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But even the first to quail and jump has jumped. Far beyond
prohibited, not to jump at all is
regarded as impossible. To "perdre son coeur" and not jump at
all is outside le Jeu's limit. The
possibility simply does not exist. It is unthinkable.
Never is the train itself regarded as an opponent. The speeding,
screaming train is regarded rather as
le jeu'$ boundary, arena, and reason. Its size, its speed down
the extremely gradual north-to-southgrade of what was then
southwestern Quebec, and the precise mechanical specifications of
each
scheduled train------these are known to the directeurs, they
comprise the constants in a game the
variables of which are the respective wills of the six ranged
along the track, and their estimates of
one another's will to risk all to win.
Los nuevos rebeldes pueden ser artistas que se expongan al
bostezo, a los ojos en blanco, a la
sonrisita de suficiencia, al golpecito en las costillas, a la
parodia de los ironistas y al Oh, qu banal.
A las acusaciones de sentimentalismo y melodrama. De exceso de
credulidad. De blandura. Dedejarse embaucar de buena gana por un
mundo de mirones y seres acechantes que temen al miedo
y al ridculo ms que al encarcelamiento sumario (final del final
de la lnea, algo supuestamente
divertido que nunnca volver a hacer
in someone a certain very strange type of sadness that appears
as a kind of disassociation from
itself, maybe, Love-o. 'I don't know disassociation 'Well, love,
but you know the idiom "not yourself"
"He's not himself today," for example,' crooking and uncrooking
fingers to form quotes on either
side of what she says, which Mario adores. 'There are,
apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of
their own emotions, particularly the painful ones
such persons usually have a very fragile sense of themselves as
persons. As existing at all.
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Avril describe a la gente triste como imprisoned in something; y
aade que the very
imprisonment that proohibits its sadnesss expression must itself
feel intensely sad and painful.
(27)
Now if the novel, as I suggested in the last chapter, partly
explores the encyclopedic urge to
understand, measure, and categorize, then numerology is
certainly one of its procedures, and it
makes sense to search for some deeper significance that would
explain Wallace's choice of the
number 90. One of the most suggestive occurrences of the number
is revealed toward the end of
the book, when the ghost of James lncandenza explains that he
"spent the whole sober last ninety
days of his animate life" (p. 838) creating the film Infinite
Jest. So the structure of the novel, far from
being random, seems to be subtly arranged to parallel the
composition of the film that it is about.
