"...a lacuna where trailer-park trailers are concerned..."

Infinite Jest, oh how I love thee; the playful word-i-ness; the offbeat, wacky characters; the names (Orin and Hal, two of the protagonists, which have fairly conservative names); the conversations...

Here's an extended conversation between Hal, the younger tennis phenom whom we've just found out received a hugely important shock to his system at the age of 13* (spoiler below, not like any of you are gonna read this book), and his older brother Orin, who's a placekicker for the Arizona Cardinals, and quite the ladies man apparently.

Orin: 'I said I think I'm being followed.'

Hal: 'Some men are born to lead, O.'

'I'm serious. And here's the weird part.'

'...'

'The weird park is I think I'm being followed by . . . by handicapped people.'

As they discuss the evidence cited by Orin, including that prior to and after a tryst in a trailer park, Orin sees the same man struggling to get his wheelchair out of the sand, Hal, the slightly out-of-touch tennis phenom, seeks to fill a hole in the O.E.D. where trailer parks are concerned:

'But this trailer. This lady you met's trailer. Confirm or deny the following. Its carpet was wall-to-wall and extremely thin, a kind of burnt yellow or orange.'

'Yes.'

'The living-room or like den area contained some or all of the following: a black velvet painting featuring an animal; a videophonic diorama on some sort of knickknack shelf; a needlepoint sampler with some kind of frothy biblical saw on it; at least one piece of chintz furniture with protective doilies on the arms; a Smoke-B-Gone air-filtration ashtray; the last couple years' Reader's Digests neatly displayed in their own special inclined magazine rack.'

'Check on velvet painting of leopard, sample sofa with doilies, ashtray. No Reader's Digests. This isn't especially funny, Hallie. The Moms comes out in you in these odd little ways sometimes.'

'Last one. The trailer-person's name. Jean. May. Nora. Vera. Nora-Jean or Vera-May.'

'. . .'

'That was my question.'

'I guess I'll have to get back to you on that.'

'Boy, you really put the small r in romance, don't you.'

LOVE IT...seriously, I'm completely devoted to this book.



* Hal discovered his dad's own suicide, by way of a microwave; he analogizes the scene to the remnants of a microwaved potato that was not cut open.