Infinite Summer

"'...for the game's finest players frequently close their eyes entirely as they wait, trusting the railroad ties' vibration and the whistle's pitch, as well as intuition, and fate, and whatever numinous influences lie just beyond fate.' Struck at certain points imagines himself gathering this Wild Conceits guy's lapels together with one hand and savagely and repeatedly slapping him with the other -- forehand, backhand, forehand."

So, for the previous passage to make any sense, it might behoove you know that a certain male teenage tennis phenom named Oliver Struck is reading a passage about the history of a certain, 'chicken-like' game involving Canadian youths & a leap across train tracks w/a train en route. Wild Conceits, by the way, is a journal in which Struck is researching a connection between said 'chicken-like' game & a group of wheelchair-bound assassins infiltrating the lower 48 states in order to overthrow the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.). I am reading this passage, by the way, in a footnote that occupies 5+ pages.

The passage continues: "'They will jump athwart the tracks in front of its high speed nose at the final moment, each trying to be the last to leap and live. It is not rare for several of the le Jeu's finalists to be struck.' Struck tries to decide whether it'd be unrealistic or unself-consciously realistic to keep using his own name as a verb -- would a man with anything to camouflage use his own name as a verb?"

Two things: (1) the back & forth between Struck and his passage mirrors that between the reader & his footnoted passage; (2) I'm sure some readers have wanted to slap David Foster Wallace's face -- "forehand, backhand, forehand" -- but I've felt that way about other authors, of the academic stripe mostly.

This extended passage is particularly wonderful for many reasons. First, it's occurring in a footnote about 3/4 of the way through the text and he's (DFW) still giving us exposition -- the book is 900+ and he's still introducing material. But, he does it in the most roundabout way possible: believe it or not, the wheelchair-bound, Quebec Assassination squad is pretty vital to the storyline, and DFW introduces their whole reason for being chairbound in what turns out to be a secondary character reading an academic journal in a footnote that the reader is reading -- did you follow that?

I just realized that I'm on p. 740 (out of 978!) and still loving the book.