Part 13 (1/2)

From ”Dockery and Son.”

72.

The end of ”High Windows”: ”The sun-comprehending gla.s.s,/And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows/Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.” The end of ”Water”: ”And I should raise in the east/A gla.s.s of water/Where any-angled light/Would congregate endlessly.”

73.

From ”Dockery and Son.”

74.

This, and later James quotes, are from the 1908 preface to The Princess Casama.s.sima. The Princess Casama.s.sima. This section of the preface has been used before, in the context of the connection between fiction and philosphy, by Martha Nussbaum in This section of the preface has been used before, in the context of the connection between fiction and philosphy, by Martha Nussbaum in Love's Knowledge Love's Knowledge.

75.

Whom he called crank turners: ”When you talk about Nabokov and Coover, you're talking about real geniuses, the writers who weathered real shock and invented this stuff in contemporary fiction. But after the pioneers always come the crank turners, the little gray people who take the machines others have built and just turn the crank, and little pellets of metafiction come out the other end.”

76.

We'll come to the second.

77.

OED: abreaction; abreaction; Psychoa.n.a.lysis Psychoa.n.a.lysis. The relief of anxiety by the expression and release of a previously repressed emotion, through reliving the experience that caused it; an instance of this.

78.

And does not sit with Wallace's respect and interest in AA, an organization he researched during the writing of Infinite Jest Infinite Jest: ”I went to a couple of meetings with these guys and thought that it was tremendously powerful. . . . For me there was a real repulsion at the beginning. ”One Day at a Time,” right? . . . But apparently part of addiction is that you need the substance so bad that when they take it away from you, you want to die. . . . Something as ba.n.a.l and reductive as ”one Day at a Time” enabled these people to walk through h.e.l.l. . . . That struck me.”

That AA is by its nature a communal activity, however, which places therapeutic emphasis on a ”buddy system,” is also worth noting.

79.

An argument recently challenged by the American professor of linguistics Dan Everett, whose paper ”Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirah,” caused an almighty brouhaha among the sort of people who get all brouhaha-ed about linguistics. In the paper he claimed to have found a tribe in the rainforest of northwestern Brazil-the Pirah-whose language does not use recursion and is, in fact, finite. The New Yorker The New Yorker had an interesting article about all this, ”The Interpreter,” in the April 16, 2007 issue. had an interesting article about all this, ”The Interpreter,” in the April 16, 2007 issue.

80.

From the OED: OED: ”Pica-A tendency or craving to eat substances other than normal food, occurring during childhood or pregnancy, or as a symptom of disease.” This is Wallace's way of describing someone chewing her own fingernails. ”Pica-A tendency or craving to eat substances other than normal food, occurring during childhood or pregnancy, or as a symptom of disease.” This is Wallace's way of describing someone chewing her own fingernails.

81.