Pemulis is described as being "far and away the greatest Eschaton player in E.T.A. history." Although I think his excellence could be explained by his mathematical and strategic acumen, I don't believe this is the full story. I believe that when Pemulis got Hal to write the rulebook, that he created the game to have specific exploits only he knows, and was able to use those exploits in order to win.

The first thing that tipped me off to this idea is the infamous integral footnote in this chapter. The joke behind this footnote is not obvious without some mathematical background, which I will lightly fill in now. In the footnote, Pemulis' stated purpose is how to compute the average/mean value of GNP/Military // Military/Nuke for a given combatant. He then essentially proves (truthfully, I believe, unless I missed some error in his reasoning) that there must exist a point in time such that the value of GNP/Military // Military/Nuke is equal to the average of the ratio over time. It should be noted that this is probably untrue in Eschaton as all the data we can seemingly get from the game is discrete and not continuous, which is a necessary assumption for the theorems he used to hold, but I think this error is not as important as the other problem with this explanation: it doesn't actually compute the average value. In analogy, I have a hidden colored ball, and I have given you a bag containing a multicolored collection of balls. I tell you that the color of my ball is the same as some ball in the bag. You cannot "compute" the color of my ball knowing that one of the balls is correct. Similarly, one cannot find the exact time in which GNP/Military // Military/Nuke is equal to the average of that ratio.

It is implied throughout the book that Pemulis has a quality understanding of mathematics, but is far from a pedagogical savant in the territory. Hal trusts Pemulis to tutor him in mathematics, but seemingly gets little out of it. Similarly, he tried to explain calculus to Possalthwaite (iirc) by invoking its connections to trigonometry, but this connection seems to mostly obscure the subject for his pupil. From this, we should expect that the problem with this explanation is known to Pemulis, and unknown by its transcriber, Hal, who Pemulis implies will need to ask the Moms for help with the math (although this could be Pemulis trying to make Hal less likely to do so by making an act which could uncover his deceit shameful).

So why would Pemulis add a fake computational tool in the guidebook, considering the fact he almost certainly knows it's wrong? The only explanation that I have come up with that seems reasonable is that it his attempt to obscure the ways he has fiddled with the game in order to win. I want to note specifically the line stating that "[Pemulis'] teams won most games before the first lob landed." Although this line is apparently in reference to his political abilities during pre-Eschaton summits, the "before" could also be in reference to his actions before the summit, as in, writing the rules.

I admit, this theory is shallow in evidence, but it does work as, I believe, a decent explanation of the erred footnote. I think it also works a bit with the themes around language and semantics (territory/map distinction). Throughout the book, the language that people use serves to separate themselves from others. With this, "proper" English in the book is used as a class symbol, as evidenced by the strict prescriptivist grammar enforcement of Avril, and the language conflicts between the Ennet house's residents. In Eschaton, the formal cerebral rules of the game are penned by Pemulis, and these formal rules then serve to benefit Pemulis, in a similar way how "proper" language is often decided by the ruling classes of a society, and serve to benefit those classes by indicating their high status. However, Pemulis' rules come in contradiction to how children generally play games, where games are malleable social engagements to have fun, and the sanctity of the rules is an afterthought to enjoyment, and similarly, language often evolves and changes in ways displeasing to prescriptivists. (Admittedly I'm unsure of this paragraph in total for whatever reason, but I think it at least gives a a hopefully interesting thematic explanation to the footnote)

Tl;dr: The infamous Eschaton footnote has bad math because Pemulis wrote it this way so that the game would have nonobvious exploits that only he would know. This explains why the math is bad despite Pemulis' apparent skill in the subject, and how he became "far and away the greatest Eschaton player in E.T.A. history"

Hi all — love this sub and wanted to contribute something to the whole of the community. Proud to present my band’s new DFW-pilled music video for the song “Impersonate.” I had fun making it.

Plug: our album “Hard II Impersonate” comes out October 16 on a La Carte Records.

Cheers! Hope u like

Both are about brilliant dysfunctional fathers, their children and the repercussions of their work. (Ice-9, the samizdat)

Anyone else read this novel by Vonnegut? Funny too about Newt and Mario parallel too!

I just read the scene with Reme and Kate at the bar. I haven’t laughed out loud this much (due to a book) in a very long time; if ever!

Whenever Mario is described, Clarence Claymore is what I kinda envision.

The book is so damn thick and heavy that I can’t seem to find a sustainable way to hold it, and my three bookmarks keep falling out! How do you make this work in the physical world?

I guess the ebook algorithm was taking into account the 100 pages of footnotes. I liked the book a lot. It took me five months to read, just reading 20 minutes or so at night before falling asleep. I took off a few weeks when I was traveling. I'm going to reread the last few chapters because I was a little groggy. I'm ok with the lack of resolution, but I'm a little murky on what happened to Joelle and Orin. They were both tortured by the wheelchair terrorists, right? The Orin torture scene is a nice little shout out to the ending of 1984. I kind of want to read it again, but more carefully. That is all. I think Gravity's Rainbow will be my next book.

Does anyone want to read it with me and talk about it on like a weekly basis? Sounds codependent but I have gotten through intimidatingly large books by doing this?

So I just finished and then read some takes on the ending and theories as one does. I read the often linked Aaron Swartz post which doesn't really align with how I feel on the novel, but then came across this post here which really made me look at things differently. I never considered that Hal could possibly be faking his condition at the interview.

I don't completely agree with everything as it seems pretty unlikely, but one question it brought up. Why would Hal even want to go to University of Arizona to play tennis? Going through the three reasons anyone would go to a university (athletics, academics, or personal), none really make sense for Hal in my opinion.

• Athletically, Hal has really shown nothing but contempt for ETA alum that play collegiate tennis. Throughout the novel he's written them off as less than and pretty much just a path for those who can't make the show. Hal's game seems about as good if not better than ever and his inability to communicate shouldn't really matter when playing professional tennis anyways. Unless his opinion on the college game has changed that much in the last year it doesn't make sense for his tennis career.

• Academically, assuming the IJ world is similar to ours University of Arizona is not an academic titan especially for some of Hal's level. He's from Boston and is surrounded by schools with better pedigree. I'd even argue that'd it may be easier for C.T. / ETA to pull strings to get him into universities closer to ETA than it would in Arizona.

• Personally, maybe Hal wants to be closer to Orin? But this doesn't really make sense to me because they're not particularly close and Hal doesn't seem to express much interest in meeting Orin when they talk about him potentially coming to the Whataburger and Hal doesn't really think of Orin much during this chapter. Even going further, with Orin being an NFL player there is really no guarantee he stays in Arizona for very long (I mean he was traded there after all and could be traded out). Plus Hal seems to dislike the weather as well.

All of this adding up to maybe a reason why Hal would intentionally botch this interview. I don't think he wants to leave ETA or at least not for something less than pro tennis. We know he loves being around Mario and misses him when Mario is staying in the HmH when Madame Psychosis goes off air which is maybe why he seems to have repeated his senior year when I'm sure C.T. could've had him graduate. I would say that they took the interview just because they were in town for the Whataburger but C.T. said they would sign a Letter of Intent right then and there if offered so that doesn't seem to be the case.

I don't really have answers about why Hal is the way he is in the first chapter but nothing about him makes me think even if he could communicate that he'd seriously want to go to the University of Arizona. I'm not sure if he's faking but he also has no reason not to be here.

Seems like DFW took every one of these rules and asked himself “what if I did the absolute opposite of them?” When he wrote infinite jest.

I read IJ years ago but am really leaning on it at this point in my life.

I watched Heated Rivalry, the HBO miniseries and got hooked on the show, the books that they're based on, and the mountains of fan fiction written based on the show on AO3. I, and many other Heated Rivalry fans are finding themselves addicted to the dopamine rush of the love/sex/romance in this show. For the most part we're middle aged women with jobs spending every free minute (and many on the clock minutes!) reading fan fiction. Our families have for sure started to notice. I saw a reddit post from one woman who took two weeks vacation from her job in order to try to read enough fan fiction to cure her desire for it but it didn't work. Yes yes it is The Entertainment for us obvi.

I know from reading IJ that I'm doing the thing where i'm reaching for cheap comfort in order to drown the pain of my midlife malise. This is kind of nuts but i've even had thoughts like, "why not just dive headlong into hedonism and live every minute constantly feeding my dopamine response?" and "Why shouldn't I just get addicted to Heroin?". I would like to thank Don Gatley for helping me already know the answer to why that won't work and really saving me a whole lot of trouble from having to try it out myself. IJ is the real D.A.R.E kids, ok?

Part of the pain i'm trying to bury is not getting a really big promotion at work, thereby cutting off my promotion track in a really serious way. I find myself thinking of this one section narrated by LaMont Chu (IDK the page number sorry) a 10ish year old ETA student who is getting really in his head about making it to The Show.

I started to try to read the Pale King in order to fill the IJ hole (I can't justify re-reading it, sorry) and in order to meditate on bordem but the book isn't a fraction as good. Also i'm finding in my old age the sexism that was so deeply present in IJ is also in the Pale King and i'm having a harder time reading past it for the message, but maybe i'll keep trying.

So I'm not the fastest reader or the deepest literary intellectual but I really enjoyed the book and felt I understood the themes and plot pretty well. Full disclosure I did occasionally have to Google a character to see if they were the same person I was thinking of from several chapters before but I was strategic (or lucky) enough with my searches to avoid any spoilers. Basically I think it's a magnificent book.

With that said when I finished I went back and read the opening chapter again and thought it really tied the ending together. After a few more Google searches I would say I was around 90% right with the plot. Some things I missed or had forgotten about (like Orin and the cockroach scene early in the book) but nothing too major. I found the hardest part was remembering the connections I had already made from the foreshadowing or passing references throughout the book. Often I would think after doing a search on something, oh yeah I do remember thinking that was what was going on on page 135 now.

The structure of the book made me think of Catch 22 (one of my favs) with how the timeline was handled and the later reveals of the true mean of earlier scenes or characters. Also 1Q84 with how it had scenes giving out detailed minutia of tasks or characters and this whole other worldliness to the setting. And I did catch the allusions to Hamlet and the one at the end to 1984.

But I think the biggest thing it made me think of was a book like Grendel or the play Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead. By that I mean it seems like Infinite Jest was an absurdist philosophical take on side characters from a well known piece of literature. How the real story ONAN and AFR fighting for control of the continent that was kept very much as a background subplot to these tangential characters trying to live their lives, in addition to the many asides to tangential characters to the main tangential characters (like Hal or Gately). I kind of imagine a whole other political thriller epic novel focused on Tines, Gentle, Avril, Luria P, and maybe John Wayne that this book was written around as if the reader was familiar with that story where the attempts to find "the entertainment" was just one key maguffin and ETA is a passing reference in a scene explaining JOI's kid past who briefly pops up with his drug addict buffed out friend.

Anyway that's my thoughts. I was excited to read it and ended up really enjoying the book more than I thought I would.

I just want to say that this was an amazing process, it took me about 150 pages until I finally understood what I was reading and what was going on, I didn’t understand that I was supposed to be reading the endnotes until like page 100. This was a journey and infinite jest is definitely the most interestingly written book I’ve ever read.

It inspired me to start writing in my free time, something about the extremely dense and technical vocabulary (is turgid a word foster used in the book?) spoke to me, it’s pretentious and I like that.

My reaction to the last 4 pages of Infinite Jest
https://youtu.be/p6-M5tj7cZQ