INFINITE JEST & HAMLET: Similarities
Talk Infinite Jesters
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2trevorcrown
Slick, I think you could really be onto something with the Rosencrantz/Guildenstern to Marathe/Steeply parallel. My memory is hazy as to whether or not R&G are portrayed this way in Hamlet, but in Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the two characters discuss and debate philosophically and theoretically just like M&S do in I.J.
3absurdeist
2> If you're still around, trevorcrown, I think slick was onto something too w/the Marathe and Steeply dialogue parallels w/Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
A big idea parallel involving tennis, and all that game symbolized for Wallace, that he pulled out of Hamlet and that has yet been mentioned, is this quote:
I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space -- were it not that I have had dreams... (2.2.254)
The fractal variables are endless in tennis: the angles, arcs, speed, quadrants, even just in the tennis ball itself: its backspins, revolutions, velocities ... the game w/in the game w/in the game ....
Tennis' boundaries, as outlined by Wallace in Gerhardt Schitt's monologue "conversation" with Mario (pp. 79-85), weren't baselines, sidelines, the various quadrants of the court, or the net; or that human-net that is your opponent. No, the only boundary, the only limit, was self.
Tennis is a game of infinite in-game variables and abstractions, made finite solely by self's delimitation: one's talent-plateaux for the game. "To be" (infinite possibilities in play on the court), "or not to be" (self's finite corporeality).
A big idea parallel involving tennis, and all that game symbolized for Wallace, that he pulled out of Hamlet and that has yet been mentioned, is this quote:
I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space -- were it not that I have had dreams... (2.2.254)
The fractal variables are endless in tennis: the angles, arcs, speed, quadrants, even just in the tennis ball itself: its backspins, revolutions, velocities ... the game w/in the game w/in the game ....
Tennis' boundaries, as outlined by Wallace in Gerhardt Schitt's monologue "conversation" with Mario (pp. 79-85), weren't baselines, sidelines, the various quadrants of the court, or the net; or that human-net that is your opponent. No, the only boundary, the only limit, was self.
Tennis is a game of infinite in-game variables and abstractions, made finite solely by self's delimitation: one's talent-plateaux for the game. "To be" (infinite possibilities in play on the court), "or not to be" (self's finite corporeality).
