[please redial your call (except you don't mind it or give anybody the creeps worrying about hiding that you mind it so nobody's feelings will be hurt)]

Infinite Jest

  • YEAR OF GLAD
  1. Hal is 18; accompanied by his uncle Charles Tavis and Enfield Tennis Academy (E.T.A.) prorector Mr. Aubrey F. deLint, he faces an interview to enter some not better specified University of Arizona, his asset being being a "on cort [...] genius" (meaning a prodigious tennis player); he shows big communication problems - he almost does not speak at all - but at the same time his reported thoughts show a deep culture ("I consume libraries", p. 12). 
  2. Hal remembers when, 5 and living with his family in Weston, he ingested the mold.
  3. As uncle C.T and Mr. deLint are requested by the Deans to leave the office in order for them to talk directly to Hal, he undergoes an horrific epilectic attack and is therefore pinioned to the floor by the Director of Comp. and then nelsoned; an ambulance has been called for.
  4. while uncle C.T. is having a fray with the administrative guys who describe why watching Hal undergoing the epilectic attack has been for them like having "a vision of the hell" (p. 14), Hal lays in the restroom of the building.
  5. Stream of thought during the transportation with the ambulance: we get to know that Hal's already been in only one other E.R. "exactly one year back" (p. 16) where there was also a "T-shirted woman" who "suffered a sudden and anomalous gigantism in her right breast, which she referred to as titty" and "had an almost parodic Québecois accent" (p.16); that "the Moms" (Hal's mother) alphabetized "cans of soup in the cabinet over the microwave" (p. 16); then Hal thinks of "John N. R. Wayne, who would have won this year's WhataBurger, standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my father's head" (p.16-17) and that he's confident about and almost looking forward to the semifinal he has to play the day after. Then he imagines that at the E.R. "someone blue-collar and unlicensed [...] will [...] ask So yo then man what's your story?" (p. 17). The entire romance that follows seems to be then just the account of this "story".
When Hal and Donald (Don) Gately are digging up the head of Hal's father with John Wayne standing watch in a mask, is it when John Wayne's face is stuck to the window, towards the end of the novel (so being stuck to the window with the snow blizzard outside as a form of watching)? No, because it is Ortho Stice's face that is stuck.
    • YEAR OF DEPEND ADULT UNDERGAMENT