Halation

Good work, pyro! Have you ever considered creating an Infinite Jest concordance listing every word imbued with deeper meaning? That would be a fun project, I think...in theory at least.

Pyro, in collecting all these references, have you come up with any ideas for the significance of this motif?

>4 Sutpen: That's my question too. I just read another one when Gately is recovering in the hospital and dreaming of Joelle as Death. (I have this page marked as significant, but I can't think about that right now.) ""...the sadder he gets, the more unfocused and wobbly becomes his vision of the Death's Joelle sitting nude on the pink plastic ring, until near the end it's as if he's seeing her through a king of cloud of light, a milky filter that's the same as the wobbly blur through which a baby sees a parental face bending over its crib..." And then after a Hal intelude, "Pus it was also creepy that, when the face's effulgence becomes the boiled white of the Trauma Wing ceiling as he comes up with a start up for air, the apparently real nondream Joelle van D. is leaning over the bed's crib-railing, ...." And there is Joelle revisiting her role in IJ........man, I just love this even if I don't know what to do with it!
(This is 75-76% through the text on the Kindle.)

wow, amazing detail! thank you so much Pyro!

Infant Jest?

Your post, pyro, reminds me how extensively one particular commentary, Elegant Complexity, I believe, focused on the infant/infantile/infantilism motif running throughout IJ. I'll pull that out this weekend and post something on it.

Um, I think I feel an "infant" thread about to materialize....