Passages that Pop #1

Earlier tonight I was revisiting a few sections I dog-eared within David Foster Wallace's brilliant Infinite Jest, the mammoth tome dedicated to eviscerating entertainment media, privatized education, and of course, youth tennis.  After being struck by a passage on p.167, concerning a father relating to his son, Jim, I thought I would try to share the passage on the blog and include some modern media that might be used to kick-start young readers into it.

"Kids today...you kids today somehow don't know how to feel, much less love, to say nothing of respect.  We're just bodies to you.  We're just bodies and shoulders and scarred knees and big bellies and empty wallets and flasks to you.  I'm not saying something cliche like you take us for granted so much as I'm saying you cannot...imagine our absence.  We're so present it's ceased to mean.  We're environmental.  Furniture of the world.  Jim, I could imagine that man's absence.  Jim, I'm telling you you cannot imagine my absence.  It's my fault, Jim, home so much, limping around, ruined knees, overweight, under the Influence, burping, nonslim, sweat-soaked in that broiler of a trailer, burping, farting, frustrated, miserable, knocking lamps over, overshooting my reach.  Afraid to give my last talent the one shot it demanded.  Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.  Use it or lose it, he'd say over the newspaper.  I'm...I'm just afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN."


For a passage that does begin with the hackneyed "kids today", there is so much verbal potency packed into a few sentences.  The repetition of the Father's symptoms building on themselves, culminating in the wonderful, coach-able quote of "talent is its own expectation".  Wallace works mostly in humor and outlandish concepts taken to insane levels in the novel, but when real human failure and emotion is allowed to peek through, it is hard to deny his power.

One of the main extended metaphors in the novel is tennis.  Below is a music video for "Calamity Song", by the Decemberists, in which the lyrics AND visuals reference Infinite Jest in a humorous way.

I hope to post more "Passages that Pop" in the future, preferably once a week if I can gather some relevant media for whatever I'm reading/gushing over at the time.  The plan for next week?  An excerpt from a classic graphic novel that I discovered in the 8th grade, about the all-too-thin line between vigilantism and heroics.