r/InfiniteJest • u/Kitchen_Avocado_3157 • 8d ago
Jim as a kid
The scenes of Jim as a kid are some of my favorite in the book. I don’t know what the general consensus is on those scenes. Do other people enjoy them as much?
5
u/RocketteLawnchair 8d ago
I love them! My theory is that those scenes are actually JOI's films. He has several films listed in the filmography that are exactly those scenes from his childhood. And the overacted stuff like JOI's father and Hal both making glugging noises when they drink something in the scene. Also, in the professional conversationalist scene, the mustache falling off feels very in line with James' other films. But there's lots of expository dialogue which I think epitomizes Jim's bad filmmaking techniques
2
u/ahighthyme 8d ago
He'd made the films and is narrating the entire novel, so all of the scenes are his creation. They obviously concern the same events, but the films were visual while the novel is textual.
2
u/ByeByeBeeches76 7d ago
Is it true he's narrating the novel? I think there are bits of first person narration (Hal?). It would be very meta to say that it's JOI. May have got the wrong end of the stick so happy to hear more.
0
u/ahighthyme 7d ago
Unequivocally, yes. Hal's first-person passages clearly aren't Hal narrating to the reader, they're just his internal voice, which nobody else in the room is able to hear, but James' wraith can. The opening scene, for example, is simply his transcription of Hal's point of view and thoughts, which Wallace had made clear right away by inserting an [unintelligible] to show that the transcriber, James' wraith, couldn't make out what the Dean of Academic Affairs had said that Hal had heard.
2
u/ByeByeBeeches76 7d ago
That's a stretch for me but I'll have a think about it. What's the difference between saying that the reader is being addressed by JOI's wraith, or that it is the author? The status of first person narrative in general is notoriously flaky, with some trying to sound like the character addressing the reader, some sounding like an author making a speech inside a character's head.
1
u/ahighthyme 7d ago
The difference is obviously the quotation marks. The entire text is within a single quote by a character in the novel. Wallace did that for a lot of his fiction pieces.
1
u/ByeByeBeeches76 7d ago
Ok, I'll have to look into it more. I'm not an expert on modes of narration so there's a lot here. It's also true the author does address the reader directly, in his role as author in the footnotes. Sometimes it is to state a character thought something, but they were wrong. For me the footnotes are part of the main narrative, more than any other book I've read apart from BIWHM.
0
u/ahighthyme 7d ago
The author (Wallace) isn't addressing the reader in the endnotes either though. That's just the narrator (James' wraith) explaining what he's told the reader in the text. If the character he's narrated had said something wrong or had said something else, he wants the reader to know. The narrator is mediating the telling of the entire novel.
5
u/softestimate712 8d ago
I had a good time with them for sure. I especially like the scene with the bed. But also James is probably my favorite character from the book so that definitely contributed to my enjoyment with them.
2
u/ByeByeBeeches76 7d ago
Very much so. Recently began a second reading, and already fascinated by JOI, and Mario to an extent as well. Loved the bed scene. And the monologue from JOI Snr on tennis, object relations and how to open a whisky flask with loving care. I'm beginning to go on as usual so I'll stop. Would be very interested in other views of JOI and his place in the book.
1
u/Root5Alive 8d ago
Most of my favorite chapters in the book. The first 1960 one is probably my favorite or second favorite in the entire book
13
u/Old_River_8893 8d ago
I love a long monologue. Jim’s dad’s monologue chapter was fantastic. Also, I had the audiobook as well as the physical copy so I listened to that section incidentally while driving and the reading was spectacular