David Foster Wallace: A Catholic, Critical Analysis (& heartfelt appreciation too) - FOGOLF - FOLLOW GOLF (2024)

Dr. Gracjan Kraszewski, Director of Intellectual Formation, Vandal Catholic
Vandal Catholic Bio: https://vandalcatholic.com/people/dr-gracjan-kraczewski

Bibliography and Notes

A Thumbnail; Gracjan Kraszewski—an amalgamated single photo of the subsequent 6 images.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pale_King#/media/File:The_Pale_King_(David_Foster_Wallace).png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest#/media/File:Infinite_jest_cover.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace#/media/File:Infinite_Jest_2.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky#/media/File:July_night_sky_(35972569256).jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky#/media/File:Sky_over_Munich_02.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard#/media/File:Winter_Storm_Juno_2015_NYC_4_crop.jpg

B Video Clips (in the order in which they appear)—full video links.

1. Thermonuclear Mirth 2024. Gracjan Kraszewski radio interview, his forthcoming novel w/ Arouca Press

2. David Foster Wallace unedited interview (2003)

3. David Foster Wallace interview on Charlie Rose (1997)

C. EDMUND WALDSTEIN O.CIST. article
https://humanumreview.com/articles/he-misses-somebody-hes-never-even-met

D.
Gracjan Kraszewski, Amazon author page https://www.amazon.com/Books-Gracjan-Kraszewski/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AGracjan+Kraszewski

born in 1890 found a school in the Mexican desert after the second world war because he’s disillusioned with American consumerism and so he wants to completely mock American society and creates Majors like dog poetry stuff like this and selling people a bunch of horrible products and he’s like I want to show the American Idiot consumer in their levit Town picket fence when they buy this stuff how stupid they are and maybe find their realize I need to search for deeper truth why have we jettisoned this why have we become so consumeristic materialistic whatever and it’s a a maximalist absurdist novel and what I’m trying to basically reconcile is I don’t know if anyone in the audience will be familiar with David Foster Wallace and his book infinite just it’s a book from 1996 that wanted to talk about the pursuit of happiness in America it’s a very very postmodern book and David Foster Wallace himself twice failed rcia and he wanted to be Catholic he was like OK Conor said kind of god- haunted and never made it across the Finish landine but his book is very very Catholic infinite Justice and it shows the of sin P 12 talked about the greatest sin of our generation is you know denying sin I feel embarrassment because I’m going to sound like some like my grandfather or something but the word citizen the idea of being a citizen it would be to to to understand your country’s history and the things about it that are good and not so good and how the system works and taking the trouble to learn about candidates for political office which means often reading stuff which isn’t it isn’t fun sometimes it’s boring but but when people don’t do that here’s what happens um the candidates win who have the most money to buy television advertisem*nts because television advertisem*nts are almost voters know about the candidates therefore we get candidates who are beholden to large donors and become in some ways corrupt which disgusts the voters and makes the voters even less interested in politics less willing to read and do the work and do the work of citizenship and when I was a little sorry when I was a little boy um there were there was a class called citizenship and um here here are certain things about here are certain things about America and and America’s history here’s why it’s important to vote here’s why it’s important not just to go in and vote for who the best looking candidate is um here’s what’s really interesting and I don’t know if you can translate this talking about this now I feel ashamed because my saying all this sounds to me like an older person saying this like a person lecturing which in American culture sets me up to be ridiculed it would be very easy to make fun of what I’m saying you know be very very easy to make fun of what I saying and I can hear in my head a voice making fun of this stuff as I’m saying it and this is the kind of this is the kind of paradox I think of of what it is of of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now and probably also a Western European is that there there are things we know are right and good and would be better for us to do but constantly it’s like yeah but you know it’s so much funnier and nicer to go do something else and who cares respect means a lot to you sort of sense that um I’m taken seriously and respected for my work you can read this in my face yeah I can read it in terms of what’s been written about you and what you’ve said um uh show me somebody who doesn’t like to be respected I guess um there there was a certain there there’s a certain amount of of uh ambivalence about say the the reception that infinite just got because you know every writer dreams of having a lot of attention um but the fact of the matter is this is a long difficult book and a lot of the attention began coming at a at a um at a time when I I mean I can do elementary arithmetic a lot of people hadn’t had time to read the book yet so um the stuff about me or interesting rumors that develop about the book and all that stuff getting attention I found that I didn’t like that very much just because I wanted people to write to read the book I’m sorry that I’m essentially stuttering you’re doing just fine so other than that I mean I you know I don’t think I’m more hungry for respect than the average American Education used to be a little bit better and a little bit more difficult and children had no choice but to realize that there were certain things that were were hard and involved a certain amount of drudgery that were actually very satisfying at the end of it but for the most part I think um I think in the US people have been who’ve been doing quote serious stuff which is harder and stranger have always played to a much smaller audience um in terms of what what can be done about the dilemma I um first of all I’m wondering who would care what I think and and um and second I’m not sure and third what do you say do I highly respect this book yeah I got to admit I’m one of the people that’s in the kind of I love it Camp um so what you know like who cares as always like I say sincerely who cares what I think you’re talking about David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus the Beloved the despised the puzzled over the this is absolute garbage the this is the greatest novel of the past 50 years all of those kind of polarizing opinions infinite Gest all right guys so um just skipping around that first section really Johnny gentle Onan incandenza subsidized time that’s a great maybe like again see you by like go read the book now now this is the funniest line in the whole book on page 407 this is the funniest line in all of infinite J gentle has completely lost mind claims Confidant ous Chief time at press conference threatens to detonate upside down missiles in US silos willing to eliminate own map out of sheer Peak if Canada nix’s reconfigured transfer of aesthetically unacceptable terrain so he gentle is going to detate nukes upside down in US talked in a previous class Francis f*ckuyama the last man in the end of History David Foster Wallace is writing this book in a time where America is clear number one it’s not a b it’s a un world not a bipolar rivalry anymore America has the most expenditures and they have friends in Seinfeld and Coca-Cola and I mean dead serious like this consumerism Conquering the world please note the concept I mentioned it before of soft power remember hard power is invading Iraq hard power is Normandy bombs um is Hiroshima Nagasaki troops on the ground boots on the ground hard power is military capability soft power is we’re going to get the whole world to watch our comics and wear Levi jeans and build a McDonald’s and every country influence them hearts and Minds consumerism I I don’t even know how to let me read you what this book’s about exactly your word is so brilliant set in an addict’s Halfway House in a tennis academy and featuring one of the most endearing screwed up families in contemporary fiction infinite J explores essential essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to dominate our lives lives about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people and about the pleasures we choose about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are equal parts philosophical Quest and screw ball comedy infinite just bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value it’s an exuberant uniquely American expiration of the passions that make us human and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do it is this infinite just is about and I’ll give you the synopsis in a second today we have three classes on David fost walls I was going to say that too like okay so that’s our timeline 1990s these are the last three classes today and all next week Tuesday and Thursday we’re just reading exerpts I will say one of the greatest times in my life praise God was when I worked at the University of Illinois I just loved it and I’m not saying this in kind of like bragging way like University of Illinois is a great school it’s a public IV it’s like a top 20 school every year so it was awesome to have those resour sources at your fingertips and I was just a lowly instructor there I wasn’t some kind of you know tenure Professor or whatever but I was I taught that that’s my first kind of real academic job I got my PhD from Mississippi State in 2016 and then before moving to the poo and doing this now I started this job in 2019 in WSU then U ofi later on um that was my Illinois period Kate my wife and I were there from 2016 to 19 um I watched the Trump defeat Hillary C in Illinois in our rented house at 2 in the morning um just sitting there watching like a lot of memories from Illinois uh including I taught a great class there in the fall of 2017 is crazy it’s six years ago now five and a half years ago now in the fall of 2017 called um fiction and the historical imagination and we read dovi we read Walker Percy I just assigned a bunch of novels and these kids were awesome these kids were worthy of like this is Illinois IV grade school they were just great quality I could just like God bless you guys if any Illinois student ever comes across this they were just amazing they’s just fantastic quality I can’t say it enough we covered infinite J in that class we spent six classes on it um I assed exer We’re not gonna be able to do six classes but this is kind of a this is the you asked if I like this book yeah so so so before I even taught at Illinois in 201 17 the previous summer 2016 I read it for the first time I have never read a book with so much wrapped attention I literally I don’t know if you have this kind of experience but you have your day and things to do and you look forward to doing something at night right if there’s something good going on at night you kind of look forward to it may maybe you’ve gotten into a new Netflix series I can’t wait for the next episode maybe you going to go see long lost friends at a coffee shop every night I was like I can’t wait to sit on the couch and read this I read it all the way through all 1,00 pages it’s a hilarious book and that it’s a lot of its footnotes end notes you have to have two bookmarks you’re always slipping back and forth um it so inspired me as a writer and again like I say that just that’s just the fact people hate this book the famous literary critic uh Alan Bloom was like there’s not a single ounce of talent in all these Pages it’s just garbage but I’m gonna read you some of the positive reviews again people this book is like the Donald Trump book he’s here the greatest he’s here the greatest president of all time or he’s a criminal the worst guy I don’t know a lot of neutral opinions on this the only neutral opinions know this book of people have never encountered it but either they really like it like I do or they find it disgusting and they hate it but it very much sums up the 1990s absurdism I’ll tell you the synopsis in a second and and um because we have three classes left the next two classes are just going to be reading from the book entire time and doing the Mike Leech thing last class here’s what he says here does this make sense I’ll give you an example here one of the characters here how in Kenza he’s one of the main characters maybe even the main character of the book in this in Kenza family he’s a 17-year-old tennis Prodigy he constantly sneaks away at his Tennis Academy to smoke marijuana like in the in the in the basem*nt or the bathrooms and Foster Wallace says after a while how liked the idea of getting away with smoking marijuana more than smoking the marijuana what was more of a high for him was secretly doing this putting eye drops in and no one would know he did it like the drugs had numbed him so much it wasn’t even about the high is that true that’s a great comment on maternity do people do drugs because they want this high or do they just like I’m going to like the idea of my mom and dad not knowing that I’m doing this misbehavior or whatever imagine someone who you know God bless them would struggle with like fornication like hookup culture are they Chesterton famously said every man knocking on the brothel door is looking for God they’re looking for love so imagine someone who’s become like a Serial fornicator um hookup culture when do they stop even trying that human connection they just want to be a bad boy and they’re just doing this to break or whatever break hearts or just misbehave this book has a lot of great questions like that so we’re just going to go through the whole book and does this make sense the book is so weird I mean he has one sentence it’s like nine pages long it it’s it’s purposely done in a very maximalist absurdist style and I’m almost ready to tell you what the book’s about almost I’m G to read you some of the reviews but I want to read you who the author was so David fosterall and again this is does this have anything to do with me the fact that his father was a professor at University of Illinois he I I lived like a block from his house in ill is that that that’s that’s completely coincidental this is not like I found out he was here and I wanted to read the author I mean that that could be a reason that was completely coincidental the fact that you know we lived in Illinois he’s from Illinois um they grew up in Illinois um I actually remember encountering this book I think when I was at Mississippi at Mississippi State I saw this in Barnes & Noble and I was like this is cool this looks interesting you know whatever hi R and um I was like this looks really interesting and cool and um I never picked it up and I remember just in 2016 for whatever reason I finally I got it speaking of getting inner Library loan I got it from the public library in NAA I think I had to order it and read it just all the way through you’re coming at the perfect time we’re just getting the last three classes are all him or all David Foster Wallace all exerpts um I made the mention that when I was at the University of Illinois in the fall 2017 I did a class called fiction historical imagination where we did infinite just six classes we’ll just have three of these but last point you missed of of import was we’re just going to when we get into this really the next two classes next week just going to be reading stuff like the example I gave the Foster wall says you know how eventually liked the idea of getting away with smoking weed more than the actual drug right it was like the the drug had that that effect had numbed it and so he was now more just interested in being like a bad boy or transgressive behavior we’re gonna go through that now who was this guy born in February born February 21st 1962 died in 2008 sadly God of mercy God Rest the soul committed suicide L people have seen um parallels the one of the other main characters James in kandena who’s kind of the patriarch of this family kills himself in this book actually by putting his head in a microwave um the book is again very very weird but a lot of people have seen parallels with the author David Foster walls anding condenses this troubled you know brilliant artist but very haunted kind of person apparently he dated some woman named Mary Kerr I know much about her she was a writer as well and he pushed her out of a moving car or something like it just like he had absolutely every kind of but he got her initials tattooed on his body like anyways um very very kind of like how do I put this just classic artist Behavior he was like the novelist version of the guy who trashed the hotel room you know the rock star whatever when was you born in 1962 died in 2008 very recently at the age of 46 1962 to 20 8 okay and I’m just reading here straight up from the most um most walk- on eggshell Source Wikipedia I I think Wikipedia is great but Wikipedia also can be edited by anyone and so you got to be careful and I know enough about this guy that I can read you is Wikipedia knowing it’s not like oh he he went to the moon you know right you gota be careful I always laugh and tell my students you know the reason you never site Wikipedia is not it’s not a good source it is a good source just not a reliable source that makes sense you got to actually if you know enough about the the person you’re researching on Wikipedia you don’t need Wikipedia right that you need to know enough to know there there’s BS you know impl implanted there anyways Wikipedia is is a good source for basic facts let me read you that um he is widely known for his 1996 infinite novel infinite J Time Magazine cited as one of the best 100 English language novels from 1923 to 2005 that’s crazy there’s like a couple thousand books published every single day and the um Time Magazine talk about ultimate mainstream time life right uh it says one of the best 100 English language novels um Los Angeles Times writer David anen calls him quote one of the most influential and Innovative writers the last 20 years okay so he’s born in itha New York fine like I said again he moved to beautiful impossibly beautiful to explain champagne orb Illinois where he raised with a younger sister his father’s a professor at University of Illinois his mother’s an English professor at Parkland College which is a right across town yeah it’s a community college in Champagne these are sister cities um Wallace lives with his family in Urbana attends Yankee Ridge Elementary School and Urbana High School I I was so close to Urbana High School I could like flick a paper airplane at it like right this just it’s cool it’s like very warm to my heart like right next door which again this has nothing to do with why we’re having this book I promise nothing to do just total inal he attends Amherst College majors in English and philosophy um his first book comes out at a very young age 1987 called the broom of the system and he says this he tells David lipsky this guy who traveled with him in this kind of like when he does like a rockstar tour of this book and becomes so huge this book was unbel was smashing success in the mid 90s the publisher sent out like notes to different people like it’s coming it’s coming storm warning like it was just it took the world took the country I’m going to read you again the reviews before we talk about the books about um quote riding the broom of the system I felt like I was using 97% of me whereas philosophy was using 50% so he eventually goes to he’s he completes an MFA from creative writing from the University of Arizona in Tucson but he for a while I think a couple months maybe part of a semester attends graduate school as a philosophy major at Harvard that’s kind of his background Professor parents writing background philosophy background um in the 90s he just goes kind of like you know just nuts kind of I don’t know you know uh this Mary carom his you know partner whatever girlfriend describes Wallace as obsessive about her and the relationship was volatile with Wallace once throwing a coffee table at her forcing out of her car years later she said that Wallace’s biography DT Max under reported Wallace’s abuse of Max’s account relationship she tweeted quote that’s about 2% of what happened um he gets married to this woman Karen El green who married in 2004 shortly before his death Wallace God bless him very troubled life drug addiction I think one time he’s like I like hooked up with every person you know alive kind of like you know again that idea of that Woodstock Behavior like total libertine sex drugs whatever he ends up in a halfway house which is a huge inspiration for a part of this book um when this book comes out let me tell you uh let me tell you what what the kind of reaction is to it and I’ll read you also from the actual cover itself but that’s basically just for the sake of time he becomes an absolute Superstar with this book in 1996 and he eventually he’s teaching at um Illinois State University Illinois State University which is in in Normal Illinois which is about an hour and a half north of champagne bana and very aptly named just kind of farming Community think like Moscow Idaho just in in Illinois Central Illinois farmland he becomes an absolute star he’s you know he’s he’s the hottest writer in all the kind of New York literary salons like his stuff is always in the New Yorkers he’s like he’s a world famous and absolutely like arguably again just for hype like the top American novelist 1990s take that as far as you can throw it again these are of course subjective kind of qualifications but it’s like he’s star they eventually woo him to panoma penoma college in California to be teach writing there that’s where he he dies that’s where he kills himself P Pomona Pomona in California P Pomona p m not n Pomona yes thank you I think I did say panoma Pomona right um yeah this is not some kind of other this is not some kind of other uh secret school or something but let me read you just the Wikipedia entry about infinite J he goes to to to Pomona and then he’ll die there and one of the biggest things is Wallace After Infinite Jest really struggles with writer’s block how do I top this he never does anyone know what his last novel was the Ping The Pale King have you read The Pale King I I got see it’s amazing I find this book so Catholic so secret that’s probably where I like it so secretly Catholic speak speaking of I cannot forget this part of Wallace twice fails rcia so Wallace is is raised in some kind of like secular Protestant background Wallace is what flaner Wallace is a living example of flaner O Conor’s comment that people are god- haunted David Foster Wallace no how much random sex he had and drugs he did and meaninglessness and life sucks and consumerism all things that he pours in this book was always searching for God may God have mercy on him he twice tried to become a Catholic why did he fail I think he described it once in like he just he didn’t receive the answers he was looking for and he kind remember he’s a philosophy major in his discussions with priests God bless all priests may God as says in the 10th chapter of St Matthew’s gospel the holy spirit will give you the words and we pray that the holy spirit gives priests the words to help people could be like could have been amazing this guy talk about Scott Han being a kind of evangelist for the church I mean David Foster wall is the kind of Superstar writer if he’d become like a you know journey home mark bro Catholic that be be awesome for the church too bad just whatever he didn’t find you know he couldn’t Square his intellectual craving that way but he he although is not a Catholic the book is very Catholic in its description of sin I believe and the kind of the Hopeless condition without Christ this book this book equals why you need Jesus Christ there’s one kind of like if I can have a Catholic like review of it this book shows why if you don’t have Jesus Christ you’re just going to have random sex do a bunch of drugs and be meaningless and proba put your head in the microwave like the character does here like that kind of stuff like you need Christ um and the book does a great job of showing that Pope Pas the 12th bemon that the greatest sin of our generation is the denial of sin David Foster Wallace is not guilty of that he shows the sin very very well I’ll talk about again I know I keep you know going towards this but I want to I want to really lay the groundwork well so next week we can spend three hours both those hour and half classes just reading from the book I already have all the notes sketched out of where we’re going to be reading from anyways okay so um the uh it sold 44,000 hard cover copies in its first year publication since then it sold over a million copies worldwide it’s become absolutely kind of a cult class it’s freaking hard to sell a million copies of a book that a lot of people give up on immediately let me give props to my boy R Alexander he understood every word like Thomas po this guy’s a genius most people are like I don’t most people they get 10 pages in whatever right I’ve heard so many people the majority of people that I know that know about infin quit trying to read infin they’re like oh yeah I read the first 100 Pages good luck selling a 1,100 page book with sentences that are nine pages long sometimes footnotes two two bookmarks and you know some of the stuff he says I wonder if I can open up randomly yeah okay so even like uh let me see okay ready this just random up from page 19 91 like for months in the spring of semester yd pah she referred to her own program as Madam’s Downer lit hour and read depressing book after depressing book good morning midnight Maggie a girl of the streets giovan’s room Under the Volcano plus a truly Gastly Brett Ellis period during Lent in a during Lent in a monotone really slowly night after night Mario sits on the low little vandero knockoff coffee table with bowed legs with his head [ __ ] right up near the speaker and his claws in his lap his toes tend to point inward when he sits the background music is both predictable and within that predict predictability surprising it’s periodic it suggests expansion Without Really expanding like it you got to get and again of course right I can read you the most simple pros from any book and you no context I think everybody is sufficiently intelligent to read this book that is disgusting right oh only the really smart people no I’m not saying that I’m saying most people out intimidate themselves with this book just like no I’m not even going to go there anyone can read this book it just takes work which I think is very cool but anyways yeah go I think Jo maybe or Thomas pin I think Thomas pinch especially gravity’s rainbow yeah um when I compare when I compare B Bros it’s it demands her whole attention but it’s not pretentious for the most part you know Jo is just like I’m just gonna throw random sounds down on the page follow along with me Wallace is like I’m going to give you words which all make sense and they all and they’re commun in every sentence and you better you better damn well pay attention to every single one is what’s going on and that’s that’s the difference II between him and other postmodern authors yeah just on the pros level sure um it’s just yeah I mean okay and fair enough like truly sincerely fair enough yeah I agree I mean I you asked the book Pat you asked when the class started um do I like this book a lot very much I mean I’ve read it like five times you know so it’s like I do I do like it a lot but I agree with how the way Ryan explained that very well I think is that it’s postmodern without being pretentious it’s not just I’m G to use fancy words haahha and you don’t know what these mean you have to go look it up ha it’s like no it’s like some really really good points even that sentence I read there like the knockoff vandero coffee table who’s vandero oh it’s masas vandero he was a protege of Walter gropus when the bouse school Founders and you can just dive in American architectures like there’s a lot of keys and things like it forces to expand into like the knowledge you have to think what’s funny about reading BR e El who wrote brght East El was the American psych right during Lent exactly yeah this Horror Story during Lent exactly this very interesting kind of like right very interesting prods and pokes and stuff all no so in the I’m actually G to read you one footnote today I think we’re just gonna get to one thing today I think I’m going to just for the purpose of time because I’m not even kidding y’all next class like pedal to the metal we’re just going to go right into it and then I’m just going to read you one actual section from the book today just I wanted to spend all this time just getting the feel of the author which I think is fine because you have three classes with him it’d be different if it’s like well I just said one class well that would I mean you can’t either you do infinite J three classes or six classes I can did in Illinois or just don’t do it at all you can’t do it in one class no a lot of the footnotes I’ll tell you the footnotes are just you know their descriptions of stuff I’m going to read you Jame in canden’s filmography that’s the footnotes we’ll do today and I’ll explain who that is what that is in a second development Wallace began infinite Jess quote or something like it various times between 1986 and ‘ 89 his efforts in 1999 1991 were more productive from early 1992 until the novel’s publication which like I said was 96 exerpts from various drafts appeared sporadically in magazines and literary journals including Harvard Review Grand Street conjunctions review of contemporary fiction Harper Iowa review New Yorker and LA Times magazine very cool the book was edited by publisher little brown and Company’s Michael pitch pit made suggestions and recommendations to Wallace but every editing decision was Wallace’s he accepted cuts amounting to about 250 manuscript pages so this is supposed to be 1400 pages long the novel gets his name from Hamlet Act five scene one infinite JZ in which Hamlet holds the scho of the Court Jester yoro and says Alas poor Yori I knew him Horatio a fellow of infinite G most excellent fancy his working title for infinite just was a failed entertainment am I trying to compare myself to David Foster Wallace right now yeah actually I have a novel coming out this summer for I had a working title for it called job search my editor was like No And so it’s called thermonuclear mirth for what it’s worth I guess it’s a common occurrence same thing happened for my dissertation I wanted my dissertation to be called dogma and that was cool Catholic Confederates like no we’re be called Catholic Confederates so there is some kind of like he wanted to be called a failed entertainment which that I mean that really explains what the book’s about probably better than infinite Jess but infinite Jess I mean we have this kind of presentism I almost want to say fatalism but like things are oh they should have been that way I guess of course it had to be infant no no no it didn’t could have been he wanted to be failed entertainment but now everyone knows it worldwide is infin well of course it could be nothing else you know we kind of put contingency to the side when things are right it’s like well was it guarantee that ryer had to go to away me Catholic college no it wasn’t right know God knows in his omnipotence omniscience from all attorney that he was going to do that but like that wasn’t predestined Britain in the stars um all right um let’s talk about what this book’s about actually before we talk about this book is about let’s read the the reviews Bessie Johnson has a chat Bessie I’m not even going to lie I see I have a little red one that says you wrote something might even an open it I don’t care so we’re just going to move on um it’s not worth even checking what it is real quick mention postern wind is um properly after World War I and say but I you can I don’t know some some definitions of modernism modern stret all the way back to Francis BAC and Thomas tops but really really about 1900 and depends on the place and culture and andu like that postern doesn’t really proly begin until the 1960s and i’ say specifically 1968 and with the sexual Revolution IDE is bubbling out of AC into reality Revolutions of 68 in Europe as well yeah and uh um but one fitting into wall Wallace is a huge critic of postm he was he like he he was sick of it he want to get past it he’s like I’m done with this I’m tired of its inauthenticity I’m tired of its just its irony let’s get back to what’s authentic what’s real let’s tell real stories and let’s move forward you say postmodern you mean in the Modern Age not after the Modern Age St so post meing after yeah well start we we use modern like as for contemporary nowadays which is what makes it confusing but I think particularly we are postmodern especially postmodern now more so than we were 15 20 years ago I think America took the longest to get to postmodernism but we’re definitely postmodern yeah fair enough um in in architecture modernism is defined by B School modernism being so philosophically as well about the machine not so much the human being with the worker being glass cube box whatever postmodern architecture Frank giri Santa Monica house house eating a house or experienced music project in Seattle smash electric guitar is like the transgression of the modernism modernism is always trans modernism is already post World War I transgressing against the verticality verticality iconography of the ages of Faith stuff like Gothic and Baro and roko is already rejecting that in favor of like a communist block style postmodernism is just complete nonsense and so he’s out nonsensing the non and maybe trying to call us back to something better and in his own personal life and bet Johnson asked a great question before I read the things here does his suicide affect your judgment of his Works no and I’ll say because um my favorite story about this is Father crappie I’ve mentioned the story before the woman who comes to him is despairing my son killed himself he jumped off a bridge and I’m despairing that he’s in Hell father crappy who is this guy was 100% anti like modern he wasn’t like oh it’s fine everyone saved no matter what he wasn’t like that but he’s like you’re not God God is all merciful god is outside of time and space you can pray the rest of your life maybe you have 40 years left to live for your son’s soul and God can apply those prayers to the moment your son hit the water maybe he’ll be in purgatory maybe he’ll be saved God Alone can judge who knows why you know maybe he’s not culpable for his death maybe he you know was insane at that moment or whatever no it doesn’t affect his judgment number one because I want to just pray for his soul I have I fell so in love with this author that I got to like I think we all should pray for the souls in purgatory daily I pray for David Foster Wallace the soul often not in a specific like dwelling on it when I mention the people that have died in my life like my grandparents think I’ll pray and may God Rest David Foster Wallace his soul in heav if he’s in purgatory you know so I pray for him um I I don’t think that somehow you know his suicide again I’m I’m anti- predestination 100% I don’t think oh he was telling us something the whole way he does seem to be fixated on suicide often one of the main characters of the book commit suicide here he does seem to be kind of haunted in that sense he fought with a lot of maybe even real demons in his life in this Valley of Tears um but no no I think like the where I think it’s bad is when people like glorify suicide God forbid like when people are like you know into like Kurt Cobain because he killed himself you know the Nirvana singer oh that’s cool it’s artistic that’s awful that’s God Rest his soul so I think it’s very very um uh very sad but so I just think like I just want to say you know God Alone can judge and I want to pray for those people and you know maybe he’s in purgatory he needs our it won’t just like Father Cy’s audios are still good F yeah father crappie is AIA he’s he’s really great I told you my favorite father crappie um my favorite father crappie I want to say story but you know homy presentation might have been at a conference is humility is a nuclear spiritual weapon um humility spiritual nuclear bomb or something like that he talks about the import of humility okay uh here okay so so remember Alan Bloom you know you know Alan Bloom is famous kind of critic um says there’s not a single ounce of talent in this book and Alan Bloom saying there’s no Talent is like remember Simon cow from like the singing competitions it’s like Simon cow saying you your voice is terrible I mean he’s like he’s a renowned this might have something to do with Allan Bloom having his ego poked because David proster wall is called his Works turgid H anyways that’s one opinion some people don’t like this book listen what people that that do like it Newsweek truly remarkable what weird fun infinite just is to read New York Times aborus is shows off Wallace is one of the big talents of his generation a writer of virtuous virtu virtuosic talents he’s a virtuoso virtuosic talents who can seemingly do anything uh New York Observer a big brilliant book Wallace is a mesmerizing Storyteller uh or Orlando senal CH challenging and provocative voice literary supplement Wallace is the funniest writer of his Generation Um L A Blockbuster comedy no other writer now working communicates so dazzlingly what life will feel like the day after tomorrow um spin an acidic freestyling 1,88 page Encyclopedia of hurt infinite Jess wrangles an enormous cast engagingly whacked out characters into a frequently hilarious but ultimately tragic epic and my favorite review comes from um New York quote spectacularly good it’s as though Paul bunan had joined the NFL or victon Stein had gone on Jeopardy infinite J is colossally disruptive next year’s book awards have already been decided if I was going to think about as a writer myself who my biggest influences are say my father is number one he does more poetry than anything else but just like it’s awesome like all being the son of a blacksmith and you be blacksmith my father number one and then outside of that Chesterton Percy and David Foster Wallace probably I I really think when when I write even if I like in the immortal words of John the Baptist I’m not worthy to unstrap their sandals like I’m nothing compared to these true Giants I still am influenced by them and try to try to like bring the paradoxical and Faith filled writing of Chesterton like the Orthodox literally the Orthodoxy both book title and the kind of style but in this postmodern shell um so I mean I love book A lot of people do but if you don’t like it I get it so what is this book about before in the last 10 minutes I read you a couple of just small exerpts because again I swear to you my friends my brothers my sisters ladies and gentlemen peeps everybody next week none of this just straight into the veins we’re injecting infinite J into our MS what is this book about well it’s set a little bit in the future some people say it’s set like 2008 2009 2010 he doesn’t really specify but it’s um written in 1996 set 105 years in the future at this time in America there’s something called on on the organization of North American nations which what is the sin of onanism who knows what this is what is the sin of onanism what is Onin uh M right masturbation spilling his seed on the ground Wallace says right away this organization of North American nations which is uh USA Canada and Mexico they’re one thing and um and the president again whatever you think about Trump he literally he has a president come around who leads on called Johnny gentle who’s the cleanest man in entertainment because he’s a germaphobe he’s literally cleaning his hands a thousand times a day and he’s exactly like Trump he’s exactly like Trump U the most preing part of the book Onan is is the ruling thing in what is America and Wallace right away is saying we’re entertaining ourselves to death so the name of our country is masturbatory entertainment in this SP I I don’t be vulgar and gross but seriously why is m so bad because you’re completely closed in on yourself you’re saying I don’t even need another person to participate in this be fruitful and multiply I just can do my own thing literally so gross right and he’s basically saying look we’ve named our culture after Mast our country after masturbation even kind of like and a lot of people don’t know onanism what is that that’s the Brilliance of his book it’s so Catholic so biblical and a very like below the text the name of your country is masturbation because your culture has become just sitting around watching stuff the whole time um okay so people are drowning in this kind of entertainment industry in fact let me read for you page 223 the consumerism has become so bad and I purposely hate this how stadiums are called like you know talk about how much things he predicted you know it I love that we start the kiby Dome I’m glad it’s not Idaho Bank Dome oh but our basketball arena is right our basketball is like Idaho Bank Credit Union something right crap like that Wallace says people are so Onan years now are named after things so he doesn’t name years listen what he says chronology of organization of North American nations Revenue enhancing subsidized Time by year so the year is not let’s say 2000 yeah so the year so yeah so listen let me tell you the years in his book ready he has nine years in his book and imagine like 2000 to 2008 whatever you want but year number one year of the Whopper year number two year of the trucks medicated pad three year of the trial siiz Dove bar four year of the Purdue Wonder chicken five year of the whisper quiet mayag dishmaster six year of the yitsu 2007 mimetic resolution cartridge view motherboard easy to install upgrade for interr interace TP systems for home office or mobile seven year of dairy products American Heartland eight year of the depend adult undergarment nine year of glad so um he’ll throughout the book he’ll be like you know March 22nd March 22nd yda you know year of the independent B under garment our society’s become so onanistic right we even have names the Burger King is sponsoring a year it’s like is he wrong isn’t that brilliant I mean is he wrong in saying that no we’re not probably far away from that you know already it’s like if you watch like soccer and I’m not a soccer fan but if you watch soccer you have like uh you have um Manchester United it doesn’t even have it on their Jersey they like AIG bank or whatever or something and we already have year of the Walker behavior and if this inspires you to get this book like even just that one thing the whole the whole thing is like every single page I think there’s Ryan said it so good like everything is like you got to pay attention and get into it but everything has some kind of a deeper like point to it and his point here is maybe that’s I think that’s one of the strongest points how much he hates postmodernity is we’re so gross and vulgar and materialistic that we would name a year after Burger King like if if if bur King somehow the government subsidized time and convinced Biden he’s like you know how about we have you know the year of woke like whatever they would do it if it was enough money if there’s enough money involved right you only can serve God or Mammon and this book is about serving Mammon now that’s only one thing out of it Onin subsidize time you have this great concavity right like in the um in what it used to be like New England which is like a garbage dump where everyone it’s like radioactive material you have feral hamsters that’s bad um so America is like this conglomerate masturbatory entertain themselves to death Dumping Ground with a literal Wasteland in what used to be like Vermont and then you have different characters who are the main characters the main family is the Inc condensa family James is the patriarch James the patriarch and he’s this Avon guard filmmaker and doit all polymath who founded this Tennis Academy called nfield tennis academy by the way I forgot this part of Wallace’s biography Wallace was a nationally ranked junior tennis player he’s a very good imagine like I don’t understand tennis at all um things like Golf and like the rankings in PGA Tour but that’s like things I do understand like football being a nationally ranked junior tennis player like he was all state in high school and was a huge college recruit he was good at tennis he wasn’t just like oh whatever he was a serious tennis player he was on that path to become a profession tennis player and then either wasn’t good enough or whatever he was like when he was a kid he was like trained tennis for real so so he takes that knowledge takes so much of himself in this book as all writers do one of the main settings is the Enfield Tennis Academy in Massachusetts and at this Tennis Academy founded by James and Kenza the filmmaker Avan guard guy he’s no longer in the picture because he’s dead remember he put his head in the microwave and killed himself like in year of uh the Burger King or something like really early in the story early in the chronology but his widow his wife and they were like super unfaithful to one another whatever his wife ail runs this Academy she runs the nfield Tennis Academy her sons are Orin and Hal Orin is a football player for the Arizona Cardinals and he’s just he’s a punter and Orin was a tennis player that all these kids are at this nfield tennis C and Orin found out randomly once picking up a football and punting it and he he punts like 90 yards like it’s it’s purposely OB OB seed it’s like it’s so good he goes right to the NFL basically he ends up hunting for I think Boston college or something and then goes to the NFL Orin is like the worst guy of all time or Orin is the scumbag IM moral figure he’s a puncher for the Arizona Cardinals he has this thing where he goes on a date with a girl and tries to have sex with a different girl while he’s on a date with that girl so he would like be dating this girl and then like excuse himself and leave and go hook up with some other girl and come back like sin run rampant right he’s showing his like how can I maybe Wallace was saying how can I show the kind of promiscuous culture that he unfor unfortunately you know fell into himself how can I show the absurdity of like okay I’m just going to be totally animalistic and just complete give into that probably a behavior like that this guy is so has so little control over his passions it’s not even enough for him to be on a date with a different woman every night he leaves that date to go be with a different woman in the middle of that date to and and purposely too like you and I have this discussion for the purpose of breaking hearts for the purpose of like yeah I’m gonna use you and leave you and stuff so that’s oron that’s one of the sons Hal is the kind of the main characters he’s in this Tennis Academy in his teenage years the year of glad which the last year is only talked about in the first 16 Pages the end of the book is the beginning talk about postmodern but he’s already he’s being recruited at the University of Arizona tennis tennis academy is one part of it next to Tennis Academy is this halfway house um where Don gatley is the main figure and W goes into a lot of the um issues there back and forth that sounds too much of the world I grew up in Betsy then you got to read it I mean yeah this is like if you were born in in you know was born 1960 1960 1970 early 80s I mean like if you lived the ’90s I can’t say that I live the ‘ 90s so much I was born in ‘ 87 so I was 13 you know at Y2K I mean but if you were any kind of adult in the 90s old enough to experience stuff to go through college in the 90s I mean yeah this is probably your life it’s kind of like unlimited we’re on number one but maybe we entertain ourselves to death and and and drown in this kind of like sea of licentiousness Tennis Academy halfway house is there there’s undercurrent of these guys who wheelchair assassins um and this guy Remy he’s the main character and they’re trying to overthrow Onan and the whole book circles around the fact that James incandenza this is hilarious made a movie called infinite just which is so seductive it kills you that’s the whole point and what’s hilarious I I thought this is this book this book killed me for four months I was entertained to death by this book like the book is the movie I couldn’t put it down the first time you’re introduced to this is there’s this Saudi atach this Saudi Diplomat who comes home he’s like his very classic traditional relationship where his wife just like has dinner ready for him put stuff in she puts in a cartridge for him a DVD and they find him three days later dead like he he watched this forgot to e forgot to eat whatever soiled himself just died infinite J is so Wallace is making the point right just like the or guys just scum back hooks up hooks up with a girl whyn’t do a different girl entertainment culture is so bad that’s where we’re headed we’re headed to the point where there are some people who say I I’ll die for my entertainment and is he not right H how ask some teenage kid how how you feel take away social media he might be like I’d rather die I mean this is where this book is getting towards infinite J is a movie he never explains why but apparently this woman called the PE goat is in it prettiest girl of all time Joel she’s in this movie you want to spell her name Joel j o e l l e no you said p p go it’s an acronym PG o a t prettiest girl of all time oh that okay yeah the whole book has these stupid acronyms whatever you know yda you you’re adult adult undergarment you’re the depend adult undergarment I’m glad we’re doing this kind of slow build Preamble when you start reading from this the next two weeks you know what you’re in for I mean it’s like crazy stuff but anyways that’s the whole part of the book is that these terrorists and different groups trying to find especially the Kea terrorists are trying to find with what they call the entertainment or the Sami not the infinite J and then distribute it across America across Onan and everyone will be like uh right die and they can take over the whole country so while America entertains itself to death we’re gonna overthrow the government it’s the kind of message of the book it’s unbelievable may have to eventually dig up the corpse of James at the end and maybe it’s buried in his head maybe not I don’t know um his ghost makes an appearance this wraith very Hamlet esque it’s freaking epic this is such so anyways go ahead well I think the two like big literary parallels rhyming schemes are Hamlet and the brothers two that I would I can draw the most comparisons I didn’t even talk about Mario his special needs brother yeah yeah absolutely there’s this character he’s third son is Mario the second second son he’s older than H yeah he’s older than and he uh and he’s prob like he’s horrifically physically deformed but he’s also most caring only genuinely loving person in the entire Noel he’s like the prince from uh the idiot yeah very very good-hearted holy kind of guy holy to point of nativity almost he’s like a franc CPE yeah that’s just like he will be around in the middle of people’s muck and sin and the only thing just is just like he’s just there sharing so for love yeah are you guys convinced I mean you can go run and get this this is freaking I mean you can get this online for like nine bucks when the when the book is so popular I mean you can find runs of this I bet you can find this like bruise books and Pullman I don’t know what use books I love Bruce books shout out to Bruce books Bruce books it’s a great place I’m gonna show you guys by the way a wrap song that I made about my um father-in-law after the class is over just because anyways but not on camera um your boy always got that didy laced up your boy always got that didy Lac up your boy always got dad gy laced up so what said your boy never get paid read about me in Forbes said never get followers but I followed by hordes golden horde I’m a going full gangus if Life’s a game your boy Billy and this to Wi this my suly you can hit this dial digits just get this I run Nappa not the mayor the alderman n but trust me I run NAA but I bet you can find this in Bruce books for a very good price now last thing I want to finish the class now this was great praise God because next week again we can just my little analogy you know just like get right to it page 985 James o in kanden of filmography so this is some of the films that James and Kenza make the following listing is as complete as we are able to make it now by the way you asked about the footnotes this footnote is like nine pages long he has some footnotes like this footnote number 71 ready foot number 71 so you’ve seen 71 you go to back what’s going to be here quote the Boston AA Alcoholic Anonymous the Boston AA slogan is you can’t unring a bell period I so some foot just one sentence or like he was a Pakistani guy period and some is like nine pages the book has no Rhyme or Reason like strap into that postmodern absurdity it’s like something one sense long um here he has foot number 21 QV mean you know C example note 211 okay thanks got to go more down the rabbit hole you got to like work with this book you got to grind with this book footnote number 24 page 95 about his filmography remember this is the brilliant patriarch genius James in Kenza who people tragically have compared himself compared um uh Foster Wallace 2 who kills himself by putting his head in the microwave but founds this Academy first is very instrumental makes makes this incandenza in this imagined world is the most important figure he made basic he’s a Manhattan Project figure he made a nuclear weapon a movie that’s so entertaining you die when you watch it literally not haha actually so so it’s a weapon of mass destruction right so anyways Betsy writes I grew up two blocks from Seattle Tennis Club Betsy you need to read this book if you said the 80s yes 80s you know you grew up in this time Tennis Club I you would probably there are Parts in this book Wallace was a great junior tennis player like I said there’s out of the Thousand Pages probably 300 400 or sports stuff it’s very it’s a very sports sports book a lot of they play this thing called like um what is the name of the tennis game called escaton escaton yeah like they do nuclear weapons with tennis serves and stuff like they it’s just amazing they chalk out a big world map lot of tennis but with tennis and then they have to do these really complicated calculations they lobing tennis balls World absolutely it’s amazing it’s amazing it’s amazing God bless this guy than God the older tennis players are supervising them it ends with ends with a kid getting a TV slam yeah exactly well the here here’s here’s the stupidest thing so he Foster walls I I can’t believe I almost forgot this before the footnotes I he he asked the question is it okay if you’re dating someone right and they say well if you break up with me I’m gonna jump off a bridge right is that okay no it’s not okay right you can say I’m sorry I don’t want to jump off a bridge I’m I’m the relationship’s over there’s a character in here named Eric clipperton who became the number one tennis player because he played tennis tournaments with a gun to his head so he would play and be like and he told his opponent as soon as I Lose I’m gonna shoot myself so he never lost it’s like can you imagine like first of all what’s so absurd about this is the Tennis Academy would say excuse me and they would call the cops you can’t have a gun on a tennis court right they wouldn’t let him play but it’s such a great you know Insight in like can you blackmail people morally I’m not that good of a tennis player but I bet if I play with a gun and uh say you know if um bet if I play with a gun and um I’m serving with you and whatever I know how play that way but I bet if if you say well I don’t want to I I don’t want to be responsible for him dying right and how many girlfriends have done that well I guess I’ll date you more I don’t know it’s wrong emotional blackmail is wrong Betsy said I just bought it good Betsy I can’t wait hear what you think about it um okay anyway so page 95 James incandenza filmography what are some movies he made I’m just describing this this whole phography blux in a box documentary cast with narrator Judith f*cka Hearn documentary history of box platform lawn and court tennis from 17th century Court of the defon to the present then next infinite just one so uh black and white silent in canden’s unfinished unseen first attempt at commercial entertainment um Union of nurses in Berkeley documentary closed caption interviews hearing impaired RNs and LP ends during Bay Area Healthcare reform Riots of 1996 um cage two sad*stic pen sad*stic penal authorities place a blind convict and a mute convict together in solitary confinement and the two men attempt to devise ways of communicating with each other um fun with teeth 73 minutes black and white silent with non-human screams and howls this is the movies he made infinite J number two um there was the second ATT creating This Kind of Perfect entertainment um let’s see Zero Gravity te ceremony the intricate okai is conducted 2.5 meters off the ground in Johnson Space Center zero gravity simulation chamber um this is the this is uh where is this here let me see the preu agreement of Heaven and Hell God and Satan play poker with ter tarot cards for the soul of an alcoholic sandwich bag salesman Suess the easy of St yeah or like here uh 59 minutes sound yeah dial C for concupiscence the prediliction of sin just the fall um he finally the last thing he makes um the last footnote he has infinite just five here’s this is when he finally makes this perfect nuclear weapon infinite J 5 year of the trial siiz Dove bar for York entertainment limited Madam psychosis Madam psychosis also Joel the P go produc girl of all time no other definitive data thorny problem for archists in canden’s last film his death occurring during post- production most archival authorities list that as unfinished unseen some list is completion of infinite Just 4 for which incandenza also used psychosis thus list the film under incandenza output for ytmp year of the tux medicated F though no scarly synopsis or report of viewing exists two short essays in different different issues of quarter cartridge quarterly East refer to the film as quote extraordinary and far in away is most entertaining compelling work no canadi AR though Canadian archist tet B lists the film as complete and privately distributed by pyu through post postumus Provisions in the filmmakers will all their comprehensive filmographies have the film either unfinished or unreleased okay and it’s like this just goes throughout the his best thing is closing up you know class over he has a film where tells people incandenza does called the joke and he purposely markets the pretentious Berkeley people and the poster says if you’re an idiot you’ll see this film don’t see this film like I warned you they come in they sit down and the film is simply the room being projected back onto the screen so they come they sit they see themselves and it doesn’t turn off until the last person leaves so it’s the joke so this guy that is the main character truly of the book this patriarch guy although he’s dead throughout the story has um created the academy that his widow wife runs she herself of Kea origin so connected to these terrorists somehow and his two sons Three Sons Mario Orin and Hal and the great concavity and Onan and joh Johnny gentle and all these that’s what this whole book is about and it’s just it really and I haven’t even mentioned enough about the halfway house he goes into deep detail about the halfway house and even like you know at one point some guy breaks down in some therapeutic session he has to hug his teddy bear in the middle of the circle and was clapping for him like he really goes deep he he went through this kind of AA na kind of like stuff narcotics annonymous so anyways Betsy Johnson you are just um a woman of impeccable intellect and it’s an honor to have you on the stream thank you for being here God bless you I hope you do enjoy the book love to talk to about it Ryan and I back in the fall had a discussion about infant J was very fun in Monica’s I really enjoy you know I never want to and truly bust to be God forever I never want to sound like an evangelist for this book that’s so gross I don’t use like that word I want to be an evangelist only for Christ only for the gospels period and to any like Protestants ever listening if you’re going to read just read the Bible please read the Bible duh like there’s no it’s like oh this book will change your life no no no it’s a fiction book and it’s like I want I I even want to tell myself to calm down it’s not that great it’s a fiction book but as far as fiction books go and as far as like God haunted this goes and showing sin and all it’s kind of like reality and he really and that’s why I hope for his soul you know I hope this guy was tormented troubled I hope he’s in BG and pray for him say a prayer for him maybe like the most Catholic thing we can do in a Catholic class pray for Theos of David Foster wall Soul God has mercy upon him um anyways if you do read the book I hope you enjoy it next week last two classes we are just going to finish up and we’re going to be asking constantly right how logical is what he’s talking about let me say right now let’s finish on a logic note the the year of the tux medicated path that’s very logical I think that is very plumbers logic a plumber could see look around say I’m disgusted by the consumer ISM our culture I disgusted by the fact that you can’t name a football stadium kibido anymore it has to be Bank Stadium so why not to me that’s a very logical thing very plain stated logical thing that people are going to be naming years we’re no longer in the year of 2023 we’re in the year of you know Ford you know Auto Body Revival whatever so David Foster Wallace after that you know long long introduction to his um work and people in the room wondering what are you talking about long introduction what I mentioned was and again this is all combined in YouTube on the stream but I did classes on David Foster Wallace in the past we are now recording live as you see the timestamp of the YouTube video posted April and then into May of 2024 but the classes I did some things on him in 2023 and I thought that’s a really great introduction like that’s very fair and that’s good so that first hour that we just got done watching on the tape is the introduction today two classes to give us three total we go to maple syrup number 303 total we’re talking about David Foster Wallace through the lens of three things we are going to talk about infinite just probably an hour or so from now on Wednesday in this class time we’ll finish with that we’re going to talk about his Grand unfinished novel The Pale King Pale King The Pale King okay like king and queen okay about IRS workers and um first though I want to begin with as promised a very recent article I’m trying to think when this article came out I think it came out 2024 no I know it came out 2024 I think it came out even like April 2024 it is called entitled he misses somebody he’s never even met he’s Miss he misses somebody he’s never even met met published in humanum which can be found at humanum review.com humanum issues in family culture and science pontifical John Paul II Institute for studies on marriage and family Washington DC the author is a San monk you cannot be any more any more based than a cian monk it’s impossible these guys are the Jedi these guys are the blank blank blank the class A Alpha the of the crop whatever kind of of the Catholic World Catholic Special Forces Edmund waldstein edman walstein of the order of San monks he misses somebody he’s never even met that’s the first thing we’re going to do is discuss his article and in his article there are 25 points which okay I mean this what is this episode entitled David Foster Wallace um a Catholic critical analysis and appreciation so everything we’re doing is talking about DFW through the lens of his wouldbe Catholicism why do I say that I’ve already said that on the stream before before everyone in class today he failed rcia twice how is that possible how is it possible if fail rcia the right of Christian initiation of adults um that is the process by which like if you’re a Protestant you come into becoming confirmed and you receive the first ho Eucharist and first Rec ilation or maybe you’re an atheist you have to even be baptized the way you come into full communion with the church how is it possible to fail rcia I don’t know but I told everyone before we started the stream I was talking to a priest and he was like shame on this other priest who T told David Foster Wallace you have too many questions St Thomas aquinus made the best arguments ever for atheism St Thomas aquinus one the greatest philosophers of all time a guy again who will never Tire saying Jesus Christ himself told him you have WR written well of me Thomas what will you have of your for your word nothing but you Lord he answers St Thomas aquinus this most devout Catholic would make up non straw man great arguments to other side no if you want to really do an atheist argument do like this or do that this priest telling David Foster Wallace oh you have too many questions like Catholicism we fear not the truth the truth will set you free Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the life so it’s very sad perhaps if he was in better hands uh David fosterall would have made his way into the church sadly everyone knows this too whoever’s watching this video might be a DI hard fan of this man of who I’m I’m a huge fan too I’ve already mentioned that many times earlier in this video but who he can pray for his soul God have mercy on him sadly committed suicide in 2008 he died at the age of 46 committed suicide just like his main character in Infinite Jest uh James incandenza a lot of parallels between incandenza and the kind of Genius of that story troubled genius um anyways we’re talking all about DFW through the lens of his would be Catholicism I think he is absolutely a Catholic writer and I do not say this to claim this in a chauvinistic way remember chauvinism one of the most misunderstood words it literally means extreme patriotism toward towards your own kind that’s why people talk about chauvinism and male chauvinist yeah it means a guy who’s just super misogynist only cares about guys right but chauvinist just means you only care about your own kind I’m not saying in a chauvinist way that David Foster Wallace is a Catholic writer meaning I’m a Catholic so and I like him and so he’s a Catholic writer I think he’s honestly a Catholic writer if he was of a different persuasion I would say that I believe honestly irrespective of my own beliefs I am a devout practicing Catholic irrespective of that 100% I think it’s true he was a very Catholic writer his most Catholic trait was showing the reality of sin I think GK Chesterton said it’s the most provable aspect of Christian doctrine the fall live in a fallen world he shows that very well um shows a sense of wonder he’s just a fantastic writer beautiful beautiful um you know uh writer those of you that are believers I’d highly encourage you do pray for his soul a very Troubled Man very brilliant man that touched with a lot a lot of talent I am certainly if there’s two camps about him as he mentioned earlier that everything he wrote was garbage postmodern nonsense and others that he’s the greatest writer of the past 50 60 100 years I’m much more closer to that second Camp they am to the first I’m not saying I’m all in that second camp but closer to closer to like some fan was heckling this NBA player think his name is Brian scalin maybe mispronouncing his name apologize if I do but he was an NBA journeyman Brian scalar played like five five minutes a game one of the worst players in the NBA which means he’s still one of the greatest players on planet Earth but some guy was like heckling him and scal turns to Fan he’s like I’m a lot closer to LeBron than you are to me he’s right LeBron James who’s 100 you maybe were terrible he’s way closer to that guy than you to him I’m way closer to David Foster Wallace as the greatest writer of The 100 years than I am to the other side that he’s you know not great I I’m not saying that he’s the greatest you know is he better than Ernest Hemingway I might say no I don’t know is he better than flan Conor Walker Percy it’s debatable for me Chast 10 I me they’re all in that conversation so we’re going to talk all about him and his would be Catholicism we’re going to start with this article with he misses somebody he’s never even met by Edmund walstein of the a cian monk and because he’s a cian here is a few seconds less than a minute of cian monk beer all right so you know rochef for Trappist ale is that sersan I mean it’s Trappist beer I maybe I apologize if it’s not Trappist I think it’s no it is it’s 100% trapis says on the bottle I apologize if it’s not San but it’s still cool to watch beer getting poured I think all right he misses somebody he’s never even met I’m going to read to basically in some ways quotes from this thing and let’s talk about it the human condition is always the same but different ages aggravate different symptoms of it one permanent element of The Human Condition symptoms of which are aggravated by the conditions of our own age is articulated very clearly in one of the famous endnotes to David Foster Wallace’s novel infinite Gest Wallace describes his character Howen Kenza as reflecting on his quote curious feeling that he goes around feeling like he misses somebody he’s never even met people talk about a lot of great writers all of us that’s our proof we’re in this Valley of Tears all all of us like remember heaven and again this is not to get fall into not just bad speculation but heresy I’m not saying oh cuz of predestination past life no Catholics do not believe in anything like that I’m saying that we we remember it’s kind of imprinted in our very being of like then remember would be the wrong word because it would imply you know pre-existence we have this kind of taste constantly for heaven and we realize it’s not to be found on this earth right Augustine our Patron Evan Catholic says our hearts are restless to they rest in you we have this this nagging suspicion this gnawing feeling this is not all there is we’re made for something greater that haunts so much of his work not just infinite J but Pale King so much of his work Point number two uh being given to abstract thought as so many of Wallace’s characters are how universalizes his feeling into the claim that quote we’re all lonely for something we don’t know we’re lonely for and to how loneliness is the great Transcendent horror Point number three from which we’re always trying to escape this point number three remember Edmund walstein order of stions humanum he misses somebody he’s never met all quotes from not DFW our Focus Edmund walstein talking about DFW Point number three um wal’s characters seek innumerable ways of trying to escape their deep loneliness plugging into anything which can make them forget the horror of quote excluded enagement in the self excluded engagement in the self um our great debater father Kon cudy op order of preachers Dominican a great job explaining like to be open to heaven is like have our ourselves sprung up like this because we’re always engaged in ourselves we’re all kind of focused on ourselves right the attempt to escape Lon becomes a flight from the self an attempt to find forgetfulness of self and diversion pleasure intoxication business or fanatical indignation quote a flight from in the form of plunging into Point number five in his final unfinished novel The Pale King that’ll be the first novel that we discuss Wallace describes the flight from the self as a symptom of The Perennial problem of human finitude The Pale King records number of IRS agents stuck in an elevator and one of them goes on a long rant about the problem of finitude time is always passing and everything else is passing away with it like Fuel and fire never to return soon we will all be dead soon everyone who knows us or even knows we exist will also be dead it will be as though we had never been this causes a deep fear that no one ever really kind of thinks about and walstein talks that foser ‘s novels are this investigation of this existentialism this existential crisis of being of self and he says going back to his earlier points on point number seven now these points are wholly arbitrary as always to my notes who cares I care that you listening people in class take down the notes as they see fit for their own edification the numbers are arbitrary this fear is closely related to loneliness if one does not matter if one’s very existence will be forgotten then one is alone that’s why in the infinite J there’s a beautiful scene at one point where a guy at the end of the book it’s thousand page novel is just standing I think like in Boston Commons or something and he’s seeing if anyone will hug him and he has a sign like touch me hug me like he’s trying to break through this uh loneliness and guess how many people touch him I think literally zero of course right who’s going to you’re walking downtown someone’s like give me a hug listen buddy please stay away from me as far as possible I mean this is this existential atomization right it’s very kind of like present in his novels but he’s always playing with I’m talking about DFW now he’s always playing with that idea of like love God above all and love God and love your neighbor as yourself Matthew 22 36-40 to love God above all and your neighbors yourself is the greatest commandment Mark 12 28-34 and it’s worth more than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices to love God above all of neighbors yourself he talks about infinite Justice in so many ways about what we worship and why and blessed be God forever how tragic and blasphemous when it’s not God but all this other stuff and I’ll talk about that in a second in’s article when he he he says you know all of us worship something it’s very obvious point the goal obviously is to worship God that’s the right ordered worship the only proper worship but a lot of us worship other things and do we love our neighbor as ourselves no I don’t think that I think all of us kind of fall short of that goal sadly walstein the mideval worldview which preceded preceded this time had integrated the finite human being into organic ho that included Human Society nature and Supernatural forces the universe was seen as finite but an ordered whole created by God not an empty and different space and so he goes on and says like maybe people feel this great existentialism this existential crisis soon everyone will be dead no one will remember me I’d received nothingness CU not only we’ve lost our faith we’ve lost our all connections both to God and to one another so everything seems like random chemical reactions in IND different meaningless Universe wal says the picture of that world we find for example in Dante’s Comedia RI their last nle Sy episode Dante’s Divine Comedy this ordered logos the root for logic but also the Incarnate logos Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior the second person Holy Trinity the Incarnate Word theologically ordering this whole what is theology um you know it’s it’s starting with the end in mind a teos is a goal the Christian Life is inherently theological right what is the point of being a Christian the catechism the old Baltimore catechism says it to know love and serve God in this world and be happy with him in the next that’s a TS a goal the whole goal of my life is to know love and serve God and be happy with him now and then forever in the next World so all of the parts of the universe are bound together by a hierarchal order of governance work working for the benefit of the whole though disturbed by sin so walstein says theological universe that’s the reality not indifferent but we Rec we recognized we’ve lost this we recognize the reality of the Fall disturbed by sin David Foster Wallace’s works are all about the disruption of sin showing the disruption the reality of sin okay so human beings in this old view were able to subordinate subordinate themselves eles to this order and thereby be unalone the nobility of the human person in comparison to the whole all of creation besides was his ability to to attain the good of the whole through knowledge and love and consciously subordinate himself to that whole the ability to know the whole meant the human soul was Immortal it was now we have this perfect logos structure but once more something that DFW does a great job showing read infinitejest if you want to see how do people act when all they care about is entertaining themselves even unto death and sin runs wild and we don’t even there is no sin though sin is invented why am I so sad but sin’s not real why am I depressed all the time but it’s not sin human persons however were seen walstein says as fallen through original sin sin to some extent alienated human person from the cosmos and its creator and put them into a state of sadness so wste is saying dfw’s Works about loneliness encaged in self or about the reality of our fallen nature and our fallen World thus it was necessary for them to be healed and reconciled to God and His creation and this is a central aspect of the Redemptive work of Christ finitude was thus solved by the gift of eternal life and loneliness by the reconciliation and communion of that life modern culture is schizoid Wallace argues now it’s Wallace speaking DFW modern culture schizoid we know a near Infinity of truths that contradict our immediate Common Sense experience to the world for example I know my love for my child is a function of natural selection but I know I love him and I feel an act on what I know therefore this progress of mathemat mathematized like this kind of not even mathematics but kind of math is almost like a secular religion mathemat mathematized science has led to quote abstraction schizophrenia and slavery technology and scientific reason yeah infinite j a lot of his works are about digging into the reality of sin a world caked over in a particular sin called abstracted schizophrenia technological and scientific R reason-based slavery and and infin Jas talks about really enslaved kind of not just to boredom and loneliness but to our own just base desires um drugs the hookup culture he talks about cartridges cartridges yeah exactly infinite Jaz is 96 but if the internet was what it was today exactly instead of cartridges and like Blockbuster and um you know VHS tapes it would just be streaming you know endless entertainment online whatever um okay so back to walstein Wallace was fascinated by advertising and continually described parody to analyze it in both as fiction non-fiction a good example example of the subtle suggestion that the Indulgence of infantile desires contributes to happiness occurs in the story quote Mr squishy arguably Wallace’s fullest exploration of the manipulative nature of advertising a fictional snack company Mr squishy gives a new chocolate snack the name felonies the name is meant to suggest that happiness really consists in rebelling against the explicit Notions of virtuous living current society and imposed by the super ego they call felonies felonies felonies crimes this is brilliant this is so Catholic he’s writing the story not just criticizing Society but saying look how satanic Society has become in the original satanic Rebellion what are the words of Lucifer when he’s the Whitebear great Angel before he becomes Satan through his Disobedience I will not serve so he’s showing even in base consumer desires people will only buy your candy bar if it tells you I will not serve hey you’re a real badass if you eat this candy this candy is like being a felon you’re badass you’re like you know a rebel that a cause you’re like James Dean but more hard edged than that right so Mr squishy what a hilarious name too sells you Fones CU what they’re really selling you what our disgusting schizoid culture is really selling you is rebellion fake autonomy Stick it to the Man yeah and he says look what this world has given us look what that attitude has given us one hand advertisers promote as the model of human life and IDEAL Physical Fitness unattainable by sedentary office workers so other corporations can Market all kind of diets diet friendly Foods exercise age blah blah blah and then on the other hand corporations such as Mr squishy can take the opposite Tack and promote self-indulgence he was a huge critic of modern consumer culture and he’s like they work hand and glove Mr squishy sells you felony candy bars that make you feel like so tough and you’re rebelling against the man they get you really fat and then Mr squishy sub compan shell company whatever on the side that works in partnership with them that all work under one umbrella sells you the treadmill and you know and the treadmill company says after you do a treadmill don’t you deserve a Mr squishy youve worked hard today you know uh okay well Wallace talks about a freedom of individual Choice ironically the freedom in question is a fake Freedom that amounts to kind of slavery the FW talks about his work especially if an aest the freedom we think we have is really a form of self-imposed slavery for Howen cenza that’s he’s one of the main characters of infinite J brilliant teenage kid almost a senior going to get a colar scholarship to play at the University of Arizona part of the incandenza family which is the main kind of family of infinite just foral the ubiquity of the fakeness of advertising has Le has led American teenagers the cultivation of attitude of irony and cynicism but how recognize the attraction of the cynical attitude stems in large part from the fact that it is itself a fake means of escaping loneliness keep in mind that for kids and younger people to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so unalone forget so-called peer pressure it’s more like peer hunger so he’s like yeah like the advertisers make something for me Mr squishy and I’m this really cool 16-year-old that’s so dumb corporations are Mak some kind of joke while I’m wearing like a corporate shirt or something that you know like as I’m mocking it I have to mock it we’ come to this culture of mocking and SAR we’re swimming in this and have been drowning it since the postor War I era and the Roaring 20s and the kind of disillusion the great breaking event of the Great War I have to sarcastically rip all this stuff while at the same time supporting the system like to be hip and cool I mock my parents all these stupid Boomers and blah all this kind of stuff which I don’t even believe I just say that that’s cool at the same time I take all my cues from the same people that I’m supposedly mocking at the same time Wallace talks about irony is the song of the Caged Bird that’s come to love its cage it’s like I’ll Trash Talk how much I hate America now America sucks well then then leave where else would you want to be I guess America that kind of attitude you know like I guess I’ll actually everything about my life I actually do like it but it’s not cool to not talk about it unironically that’s why one of the characters Mario and Kenza it’s this is so cool here right um is the only one that can escape the falsehood of this ironic sarcasm moreover the ironic distance from the World closes off any Avenue of escaping existential loneliness a person can only speak of connection between Persons Of Love of transcendence or meaning in ironic mode I love you LOL great job today I’m glad it turns out you don’t suck haha I I can’t talk about serious stuff that’s ironic joke whatever right so Mario and Kenza this character how’s special needs brother completely lacks this ironic distance from the world and he is Disturbed by seeing it in others he is puzzled that people cannot talk about Deep Emotions or about suffering or loneliness or God quote it’s like there’s some rule that real stuff can only get mentioned if everyone rolls their eyes or laughs in a way that isn’t happy isn’t that so true like Foster Wallace is the DI diagnostician he diagnoses our stuff I think just so incredibly amazing the people in Enit house so I actually continue on here last few points uh Mario felt both good times he’s in and and it house is we’ll talk about this again in about an hour in the Stream when we talk about diving in infinite J and it house is this Halfway House in Boston you know 12-step program recovering especially I think Alcoholics Anonymous there’s also na Narcotics Anonymous Don gatle is the main kind of figure but anyways Mario felt good felt good uh both times in N at house because it’s very real people are crying and making noise and getting less unhappy and and once he heard someone 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 the people in inah house say God with a straight face because they have come to the end of their tether and are willing to try anything to help them Escape their addiction they attend 12-step programs which tell them they need to entrust themselves to higher power to the surprise of many of them it works I mean he’s about breaking the sin Laden crusty irony of our society and so to conclude we talk about Pale King I agree so much with the cian priest what a legend walstein quote walstein Wallace’s deep Insight in The Human Condition was indeed that we all go around missing someone who we have never met lonely for the one for whom we have been estranged and he saw the flight into diversion is a symptom of that loneliness a symptom that leads now in our hypermodern culture to the same place that led the ancient Israelites enslavement to false Idols the idols have different names and better marketing but they are Idols nonetheless yet Wallace’s vagueness and hesitation about naming the one from whom you are estranged is a sign of how modernity aggravates our condition and makes it difficult even to name it has been 15 years since Wallace’s death by suicide in those years the world has only come to resemble his novels even more closely he is the preeminent diagnostician of our crisis of meaning that’s very beautiful you know that he can’t even name God he talks a lot about God in infinite J but he can’t even name God how sad that priest who couldn’t bring him all the way home he can’t name the one to whom we are ultimate uh you know a strange the only one that could heal our um pain and suffering in fact did in the full measure on Calvary Jesus Christ that’s the walls brings us to the it’s a very Catholic novel in Catholic Works he brings us the doorstep of sin and he’s just waiting not to fail our CIA get him through the door to everyone who’s been with us the whole time now I guess in the whole stream getting close to like over 100 minutes like an hour 40 probably have just as much left to go we are at this point going to talk about The Pale King his unfinished novel about IRS workers I believe it was a finalist for the P surprise in fiction 2012 uh one of three selected for that no one got the award that year I don’t get it what yeah the pter priz committee had three books become like you know bronze silver gold metal you know po whatever said these are the best three well ostensibly you’re going to pick one of them no one got it anyways um he at that point this is poisly published he dies in 2008 this comes out I believe in 2011 wow again what’s the very Catholic point of The Pale King it what do we do with that loneliness that estrangement can we find beauty in the quotidian every day this book is his terz of L book I believe terz lzo talked about doing member the Little Flower this amazing Saint um very modern Saint teres L I believe is 1873 to 97 almost lives into the 20th century terz of L if you’ve never heard of her do ordinary things with extraordinary love like the little way little way to S this book’s about the little way of the Mind breaking bordedom of being an IRS agent speaking of I got to start here on page 27 this is how boring the IRS is ready from the Poria Journal Star Monday November 17th 1980 IRS worker dead for 4 days supervisors at the IRS Regional complex in Lake James Township are trying to determine why no one noticed that one of their employees had been sitting dead at his desk for 4 days before anyone asked if he was feeling all right um he says he passes away and the office cleaner finally finds him uh Mr Bloomquist superviser Scott Thomas said Frederick was always the first guy in each morning and the last guy to leave at night he was very focused and diligent so no one found it unusual that he was in the same position all the time and didn’t say anything he was always absorbed absorbed his work and kept to himself so the IRS is so boring a guy dies at his desk and just sitting there and no one even notices they’re so abstracted into their own encaged loneliness and like whatever we thought just he’s a hard worker I don’t know the book has a very very beautiful intro and if you’re wondering like are you just going to read us exerpts yeah yeah I am um I think I think that’s that’s great that’s the best way to kind of get at an author is I’ve already done way enough analysis I gave you an hour of infinite just me talking about it what the book is about I gave you probably half an hour of waldstein the San um priest author talking about his take on enough analytics I just want to go straight to the source the remainder hour hour and a half of Pale King and infinite justest is basically just reading from the books let me just read you the first chapter of how this book opens up he was a fantastic stylist why is David Foster Wallace the final class of Beauty in this maple syrup history run of this year because he talks about God even without naming his name as bste says shows us that all of us have that our hearts are restless they rest in you augustinian Teresa lzo little way all that stuff he’s also a beautiful writer he’s also an incredible writer listen to this opening paragraph This is about a plane coming in to Central Illinois pass the flannel planes and backdrop graphs and skylines of caned rust and pass the tobacco Brown River overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water down river to The Place Beyond The Windbreak where untilled Fields simmer shrilly in the AM heat shatter can Lambs quarter cut grass saw Brier nutgrass Jimson wheat wild mint dandelion foxtail muscadine spine cabbage Golden Rod Creeping Charlie butter print Nightshade Ragweed wild oat vetch butter grass invagin*te volunteer beans all heads gently nodding in a morning Breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek an arrow of Starlings fired from the Windbreak thatch the glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day a sunflower four more four more one bowed and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys all nodding electric sounds of insects at their business ale colored sunshine and pale sky and whirls of circus so high of Cirrus so high they cast no shadow insects all business all the time quarts and CH and shist and condra iron scabs and granite very old Land look around you the Horizon trembling shapeless we are all of us brothers and just trying to just get at once more some of this idea you know of overcoming loneliness or being marooned in loneliness how do we escape this existential Human Condition I’m single and single men are the ones in the service that repost to the most post any repost is a hassle for personnel reposting a family is worse plus you have to offer incentives for people with families to move it’s a treasury rig if you’re single though you stop even unpacking it’s hard to meet women in the service it’s not the most it’s not the most popular there’s a joke can I tell it you meet a woman you like like at a party she goes what do you do you go I’m in finance she goes what kind you go sort of a type of accounting it’s a long story she says oh for who you go the government she goes city state you go Federal she goes oh what branch you go US Treasury on it goes narrowing down at some point she figures it out what you’re dancing around and she’s gone but you’re an IRS agent I know he’s great I tell you you will if you anyone picks this up you will love him 115 it was either on the Twilight Zone or Outer Outer Limits one of those a claustrophobic guy who gets worse and worse until he’s so claustrophobic public and he starts screaming and carrying on and they trundle him off to a mental Asylum and in the Asylum they put him in isolation a straight jacket and a tiny little room the drain in the floor a room the sign up a closet which you can see would be the worst thing possible for a claustrophobic but they explained to him through a slit in the door that it’s rules and procedures that if somebody’s screaming they have to get put in isolation hence the guy’s damned he’s there for life because as long as he’s screaming and trying to beat himself in conscious against the wall of the room they’re going to keep in that little room he’s a living example of how there has to be some are playing the rules and procedures for certain cases or else sometimes there’s going to be some ridiculous fup and someone’s going to be caught in a living hell the episode is even called rules and procedures and none of us ever forgot that this part of like I guess like an IRS training video um could you imagine spending your whole career trying to understand nonsense the crazy I mean David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace went uh spent a year working for the IRS like in the 80s a lot of his work is I would not call it semi-autobiographical but we all write from experience Ernest Hy said write what you know shout out to my mother Alexander KVA she’s an accountant was she retired recently after a long and stored career brilliant woman I don’t just say it because she’s my mom and I love her that’s true both those things were true but just amazing mathematical mind um David Foster Wallace had this kind of like account Ing and just rules and procedures and bureaucratic firsthand experience working in an IRS office like as a 23-year-old he himself was in a halfway house for a while and he was caught up in drugs and all the kind of stuff which he really talks a lot about in um infinite J Infinite Jest is set around to Tennis Academy he was a junior ranked nationally ranked junior tennis player you know excellent person you think has you know possible Pro potential down the line so a lot of the stuff you know he puts into his own from his own experience Pale King our house is outside of the city one of the black top roads we had us a big dog that my daddy would keep on a chain in the front yard a big part German Shepherd I hated the chain but we didn’t have a fence and we were right off the road there the dog hated that chain but he had dignity what he do he never go out to L the chain he never even got out to where the chain got tight even if the mailman pulled up or a Salesman out of dignity the dog pretended like he chose this one area to stay in that just happened to be inside the length of his chain nothing outside of that area there right there interested him he just had zero interest so he never noticed the chain he didn’t hate it the chain he just up and made it not relevant maybe he wasn’t pretending maybe he really up and chose that little circle for his own world he had a power to him all of his life on that chain I loved that damn dog that’s that’s that’s really guys no further comment fantast fantastic writing in the book once more a lot of these Catholic connections the inspiration for this main character is taking a tax class at depal University a Jesuit university in Chicago with a Jesuit priest that’s how he gets involved and the Jesuit priest basically in some way now Aura at Labor prayer and work is the motto of the benedictines not the Jesuits but all Catholic religious orders Catholicism at large have this idea of praying and working the Jesuit basically you know teaches him the beauty of his love of numbers and whatever so um here it is here’s how this guy gets involved during an entirely different depa class one I was not even really taking but sort of bumbled in through an inattentive screw up during the final review period just before spring break and was so dramatically moved and affected by that I barely even studied for my regular course’s final exam this time not out of carelessness or sloth but because I decided I had some very important sustained concentrated thinking to do after the dramatic encounter with the substitute Jesuit in advanced tasks which was the class I’ve mentioned sitting in on by mistake so this main character is future IRS agent sits in on this class by mistake and changes his life he discovers his very Catholic word vocation for you’ll hear this in a second back to the text the fact is talk about people being called to something called to the priesthood called to marriage the fact is there are probably just certain kinds of people who are drawn to a career in the IRS people who are as the substitute father said that final day at Advance called to account some people are called to account to to the vocation of accounting to the vocation of mountains of paperwork all that so anyways I highly recommend you read The Pale King we didn’t even we didn’t go over I read you like five exerpts but I really want to transition next in our video to talking in full measure about uh infinite just and give that as well full accounting come on um this episode already of maple Sy history is going to be and you already know what it is is watching now on YouTube three or 4 hours long how how am I going to go over a thousand page book in the short time I’m not but I’m going to do if I gave you uh five or six exerpts of The Pale King I’m going to read you 75 or so exerpts of infinite just but before I do I have one more thing to do one thing in between think of a little halftime between Pale King and infinite jff stuff yeah get them the stuff and then let them so guys to close out today’s class cuz remember it’s three parts total that first hourong if you’re like you seem like even a year later you’re wearing the same sweatshirt and it’s got a hole in it I aim to wear the same sweatshirt for the final class too okay have it be all Kansas j-hawks all the way am I a KU fan no but you’re from Kansas N I just have the sweatshirt it’s got a real sweet jhawk in blaz in here it’s completely disheveled and discombobulated but it’s very comfortable I wore it for the episode last year which is part one of the stream part two part three I aim to do the same um to close out day two remember we’ve covered covered a lot people in class live and just watching later T we’ve covered a long hourong introduction to the man and infinite just basically beautiful thing from Vault Stein that article discussing just the kind of like loneliness at the heart of his works and exerpts from Pale King all we have left to do is next class close with a full investigation or pretty thorough investigation inest I want to close with in this halftime period David Foster Wallace’s famous Commencement Address at Kenyan College very famous liberal Art School uh Wallace is already a superstar at this point he becomes a superstar in 1996 publication suest this 2005 three years before his death at this point he’s a professor out in Pomona in California um he’s I think at this uh Commencement Address he talks about like does that story that I like repeating often the two fish swimming in the water and one turns to the other how’s how’s the water today and well the one says what’s water you know the lack of awareness you’re so can’t see the forest from the trees right you’re so deep in your meter it can be good or bad how awesome would you say what’s Holiness because you’re so full of full of Holiness you’re so Matthew 5:48 be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect I don’t even recognize I’m acting holy I’m just being praise God thatd be good you know ignorance to your circ*mstances of course it might mean as well the very negative stuff that he brings out infinite J I’m just so focused on the entertainment remember the the the whole infinite G is a movie that James incandenza This brilliant guy makes that is so entertaining it kills you when you watch it you watch it until you become forget to eat and breathe and you die and the whole part of infinite Jess is disseminating this movie as a weapon of mass destruction so perhaps the fish in that movie you know you’ve been on the TV a lot today have I really yeah it’s been 13 hours maybe that’s you know that part of kind of lack of awareness too I’m just going to read to you a very small exerpt this Kenyon address I think they made it into a little chatbook and you can find it online certainly but David Foster Wallace Kenyan College 2005 here the author simply speaking and in a sense instructing as you do a Commencement Address hopefully bequeathing some wisdom and knowledge to the audience not part of his book’s commencement address because here here’s something else that’s true in the day-to-day trenches of adult life there is actually no such thing as atheism there is no such thing as not worshiping everybody worships the only choice we get is what to worship if you worship money and things if they are where you tap real meaning in life then you will never have enough never feel you have enough it’s the truth worship your own body and beauty and sexual lure and you will always feel ugly and when time and age start showing you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you on one level we all know this stuff already it’s been codified as myths Proverbs cliches bromides epigrams Parables the skeleton every great story the trick is keeping the truth upfront in Daily Consciousness worship power you will feel weak and Afraid and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at Bay worship your intellect being seen as smart you will end up feeling stupid afraid always on the verge of being found out that is profound all he’s missing there I want to pray for his soul daily all he’s missing there is because you must seek God alone because only in God will you find fulfillment or as St Augustine said who would have thought it Augustine of Hippo super OG going way back in time our hearts are restless until they rest in you finish it that’s legit that’s so cool that’s awesome guys welcome back this is we’re still on this one stream if you’re watching this on YouTube later it’s a 3-hour episode or more or maybe only got to 240 I have no idea cuz I’m doing this in real time right now I don’t know how long we’re going to go today but without belaboring the point this has been all about the Catholic critical analysis of David Foster Wallace and as promised the first hour of our stream was talking about his biography and just talking about infinite just today and check this out uh before I had the blue the blue book version of it I have this white one 20th anniversary edition and it’s taped as well which is I think that’s cool we’re just going to go through I have six sections to take you through I’m just going to to read to you stuff from his book and again I’ve said enough I’ll say it a final time but he writes about god- haunted this that austinian our hearts are restless they rest in you and the reality of a world steeped in sin that is denying its sin and entertaining itself to death remember this book is called infinite just because the genius aour in this book James incandenza founder of the Enit um uh not enet Enfield Tennis Academy and it house is the is the halfway house the Enfield Tennis Academy he’s also This brilliant avangard filmmaker and he makes infinite J this cartridge this film that is so enticing so seductive you die when you watch it and so throughout the book different people including a group of cuqua separatist wheelchair assassins are trying to find this cartridge and disseminated and his the in canens the family’s involved Etc whatever and so there’s a great like Point within the point there of yeah he’s writing about American society literally in 1996 almost Y2K you know watching friends and Seinfeld on the couch until blah until it just passes out entertaining itself to death very much like our Netflix culture today so without further Ado that’s why again we are studying him or closing our beauty class with him I hope God willing this is this is now number 303 of uh Maple syah history this whole episode has been 301 2 and 3 I hope there’s 7,000 episodes left of maple Sy of History It’s the final class of beauty spring 2024 he’s also very funny and beautiful writer so without further Ado just exerpts an analysis the whole time first thing to give you a hint in this book during that last pre- subsidized year after each tournament’s perun final at the little post final award presentations and dance Eric clipperton would attend unarmed and eat maybe a little shaped turkey from the buffet and mutter out of the side of his slot-like mouth to marot and Kenza attend unarmed so Eric clipperton is a tennis player you guys know Eric Cliffton what is his story Eric Cliffton is a tennis player who plays tennis with a gun to his head and he tells his opponent If I Lose I’m going to shoot myself so he’s never lost he’s never lost a game because of that and so so they say that uh since his Glock 9mm and public intentions were instantly legendary he was regarded by the USA United States tennis Association as having never had a legitimate Victory or even a legit match in sanctioned play he literally blackmails his opponent okay we’re playing tennis if I lose if I lose up you know 15 love If I Lose I’m going to shoot myself this book literally through this one character of a thousand is precisely like that hope that I can entice you as as with the as with The Pale King just to read it for yourself right what do I mean by prese subsidized time well he’s talking about again right being in a time in American history where everything has become so hyper commercialized and so sold out that even the years are sponsored so here is chronol on page 223 and I believe both this white cover Edition the blue there’s a hard cover also blue with like clouds I believe all of the um copies have the same page numbers I think they’re all I’ve seen a couple different copies and own multiple ones and they’re the same so to be 223 in every every version of the book chronology of organization of North American nations Revenue enhancing subsidized Time by year so here are the years they’re no longer it’s no longer let’s say 1999 it is the year of the Whopper the next year year of the tux medicated pad year three year of the trial size Dov Bar number four year of the Purdue Wonder chicken number five year of the whisper quiet matac dishmaster six year of the yitsu 2007 mimetic resolution cartridge view motherboard easy to install upgrade for infron interlace TP systems for home office or mobile number seven year of dairy products from the American Heartland number eight year of the depend adult undergarment nine year of glad this year of glad FYI and we’ll talk about that over the course of this remaining hour or so however long we have if you note or I ask you to please do note if you ever read this book the book ends on page 981 actually reading it subsequent to that are about 120 pages of footnotes they’re really important they’re really important thank you bie Johnson yeah you do not skip over the footnotes I mean you’ll be completely uh in the dark the actual page total here actual the last numbered page listed in this book is 1079 okay so there’s so what is what is n that’s 98 pages of footnotes at the back end and the book ends on page 981 but really the first 16 pages are the end of the book because you’ll see as you go through and again I guess sorry you know spoiler alerts for anyone I’m going to spoil every well not everyone I won’t tell you where they find infinite just I’m not talk about John Wayne this amazing tennis player with the same name the them I’m not going to talk about everything but spoilers right the the book opens up on page three with year of glad okay so remember in terms of substi time and I believe it’s those 16 pages are the only time we have year of glad for the entire book the audio book is 56 hours and 12 minutes long the audio book is 56 hours and 12 minutes long you know who reads it is it Sean Pratt Sean Pratt dang I got to find out who Sean Pratt is got to have on got to have him on Maple Sy history Sean how is it like reading 56 hours did you do it all at once did you pull double all nighter you know like that’s pretty impressive all right guys um okay so that that gives us a kind of good I again if a lot of this is going to be kind of like confusing today again anyone watching on the episode and now 2 hours in it’s not we’ve talked about the whole schematic that’s what’s so fun about having that long form layout it’s not it’s not confusing in that way and I told you what we’re just reading is basically Snippets about the augustinian hole you know the the the hole all of us have inside we try to fill with entertainment and whatever and like our hearts are rest they rest in you and you know the the sin but if it if it despite all that is kind of random and confusing that’s postmodernity this is this is the postmodern book par excellance like the book I’m going to read it right now listen to the actual last words of the book okay it will be someone blue collared unlicensed though inevitably a nurse’s aid with quick bit Nails a hospital security guy a tired Cuban orderly who addresses me as Jew who will looking down in the middle of some kind of bustled task catch what he seizes my eye and ask so yo then man what’s your story that’s the actual end of the book that’s the actual end of the Chron year of the depend adult undergarment page 17 we’re back in earlier subsidized time to really spoil it Hal who is the grand tennis proy proog yeah how and Kenza he’s getting vetted if he’s going to be worthy of his athletic scholarship to play tennis for the Arizona wild cats which actually already is kind of a disappointment for Hal because this book remember takes place at Enfield tennis Academy’s a main focal point and it tab drug house the wheelchair Keva assassins are a main group the incandenza family is is the main main kind of like overarching familial anchor how in Kenza this high school kid throughout the whole book he’s 14 15 16 17 in the year of glad he’s 18 or 19 like he’s that last year he’s graduated this Elite boarding school Tennis Academy and he’s going to go play uh division one at that time pack 10 now it be Pack 12 now well the Pack 12 is it’s Pack 2 now but but you know pack 10 Arizona Wildcats tennis why was that already kind of disappointing for how because the best players at the nfield tennis academy like the already mentioned who I’m not going to talk about at all today but John Wayne who’s number one boys guy they go pro immediately they’re on the ATP Tour all that kind of stuff so it’s already kind of a step down for Hal who’s always Hal’s always kind of f the book portrayed as kind of one step below greatness like John Wayne sets the pace for the whole school he’s the the number one guy this Canadian guy um um and that is the last kind of chronological line that is thrown to us across the abyss that is this Grand postmodern book so once more just diving right back into stuff let me take you to the next section of high import David Foster Wallace in 1996 predicted the presidency of Donald Trump I promise I I hate Trump I love Trump no comment I really make it a strong promise the only thing that I ever want to put my name to is I’m a devout Catholic you know God have mercy on me God help me I am not left right whatever I would never want to influence people so this is not going to be look how awesome Trump is or look how bad Trump is it’s not a compliment or an insult it’s just a fact he kind of predicted this former reality star type Persona there is no question I believe Donald Trump was famous long before The Apprentice but the that really kind of made Trump amongst the recent generation of Voters in 2016 especially Trump you know you’re fired to kind of public Persona so listen page 382 the motionless face on the screen is Johnny gentle third party stunner Johnny gentle the first US president ever to swing his microphone around by the court during his inauguration speech whose new wh suited office of unspecified Services retinue required inauguration attendees to scrub and mask and then walk through chlorinated foot baths at public pools he’s also a germaphobe Johnny gentle Johnny gentle managing somehow to look presidential and a f*cku Michael filtration mask whose inaugural dress hel helded the ad the Advent of a tighter tidier Nation who promised to clean up government and trim fat and sweep out waste and hose down our chemically troubled streets and asleep darn little and he fashioned away to rid the American psychosphere the unpleasant unpleasant debris of a throwaway past to restore The Majestic ambers and purple fruits of a culture now promises to rid of the toxic aluia choking away highways and littering our byways and gruning up our sunsets and cruddy those Harbors in which telis garbage barges lay stacked up at anchor clotted and impotent amid undulating clouds of potbellied gouls and those disgusting blue bodyi flies live on [ __ ] first US president to ever say [ __ ] publicly Rusty hole barges cruising up and down petrole coastline lines laying up rii and stacked admitting CO as they wait the opening of a new of new landfills and toxic repositories that people demanded in every area but their own what am I talking about so it’s actually great I love this in a 1,79 page book we’re going to get the whole book pretty pretty tight right now ready remember a genius artist filmmaker guy James and Kenza who’s also the founder of Enfield Tennis Academy him and his wife ail ail is the mom figure literally her son’s how and how’s brother Orin Orin is a complete scumbag Orin is a complete scumbag Orin is house brother who discovers randomly and we’ll read it that he has a great talent for for punting footballs and he becomes an NFL punter he’s absolutely remember talking about Sin with no restraint orin’s favorite thing to do was to go out on a date with a girl and in the middle of that date excuse himself and go hook up with a different girl and come back to that with that girl like absolute womanizing hedonist that’s or an inand one of the sons how’s older brother the other brother remember is kind of the Beating Heart dost’s idiot kind of character Mario Idiot by the way being a high compliment if you ever read the book Idiot by dovi it’s about this Prince who’s too good for this world sorry repeatedly you’ve read it repeatedly yes give tell me do you do you agree the idiot is a beautiful book yes is why why do you think it is I think it is why do you think it is oh dear I had my book grou ladies read it and they all hated it shame on them I had my book ladies read it they all hated them shame on them they a good book in the idiot this this character right he is too good for this world he’s ridicul as naive and he’s just trying to live like Christ’s love like purely and beautifully it’s like Doki shows also great di diagnostician of sin that the world can’t handle goodness right the world the ultimate goodness came Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior and we killed him right world can’t handle goodness so there’s three in kons of Brothers James is the father founds Enfield Tennis Academy with his wife Abal who all the boys call the moms it’s a running joke throughout the thing the moms and after incandenza dies by killing himself by putting his head in the microwave the mom’s AAL is to run um the mfield tennis academy along with Charles Tavis this figure that I’m blanking now but is somehow related to to how in some way I think he’s like an uncle or something but uh they’re going to run nfield Tennis Academy James and Kenza found the Tennis Academy ail’s wife three boys main character Hal For Whom the story ends so what’s your story man talk about more about him in a second he’s kind of the main character Mario his special needs brother who’s the real beautiful Saint figure of the thing if if it’s like brothers K Doki stuff like he’s the the good you know was it Ali wisha in that story I’m also blanking who’s who’s the good brother in Brothers K is it D no so we need to get we need to get our Russian experts on here but Mario represents I think the idiot is actually maybe the better uh example Than Brothers K of someone who is too good for this world where Orin again is the ultimate hedonist giving into everything every one of his kind of instaneous Pleasures NFL punter by accident now uh but right James made this movie He’s also avangard filmmaker he made this movie that is so entertaining it’s a weapon of mass destruction and when you watch it you die called the entertainment called truly infinite just from which the book takes its title you got all that and there’s a drug house and wheelchair assassins what is this stuff here clotted and impin among undulating clouds the US has become like a massive dumping ground there’s it’s amazing like the book it’s so subtle in a certain sense first of all the US is no longer the us something called Onan organization of North American nations which as well you know onanism right onanism masturbation I mean it’s very well done like any Christian will tell you Catholic Protestant all Christian dominations masturbation is wrong it is wrong to be kind of turned on oneself that’s how brilliant this book is a diagnosis of sin that even the country is named you know masturbation that that could be named like in the literal visceral sense of that or like that’s what Netflix is if you neglect all of your things you sit there you know watching the whole time for your own pleasure kind of thing so Johnny gentle is the president of Onan the organization of North American nations and there are massive like dumping grounds of garbage everywhere which he is particularly concerned right somehow looking managing to look presidential in a f*cku microfiltration mask so he’s like I’m not I’m not saying here he’s predicting Co at all but like he’s wearing a mask through his inauguration but he’s also swinging the thing he’s he’s a former like Las Vegas performer you know whatever so in the so while all this is going on the tennis academy the search for infinite Jaz the Keva wheelchair guys want to find it because they want to overthrow Onan we know when this book was published in ’96 that cuqua almost seceded from Canada there’s a referendum that failed like 52 to 48 to have Quebec break away from Canada almost it almost went through so that’s all the background if you know that like you know now we’re probably about two hours into the stream I think I when I saw it I was you know I put these things piece by piece before I publish it because obviously the files are very large before we started today’s stream which is part three it’s one integral hole obviously but I had like an hour 45 so probably like 205 on the YouTube stream see goodbye you know thanks you can skip the last hour like we’re just reading ex that’s the whole story it’s the search for this weapon of mass destructions film that symbolizes what all of Americans become just sitting in a couch staring at the TV forgetting anything else even if we die dying for pleasure in Hedonism while we search for God but like walstein said we don’t even know we’re searching for God he misses someone he doesn’t can’t even name right we don’t even know what the whole is that will satisfy you know our hearts are restless they rest in you who is you we don’t even America’s jettison Faith well just watch another episode of Friends kind of attitude that’s the whole story here so that’s what he means here about all this kind of stuff um the the garbage and everything so continuing on here listen to some of these headlines from John and gle’s presidency Ukraine two more Baltic states apply for NATO inclusion wow this is freaking this is 1996 the same things going on now with Ukraine Russia whatever right uh gentle on waste storage from dismantled NATO thms not in my nation babe um US Canadian support doomed NATO Summit from start Icelandic poll declares um Burger Kings Pillsbury awarded rights to New Year header Pizza Huts PepsiCo files bid rigging complaint with IRS calendar and pre-printed check industry stock sore Onan packed Penn these are all just like him just listing free listing in the middle of the book page 390 the different headlines giving you all the context of how the country came to be as it is he mentions here in the middle of this page 397 one of if Infinite Jest is James incandenza Masterpiece and it is I mean it’s his ultimate it’s it’s a thing that might end all the North American Alliance maybe his most famous film you know and obviously I’m saying this almost like twoo serious this is all fiction he’s not a real filmmaker right maybe his most like you can’t find this on IMBd whatever these aren’t real movies but his most famous film in the book is the joke you are strongly advised not to sh out money to see this film and it’s an amazing parody on the pretentiousness of like Berkeley types listen the joke’s total running time was just exactly as long as there is even one cross-legged Patron left in the theater to watch his own huge projected image gazing back down at him with the special distaste of a disgusted ripped off feeling art film Patron so the movie is the joke is you sit down and the dor flips on a live feed of everyone sitting in the in the theater so you paid 20 bucks to watch a movie which is and then everyone slowly leaves and it doesn’t click off till the last person like quits so sometimes the joke runs for 20 minutes sometimes it goes on for nine hours I’m just sitting there when’s the movie going to start poping the popcorns that’s it more headlines well it’ be better now because the movie theaters have those recliners now H now you can just jokes on them I got to you know like a nice night in a hotel yeah you’re in luxury it doesn’t matter what’s on the scen well said well said exactly exactly more more headlines um freak Statue of Liberty accident kills fed engineer header Brave man on CR on crane crushed by 5 ton cast iron Burger so the Statue of Liberty America has sold out so bad in this Onin phase they’ve changed the Statue of Liberty to be holding a burger instead of the torch cuz it’s year of the Whopper in subsized time and it kills a it falls on one of these workers um now speaking of these like these these these uninhabitable areas of America right my baby has six eyes and basically no skull lur color 3 32 point tabloid Heather dat line Lancaster New Hampshire gentle declares all US Territory north of line from Syracuse to tyoga New York tondan New York to Salem Massachusetts Federal Massachusetts Federal disasters declares all territory North line from Syracuse to TA taara and tyoga to Salem Massachusetts Federal disasters offers federal aid for Upstate and New England residents wishing to relocate claims funds for EPA cleanup quote are not within the map of what’s possible so America is like a massive wasting dump and by the way he’s trying to Pond this off on Canada gentle to can kadian PM have some territory Canadian PM gentle no really thanks anyways gentle to Canadian PM but I insist gentle to pm look babe take the territory or you’re going to be really really sorry now this is the funniest line in the whole book on page 407 this is the funniest line in all of infinite just gentle has completely lost mind claims Confidant ous Chief time at press conference threatens to detonate upside down missiles in US silos willing to eliminate own map out of sheer Peak if Canada nixes reconfigure transfer of aesthetically unacceptable terrain so he gentle is going to detonate nukes upside down us Sil us silos to whatever his own territory if Canada doesn’t take this garbage dump all right guys so um just skipping around that first section really Johnny gentle Onan incandenza subsidized time that’s a great maybe life again see you by like go read the book now but continue on page 63 they give some information on incand danza’s father who’s kind of pushes him to get in tennis in the first place um the father uh progressively crippled by obsessions with death by spider bite and by stage fright and with a bitterness of ambiguous origin but consuming intense towards the method School professional acting and its more promising exponents a father who somewhere around the NAT of his professional fortunes apparently decided to go down to his raid sprayed basem*nt workshop and build a promising Junior athlete the way other fathers might restore vintage Autos or build ships and siiz bottles or like refinished chairs it’s like his father pushes James in cenza his father would be the grandfather of Mario or in and how into getting involved in tennis in the first place and so then jamesen marries this woman ail ail in condensa she’s the moms she becomes head Mistress of ETA here’s how she’s described she’s 6 foot five um very tall woman I mean this kind of woman we should be you know basketball center incredible volleyball player the tall ungainly socially challenged and hard drinking Dr in canden’s May December marriage to one of the few Bonafide bombshell females in North American Academia the extremely tall and high strong but also extremely pretty and gainly and T toing and classy Dr AAL mandragon the only female academic ever to hold the MacDonald chair in prospective usage at the Royal Victoria College of mcil University whom incandenza had met at UT Toronto conference on reflective on reflective versus reflexive systems was rendered even more romantic by the bureaucratic tribulations involved in obtaining an exit and then entrance visa to say nothing of a green card for even a US spoused Professor mon Dragon whose involvement however demonstrably nonviolent with certain members of the cuqua separatist left while in graduate school had placed her name on The Notorious list people who we have to follow closely people who we must survey people upon whom we must place a close watch Surveillance the birth of the incand Dan’s first child Oren had been at least partly a legal maneuver all right so this kind of green card marriage whatever you know yeah I did this book is so grimy it’s so about so about Sin it’s so about Sin AAL the head mistress whose husband kills himself by putting his head in a microwave James he he’s called himself throughout the book by the way too the kids call AAL the moms they call James himself instead of dad just they refer to him like in this weird kind of way um he it’s very kind of like he really well portrays kind very you know Dysfunctional Family um adal starts having an affair with John Wayne at some point in the book who’s like this you know 19-year-old kid it’s just there everything every kind of like lack of the cardinal virtues lack of temperance and and you know lack of any type of restraint runs wild in this book which once more is absolutely um what happens when you are submerged in sin but can’t even name it and you can’t name the way out that’s exactly what this book that’s why and again along the way it’s so beautifully like I said it’s so beautifully written it’s so funny every page has a laugh out loud Parts um but yeah it does a great job of kind of showing that that run wild um you’re wondering why I’m flipping through every once in a while I’ve like boted this book notorized this book to like absolutely Bonkers hyper bunker level but I got to find these Pages it takes a while to flip through right so that’s why like you know and I don’t mean to pause randomly page 81 after himself dies Dr char Tavis and here it is either Mrs incand Dan’s half brother or adopted brother um took down took down the Latin motto and substituted for this is for the Tennis Academy the nfield Tennis Academy he Charles Tavis makes the boring uh motto for the Academy be this the man who knows his limitations has none blah right gross W was himself James and kenza’s maker of infinite J what was his motto nefas EST they can kill you but the legalities of eating you are more dicey like it’s something like imagine play tennis with that idea like they might kill me but they’re going to have to eat me like I it’s just so the translation in there doesn’t it okay good that’s it yeah the translation literally is they can kill you but the legalities of eating you are much more dicey you ever read something with all these little foreign language Snippets no translation yeah it’s like thank you for nothing yeah for for all these 100% yeah so actually let’s even like test this right now so uh and let’s see how good my memory was with this so yeah it’s foot note 32 on page 81 let’s go there and see what the literal translation is again I I think they it’s like they can kill you but eating you is more difficult legally something like that um let me see photo number 32 and some of these footnotes yeah some footnotes are like one sentence long some are like 20 pages long remember it’s 98 pages of footnotes yeah here it is literally roughly quote they can kill you but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicer that’s what the Latin motto said which was the cool Latin model of the academy before CT Charles Tavis comes in and makes it um and he the guy um the they had this German guy who’s this kind of like a real intense hard driving classic German guy called stit and uh he talks about his training facility about science he goes when I am boyish training to compete for best our training facilities on a sign very largely painted stead said we are what we walk between okay um we are what we walk between I like what I saw on a shirt Jaan on I think it was like the label or something it just said noon is the best time noon is the best time no new ne new is the best time very actually that makes sense that’s not wrong right yeah must be alternative not you so talking now about um Orin in cenza page 291 remember Orin is the awful brother hooks up with everybody um just hedonistic really nihilistic actually above all he has this kind of like promiscuity that’s not rooted in even seeking pleasure it’s more just like his hopeless bitterness and everything he’s super blackpilled but Orin actually like Orin is an amazing junior tennis player like anyone at nfield Tennis Academy who randomly discovers that he has the best punting leg in the world and ends up becoming a professional football player in the NFL for the Arizona Cardinals um here’s how that happens he’s at Boston University um Orin decides just to try out for the football team he I think he went to play tennis at Boston U which again nfield Tennis Academy talk about these boarding cies are so Elite it’s like Eaton matriculating to Oxford like the goal is to go to this Tennis Academy and like go right to the professional tour so most people being a division one athlete that’s already 1% of 100 it’s amazing right for some of these guys it feels kind of disappointing a you know whatever but or they think they make a point in the book like anyone at Enfield even like a middle level player could get a division one scholarship anywhere cuz the competition was so intense that junior level David Foster Wallace by the way it’s worth noting a lot of you people that are fans of you know this was an amazing tennis player himself he was a junior ranked player in Illinois when he was a kid and I don’t know what happened he you weren’t in that sort of category he wouldn’t have written this MH you know certainly ER his timing way you write what you know yeah 100% so anyways but I’m just saying that Foster walls actually was very good he did not play tennis in college I believe did Foster Wallace nor professionally but he he was of that Talent like it’s it’s amazing he was in that stream potentiality he’s a very good tennis player the author Foster Wallace Orin goes to beu decides I’m done with tennis um so here’s what happens orin’s at this like Vu practice he tries a football team and gets his butt kicked he tries out as like whatever a linebacker receiver running back just gets crushed um the destiny grade you’re talking about Destiny or what again like Christians Catholics would call Providence you know God’s will right fate as more secular people can would say Destiny has no beeper Destiny always leans trench coat out of an alley with some sort of that you usually can’t even hear because you’re in you’re in such a rush to or from some important event you’ve tried to engineer the destiny great event that happened to or and Kens at this point was that just as he was passing glumly under the home goalposts and and entering the shadow of the South exits uh added a loud and ominously Orthopedic cracking sound plus then shrieking issued from somewhere in the field behind it so he’s leaving the football triy out their starting punter gets his leg broken cracked in half by like the rush of the defensive line so anyways um the football gets blocked and it goes over to Orin Orin picked up the block puns ball the head coach was gesturing impatiently from his position at the Midfield bench Oren held the football feeling it weird overweight and looked way up field the stretcher bears and punter and assistance and coach and then he kicks it and just he kicks it and just wow imagine like a guy you know there was a guy recently I don’t know how how much you know everyone knows this but like I’m I’m sure this is pretty common knowledge to throw a baseball 100 milph is ridiculously hard the average man the average man untrained man people don’t realize this people always like oh yeah the fish was this big people are like the untrained guys is like oh yeah you know Major Leaguers they throw baseballs like 93 95 mph pitchers do I could probably throw like 70 the average untrained man would throw 40 miles an hour about it’s about that if you just and I know that probably because you have told me that before I able to pull that 40 out of that’s awesome which is shocking no if you’re no if you’re if you’re even if you’re even sitting there just like and throwing the ball with a nice not too much of a loop but just a nice nice gliding playe catch and looks like oh that guy can throw baseball he’s probably throwing 50 m hour even like uh there’s a thing last year Major League catchers who have unbelievable arms anyone SE like a Mariners game whenever think about a catcher thrown from guys tring steel second base thrown from behind home plate has throw it on an absolute missile in less than 2 seconds 40 yards the average discrepancy of Major League velocity last year for catchers was like 74 to 84 mph right like the guys one of the some of the best arms in the entire world like 74 to 84 mph sorry to interrupt I think this is your class class of the semester this my last class semester thank you for everything you’ve done what do we what do we owe the pleasure of this meeting not just to acknowledge ackn knowledge you’re a great Professor here you you are far too kind we’re talking about our last class is oh your favorite infinite J talking I’ll tell you again I’m telling everyone uh you know on the video and stuff mentions multiple times but um this guy is so good we’ve read last class from a cian monk who wrote a article about him that came out last month in human Review called he misses someone he’s never met and David Foster Wallace twice failed rcia was very much flry o Conor god- haunted style and in that book this assertion monk or this article wallstein says in all of his writings there’s this idea of like being submersion sin but not being able to name it or the way out and that’s what we’re discussing and you came at the point where one of these guys who is a tennis player uh by half in stance discovers he has an amazing ability to to PT footballs so that’s where we are sweet I won’t interrupt you any further I just wanted to say you’re not you’re the you’re the absolute coolest please come it’s always a pleasure to see you um they catchers who have some of the strongest arms in the world right um 74 to 84 mph now that everyone has that kind of context right and you know the average Major League fastball is uh like 911 92 there was a guy recently very talented kid obviously but he hadn’t played baseball like in four or five years who at some major league Stadium they have those fast pitch things right he threw 96 miles hour that is what this is like that is crazy again most Bros most guys even like really big strong weightlifter guys if they break 60 MPH trying throwing their arm out of their socket one of those you know Seattle Mariners speed booths it’s like that’s you have a decent arm 60 M hour that’s not awful you know break there was a guy recently some YouTuber who does baseball videos offering like a 100 bucks to anyone off the street who could break 70 mil hour and everyone was like oh yeah I can do it they all none of them got even like past 55 it was like it’s a so that this kid messed around his friends through 96 wow and that’s a legit reading like the radar just the out of the hand you know feet per second 150 ft per second is 100 mph or 146 ft whatever like people people mistakenly think oh it was 96 because he’s thrown so close I can throw the ball as hard as I can off that wall here or go outside and throw across football field it’ll be the same reading it’s out what it’s the real reading out of my hand so that so throwing so so so or in cenza picking up a football and punting at 70 yards is like a random guy imagine the attendant being like Oh yeah dude okay you know he’s expecting to see 60 58 and he throws 996 which is better than Major Leaguers that’s or in canza so they say by the second week o was up to around 65 yards um by Halloween his control was even better than his distance it wasn’t by accident the Special Teams assist described it as touch consider that a football field is basically just a grass tennis court so they talk about like Orin becomes like an expert at lobbing shots lobbing punts the way that he used to do you know um with that and already very very quickly he becomes like the premier punter in America last point about this here um it his initial home start wearing a padless uniform didn’t fit in a wide receiver’s number he was summoned when be’s first drive stalled in the 40 of a Syracuse team that had no idea it was it was in its last season of representing an American University a side issue college sport analysts would later use the game to contrast the beginning and end of different eras but a side issue Orin had a book long of 7 3 yards that day and an average hang of 8 point something seconds but that first official punt exhilarated he sent over the head of the orangeman back waiting to receive he says it goes about 90 yards this is insane so this is not the kid throwing 96 in the speed Booth this is the kid throwing 108 like the some random guy you just discover has the greatest arm in in world history by the way the kid who threw 96 that Booth the Oakland Athletics signed him the next day and now he he got he got cut in single a which is spoken Indians but again the unissued like oh that’s too bad that’s still he became he became part of a Major League organization overnight because he threw 96 miles hour so the truth is Stranger Than Fiction like if someone could actually do this real punters in a good punt time for NFL Hang Time means when you kick it to how long it stays in the air for it comes down a real great hang time is like 4.5 or 5 Seconds see maybe it’s 5 seconds he has an 8C hang touch that’s insane how far can the best punter ever punt the ball not counting roll because might you can have a 99 yard punt that rolls how long can someone kick the from foot to touchdown I don’t know 65 70 yards he puns at 90 yards so Orin discovers and then the rest of the story is in and out of him playing in the NFL and whatever but here’s the thing here there’s a girl watching him here called the PE goat PG o a t it’s an acronym prettiest girl of all time the P go and the P go go freestyle on her story her and Orin become romantically involved somehow she is literally like the most beautiful woman ever she’s like unapproachable people won’t even like get near her but she there’s a huge she factors in a huge part of the story her mom the peo her name is Joelle it’s a real name she’s from Kentucky and she comes from a family it’s her her mom and her dad her mom becomes progressively enraged at how close her dad is coming to her that like Joelle the dad even when Joelle becomes you know older and older like already young woman wants to just take her to the movies all the time spend so much time with her whatever to where the mom’s feeling neglected like you just want to spend all the time with the daughter she’s so great I’m just this old hack so she throws at one point in frustration throws acid at her husband’s face cuz he’s like a chemist he Ducks Orin Ducks they have been home with the family Joel gets hit right in face yeah of course so the prettiest girl of all time gets horribly deformed and she’s part of this like group of deformed people but in infinite G if I can find the note in a second we’re already we talked about this book for you know 100 years I mentioned in the earlier part of the stream when I was at the University of Illinois and did a class called fiction and historical imagination I did six classes on this and that was you know I mean and we still only covered exerpts you can’t you know a final time I read this book the first time ever in the summer of 2016 read it every night was excited to read it looked forward to reading it it took me three months to read it um you know may through August so it’s like how how can we cover that in you know even three- Hour episode but Joelle is the star of infinite just himself remember James and kenden the guy who kills himself in the microwave makes her the star of the show and she’s somehow like that’s part of the kind of Seduction of it but I think it really is it’s not so much meant to be sexual as kind of like psychological like you just can’t it’s so weird but she’s like veiled because she’s theform from AET a lot of weird yeah I hope at this point like you’re thinking I just got to I got I got to read it people always hear this oh this is the ultimate bro book like I know so many guys who pick up infinite Jazz never make it past 100 Pages well they’re losers I mean let’s be honest you know um no like you you can get through it I’ve mentioned this many times like I don’t understand people being intimidated by this book it is so fun you have to work you have to in the stest episode people watching on YouTube but people in class have not seen that obviously I open with 5 minute clip of various interviews from David Foster wall and he rightfully says he’s like things that are like complicated like this have always played to a smaller audience they’re harder they’re less wellknown but they’re maybe maybe they’re worth the work you know in that way and I agree all right all right guys uh we have probably what 15 minutes left okay so here I’ll read you something about the enet house this is good page 137 we haven’t talked enough about that remember himself James and Kenza makes infinite Jazz Johnny gentle Onan and of course and I love that I love sports so much I love one of the main focus points if not the main focus point is the tennis stuff I freaking love sports so so it’s great but the drug housee is a big part too and the main character is this guy this criminal convict guy who he’s a bad guy but he’s also has his good heart and his name is Don gatley um let me just read you this whole thing on page 137 and it house drug and alcohol recovery house was founded in the year of the Whopper by a nailed tough old chronic drug addict and alcoholic who had spent the bulk of his adult life under the supervision of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections before discovering the fellowships of Alcoholic Anonymous and undergoing a sudden experience of total selfs surrender and spiritual awakening in the shower during his fourth month of continuous AA sobriety this recovered addict alcoholic uh who in his in his new humility so valued a tradition of animin that he refused to even use his first name and was known in Boston AA simply as quote guy who didn’t even use his first name open opened an house within a year of his parole determined to pass on other chronic drug addicts and alcoholics would have been so freely given to him in the etier shower anet house leases a former Physician’s dormatory in the Enfield Marine Public Health Hospital complex equipped to provide 22 male and female clients a 9-month period of close ly supervised residency and treatment and a house was not only founded but originally renovated furnish and decorated by the nameless local aaxon who since sobriety uh didn’t exactly mean instant saood used to lead select teams of early recovery dope fiends on after hours boosting Expeditions area furniture and houseware establishments this legendary Anonymous founder was an extremely tough old Boston AA galute who believed passionately everyone no matter how broad the trail of slime they dragged him behind them deserve the same chance at sobriety through utterly total surrender that he’d been granted it’s a kind of extremely tough love found almost exclusively in tough old Boston gutes and there’s a lot of this idea of like sin but Redemption coming back gate Le is kind of like Redemptive figure he’s awful and terrible he’s really he’s a bad guy he’s a common criminal does a lot of really gross stuff but he’s always searching for Redemption remember well we can’t even name his name at thought like he’s searching for God obviously he’s searching for ultimate Redemption and all these things are kind of like proper steps on that path to to the true light right um all right let’s continue let’s continue clipping along [Applause] okay so um page 374 uh the why of the disease this is back at uh Boston uh you know AA en house the why of the disease El Labyrinth the why of disease elaborate is strongly suggested all a boycott inhabited as the maze is by the twin minotaurs of why me and why not AKA self-pity and denial two of the similarly Smiley faed Sergeant arms more fearsome AIDS the camp the Boston a in here that protects return against return to out there is not about explaining what caused your disease it’s about a goofy simple practical recipe for how to remember you’ve got the disease day by day how to treat the disease day by day and they talk about the constant need of like um surrender self-acceptance anyone who’s been through any kind of byol step program this would all seem very very kind of familiar and old hat and indeed once more as I mentioned earlier with Foster Wallace just as he um had a lot of experience as a junior tennis player and wrote so much from what he knew in that sense he also was in uh alcohol and drug rehab while I think he studied briefly he already had put out his first novel the broom of the system in 1987 age 25 but briefly was a philosophy major at Harvard University I think he made and his dad was a philosophy Professor his dad was his mom an English Professor yes I believe that’s correct and I I mentioned this well multiple times but I don’t know how many times on this stream like I said the first time that I taught this book was the University of Illinois Urbana champagne that’s where he was from his dad was a philosophy professor at the University of Illinois and his mom was I think right English professor at Parkland College which is right across town Urbana champagne or sister cities uh the University of Illinois orbana champagne is literally in between both of those kind of bleeding onto both parts of the city and kind of I think it’s his own ZIP code anyways Parkland is in Champagne so kind of like right across uh the way but for a while he Foster Wallace studied a year I think he was also the University of Arizona too for something which again why how and the Wildcats every everything is you know this is not at all an autobiographical piece but you write what you know as you said so so correctly um the uh when he was at Harvard he made some kind of Quip and I think he’s being sarcastic but he’s like I found out philosophy studying philosophy me nothing more than like doing the professor’s laundry I think he meant like he just hated being like he already had published a novel and now he has to go and like oh yeah yeah like drink the wisdom of these people and it’s kind of pretentious you know nonsense I am the biggest fan of philosophy but I think he he s you know it was it wasn’t that it was just here supposed to hear and kiss butt the entire time and you know no thank you but he got involved in drugs whatever um so the enet house part of the story is very much his part of the story too and here’s very much a drug era you know huge drug era oh tot it’s the 90s it’s the age of self-indulgence it’s the if people say the 70s was the M decade the ’90s the ultimately in that idea Yeah well yeah the 70s was so much you know I mean maybe not as hard drugs as much but for David Foster wellis you know growing up in the s is and um Coming of Age in the sort of Love 100% yeah so if he no okay I see what you’re saying I mean he’s a lot of from what I understand like his rehab time and whatever is like late 80s early 90s but no I see high school yeah 100% on that freshman sophom*ore year high school is 1977 yeah right yeah I mean that that was the era when when you know every high school kid who actually wanted to have fun in a high school dance would be doing drugs right right um exactly yeah so I mean like once more there’s so much just kind of like drawn from his own the depths of his own kind of like personal Coming of Age and and whatever last note on en house um about is about their model remember earlier about like they can kill you but eating you is harder here is uh and House’s uh motto trying to avoid you know relapse in other words check your head at the door though it can’t be conventionally enforced this Boston aa’s real root axium is almost classically authoritarian maybe even Proto fascist some ironist who decamped back out there and left his meager effects to be bagged and to tossed by staff into the en house attic had all the way back in the year of the tux medicated pad permanently engraved his tribute to aa’s real prime directive with a Rosewood handled boot knife in the plastic seat of the fan Men’s Rooms commode do not ask why if you don’t want to die do like you’re cold if you want to get old it was a family that’s a guy’s actual name yeah well change your name right yeah right so listen this is okay this is actually where here on page 788 it’s explained what is what is in infinite just okay uh and by the way Madam psychosis is Joel the P go the prettiest girl of all time Molly notkin tells the US o us operatives their understanding of the oppr Guard Ur Joo in canden’s lethally entertaining infinite G five or six is that it features Madam psychosis some kind of maternal instant instantiation of the archetypical figure death sitting naked corporally gorgeous ravishing hugely pregnant her hideously deformed face either veiled or blanked out by undulating computer generated screens of color or anamorphosis into unrecognizability as any kind of face by the camera is apparently very strange novel lens blah blah blah blah so like there’s this idea right like if you’re going to say this is the most beautiful woman of all time or It’s the funniest film of all time it’s the best joke don’t tell that because once and he talked about that too that you have this perfect idea in your mind once you explain it you ruin it but I mean he gives us a little taste of kind of what what is actually on that film what is actually going on um that it features again this P woman involved with the sun Orin performed by accidental uh being hit accidentally by this uh acid thrown by her mother so much of the just here like very extraordinarily postmodern book obviously but just classic you know plot lines overlapping whatever it may be things that don’t need much further comment on I’m actually going to finish with page 967 it’s the last thing I want to talk about it’s the point I made earlier about the guy who want someone to touch him that’s the last thing I’ll finish with um but just a couple more I’ll come back to 967 and a couple other points uh okay just I’ll read you this on page 107 because we haven’t talked enough about um the wheelchair assassins once more right I’m not going to go through all the different localities and we’ve fairly covered that we talked about all the different parts the book plays with remember subsidized time chronol lot uh chronologically structures it we bounce back and forth and the main focal points we got that the last people we haven’t talked about are these wheelchair assassins remember that ail the moms is somehow tangentially or whatever involved with um there’s a long dialogue between these two agents an american guy and this guy Moro of the wheelchair assassins and they just talk about you know whose system um is better um so steeply made Notions of morath says and again he’s purposing he’s he’s a kakaa he speaks awful English so read as purposely you know whatever like broken up as if you will give the permission does this love you speak of Mr tin’s Grand love it means only the attachment Ty is attached fanatically our attachments are a temple what we worship no what we give ourselves to what we invest with faith steeply made Notions of weary familiarity here we go morath ignored this are we not all of us Fanatics I say only what you of the USA only pretend you do you do not know attachments are of great seriousness choose your attachments carefully choose your temple of fanaticism with great care what you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen die for one person this is craziness persons change leave die become ill they leave lie go mad have sickness betray you die your nation outlives you a cause outlives you so Morra the wheelchair assassin is fanatically committed to finding the entertainment infinite just and the first time we see infinite Just In Action is there’s this medical ATT a from like Saudi Arabia whose wife has like a Tuesday night meeting with the girls or whatever and she puts on this entertainment for him and she finds him dead a couple days later or something like that and he just like slumped in a chair watching it on repeat and then I think actually what’s hilarious is she comes in and she looks at it and she dies and like nine people die before they finally before they finally contact someone and say go in there and turn it off don’t look at it this has like a Medusa like effect it’ll turn your brain to stones or butter melt you whatever right yeah you just keep watching it and watching it on an infinite Loop exactly and Ste and steeply and morath the two agents exactly and steeply and morath the two agents are talking about poison and antidote the entertainment is the poison is the weapon of mass destruction infinite G they’re looking for an anecdote but we’re not anym sure that they actually do have copies also does this quote anti- entertainment the film’s director supposedly made to counter The lethality does it really also also exist as some kind of Remedy or antidote they’re also talking about like they’re trying to find are they disseminated copies what’s the original where is it spoiler or just I won’t comment further but John Wayne factors into this a lot the main tennis player the excellent the number one tennis player at nfield Tennis Academy um okay so they kind of go back back and forth last two things so basically out of time just want to tell you show you the oh no you know what I’ll read this will be the penultimate thing that I read and then I’ll actually finish with reading the how the book actually starts we’ll just finish with reading from the year of glad that’s the appropriate Place end listen this it’s funny uh once more you know looking to fill that god-shaped hole with anything but and these guys here these guys come from a Catholic Family are on to some of that um it’s outlined eventually boil down to this A desperate Barry Loach and just about camped out in front of the candle lighting apps of the Lo Lo’s Parish Church Lo challenges his brother to let him prove somehow risking his own time berries and maybe safety somehow if the basic human character wasn’t as unempathetic and necrotic as the brother’s present depressed condition was leading him to think so this guy says these two brothers have this bet can I stand outside and get people to touch me and I won’t like leave my post till I’m touched I’m going to prove to you you’re wrong about being bitter and depressed that no one cares no one has any empathy someone will come and give me the human contact I’m obviously asking for it’s possible that the respectable citizenry with their book bags and cellulars and dogs with little red sweater vest thought that sticking one’s hand way out and crying quote touch me just touch me please was some kind of new stem type Argo for lay some change on me because Barry Lo found himself hauling in a rather daily impressive total of money significantly more than he was earning at his work study job so once more too right how do we treat the poor there this amazing question of like do we just like throw change at the poor I don’t even look at this guy he’s made beneath me again he the book for the Thousand time is so crazy terribly Catholic so much diving into like how do we love neighbor do we love our neighbors as ourselves and ultimately out of love for God but if we can’t even name God and can’t name sin and therefore name the path out of sin to God are we just lost in a kind of postmodern blah you know blankness to where at one point talk about how doing drugs at ETA nfield Tennis Academy and Foster walls beautifully writes how became more interested in the secrecy of doing the drugs and the drugs himself the greater high was just trying to get away from being a bad boy anything to feel like rebellious right remember his Mr squishing point from last class in that article the article that the San monk that one of foster Wall’s short stories a fictional candy company makes candies called felonies and that gets everyone to buy them because we’re so rebellious by Nature then Mr squishy company um so Barry Lo had to take incomplete in the semester’s training courses and got canned from his work study job for not showing up and he went through weeks and months of personal spiritual crisis after as passer by after passer by interpreted his appeal for contact as a request for cash and substituted abstract loose change for genuinely fleshy contact and some of the T station’s other disreputable stem artists BEC became steming by the way is Boston slang for for panhandling um and some of the T station’s other disreputable stem artists became intrigued by Barry’s pitch to say nothing of his net receipts and started themselves sck up the Cry of touch me please please someone so this this idea that starts off is like I’m going to prove to you people love each other I turns into like a panh handling technique Woe Is Humanity how does the book begin uh amazing it starts off ear of glad I am seated in an office surrounded by heads and bodies my posture is consciously congruent to the shape of my hard chair there’s a cold room in University Administration wood walled Remington hum double windowed against the November heat insulated from administrative sounds of the reception area outside at which Uncle Charles Mr dent and I were lately received I am in here three faces have resolved into place above summer weight sport coats and half winders across the Polish Pine conference table shining with with the Splender light of an Arizona noon there are three deans of admissions academic Affairs athletic Affairs I do not know which face belongs to whom I believe I appear neutral maybe even Pleasant though I’ve been coached to air on the side of neutrality not attempt what would feel to me like a pleasant expression or a smile and you’ll have to read the rest to dive you have to read the that’s the first two paragraphs read the next 1,000 pages to as for yourselves if you think this work is as worthy as I do and does all these things that I’ve been have not shut up about the past 3 hours so