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Infinite Jest
"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling."
"American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels."
The Prince of Tides
"Now I know that a part of me would like to have traveled the world as he traveled it, a jester of burning faith, a fool and a forest prince brimming with the love of God. I would like to walk his southern world, thanking God for oysters and porpoises, praising God for birdsongs and sheet lightning, and seeing God reflected in pools of creekwater and the eyes of stray cats. I would like to have talked to yard dogs and tanagers as if they were my friends and fellow travelers along the sun-tortured highways, intoxicated with a love of God, swollen with charity like a rainbow, in the thoughtless mingling of its hues, connecting two distant fields in its glorious arc. I would like to have seen the world with eyes incapable of anything but wonder, and a tongue fluent only in praise."
"I wondered if it was just in the house of the dying that you became so acutely aware of the presence of clocks."
"American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels."
The Prince of Tides
"Now I know that a part of me would like to have traveled the world as he traveled it, a jester of burning faith, a fool and a forest prince brimming with the love of God. I would like to walk his southern world, thanking God for oysters and porpoises, praising God for birdsongs and sheet lightning, and seeing God reflected in pools of creekwater and the eyes of stray cats. I would like to have talked to yard dogs and tanagers as if they were my friends and fellow travelers along the sun-tortured highways, intoxicated with a love of God, swollen with charity like a rainbow, in the thoughtless mingling of its hues, connecting two distant fields in its glorious arc. I would like to have seen the world with eyes incapable of anything but wonder, and a tongue fluent only in praise."
"I wondered if it was just in the house of the dying that you became so acutely aware of the presence of clocks."
Head-to-Head
Characters: Hoo boy. These books are both drawn-out tomes with hundreds of pages spent on minutiae. Infinite Jest wanders nigh-incomprehensibly in early chapters, and only later in the book when the reader has a handle on the timeline and main setting does it become apparent that so many of these early chapters are dedicated solely to contextualizing major and minor players who will later share a stage. This method is incredibly thorough, and it has its pros and cons: when it shines, characters who would otherwise be forgettable (see: Ken Erdedy, Kate Gompert) become memorable stars in their brief contributions to the main plot. Meanwhile, some others who play roles of similar size (Poor Tony Krause, Wardine (Oh God, Wardine's section, why)) have introductions that are written so unappealingly that when the character pops up again, it's an "Oh. you." moment.
Then, there's The Prince of Tides. No question, the scale is smaller; although the entire small Carolina town is briefly described (and is a character in and of itself), Conroy spends reams of paper building Tom, Savannah, and their gravely wacky family into complex and real characters. The same characters that will cause fits of laughter (see: Henry's promotion for their Esso station) will also cause fits of rage (see: Henry's treatment of his family). I might know Tom Wingo better than I do some close friends because of the detail assigned to him.
What both books do best: the characters are so well developed that their actions have reason. Nobody is necessarily good or bad, they're just people in odd landscapes, making decisions that are uplifting or frustrating, based upon their learned traits and imperfections.
Advantage: The Prince of Tides gets it, capitalizing on IJ's biggest foible.
Setting: All those pages, all that detail. Wallace's world is insane but plausible once the insanity is taken as a necessity. The pinnacle of this is definitely the Eschaton scene, although Ennet House & Enfield Tennis Academy are massive and well-defined as backdrops.
I give so much credit to Conroy for making the oft-mundane come to life; southern literature is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, but although I most often leave it, I took The Prince of Tides heartily. I think it's likely harder to do a standard to perfection than it is to pull a perfect setting out of novel fiction, but I don't want to split hairs that fine.
Advantage: Push.
Plot: I read Infinite Jest well over a year ago. While doing a bit of supplemental reading to think critically for this entry, I stumbled across a blog that mentions how intricately tied to Hamlet IJ is. Right down to the first lines of each work: Hamlet's reads "Who's there?", while Infinite Jest replies "I am."
I've read Hamlet and did plenty of supplemental reading when I first finished Infinite Jest, too. This is the first time I've stumbled across that above tidbit. The depth of this book is just un-fucking-real. I wish I had the time and the smarts to decipher all the clever that happens while Wallace tells a story about addiction and the nature of entertainment.
The Prince of Tides is much less subtle; the plot is the plot. It's a slow burn that's not about to increase your heart rate, but remains captivating throughout. As good as it is, there are far more Prince of Tides plots than there are Infinite Jest plots.
Advantage: Infinite Jest.
Ending: Shocking final words that are so known and good that the Simpsons made a joke about it. The Prince of Tides uses even its last two words to reveal more about the characters it has already detailed to great lengths, and honestly they change the landscape of the book a little. It's great, and would best almost any other book in this tournament.
Infinite Jest, though—the tactic is a seeming non-ending, where the real & satisfying ending requires restudy of some of the book's passages (and/or Google cheating), and then the effort required to find that satisfying ending makes a statement about the nature of entertainment that the book has been working on for a thousand pages. It's so clever and meta that it's an honest reward.
Advantage: Infinite Jest.
Writing/Language: Look at the length of those quote porn sections. Expertly crafted paragraphs elucidating powerful opinions. This is what reading is all about. & There is so much more where that came from.
I'm on record as saying Infinite Jest contains my favorite prose ever, but picking a winner between these two juggernauts would cheapen my opinion on them.
Advantage: A world class push.
Philosophy: This is the one category where it's really not close. Both novels contain an abundance of self-pity, but while Conroy uses it to tell a story, Wallace uses it to pose cumbersome existential questions.
Advantage: Infinite Jest.
Advantage: Infinite Jest.
Writing/Language: Look at the length of those quote porn sections. Expertly crafted paragraphs elucidating powerful opinions. This is what reading is all about. & There is so much more where that came from.
I'm on record as saying Infinite Jest contains my favorite prose ever, but picking a winner between these two juggernauts would cheapen my opinion on them.
Advantage: A world class push.
Philosophy: This is the one category where it's really not close. Both novels contain an abundance of self-pity, but while Conroy uses it to tell a story, Wallace uses it to pose cumbersome existential questions.
Advantage: Infinite Jest.
Winner Winner Turkey Supper
The Prince of Tides is truly one of the best books I've ever read and likely ever will read (with a movie I've never seen and likely never will see). It's a shame to see it exit in the round of 8, but Infinite Jest literally changed the way I read and, to a lesser extent, the way I think.
Alas, poor Conroy! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy!
Infinite Jest moves on to the semifinals.
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