There’s Always Time
Something to note in the interviews I have listened to with David Foster Wallace, is that there are a lot of commentaries about whether or not people in the modern era have time to read a book of this length, let alone at all. However, I think David Foster Wallace wants to warn the modern era not to let time-constraints of their daily lives ruin the enjoyment and entertainment of a narrative. I think one of the most important messages of Infinite Jest, is that there is danger in using the excuse of modernity as a scapegoat for lack of readership. Even if time is being Subsidized and bought out by companies for advertisement, it still exists, and you [the reader] should not fall into in-action like Hal does. You have choices.
One theory about the novel, is that it is set up in annularized “No-Time.” In the section describing Madame Psychosis’ Radio Program, the setting of the studio curiously has “Over the screen’s left section…four clocks set for different Zones, plus a numberless disk someone hung for a joke, to designate the annularized Great Concavity’s No-Time.” (183)1 We could live by the rules, only looking at the correct clocks that represent four Zones, but who knows where the authority in that time comes from. Thus, Wallace gives us a second option.
What David Foster Wallace really wants the reader to do is to slow down time, and really read and understand the stories, and allegories he is giving us in this narrative. By creating a story in “No-Time” there are no constrictions with chronology or time-gaps. Annularized time creates gaps in the story, and that is the particular relationship with the reader that Wallace wanted to create. A story that involves so much time, the reader is able to fill in the missing links.
Georlandt argues that the “structure of the novel becomes a loop … designed to ’ensure continued watching’” (323). And surely this is Wallace’s goal, admitting in the Michael Silverblatt interview that Infinite Jest is “designed to be read more than once.”
Although this class has only provided us students with three weeks to read and discuss Infinite Jest, Wallace has created a narrative that will permeate into the way we read literature from here on out. Like the wraith in the novel, we live in a different time dimension than the novel can possibly give us. The wraith lives at a rate infinitely faster than human life. The wraith describes a human life as a second-hand click on a clock, Not too interesting, but the wraith in the novel has decided to take three weeks time to visit Gately and attempt to warn him about the upcoming future, as a kind of foresight. The same goes for this novel, although the reader may feel like Gately, feverish, confused, like in a dream, eventually the information in this novel will permeate into something the reader can use toward the future. The time gaps and lack of chronology are no short-comings, but a testament and contract with the reader that if you slow down long enough to pay attention you might actually learn a thing or two.
This book is something you are definitely going to keep coming back to.
1. There used to be a link to the Theme: Annular of the David Foster Wallace WikiPage. It is not there anymore? This is not an original idea of mine, but something I saw on that page.
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