This mountain of a book is the result?

Why kill your audience?

A question posed by the late comedian Bill Hicks in response to the accusation that Judas Priest had layered its albums with subliminal messages driving its fans to commit suicide. To quote:

“You hear about these two kids, big fans of that band Judas Priest? They listened to the band then killed themselves....wow...two less gas station attendants in the world. What? I don't mean to be cruel but I don't think we lost a cure for cancer here. Trust me, there'll be no delay in the shuttle program because of this. But again, nobody asked the question that I wanted asking at the trial. There are these subliminal messages, backwards messages on the album, OK? Here’s the question that did not get asked in this retarded case: What performer wants their audience dead? What are these guys in the band doing?”

Hicks shifts to working class British accent.

“You know, dude, I'm fucking sick of this. I am fucking sick of it. I'm sick of the touring. I'm sick of making 400,000 dollars a fucking night. I'm sick of the free drugs, the free booze, the groupies blowing me to fucking dawn every night, I'm in a rut and I want out.”

“We got all those concerts coming up, man.”

“I know, it sucks. Unless... Ian, Nigel, come here. I just had a fucking idea, man. What if, Ian ... Let's just say, what if....now open your mind real wide now. What if we kill the fucking audience? Could I go back to my day job? I could sell shoes again!”

James Orin Incandenza

James Orin Incandenza hovers in the novel's background like the ghost of Hamlet's father. At one point, he seems to become a literal ghost. 

While still corporeal, he put out an oeuvre of avant-garde films (or cartridges). As Wallace describes his obscure legacy ...

"...even the bastards in the avant-garde journels were complaining that even in his commercially entertaining stuff Incandenza’s fatal Achilles’ heel was plot, that Incandenza’s efforts had no sort of engaging plot, no movement that sucked you in and drew you along."

A description that obviously and equally applies to David Foster Wallace's stuff.

 

Bathykolpian

Etymology
 
Derived from Ancient Greek words βαθύς ‎(bathús, “deep”) and κόλπος ‎(kólpos, “bosom”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: băth-i-kol-pē-en

Adjective

bathykolpian ‎(comparative more bathykolpian, superlative most bathykolpian)

1. deep-bosomed.
2. big-breasted.

   "The bathykolpian Heré ... sent down Iris" - Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" (1858)

Quentin Tarantino

In the 1990s, Quentin Tarantino influenced a tremendous growth in nonlinear films with Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994). Here's a helpful infographic: Pulp Fiction in Order.

Gravity's Rainbow vs. Infinite Jest

And now to address the big, shiny, somewhat phallic V-2 rocket in the room.

Wallace wrote a big, funny post-modern book that skewers American civilization. So did Thomas Pynchon (c.f. Gravity's Rainbow). Aside from frequent parabola references, that's pretty much where the similarity ends.

Gravity's Rainbow is basically a pilgrimage. Pynchon's characters move from Point A to Point B.
Infinite Jest is static. Wallace's characters are locked in their own skulls, islands unto themselves.

Gravity's Rainbow had some long strange trips, baby. When faced with evil Nazi rocket scientists and the death cult techno-conspiracy of Western Civilization, why not get high?

Gravity's Rainbow thundered with the voice of the paranoid Author God. Infinite Jest doesn't.

Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) was a novelist, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. He is best known for his novel A Clockwork Orange, but altogether he wrote thirty-three novels, twenty-five works of non-fiction, two volumes of autobiography, three symphonies, more than 150 other musical works, reams of journalism and much more. He was born in Manchester, England and grew up in Harpurhey and Moss Side, went to school in Rusholme, and studied at Manchester University. He lived in Malaya, Malta, Monaco, Italy and the US among other places, and is still widely read all over the world.

In addition to cooking up the Indo-European tongue of Quest for Fire and the nadsat slang of A Clockwork Orange, this wordy wordsmith peppered his books with near-forgotten slovos. For example ...

Bathykolpian.

Said word pops up in his Malthusian SF novel, The Wanting Seed. To look it up, you used to have to crack open the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary or pay to use their website. It ain't in the collegiate dictionaries. But it is on Wiktionary.

There's a bloody essay out there somewhere chock full of Burgess' words. But I couldn't find it. Bathykolpian will have to do.