Currently up to the beginning of https://old.reddit.com/user/ahighthyme?app=res&count=625&after=t1_fczych6.

Skipping things that are widely agreed upon (e.g. the division into chapters and sections), and focusing on more controversial things.

IJ as a whole

• IJ is about overcoming addiction via community.
  • IJ is about “onanism, solipsism, capitalism, technologism, and fascism leading to overwhelming addiction, depression, isolation, and loneliness.” IJ is about “choosing to help others, community, over self-absorbed solipsism.”
  • IJ is meant to be an anti-entertainment, a human interaction between author and reader.
  • The anecdotes in IJ are about addict’s attempts to overcome their addiction, “until the final one is successful.”
• IJ is an autobigraphical redemption story.
  • JOI is “a version of [DFW] who didn’t get sober at AA and killed himself”, is “an alternate version of Wallace himself.” DFW did not go back out there, but JOI did.
  • JOI was an avant-garde visual storyteller who didn’t communicate anything useful to anyone, which was what DFW felt about his own “previously avant-garde […] writing.”
  • Hal is DFW as student tennis player, Avril is DFW’s mother.
  • Ennet House is Granada House, the halfway house that DFW went to. Gately is Big Craig.
  • DFW said the book was written for Mary Karr, whom DFW loved, and IJ is meant to fulfill AA’s step 9 by making amends.
• IJ is narrated by JOI. Evidence.
  • DFW wrote “a novel about himself narrated by Himself.”
  • JOI is an unreliable narrator, and this is “essential to the entire story.” Hence why the Wardine section is written that way.
  • JOI’s meddling is only being done to save Joelle from getting killed by the AFR. “That’s literally the novel’s entire plot.”
  • JOI opens the narration with Hal as “showing us that he recognizes the harm he’s done.” IJ is a story about the mistakes JOI made.
  • The switches to Hal’s first-person narration is JOI narrating Hal’s thoughts. More argument. This only happens when Hal “feels things,” like when he ate the mold or did his marijuana detox.
• The names of the years of Subsidized Time are meaningful.
  • YW: A huge event or an enormous lie (whopper), like what happens to Gately.
  • YTMP: Treating waste with drugs (medicated) instead of producing less waste.
  • YTSDB: JOI killed himself because he tried (trial-size) to get clean (Dove soap) and failed.
  • YPWC: An extreme fear of facing the truth (chicken).
  • YWQMD: Using machinery to secretively (whisper-quiet) clean up waste (dishmaster).
  • YDPAH: (American heartland?)
  • YDAU: Infantilization (adult undergarment).
  • YG: US/Mexican forces defeat the AFR, leading to the end of ONAN, and thus joy/gladness.
• IJ’s structure:
  • Holds that the Siperinski Gasket refers to the three narratives of: Hal and ETA, Gately and Ennet, JOI and IJ. Other parallels are the enabler (Pemulis, Kite, Lyle).
  • There’s more parallels between ETA and Ennet: progress hindered by disease (Glynn with diverticulitis, Schacht with Crohn’s disease), unreasonable rigorous rules leading to someone’s expulsion (Eschaton and Pemulis, shootout and Lenz).
• IJ and religion:
  • DFW loved Mary Karr, who was converting to Catholicism, believing baptism would help her recovery, “Calvin Thrust” in the text personifies Calvinism.
  • “Every character shown following or using a specific religious tradition only does so selfishly and therefore fails.”
  • Gately is a Christ-figure, who has a crucifixion and resurrection. Lyle is a failed Buddhist.
  • The ending scene, has Gately on the beach who “hadn’t been submerged and cleansed of sin.” But he ends having refused narcotics, and gets baptized in an ice bath at St. Elizabeth’s.
• (unsorted)
  • 80s Bill and 60s Bob are allusions to AA’s founders.
  • Gompert’s fate is unresolved in the text.
  • Clipperton “was never suicidal”, and only killed himself after realizing that undeservedly being on the top was empty and hollow.

People

Avril / Luria

• Avril is Luria Perec. Or at least, there’s a huge amount of circumstantial evidence, even if it’s left unresolved in the end.
• Avril-as-Luria chooses JOI as suitor because of his work in optical physics, which ended up being used as a weapon for Québecois separatism.
• The Moms nickname is because “she’s treating each of [her children] completely differently.” She ran away from Hal when he needed her, ran away from Orin when he needed guidance, and gave Mario a language lecture, instead of interfacing.
• Sometime, probably in March YTSDB, made love with Orin and wrote his nickname (”Filbert”) on the fogged window of her car. (It’s a so-called “word”.)
• 11/8: Steeply reports Eschaton and Hal smoking weed to Avril. The spot urine test wasn’t meant to be official (which could damage ETA’s reputation), but to scare Hal into getting clean.

Gately

• In YW, Gately on the beach represents reliving childhood trauma. It was not Gately’s turning point, which was actually the DuPlessis burglary.
• After being in Revere Holding, Gately took revenge on the ADA through burglary and putting a toothbrush up his wife’s ass.