Antichrists

What makes this such a wonderful book to dissect is the density and careful placement of every little detail, such as the "Dennis Gabor is the Antichrist" line brought up yesterday by mark. As for its meaning inside the text, I tend to think that this line functions as a kind of payoff of the title of one Hal's nine "stellar" (and highly suspicious, especially under the circumstances, to the administrators on hand) application essays he had submitted to the U of Arizona: "The Implications of Post-Fourier Transformations for a Holographically Mimetic Cinema." The science is entirely over my head, but it seems that much of Gabor's work is built upon a foundation laid by the French mathematician and physicist Joseph Fourier, with the Gabor Filter and Gabor Transform being of particular note. Between that title and the Gabor as Antichrist remark I think we can infer that Hal is not terribly rosy about the implications of post-Fourier transformations for a holographically mimetic cinema. This subject gains a political dimension in the (spoiler free) description of "The Machine In The Ghost: Annular Holography For Fun And Prophet" in the James O. Incandenza filmography end note that is part of this week's reading.

I think it's safe to say that one of the major themes of this book as well as Wallace's writing in general is the destructive personal and societal conquences of pursuing entertainment/pleasure above all else. Whether rejecting the poisonous irony of '80s television and the lavish pampering of a cruise ship vacation or chronicling the evil genius inner workings of focus-group testing, a deep mistrust of things that cater relentlessly to the American appetite for pleasure reverberates throughout all of Wallace's work. More than style, it's that quality that links his work to his postmodern literary forefathers like Pynchon, Dellilo, Barth, Barthleme, et al. Whereas those authors used irony, black humor, fractured narratives and other devices to attack the overbearing conformity of post WWII America, Wallace consistently took aim at the dark forces (advertising, marketing, late 20th century American entitlement & malaise) that sprouted from the cultural rubble that followed their rebellion. Vilifying holography fits with that thesis. What could be a more seductive form of visual entertainment than a hologram?

Finally, Wallace has like a thing for Antichrists. In addition to Gabor, the brother of the protagonist of Wallace's first novel was nicknamed the Antichrist. In his pre-IJ essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction," Wallace stops short of calling David Letterman the Antichrist, but he does call him something like "the archangel of contemporary irony," which if you know much about DFW you know that that's pretty much synonymous with Antichrist. I have also read interviews with Wallace where, again with regards to the evils of modern irony, he calls Rush Limbaugh and novelist Mark Leyner Antichrists. And I also seem to recall reading him refer to Marcel Duchamp as being considered (the implication being by others, not necessarily by him) an Antichrist for opening this whole art regarding itself can of worms in the first place.