What. Did I. Just read.
I can deal with junkies getting heroin or whatever laced with detergent and one of them having their eye pop out of their head. Or with people being terrible human beings. But David Foster Wallace's description of an E.T.A. student paraboling head first into the upright monitor of a smashed Yushityu desktop computer is just terrifying. A flash bang rendition of George Orwell's foot in a human face for all eternity.
Or, as Pemulis says when the rules of the game of Eschaton start to break down, "Jaysus!" (338).
Right, Eschaton.
So the last section of Infinite Jest that I've read details this game to a painstaking degree. Essentially, it's a four-tennis court top strategy game defined by the players' primary weapon being nuclear warheads that they have to lob to their targets. Since the game is played on a world map projected onto four adjoining tennis courts, it's a big job to orchestrate it all, and each year (apparently the game gets played about once a year), one person takes on this duty. This time that person is Otis Lord, who winds up in the monitor at section's end.
I've noted it before, but Foster Wallace truly has a knack for writing absolute chaos. And all the dry data that the section gives you before the game's order breaks down just whets your appetite for such chaos.
What's worse, it's not likely that we'll hear about the fate of those who were beaten and bloodied in the brawl that ends the section for a few more yet. Even then, I doubt we'll hear directly. Maybe the mention of the black armbands during the section's set up of Eschaton wasn't just to fill out the list of materials used - maybe.
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