Infinite Jestation: A Blogthrough (Pages 151-171)

Unlike the other Infinite Aaron, I've been falling steadily behind in my reading of Infinite Jest, falling, I suspect, prey to the same malaise that struck me both of the previous times I attempted to read through David Foster Wallace's novel. That is, namely, that I don't want to finish the novel. Appropriately enough, I got lost reading Beckett this past week, specifically some of his short plays and novels (research for two excellent shows I reviewed, First Love and Krapp, 39), and they reminded me greatly of the rambling monologue James Sr. (p. 157-169) delivers to his son, James O. Incandenza, in B.S. 1960. That is, they are moments you could get lost inside, moments that are so rich, so thick, so ultimately enjoyable, that they almost compel you, feverishly, to reread them, over and over again, looking for meaning. This is, I imagine, how some people feel about texts that are more religious in nature.

But I digress: this section is, as James puts it after putting away a shot of his amber liquid, "gloriously painful," which is appropriate, as it sums up the man's entire life, fixated as he in using his son, Jim, to recreate the past. "I'm giving it the one last total shot a man's obligation to his last waning talent deserves," he says of his last-ditch efforts to return to Hollywood, even though he's unable to even make it to the tennis courts with his uninterested ten-year-old son. (No wonder, then, that James Jr. eventually makes such rebellious apres-garde films.) No, he's still hung up on his own father issues, with the way, in 1933, his father's cruelly dismissive "Yes, But He'll Never Be Great," causes his body to self-destruct on the tennis court. And in doing so, he has carried over the worst of his father's traits, specifically the centrally isolating solipsism (a theme of the novel, if you haven't yet guessed) that Wallace evokes here, a conversation between father and son in which only the father speaks and even the son's actions drown within a sea of text.

The drunker James gets, the more I think of Beckett, too, for the whole thing turns into a rant on mortality: "I'm . . . I'm just afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN." And, in light of Wallace's eventual succumbing to depression, there's a lesson here, too, about the dark gift of talent, for it is a gift that is either lived up to or lost, and some people cannot cope with the feeling of losing touch with their talent. (Better to have loved and lost may apply to the heart, but not the mind, for which blissfully unburdened ignorance is sometimes preferred.) James wails about being there--inside the perfect machine of his body that he created--and I can't help but remember the introduction to Infinite Jest, in which Hal tries to communicate that he is present, locked to some degree within his "perfect" body. (Hal's talent for tennis is never questioned.)

I want to address, briefly, a criticism that I've heard from some people about this novel, particularly sections like this. They seem to think that it is filled with technical writing, and that all of the characters ultimately end up sounding alike. This is simply not true--the words may not always fit the characters, but the rhythm of the language is always unique to each section. Like Joyce, much of Wallace's work is better when read aloud (and I've heard good buzz about the film version of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men currently playing at Sundance). Just listen: "He plays golf. Your grandfather. Your grandpappy. Golf. A golf man. Is my tone communicating the contempt? Billiards on a big table, Jim. A bodiless game of spasmodic flailing and flying sod. A quote unquote sport. Anal rage and checkered berets. This is almost empty." Out of context, sure, that description of golf might seem out of character, and yes, the "quote/unquote" business is identifiably Wallace. And yet it's James's voice pressing through it, slurring perhaps, but there all the same.

In light of all that (by the way, Hal's father's initials are J.O.I., or "joy"), seeing Pemulis's Drug Smuggling (p. 169-171) is rather underwhelming, but there's a nice nugget buried in footnote 57 that compares the "incredibly potent [drug] DMZ" to a piece of modernist work. Considering how much I've been tripping out on Infinite Jest (in much the same way, I dare say, as the poor victims of J.O.I.'s film version), I'd say that's a pretty accurate description.

Words looked up: parping, rutilant, purled

Freshwater

Photo/Carol Rosegg

"To the true artist, one fact is the same as another," says the painter George Frederick Watts, struggling to find a way in which to paint Modesty in such a way that she is both veiled and naked. Perhaps that's why, in the midst of her more serious writing, Virginia Woolf set some private time aside to work on Freshwater, a gentle satirizing of art that contains absolutely no facts. In Anne Bogart's hands (cobbled together from the original 1923 script and Woolf's 1935 revision), the play serves as a lighthearted cry for freedom--there are no suicides here, and a divorce is handled by way of porpoise.

The problem Ellen Terry (Kelly Maurer) faces--while posing for her husband Watt's (Barney O'Hanlon) "Modesty Crouching at the Feet of Mammon"--is that nothing ever changes in this house. The philosopher Charles Hay Cameron (Tom Nelis) and his photographer wife, Julia Margaret Cameron (Ellen Lauren), are off to live in India--but not until their coffins arrive. Alfred Lord Tennyson (Stephen Duff Webber), the poet, has been reading Maud to his friends so often that the words have lost all meaning. When a handsome soldier appears, Lt. John Craig (Gian Murray Gianino), she jumps at the chance to actually be seen, heard, and loved--he is no self-absorbed artist. (Nor is the knowing maid, Mary Magdalen [Akiko Aizawa].)

Freshwater was designed to be performed and seen by Woolf's friends in the Bloombury Group, and the play's humor is directed mainly at self-aware artists. However, Bogart has added some musical numbers and beefed up the sight gags so as to make it a broader comedy. (Nelis might as well be auditioning for Monty Python; Webber is mimicking Will Ferrell.) In fact, the play has enough doors opening and closing to be a farce, save that for all the entrances and exits, nobody ever really goes anywhere or does anything. So far as ham goes, Bogart's seasoned Woolf's recipe as well as she can and it does stand at a lean 70 minutes, but you'd better not come hungry for much more because--true to today's starving artists--the table is pretty threadbare.

The Judgment of Paris

Photo/Steven Schreiber

Three women dance into the decaying theater, vying for a golden apple. The first, Hera (Laura Careless), performs a short ballet, hoping to win the approval of Paris (Seth Numrich). The second, Athena (Yeva Glover), bursts into a short flapping jazz number, never mind the shimmery armor. But it is Aphrodite (Gioia Marchese), with her "give the audience what it wants" fan burlesque who wins the day. This, The Judgement of Paris, leads--through Austin McCormick's gracefully choreographed violence--to the rape of Helen (Elyssa Dole), that Everywoman, giving truth to the phrase "ravishing beauty."

McCormick's piece could not have found a better place than the Duo Theater, the sort of decayed Moulin Rouge-type place, gilded proscenium and all, that signifies the cost of maintaining beauty. The free Ferrero Rocher on every chair (an expensive type of cheap chocolate) and Olivera Gajic's slightly frayed can-can costumes are further extensions of that thought; Marchese's interpretation of Aphrodite as the Russian mistress of a brothel solidifies it. While these consistencies hold things together, McCormick (and his Company XIV ensemble) are free to giddily romp through their spin on Paris's story. And though they pull from several sources (including, rather appropriately, Chuck Mee's Agamemmnon 2.0), it's their own text, which creates the sort of coherent throughline that experimental works benefit from.

This doesn't mean that some of the images aren't confusing. For instance, it's unclear what Davon Rainey, cross-dressing as one of the frolicking "cupids" of the play, represents (though not to his discredit; his dancing is superb). However, given the clear theme, we can draw our own conclusions, as we do when ruffling skirts are made to seem like waves, or a slow sensual dance in the smoky dark can resemble a dance of fallen warriors, if the music and monologue give it such a context. Of course, the play is strongest when everything merges: when a single spotlight remains fixed on a befuddled Helen and the other dancers cruelly move her to the choreography, the result is heartbreaking.

McCormick has labeled The Judgment of Paris as "a dramatic entertainment." Thankfully, he has not tarnished the beauty of either one.

Sixty Miles to Silver Lake

Photo/Monique Carboni

The thing about life--real life--is that it isn't full of dramatic moments. And when its drama overtakes us, it's rarely as well-spoken as it is in the theater. However, life is filled with plenty of regular moments, and some of the mundane stuff we say is pretty profound. In Sixty Miles to Silver Lake, Dan LeFranc brilliantly captures the relationship between a father and son in a series of photo-realistic snapshots, develops them over several years, and then shuffles them together for maximum exposure. Independently, these are quiet moments, ones that hint at Ky's unconscious insensitivity and show Denny's melancholy responses to his parent's divorce. But as a whole, they add up, with repeating lines serving as a reminder of how much and little the father-son relationship changes.

LeFranc's writing is outstanding. With Denny, he nails the run-on excitment and universal disdain of teenagers; with Ky, he's got his finger to the pulse of the awkwardly embarassing ways in which fathers try to stay hip and their attempts to stay in control. And while these characters are at once recognizable, they are never even remotely cliche: the dialogue is far too specific for that. Silver Lake's structure also keeps things fresh: all the scenes take place within a car, which surrounds even casual exchanges in a deeper level of intimacy. The aesthetic choices mirror the text, too: Dane Laffrey's set is recognizably a specific car, but at the same time, open enough to be any car, and Tyler Micoleau's lighting makes such subtle shifts that those who want to can note the precise demarcations in time while others can just enjoy a smooth, singular ride.

The show also benefits from top-notch directing and acting. Anne Kauffman, as usual, remains fixed on the human interactions: her deft ability to communicate a plausible weirdness saves the latter third of Silver Lake. As the show drifts into dreamy symbolism and broadens to show us Denny as a father, the set expands, preserving our sense of boundaries---the equivalent, in other words, of changing a flat tire while the car remains in motion. Dane DeHaan (Denny) and Joseph Adams (Ky) are more noticibly impressive, at odds one moment and best friends the next, but always consistently within their characters. As the father, Adams is more aware of his needs--they are rooted in a transcendentally youthful nostalgia ("The juice, dad!")--but DeHaan is equally virtuosic, communicating equally desperate needs without fully knowing what they are (something that frequent leads back to the embarassed old "I so wish you weren't my dad").

Don't let the small car and small scenes fool you: LeFranc's play has a lot of leg room, stretching out over seven years (though not in chronological order). You don't even have to worry about buckling up, not with Soho Rep. driving Sixty Miles to Silver Lake.

Krapp, 39

Photo/Dixie Sheridan

In Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, a 69-year-old man looks back at a life less than lived and throws himself a somewhat bitter birthday party, saying farewell to a life that is no longer his. Michael Laurence's riff on the subject, Krapp, 39, says hello to a life that he wishes to claim. At first, it's the character of Krapp, whose monologue he plans to record on stage and then use thirty years from now. But along the way, prodded by phone conversations with his friends (one assumes these are George Demas, and his off-stage collaborator, Jon Dichter), the play becomes an archival of his own life: as George puts it, the only thing that can be controlled--that is, lived--is the present, and the only thing that an actor can show--with or without a character--is something personal.

To that end, Laurence fills the stage with himself: objects from his past line a "tech" table along the back wall, two video cameras record this moment to represent his future, and an often handheld digital camera records his high-resolution present, the footage visible on a large flatscreen monitor off to stage left. Just like Krapp, none of these objects are passive: Laurence films his historical relics in slow, appreciative pans during the recorded moments, and instead of listening to a younger version of himself, he reads aloud diary entries and letters from the last ten years. Whether these pieces of the actor Laurence are fact or fiction is irrelevant--they feel real, particularly a birthday message from Mama.

Laurence's grant-worthy term for Krapp, 39 is "an autobiographical 'documentary' theater piece," but in truth, it is neither a history nor a premonition, and it is all the stronger for that. Krapp is a sort of shield, in which an actor can visit the deep themes of love and death and, especially, loss. Stripped of that role--"Take the character away from the actor and what does he have?"--and there's a far greater existential dread . . . and, as Beckett so wisely observed, a certain special comedy, too.