Good Looking People in Small Clever Rooms That Utilize Every Centimeter of Available Space

Topics of discussion:

• Hal's relationship with Himself (Hal being the most similar to J.O.I.); 
• Lenz: strange get-up, racist inner monologue, and the effects of cocaine; 
• AFR in Antitoi Entertainment;
• Ruth chasing Poor Tony; 
• The Swiss hand model IS Luria P.?!

See also:

Topics of discussion:

• Ruth Van Cleeve and Kate Gompert encountering Poor Tony; 
• Cocaine Anonymous;
• Meanwhile, at ETA...Pemulis messes in the ceiling panels, Lyle hovers, Schtitt and Mario go for ice cream, Avril chain smokes, and Hal watches Blood Sister;

See also:

Topics of discussion:

• Helen Steeply interviews Thierry Poutrincourt while Hal and Ortho play a match; 
• DeLint is both a jerk and maybe not very smart;
• Matty Pemulis and child abuse;
• Hal watching old TPs of James O.'s films

See also:

• the name "Ortho;"
• time ghosts;
• rabbit holes that are short and unrewarding 

We'll read pages 698–716 next time.

Topics of discussion:

• Marlon Bain ("a very wet boy" and Orin's former doubles partner) corresponds with Helen Steeply; 
• Orin attempting to define himself in opposition to Avril;
• a nightmare review;
• younger students in the tunnels picking up trash and stumbling on TP cartridges?!

See also:

This time, we welcome special guest, Jonathan Gingerich, to join us as we talk about...

Topics of discussion:

Topics of discussion:

• TP specifications/advertisements;
• CHOICE;
• Draining the duck pond;
• Vignette in Rodney Tine's office;
• MIT radio technician is kidnapped by AFR;
• Dinner at ETA;
• And possible ghosts remain!

See also:

Topics of discussion:

• Racoons;
• What do you miss? - Orin takes a "survey" (where did automatic doors go?);
• Moving cars around outside Ennet House and the violence that ensues!

See also:

Our apologies for some less-than-great audio this week. It's still listenable, just a little rougher than usual.

We'll read pages 596–620 next time.

Topics of discussion:

• Lenz + Green + Polynesian music;
• Mario's missing Madame Psychosis;
• Don Gately's administrative duties;
• Basically, Brianna is Don Gately!

See also:

Next episode we'll be reading pages 575–596.

Topics of discussion:

• Helen Steeply's interview with Orin Incandenza;
• Call-backs to those times when J.O.I. impersonated health care professionals…;
• The nature of mental illness;
• Idris Arslanian (???) wandering around in a blindfold;
• Tree creatures pooping and hawks swooping;
• and HAIR CUTS

See also:

Topics of discussion:

CW: animal cruelty

Topics of discussion:

• Why we skip reading things;
• Marathe and Steeply continue sitting; 
• Joelle/Don Gately - veils, misunderstanding words;
• Randy Lenz - doing a little cocaine;
• Graphic violence and the purpose in the novel

See also:

Topics of discussion:

James O.'s autobiography; Casual sexism + gender roles; Narcotics Anonymous; Hank Hoyne and studying The Entertainment; Lateral Alice Moore; Politeness Roulette; and EPISODE 17

See also:

Topics of discussion:

Marathe and Steeply's conversation about neurology and p-terminals; "Has anyone told you Don Gately has a square head?"; the Antitoi Brothers' shenanigans; stereotyping of folks in wheelchairs; Infinite Jest: apparently unfilmable, but IS IT?

See also:

Topics of discussion:

New bikes; trite cliches that actually work; teeth dreams; the whereabouts of Madame Psychosis; A.M. drills; C.T. and Total Worry; living within the tennis court; and CAKE

See also:

Topics of discussion:

Marathe and Steeply talk the Office of Unspecified Services, their political philosophies, and SOUP; The American Dream; Eric Clipperton (finally some closure); Gately and cleaning; Dr. Dolores Rusk, ETA counselor

See also:

Topics of discussion:Eschaton, film, leitmotif, critics and consumerism, President Gentle, Eric Clipperton, advertising, computer storage, Schtitt's politics, and BANANAS!

See also:

Topics of discussion: Marathe and Steeply on the ledge, still; anti-confluentialism; Interdependence Day celebrations at Enfield Tennis Academy; the politics of O.N.A.N.; the politics of A.A.; how to do A.A. "right;" also HATS 

See also: 

• filmmakers: Fritz Lang, Robert Bresson, Maya Deren, Hollis Frampton 
• Jacques Godbout's Kid Sentiment & The Black Sheep 
• Roger Ebert's review of Pink Flamingos 
• Andrew's non-fiction poetics essay, "Self-Consciousness, Performance, and the Technical Monster" 
• William Blake "The Tyger" & "The Lamb" 
• Allen Ginsberg reading William Blake 
• Tod Haynes' Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (movie) 
• Denise Duhamel's Barbie poems, Kinky 
• Cloud Atlas (movie) 
• Network (movie) 
• Avatar: The Last Air Bender 
• Inygo Montoya in The Princess Bride 
• Murder on the Orient Express (1974 movie) 
• Peter Greenaway's The Falls (movie) 

We’ll be reading pages 395–418 next week. 

Please excuse this late installment—it's because I'm lazy! In this episode, we talk about AA and dive into David Foster Wallace's sometimes-unsavory biography.

After a one-week hiccup in our schedule, we're back and reading about an unmitigated fiasco. That's right—it's Eschaton!

Cameras (again); Mario Incandenza continues to be one of the few characters with any redeeming qualities; Emil Minty is a real person!?; beasts; computers; apocalypses; unidentified Ford-sitters.

Welcome to our belated fourteenth episode—sorry, it couldn't be helped! This week, we learn more about Quebecois separatists and discuss our own, largely-inadequate history educations.

• Answering the double-bind essay question
• Inadequate curricula, both real and fictional
• Quebec History in Infinite Jest: Disentangling Fact from Fiction: A Brief Survey of Canadian Historical References in the Writings of David Foster Wallace
• Wile E. Coyote as a model for direct action in the Quebec freedom struggle

It's our lucky 13th episode—we're just past page 300, and we have some technical difficulties!

• Johnny Gentle, famous crooner
• Prorectors: the disaffected grad-student-class of ETA
• A sort of contortionist with other people's bodies
• Acid collections
• Digital Bolexes: the mystery deepens!
• Poor Tony's harrowing detox
• "Zuckung"

We normally record our podcast on a Saturday afternoon, but we did this one on a Thursday morning and it shows. Please excuse the slightly reduced audio quality, due to the sudden and catastrophic failure of an SD card.

• Clichés
• "Egregious"
• Assigned readings
• Overworked students/space mutinies

Our week 11 reading is dominated by a long phone call, so it seems somehow fitting, even thematically appropriate, that we, as always, meet up with our friends to discuss it telephonically.

• "The sated ghost cannot see secret things"
• The unusual bodies of Infinite Jest
• More Hamlet parallells
• Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton/"It was a dark and stormy night"

It's week 10, we've made it to double digits!

• WHERE DID THE ACID GO?
• Madame Psychosis/metempsychosis/psychopomps
• Hedgehogs: what do they do?

We'll be reading pages 242–270 next week.

Have you read Infinite Jest, or have you tried to read Infinite Jest? Let us know: anchor.fm/small-clever-rooms/message

It's week 9, and we're still reading a long book!

• French prescriptivism/Audio à la demande
• Facial isometrics/tortured Popes
• Recovery aphorisms/a disagreement over narrative perspective
• Evil CIA experiments/Medieval mass hallucinations
• Fiberglass replicas of famous filmmakers
• Suicidal ideation/other sad stuff

Welcome back for our 8th week of Infinite Jest! We're up to page 198.

• We're sad for Hal
• "Feral Prodigy"
• Mario Incandenza's cinematic influences
• Enfield Tennis Academy's academic curricular model
• "Bafflegab"
• The incident with the fork
• President Limbaugh?
• Formication
• "Unabashed bashing at its most fascist"
• Madame Psychosis
• The Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed
• Medusa vs. Odalisque
• Depressing books
• The mimetic architecture of the M.I.T. Student Union
• The buildings on Commonwealth Avenue

The gang is up to page 172 this week. This reading featured a long chapter with no paragraph breaks and menacing undertones! Topics of discussion

• Discord chicken quality
• James O. Incandenza's daddy issues
• The O.N.A.N. insignia
• Mario's head-mounted Bolex
• The Incandenzas’ inheritance of family problems
• Hideous tennis injuries
• DMZ/Madame Psychosis
• ⚡️HAMLET⚡️

We're nearing two months of quarantine, and Vvinni's got bees! Topics of discussion include:

• Supposedly Lyle, on wisdom being the better part of valor
• The harrowing account of C's death by Yours Truly
• Lying to your brother over the phone
• The bricklayer joke
• Grading Hal's homework
• Microwaves, and the dangers thereof
• The treacheries of videoconferencing

See also:

Not to brag, but it's our best episode so far! Topics of discussion include:

• Last weekend's pie-baking fiasco
• Dental hygiene
• The three worst Pokémon types
• You can only wear a yachting cap ironically so may times before you're wearing it sincerely
• An anti-Entertainment!?
• The ugly gender/sex politics of that deeply uncomfortable chapter with Mario and Millicent Kent
• Twin Peaks' Denise Bryson vs. the transmisogyny of Friends

For next week, we'll read up through page 151.

The gang all stopped reading on the same page this week! Topics of discussion include:

• History of Entertainment
• Big Buddies/Little Buddies
• The Darkness
• Oatmeal, big wooden spoons
• Romance vs. duty
• Puzzling out the provenance of the Entertainment

See also:

Welcome back! We had planned to get to page 95 this week, but another long endnote leapt out of the bushes at us! Norma and Vvinni slogged bravely onward to page 95, while Andrew and Brianna cut their losses and stopped at page 85. This week's topics of discussion include:

• Cats who are problems
• Literary depictions of depression/psychiatric medicine
• Gerhardt Schtitt's musings on the sublime poetics of tennis
• The Enfield (England) Poltergeist
• Québécois separatists/wheelchair assassins/le jeu du Prochain Train
• Feral hamsters!
• They may kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier.
• O.N.A.N./Onan

For an astounding second week in a row, the gang meets up to talk about Infinite Jest! We had planned to get to page 78 today, but we ran into an enormous endnote, so we stopped at page 68 instead.

This week's topics of discussion include:

• Found cats
• Hi, Grandma!
• “Quo Vadis”
• Imaginary technology
• Nightmares
• The filmography of James O. Incandenza, and his place in the 20th century experimental cinema canon
• Nuclear fusion

We're actually doing it: Andrew and Brianna are joined by their friend Vvinni and Andrew's mom Norma, as they begin the gargantuan task of reading and discussing Infinite Jest.

• This week's topics of discussion include:
• The annoyance of endnotes
• And but so
• The glass delusion; glass pianos
• Literary blackface
• Dove Bars: chocolate, or soap?
• Turkeys

Next week, we'll settle in and discuss pages 50–78.

We went back and recorded this mini-episode when we were a little more than halfway through the book because we realized our first episode didn't do a great job of introducing us or what you could expect from the podcast. Welcome! This podcast is a book club where we read and talk about Infinite Jest, the 1996 novel by David Foster Wallace. It's a book about tennis, experimental film, depression, addiction, experimental tennis, global politics, recovery, and a few other things.

• Trigger warnings for Infinite Jest
• Sexual Assault
• Abuse
• Child abuse/pedophilia/incest
• Animal cruelty or animal death
• Self-harm and suicide
• Eating disorders, body hatred, and fat phobia
• Violence Kidnapping and abduction
• Death or dying
• Blood
• Mental illness and ableism
• Racism and racial slurs
• Sexism and misogyny
• Classism
• Transphobia and trans misogyny
• Homophobia and heterosexism
• Addiction and drug use

[based on the University of Michigan LSA Inclusive Teaching Initiative's list of potential trigger warnings]

Our first episode starts with pages 1–49 of the paperback edition.