Tag Archives: Randy Lenz

by | March 8, 2012 · 8:04 am

The Infinite Jest Liveblog: Alas, Poor Tony

This is the latest entry in Words, Words, Words the ongoing liveblog of David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.”

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March 8, 2012, pgs 845-864/1076-1077. Finally, the end comes for Poor Tony Krause and Randy Lenz, two of the most unpleasant characters I’ve had the pleasure of reading.

But age with his stealing steps/ Hath clawed me in his clutch,/ And hath shipped me into the land/ As if I had never been such.

Lenz remains Lenz right up to the very end, apparently cutting Krause’s digits off and offering them up during the AFR civilian testing of The Entertainment. If there was any ambiguity, it seems that Marathe has definitely made his choice since he failed to report Jolene’s Joelle’s presence to Fortier and “had made his decision and his call,” said call being to Steeply. In the meantime, he helps plan an AFR incursion to ETA to get at Hal, Mario and Avril.

Gately dreams. He’s with Joelle getting ready for romance when her revealed face is that of Winston Churchill. This is reminiscent of the description of Ortho Stice from two hundred and ten pages prior: “A beautiful sports body, lithe and tapered and sleekly muscled, smooth…on whose graceful neck sits the face of a ravaged Winston Churchill, broad and slab-featured…” It’s too far a stretch for me to call this a Hamlet Sighting, but I do think it’s funny that there is some possibly family resemblance between our possible Laertes and our almost certainly Ophelia characters. The root cause, however, is most likely David Foster Wallace’s feeling that Winston Churchill was funny looking. Gately’s touching memory-dream of Mrs. Waite morphs into what appears to be the content of The Entertainment, in which JOI’s death/female/mother cosmology is explained to Gately, who submits to it.

Hal wakes from a dream and — for what I think is the first time — speaks in a first person voice that is loudly and clearly identified as Hal (and not just a random, nameless first-person somewhere in the jumble of characters in the previous 850 pages). Hal now has a voice, and it’s one of the coolest tricks in a tricky novel, mostly because it doesn’t feel like a trick. Pemulis is off the stage, but he’s clearly on the mind of Hal, who describes the snow outside as “Yachting-cap white.” He is then struck by that fact that he’s having feelings of not wanting to play tennis: “I couldn’t remember feeling strongly one way or the other about playing for quite a long time, in fact.” Hal is shifting out of neutral, which seems like a good thing, but is also accompanied by the feeling that “without some one-hitters to be able to look forward to smoking alone in the tunnel I was waking up every day feeling as though there was nothing in the day to anticipate or lend anything any meaning.”

Gately wakes up to the real Joelle van Dyne. Like her Ennet House-mates, Joelle unloads her recovery narrative on Gately, only this time he doesn’t seem to mind. He takes inspiration from her progress and has his own kind of breakthrough: “He could do the dextral pain the same way: Abiding.” We hear a by now familiar Wallace refrain “What’s unendurable is what his own head could make of it all.” All this business about living in the moment and ignoring the mind carries more-than-subtle notes of Buddhism.

In addition to refusing narcotic painkillers, Gately also tries to convince himself to swear off Joelle.

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by | January 28, 2012 · 9:59 am

The Infinite Jest Liveblog: Cult Classics

This is the latest entry in Words, Words, Words the ongoing liveblog of David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.”

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January 28, 2012, pgs 716-735/1054-1062. A second snatch-and-grab c/o the now fully recidivist Randy Lenz is taking shape in the Central/Inman Squares area of Cambridge, while nearby at Antitoi Entertainent [sic] the AFR is scouring the inventory to find a copy or Master Copy of The Entertainment. They have traced the cartridge’s possible whereabouts through “the strenuous technical interview of the sartorially eccentric cranio-facial-pain-specialist, whom they had traced through the regrettably fatal technical interview of the young burglar.” The young burglar being Gately’s accomplice in the unfortunate case of the Fatally Congested French Canadian. We learn that the FLQ was responsible for the blank cartridge dispensing wheelchair statue that Joelle passed on Boylston St., and we get some insight into the true motives of the AFR: “the sort of testicular frappe to the underbelly of U.S.A. self-interests that would render Canada itself unwilling to face the U.S.A. retaliation for this…” and so on. Fortier’s plan does not have Marathe surviving to see such a conclusion. AFR believes that Orin is likely to have copies of The Entertainment and “may have borne responsibilities for the razzles and dazzles of Berkley and Boston.”

Joelle begins to fret about the cosmetic condition of her teeth, which is an odd concern for someone who wears a veil over her face at all times. Speaking of veils, Marathe arrives at Ennet House under cover of the UHID profile searching for Joelle. There is yet another instance of someone who “appeared to have several cigarettes burning at one time.” One particularly troubled resident’s assertion that the people around him are metallic impostors will sound familiar to any IJ readers who also know their Battlestar Galactica. I suspect there is some overlap in the IJ and BG crowds, or at least think that there should be. This part in particular might ring bells:

“You ain’t here. These fuckers are metal. Us — us that are real — there’s not many — they’re fooling us. We’re all in one room. The real ones. One room all the time. Everything’s projected. They can do it with machines. They pro — ject. To fool us. The pictures on the walls change so’s we think we’re going places.”

I make no claims about the origins of this connection. I just found it interesting. No one is saying that in this section heavy with talk of cults, Wallace made reference to one of the ultimate cult classics (the metal people, not projection), and then that cult classic re-referenced IJ later in its re-imagined form. What I will say, however, is that if there’s anything going in entertainment today that you might be willing to saw your own fingers off to keep watching — as the AFR requires of the MIT engineer in their first test of The Entertainment’s power — it’s Battlestar Galactica. It’s that good.

Click to enlarge. Credit: Chris Ayers http://pooryorickentertainment.tumblr.com/

From Marathe at Ennet house we jump to one of the most notorious endnotes in the book: a seven page section of tight, 9-pt font, with its own footnotes, that’s not made any easier to read since much of it is in high academic style (c/o current Ennet House resident Geoffrey Day), and because it doesn’t appear to have specific relevance to the finally-seeming-to-come-together narrative a few hundred pages back in the book. Speaking of those pages, there is one seeming inconsistency here. Geoffrey Day, author of this academic article on La Culte du Prochain Train, is sitting within earshot of Marathe, who is clearly sitting within earshot of another conversation about cults, and yet Day appears to take no notice of the legless, wheelchaired man near him.

The articles here, and Struck’s attempts to plagiarise them, give some insight into the whole territorial dispute and provide some parallels to our own geopolitical disagreements. We learn of the “Faire un Bernard Wayne,” and when Wallace writes that “Disastrously, Struck blithely transposes this stuff too, with not even a miniature appliance-size bulb flickering anywhere over his head,” I don’t think he’s merely referring to the disaster of plagiarism. As we learned earlier, “An employee at the Academy of tennis of Enfield had been recruited and joined the Canadian instructor and student already inside for closer work of surveillance.” And this essay is for Poutrincourt, who may not appreciate what Struck appears to know, even if he doesn’t really know it.

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by | December 20, 2011 · 7:11 am

The Infinite Jest Liveblog: Getting Chewed by Something Huge and Tireless and Patient

This is the latest entry in Words, Words, Words the ongoing liveblog of David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.”

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December 20,2011, pgs 567-619/1044-1045. Let’s begin with the mention of the blind tennis player Dymphna, which seems insignificant aside from the fact that he is nine years old here in the Y.D.A.U., yet is sixteen when Hal says he has to play him one year later in the book’s opening chapter. I don’t know whether this is an oversight or something deliberate. What I do know is that the use of the name “Dymphna” here likely comes from St. Dymphna who, according to the prayer to St. Dymphna, looks out for those “afflicted with mental and emotional illness” to whom IJ is practically dedicated. The reference also bears weight based on the story of Dymphna, which is commonly called “The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter” and is about pretty much what the title says. It’s a flip on the Oedipal themes running throughout IJ and, as we will see, has some serious relevance vis-a-vis Joelle van Dyne.

While Idris Arslanian walks around blindfolded to study the blind-Dymphna method, Pemulis provides a useful explanation of annular fusion and the reasons for giant infants and large hamsters in the Concavity. Pemulis also mentions that James Incandenza helped design “these special holographic conversions so the team that worked on annulation could study the behavior of subatomics in highly poisonous environments. Without getting poisoned themselves.” This brings to mind the speculations Steeply’s people have made on holography in The Entertainment.

One also finds it amusing that the discussion of annular waste reuse happens as Pemulis solicits Arslanian to (re)use his urine.

The story then jumps between Orin Incandenza’s developing situation with the Swiss hand model and Lenz and Green’s walk home, which after a brief section with Mario ultimately climaxes at Ennet House.

Orin maintains his theory about his legless admirers while his dangerous liaison hides under the covers with a pistol and an oxygen mask. Again, this strange situation is balanced with Orin’s sadness and longing, and his Holden Caulfield-esque remark that “I miss seeing the same things over and over again.” Also an offhand mention of feeling “ready for anything” including “Swiss cuckolds, furtive near-Eastern medical attaches, zaftig print journalists.” Emphasis mine.

Bruce Green is sharing another of OJ’s tragi-comic back stories, including a note that “The creepily friendly bachelor that lived next to his aunt had had two big groomed dogs,” which I think is Wallace’s Man in the Macintosh* moment. Lenz is finally back to executing house pets and giving chase to large Canadians. Mario’s sojourn outside Ennet House is a brief, calm island in the middle of raging seas, even despite his uneasiness about Madame Psychosis. His feeling that “It’s weird to feel like you miss someone you’re not even sure you know” now has a sad extra valence of meaning to it. I wonder if maybe Mario is showing something of what Wallace felt like around AA, and why he felt compelled to write about it. “Mario’s felt good both times in Ennet’s House because it’s very real…once he heard somebody say God with a straight face and nobody looked at them or looked down or smiled in any sort of way where you could tell they were worried inside.” You can even hear DFW breaking through when he momentarily slips out of Mario’s voice to complain about the difficulties of finding “valid art” — which just doesn’t sound like Mario — about “stuff that is real.”

Then, during the Herculean and Kafka-esque moving of the cars at midnight, the ever-humble and ever-dutiful Don Gately gets into a brawl defending Randy Lenz. This is an incredible fight scene. Not only because of the balletic choreography of (as I think Lenz puts it) “some righteous ass-kickings,” nor for the beautifully illustrated pain, like the way Gately’s “shoulder blooms with colorless fire,” but because this fight scene is also a character study of Don G, while it is also a romance between Don and Joelle, while also being a pretty incredible ensemble piece about the people at the halfway house and environs. It’s the Ennet House Eschaton.

*Given the lack of any quick and dirty internet explanations to link to here, I should maybe just say that The Man in the Macintosh was an incidental character in James Joyce’s “Ulysses” long thought to be Joyce himself. After an evening’s Googling, however, there is apparently evidence that the Man is actually Mr. Duffy from the story “A Painful Case.” My point is, Wallace had two dogs and likely considered himself a creepily friendly neighbor at times.

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by | December 14, 2011 · 8:49 pm

The Infinite Jest Liveblog: Finding Drama

This is the latest entry in Words, Words, Words the ongoing liveblog of David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.”

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December 14,2011, pgs 550-567/1037-1044. Plot points abound as our seemingly anti-confluential drama moves along. Pemulis, attempting to look insolent but actually looking “less insolent than just extremely poorly dressed,” uncovers a sordid bit of role playing between John Wayne and Avril. I suppose it’s worth remembering here that in Oedipus’ story, he actually married his mom. What’s happening in Avril’s office is an important piece of information, but what’s missing is an answer to the question: What did Pemulis have to say to Avril as he swaggered into her office dressed that way?

It’s no accident that the section immediately following opens with a description of Lenz’s equally cartoonish attire. Lenz on coke becomes a fact-spewing machine, lending a hand to Wallace who can have him jabber about everything from the “dreaded Estuarial crocodile” to Real Estate Cults in S. Cal. (see T. Pynchon, “Inherent Vice” for extended and excellent commentary on the subject) to his wildly obese mother. Wallace’s prose is particularly suited to the unstaunched flow of coked up monologue. While Lenz is undoubtedly doubtable, not everything he’s saying is bullshit. He mentions both La Culte du Prochain Train and something that sounds curiously like The Entertainment. One wonders what else he is saying has factual backing and possible relevance. Toward the end of one of his sections, he refers to himself as “yrstruly,” harkening back to an earlier section in the book and a first-person narrator hanging with Poor Tony who could be Lenz but doesn’t really seem to fit the part.

Hal lies on his bed, doing nothing. “We await, I predict, the hero of non-action, the catatonic hero, the one beyond calm, divorced from all stimulus, carried here and there across sets by burly extras whose blood sings with retrograde amines.”

Gately is interfacing with residents at Ennet House “UP TO ABOUT 2329H., WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 11 Y.D.A.U.”

Orin’s extended endnote interview yields the following information: JOI invented “that new kind of window glass that doesn’t fog or smudge from people touching it or breathing on it,” presumably after seeing a certain name written into the fogged up window of a car. The Mad/Sad Stork was, in a manner of speaking, a functional alcoholic. The Mom’s is a functionally insane person. According to Orin, Hal “is so shut down talking to him is like throwing a stone in a pond.” Echoing Gately and AA in general, “The Mad Stork always used to say clichés earned their status as clichés because they were so obviously true.” Marlon Bain’s parents died in a strange accident, he is (or was) non-functionally insane, he bears a serious grudge against Avril, and he recently sold his Saprogenic Greetings company, which I believe we last saw for sale in Antitoi Entertainent.

Credit: Chris Ayers. pooryorickentertainment.tumblr.com

For all the absurdities of Orin’s interaction with the hand model, this section has some extraordinary writing about sex for the Oedipally-stricken. Here Wallace rivals Pynchon in his ability to create a situation that is comical and ridiculous, and then drill swiftly down into the honest, human heart of the matter. It is worth slowing down to read that “It is not about consolation…It is not about conquest…It feels to the punter rather to be about hope…” and so on. You get a sense of Orin’s true and deep sadness, as he searches for whatever it is he’s searching for in the one activity he seems genuinely interested in. Once again, it seems no accident that these pages with the football player having sex with a mother are in close proximity to a section with a mother engaging in sexual role playing with a young man dressed as a football player.

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by | December 9, 2011 · 10:38 am

The Infinite Jest Liveblog: Lenz Grinding

This is the latest entry in Words, Words, Words the ongoing liveblog of David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.”

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December 9,2011, pgs 538-549/1037. I’m open to suggestion on the point, but for my money, Randy Lenz’s walks home from his AA and NA meetings are the most unpleasant and difficult-to-read narrative thread in a novel with more than its share of unpleasant narrative threads. To start with, Lenz is a terribly unappealing character regardless of what he does during these strolls home. He’s paranoid, arrogant and jumpy, annoying in his compulsions to always walk north and always know the exact time, rude and downright malicious in even the smallest acts (see him “lying on [Geoffrey] Day’s mattress with his shoes on and trying to fart into the mattress as much as possible.”) A quick look through a few Wallace sites turns up commentary like, “reading about Lenz makes me almost physically ill, more so than any other part of the book thus far,” or that his section of the book “has haunted me since I first read Infinite Jest. For 12 years, any mention of Allston made me think of Lenz and his ‘There.'” Also this: “Randy Lenz is a slimeball, frankly.” Most people talked about reading this section in protective supervision over their pets, and it’s worth remembering that DFW was the owner of two dogs for whom his love has been noted in more than a few instances.

My cat Jolene hates the Randy Lenz part, too.

This is a hard chapter to read, and was undoubtedly a hard chapter to write. The question is: What’s the significance? There must be more here than an extended stay with an unpleasant character — starting with the fact that, in a book where a key character is an optical expert and filmmaker, this character’s name is lens. He is also known to carry around the large-print version of William James’ Gifford Lectures, better known as “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature,” and it’s clear by now that religious experience is an important theme. What I find the strangest, though, is Wallace’s level of sympathy with Lenz. While lying (and farting) on Day’s bed, Lenz reads “something about the more basically powerless an individual feels, the more the likelihood for the propensity for violent acting out — and Lenz found the observation to be sound.” It’s also “maybe to his credit that he’s a little off his psychic feed for a few days” after he considers taking out his issues on an actual human being. Even his gruesome, psychopathic, early-sign-of-a-serial-killer executions of an escalating scale of rats, cats and dogs end with a relieved “There,” from Lenz. It’s hard not to somehow ID with his catharsis, though certainly not his method. He genuinely likes Bruce Green, and again, his anxiety about blowing Green off is relatable, even if it is only so that he can continue torturing innocent, domestic animals. So perhaps the extended stay with an unpleasant character is the point. That this is an acknowledgement that not every variety of religious experience is upward progress, and a study in the parts of human nature that most people — and definitely most novelists — don’t have the heart or stomach to explore without laying a clear judgement on the character.

Another important point: Doony Glynn once had an experience with “a reckless amount of a hallucinogen he’d refer to only as ‘The Madame'” that, among other things, projected an accurate vision of the DOW index into his sight for a few days.

Then…

There once was a man named Rodney Tine.
He measured his penis every a.m., around nine.
He’s now on the trail
of a film with a revolving door and a woman in a veil.
From Berkeley to Boston and LA to AZ,
seeing it played has been lethal each time.

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