jonathan Franzen’s “My Father’s Brain” (in How to be Alone), which was recommended by a date a while back and I just got to it. Very fitting that he was a close friend of DFW’s, but also because it makes one think of how one thinks. Right, so, for IS, I will need a brain.

1. Muscle training – consisting of  reading DFW selbst. I read his Oblivion: Stories, the This is Water speech (as per the previous post), and the burning baby story (it made me silently weep in my office) in Esquire, which were all new reads for me.

2. Stretch training – reading a bit about language and logic and their constraints. I bought David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress because DFW praised it in the jacket. It is an excellent novel and it is is great prep as it is about language and logic and the mind and its limits… The relationship to TBotS is almost impossible to miss. But the writing is so peculiar, so special, that it feels at times like it has nothing to do with TBotS, or anything else, for that matter. I also re-read Paul Auster’s City of Glass, in the spirit of focusing on language. But this time I read the graphic novel, which is an incredibly good and beautiful adaptation (much better than the play at the Centro Cultural Helénico in Mexico City nearly a decade ago). There is definitely something to say about its use of the natural language of non-language (i.e. pictures).

c. Cardio workout – getting fit for the times. I read Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, to put me in a mid-nineties mood, ambiance, context, etc. I recently went through his IV, A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas as well, so that was like a soft cardio warm-up to the whole training.

And, finally,

d. Massage – something sweet and soothing. I read Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight in a delayed flight on my Kindle. This might be a surprise (given the above references) but I didn’t want to start something that would use up much brain muscle; that, plus I always get curious when things get all the rage (and I have to confess that it was a fun read).

Why blog? Water (big W)/water (little w).

OK, so I finally decided to start a blog…

The trigger was Infinite Summer (IS). I will spend the summer of 2009 re-reading David Foster Wallace’s (DFW) Infinite Jest (IJ) and posting on IS. So now I have something to write about that hopefully will drive other things to write about. As I guess is pretty clear, I am a big fan of DFW. And that’s the source of the title: DFW’s commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, published as This is Water (it gets harder and harder to find on the web). Anyway, I sent it to my brother for his graduation and he just replied “pura pinche agua”. The rough translation is “just fucking water” (even though it doesn’t quite work in English). And that’s the way am seeing things as of this writing, pura pinche agua. The question that will drive the non-IJ postings (and most likely many of the IJ postings too) is “what is Water?” (which I now capitalize when in re: to DFW’s Water). I guess this is the question that drives everything, or should. But I will also spend the summer sailing (well, learning how to sail and race) so that it will all be about Water/water, sailing being the non-capitalized kind. The link, or part of it, is that I will spend time on the water thinking about Water. We’ll see how it goes.

(The picture above, and the cloud pictures that appear through the site are not from an IJ cover, thought they are a pictorial and personal reference. They are all crops from one single photo. The photo was taken in Yagul, Oaxaca, on 13 September 2008 as we were talking about DFW and his death.)