Techno-Romantic translations through contemporary post-modern fiction:

fig. 1
Transcription of the radio-play T.R.anslation of a segment from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
Created for After David Foster Wallace, Kelley Writers House, Philadelphia, PA

 

"and Lo, for the Earth was empty of Form, and void.
and Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep.
and We said:
Look at that fucker Dance."

dfw

Maximalism....Maximalism with reproductive symptoms. Also morbid extravagance.
Howling proliferations of tenderness deep beneath the surface of the skin.
Those whose subconscious extremities are too expansive to be insinuated into mass and form alone.
The unremitting flow this year of all years.
The spasmodically wry of neck and twisted head. Those with scrivener's palsy...
The senseless, whose bridges have collapsed. Whose branches are wasting away.
And yes students of the composition of matter,
and speculators whose work is distinguished by rigor, abstraction, and beauty.
Also those who are losing their heads. Those who have increasingly become their own thick skin.
Them that seep, from their ultrastructuralist fenestrations.
Come one come all, this circular says.
The abnormal wideners of spaces. Those losing a sense of position, vibration, a discriminative touch,
significance, an appetite, a spine, a signal, a pound of flesh.
The charmers and their hubrisistic evacuations. The splitters of infinitives, or those who erupt like a
monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend,
or those who suffer perennial estrangement from the palms of their own hands, or god forbid all three.
Synaptical Nictitation Syndrome, you say? Come on down.
Those who simply pertain. Those who married into The Sea. Those who suffer the skins.

Normally distributed Scars, wearing your overly complicated pasts.
Afflictees of hidden redness. It says here Come all ye waitful.

Blessed are the the Unpainters, for they...
Polymorphic depigmentation. A tooth becomes a river. Interseptos, transversus.
The Let.-Trilingual
Swells in the defect, head, and neck.
The name-binders.
Those with constant arms folding into the envelopes of time.

Re'merge within the universe's luminous aevum is what this says.
Hermitians, back slowly away from the canopy of the inner product's flailing boughs........
The imaginary problem and its limitless solutions. ...All ye crooked and lid-less umbrellas.
The hairless horizons. The lovehandled. The exodoctrinologically mellifluous of quill and ken. Fly don't walk on down.

The atomically-nosed. The unexpectedly -hollowed. The collector of multiplicities with a cut black cloth in every pocket.
The chronically collapsing wave.

The ones it says here the ones the cruel call Two Be-ers -- one be- for your head, one be- for the Observer's head in case your paths fall off.

The winded and windless and wrung, who keep to the wrinkles.
Those who beget only when _____. The quote heuristically challenged.
Abandon your cynics and magicians,
I'm reading this right here,
your corbels and constraints and COMPLIcaTed predictions,
find Nests of Secret Scratchings and the Inner Resources to caw at your own unsinking plight,
is what this goes on to say, a bit thigmotactically maybe.

Is it our place to --Say.

It says here Style not Inflection. It says Come don the veil of the typed and spoken.
Procedures in invasive amative apprehension. To grip and to clutch. The almost ponderous swell
of Total Information Awareness' (nearly imperceptible) metacirculation as seen through the bestockinged lower leg
and ankle of Dr. Node. .. The Schroedinger's Cat of spines. The hope for weightlessness.
It says Onward Not Until Then. It says Never Until Then. The fatally attractive: Enter. Well and come.
The Act-aeonizing, Becoming Dear, side by side with the Apotropaic Woman. The inflammatory lifting of skin,
the center of the visual field, the de-pigmented. Medusas and odalisques both: Come find common ground.
All meeting rooms without views. That's in italics: all meeting rooms without views...
Nor are excluded the utterly scent(s)less, nor the Monstrously Paralyzed -- whose lines of sight are frozen ever outward-- two blades that will never cross or mete, nor either Ignis Sacer, uneased peripheral nerves, an eruption of the formal variation of worm,
the benign invasion that becomes an internalized harbinger...The multiple cut away.
There can be no adequate replacement for an absent part of the body.
Mouthbones projecting out of their own domains, thorntrees or fleshy growths hanging from head or neck,
chins evacuating the branches of the lower jaw, the shore of giants. The cloven roof.
Passages through the pores and interstices of the uninhibited.
The inordinate but not necessarily metamorphic code of a wolflike man's oversensitive follicle.
The dunce. The quivering echolalia. The 4-6 Hz tremor, maximal when the limb is at rest.
The stunted and gnarled. The monstrously summarized face. fetor spiritus. The turned and arched and in-stinct.
The in any way askew. The caviomorphic- and Xantusiidae- and ungulate-looking...The tri-nostriled. The sheathed of lips and lid.
Those with those dark loose bags under their eyes that hang halfway down their faces. Those with thinning skin.
Those with Rochon-Duvigneaud's syndrome.

Those who look like they have Superior Orbital Fissure Syndrome although they don't.
Those who are more hollow than the past participle of lose. You decide. You be the judge.
It says You are welcome regardless of severity. Severity is in the eye of the sufferer, it says.
Pain is pain. Crow's feet. Lines of flight. Writing habit. A better world that didn't take. paper-cuts. Sorrow. A new beginning...'

-Sarah Zar

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Original Text (compiled from The Madame Psychosis Radio Show in Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008)


" 'Obesity...Obesity with hypogonadism. Also morbid obesity. Nodular leprosy with leonine facies...The acromegalic and hyper keratosistic. The enuretic, this year of all years. The spasmodically torticollic...Those with saddle noses. Those with atrophic limbs. And yes chemists and pure-math majors also those with atrophic necks. Scleredema adultorum. Them that seep, the serodermatotic. Come one come all, this circular says. The hydrocephalic. The tabescent and chachetic and anorexic. The Brag's-Diseased, in their heavy red rinds of flesh. The dermally wine-stained or carbuncular or steatocryptotic or God forbid all three. Marin-Amat Syndrome, you say? Come on down. The psoriatic. The exzematically shunned. And the scrofulodermic. Bell-shaped steatopygiacs, in your special slacks. Afflictees of Pityriasis Rosea. It says here Come all ye hateful. Blessed are the poor in body, for they...The leukodermatic. The xanthodantic. The maxillofacially swollen. Those with distorted orbits of all kinds. Get out from under the sun's cove-lighting is what this says. Come in from the spectral rain...The basilisk-breathed and pyorrheic...All ye peronic or teratoidal. The phrenologically malformed. The suppuratively lesioned. The endocrinologically malodorous of whatever ilk. Run don't walk on down. The acervulus-nosed. The radically -ectomied. The morbidly diaphoretic with a hankie in every pocket. The chronically granulomatous. The ones it says here the ones the cruel call Two-Baggers -- one bag for your head, one bag for the observer's head in case your bag falls off. The hated and dateless and shunned, who keep to the shadows. Those who undress only in front of their pets. The quote aesthetically challenged. Leave your lazarettes and oubliettes, I'm reading this right here, your closets and cellars and TP Tableaux, find Nurturing and Support and the Inner Resources to face your own unblinking sight, is what this goes on to say, a bit overheatedly maybe. Is it our place to say. It says here Hugs not Ughs. It says Come don the veil of the type and token. Come learn to love what's hidden inside. To hold and cherish. The almost unbelievably thick-ankled. The kyphotic and lordotic. The irremediably cellulitic. It says Progress Not Perfection. It says Never Perfection. The fatally pulchritudinous: Welcome. The Actaeonizing, side by side with the Medusoid. The papuled, the macular, the albinic. Medusas and odalisques both: Come find common ground. All meeting rooms windowless. That's in ital: all meeting rooms windowless...Nor are excluded the utterly noseless, nor the hideously wall- and cross-eyed, nor either the ergotic of St. Anthony, the leprous, the varicelliformally eruptive or even the sarcoma'd of Kaposi...The multiple amputee. The prosthetically malmatched. The snaggle-toothed, wattled, weak-chinned, and walrus-cheeked. The palate-clefted. The really large-pored. The excessively but not necessarily lycanthropically hirsute. The pin-headed. The convulsively Tourettic. The Parkinsonianly tremulous. The stunted and gnarled. The teratoid of overall visage. The twisted and hunched and humped and halitotic. The in any way asymmetrical. The rodential- and saurian- and equine-looking...The tri-nostriled. The invaginate of mouth and eye. Those with those dark loose bags under their eyes that hang halfway down their faces. Those with Cushing's Disease. Those who look like they have Down Syndrome even though they don't have Down Syndrome. You decide. You be the judge. It says You are welcome regardless of severity. Severity is in the eye of the sufferer, it says. Pain is pain. Crow's feet. Birthmark. Rhinoplasty that didn't take. Mole. Overbite. A bad hair year...'

 

"...Her sign off is more dead air."

--Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

R.I.P.