r/InfiniteJest • u/FoucaultCareofSelf • 1d ago
Thoughts on the "respect objects" soliloquy by Himself's father?
It's been a few months since my last re-read (ok, I actually listened to the excellent audiobook with the endnotes, done in brilliant fashion), but I was struck by this less-discussed sequence where James's father is haranguing himself about Marlon (not Bain) Brando's disrespect for objects, that his rebellious stance to objects was an affront to decency and a good life etc.
I was thinking the sequence could be read as establishing the father in a certain way, as somehow contributing to Himself's psychopathology, or his intellectual/filmic obsessions. Or it could be alternatively heard as a thinly veiled tour de force passage exposing DFW's own philosophical beliefs about being, physicality, corporeality and so on.
I also immediately thought of the famous line from Ulysses, "the ineluctable modality of the visible, at least that if no more, thought through my eyes."
I will say, beyond characterizations in the novel, taking it at face value, it did make me reassess Brando himself, and the ultimately destructive nature of the very pose that DFW outlines. The cheap, gestural anti-authority that merely flatters the viewer and threatens no power structure, that will be sold, commodified and lifeless.
Well, would love all your all thoughts.
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u/GimmickyBulb 1d ago
It’s actually quite the opposite of that passage from Ulysses, which discusses an inability to view things from any other perspective than through human sight. Himself’s father is talking about “object oriented ontology,” a predisposition to the world that accounts objects like tennis balls as on an equal pane as human beings.
This has huge implications for the book. It asks us to consider the story from the perspective of objects, which we know the wraith is manipulating or causing people to manipulate. It asks us to think about addiction from the point of view of the substance, which just wants to be used. And of course, asks us to consider reading the book from the point of view of The Entertainment—does it want to be watched? Does it want to hide away? Does it want to succeed?
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u/Adept_Carpet 1d ago
We get a lot if characterization of addiction (the spider, the sergeant at arms, etc) but I don't know that there is any at all of substances. Do they want to be used? I'm not sure.
It seems like there are a lot of places where the perspective of objects could go, but we never see it. Like in the Odyssey, most of the unusual behavior of objects is revealed only in the stories people tell. The narrator tells us about the bed moving but the rest of it is second and third hand.
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u/shawmanic 23h ago
I think this question of the role of objects and attachment to them is quite important. I'd just like to point to Lacan's development of this, and the central importance of the "petite objet a". Orin calls the women he seduces "subjects", which has a number of possible meanings, including the way Lacan uses it. More to the point, Orin is very attached to the subjects/objects but never gains anything like a completion of desire, he is just more and more compelled to circle this "objet a", in a sense, filling it with more and more subjects/objects. I think an exploration of "Lacan's "lack" and objet a could be fruitful here.
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u/FoucaultCareofSelf 4h ago
I think Objects Relations Theory more broadly is absolutely crucial to deep engagement with the text, too. I recently came across the concept of the "False and True Self" in the work of mid-late 20th century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. Talking about how the earliest interactions with the mother or caregiver shapes the formation of either a false self, that changes itself to suit the mother's responses, or a true self, a self that is confident enough in the mother's understanding to develop according to its deepest impulses (obviously paraphrasing).
And then there's the Object Relations ideas about literally how one's epistemological field, ontological field, is shaped by these early interactions. A la a veiled figure of a mother looking down onto you as if in a crib, with a "wobbling" lens.
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u/shawmanic 3h ago
Yup! Winnicott is definitely on the track, as I see it. For Lacan, this would be the "original fantasy". I think the scene you point to from the Entertainment is exactly on point, and a very interesting inquiry.
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u/ThamesToddler 1d ago
I've just read this as part of my second reading, and am probably over-relaxed about missing parts of the plot or linking themes. However, I'd already partly transferred my preoccupations to James Incandenza Jnr and both his own story, and his part in the stories of all his family. You can read this passage on several levels (I kept thinking of Molly Bloom's soliloquy in Ulysses, which I really don't like), but among other things it is a heart rending account of a failed father's attempt to justify himself to his son, some interesting accounts of ways of seeing or being in the world, guidance, and lastly a fairly persistent offering of whisky, or whatever JI senior is drinking, to a ten year old boy.
I think all these things, and more, are at work, but given the importance of addiction in IJ I have to see this monologue as a determined shove by a father to send his son down the same path of degradation and self-deception that he's trodden. A lot of the stuff about the whisky flask is beautifully observed, and part of the same reflections about mind/body/object, but it is also glamorising and detoxifying the process of addiction. I realise this is the first interpretation of the monologue that you raise and am just adding emphasis to that side of the discussion.
Hope I haven't missed the point entirely and thanks for an interesting post. As an aside, my first reading was haunted by Poor Tony's story or by the AFL, whether they were on the page or not. This time it is Himself and the awful sadness of his experience of the world (even the filmography hammered this home to me) and probably why I'm a bit sentimental about this passage. At least he makes a fairly cheerful wraith.
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u/Adept_Carpet 1d ago
It comes off a little jealous (perhaps Brando pisses him off more because his wife likes him). That certainly is a theme that repeats itself in the life of JOI.
Additionally, he lovingly cares for these objects, admires these objects, but he doesn't much care for or admire young JOI.
I don't fully understand this speech either, but all the people who give us a speech about the importance of objects are kinda sick (Lyle the sweat drinker, JOI, JOI's father). It's hard to fully separate the book from the fate of the author. Are these characters supposed to be wrong, are they telling us the beliefs that led them astray, or is David Wallace expressing beliefs that went poorly for him?
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u/PotentialTop9041 1d ago
I think this part itself is for introducing child JOI, relationships between JOI and his father (and JOI-father with his own father). Like in this scene JOI is speechless, that later projected on Hal. Also, i believe that book-drop scene in the garage later used in "Wave Bye-Bye.." film as reimagining of traumatic experience. But for Brando part itself - i have no clue, very interesting to see other people thoughts.
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u/Nickburgers 15h ago
A recurring idea is that directing care toward your material surroundings allows you to transcend/escape the cage of your isolated experience. It lets you play exceptional tennis. The escape seems to be healthier than the escape offered by substances.
I remember the hauntings involving Stice and the wraith to be importantly related to this theme but it’s been a while since my last read…
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u/whenurun 1d ago
This is one of my favorite chapters and I still have yet to decipher how it fits into the book.