I’m originally from Texas, but I lived long enough in Arkansas that I think of it as home, even though I’ve been in Charleston ¹ for more than seven years. Arkansas has always had something of an identity complex. To anyone in the north who has even heard of it, it is a southern state. ² To quite a few people in the deep south, it is too far west to really count as southern.

I have beautifully simple litmus test for southern states: any state that fought on the wrong side of the Civil War qualifies by that fact alone.

With the exception of a brief stint in Philadelphia, I’ve lived in the south my entire life. And that’s not entirely a bad thing. There are a lot of things I like about the south. ³ But one thing I’ve never liked about the south is what I think of as Civil War Denialism–a condition whose primary symptom is the inability to admit, whatever the extenuating circumstances, that the south was, in fact, on the wrong side in the Civil War and deserved to lose.

Admitting that the south was wrong to secede, and, even more importantly, to secede over slavery, isn’t to say that the north was some Utopia of racial equality, or that the Union’s motives were entirely pure. But about the core issue–the existence of slavery as a legitimate economic institution–there should be no confusion. Anyone who claims that the Civil War “wasn’t really about slavery,” a claim I’ve heard my whole life, hasn’t bothered to read the “Declaration of Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” Was “states rights” and issue? Certainly it was. But so was human rights. Arguing over jurisdictions doesn’t change that, it just shifts the argument from the ethics of slavery the semantics of law, while failing to address the former. ⁴

The thing that struck me most about the NPR story was that the various defenders of the “good name” of their Confederate ancestors have such trouble admitting that those same ancestors were simply wrong about some things. The absurdity here is they were likely wrong about many things, from the most trivial of things to the most important. I’m willing to bet that these various sons and daughters of Civil War veterans would be unwilling to defend their ancestors’ point of view on most any other topic. So why feel the need when when it comes to this one?

I feel no need to agree with or, in those cases where I disagree, “respect” my ancestors’ opinions on any topic. They were their own people, trying to make sense of the times in which they lived. I’d no more ask them for advice on human rights than I would on dental hygiene. We’ve learned a lot about both since April 12, 1861.

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There are still several more sites to go, but I haven’t had any major issues yet. Most of the remaining sites will be easy. The two exceptions will probably be bassplaying.com (since it runs on Drupal) and wheatdesign.com, since it is old, full of cruft, and mostly held together by htaccess redirects. In fact, now would be a good time for spring cleaning, but I want everything up and running on the new servers before I turn out the lights at Dreamhost.

I’ll go into the reasons behind my hosting switch in another post. I just wanted to put this one up to test thing and to alert you to any outages.

Update, 11/07/2010:

I’ve been with A2 the better part of a year now, and I haven’t had any issues with them at all. My sites are up, performance has been very good, and the price is right. If you’re looking for a web host, I recommend them:

If you are using A2hosting to host any of your sites, feel free to share your experiences in the comments.

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Clerk: We have those, but only in a “Husky.”
Woman: [Emphatically] Oh, no, no. He’s anorexic skinny–concentration camp skinny.
Son: ???
Woman: It’s okay: skinny is good.

How many things are wrong with this conversation? The flippant use of “anorexic”? The even more grievously flippant use of “concentration camp”? Or is it that maxim at the end (and its unspoken converse). For the record, the boy was of normal size–neither particularly skinny nor at all overweight for his age. The mother I would describe as verging on gaunt.

A note to the college bound: psychiatry is a growth industry, and ever will be.

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Redirect /flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/wheat

Assuming the .htaccess file is at the top level of your website, you can now use something like wheatdesign.com/flickr to forward visitors to your profile page on the social networking site in question. This is handy, especially if you’re pimping something and want to keep your own URL front and center (on, say, print media). It also means you never have to wonder what URL scheme the site in question uses for profile pages.

I’ve set up several for wheatdesign.com and intend to set up the same for my other domains, as I can never decide which one should have precidence.

A note on style, you’ll want to resist the temptation to put trailing slashes on either the shortcut or the place where it redirects, as doing so will often confuse either Apache, or the service in question, or both.

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[The Infinite Summer/Infinite Zombies/Infinite Jest project continues]

In the readings for the second milestone (63-94), we learn, in a fairly straightforward fashion, a lot of backstory pertaining to Hal’s father, Dr James Orin Incandenza, as well as some details about Hal’s grandfather.

Structurally, the details of Dr. Incandenza’s filmic output reveal many details about his own troubled life and, especially, his troubled relationship with his wife and, to a lesser extent, his son Hal.  Also notable, as I’ve been told to watch out for Hamlet references (and as I am something of a Hamlet freak), is that the production company for many of the films, especially the later ones, is “Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited” (990), which is, of course, a reference to the court jester whose skull Hamlet famously addresses in the speech from which Infinite Jest takes its title–a speech, not inconsequentially, about death and the purpose of life, given the fact of it.

Pages 68-78 comprise an interesting chapter about a Katherine Ann “Kate” Gompert, an attempted suicide now confined in the psych wing of some hospital. The cause of her attempt seems to be a combination of depression and pot withdrawal.  We see the chapter in limited omniscient (or maybe free-indirect?) POV from her doctor’s perspective. It’s a really great scene, as we get inside the head of the doctor (actually a resident) trying very hard to keep the clinically correct outward emotional affect, even as he seems to also become genuinely concerned (and maybe a little out of his depth) during this consultation. So, here, the communication theme appears again. There seem to be moments of genuine understanding here, when the doctor goes off script and Kate reaches out, attempting to be understood. I’m not sure the doctor ever gets named. Kate, mentions another doctor, Dr. Garton (a previous shrink?).

We get a really good chapter introducing Gerhardt Schtitt and his relationship with Mario Incandenza (79-85).  I like this one for a lot of reasons. First off, it’s one of the few places so far where DFW gets overtly philosophical, admiring–while also admitting the possible issues with–Schtitt’s pro-fascist upbringing (82), as it creates a sense of belonging and shared purpose, something DFW thinks is sorely missing from modern life (and that Schtitt thinks is missing from American life).  It also lets him philosophize more about tennis as a battle not between player and player or even player and objective rules but one between player and self.  Stylistically, it’s great because DFW switches, abruptly, from a free indirect POV (hovering in and out of both characters minds) to direct authorial intrusion (e.g. “This should not be rendered in exposition like this, but Mario Incandenza as a severely limited range of verbatim recall” [82]).

We also get into the really fascinating and strange chapter about Marathe, a wheelchair bound Quebecois separatist and member of an elite group of similarly injured assassins.  The origins of the injury itself are explained in detail in perhaps the longest footnote so far (Note 39, which leads to note 304, which tells the story of James Albrecht Lockley Struck, Jr. as he is plagiarizing an essay on Marathe’s group of assassins and the Quebecois separatists in general.  The story is eight pages long with several footnotes on it as well).

The tape (which Steeply calls “the entertainment”) which we now know has killed–or, at least, frozen, Medusa-style–the medical attache, his wife, and many others who entered the room and inadvertently looked at it, is mentioned.  Steeply wants to know if Marathe’s crew had anything to do with it, which he denies.  They speculate that it might have been personally motivated, which leads me to suspect that it might have been James Incandenza’s work, an effort to get even with the medical attache for sleeping with his wife.  But we’ll see.  It gets a little confusing there.

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[I'm blogging my reading of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest this summer with the folks over at Infinite Zombies. This post is available there as well. I'm keeping a copy here for posterity. Your comments are welcome at either location.]

I have to admit, pulling my thoughts together in order to create a decent first blog post about Infinite Jest has been harder than I had anticipated.  I’ve been beneffitting greatly from Daryl‘s observations and some of the posts and comments over at the mothership.  But, in a way, the wealth of good and informative posts only makes things harder, as anything I might be clever enough to say has likely already been said, and more cleverly.

I’ve found myself taking more than the usual amount of notes for this thing.  And I’ve been trying to stay ahead of the the reading schedule, both because I know that I’ll sooner-or-later fall behind (likely right after the students in my summer class turns in their second round of papers) and because getting a little deeper into the book ads some perspective.

[Here be spoilers: I'll be discussing pages 3-63, below.]

What to say about the first sixty-three pages?  First off, it’s not pulling teeth. DWF keeps things lively with shifting points of view, a huge cast of characters, and a good dose of (generally dark) humor.

The first chapter (“Year of Glad,” 3-17) is one of discrepancies, the first being the distance between Hal’s academic performance, which is outstanding, and his performance on academic tests, which is described by one of the deans in the interview that is the gist of this chapter as “subnormal” (6). The second, and probably more significant, is the discrepancy between Hal’s point of view and that of everyone else in the chapter–or as much as we can surmise of it, since we see their reactions only through his eyes. Internally, Hal seems on the verge of a panic attach of some sort, but he also seems quite well versed in how to manage his own anxiety.

It is only after the deans dismiss his two handlers, Uncle Chuck (whose full name, we later learn, is Dr. Chuck Tavis, [half?] brother-in-law of Hal’s late father, James O. Incandenza, and his successor as director of the Enfield Tennis Academy) and Avery deLint, one of the “prorectors” at the ETA, that the silent Hal finally speaks and the distance between his point of view and every other is revealed, albeit with a good dose of comedy, like Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen skit gone mad, as the deans seem to try to outdo one another in their descriptions of Hal’s behavior:

‘But the sounds he made.’
‘Undescribable.’
‘Like an animal.’
‘Subanimalistic noises and sounds.’
‘Nor let’s not forget the gestures.’
[. . .]
‘Like some sort of animal with something in its mouth.’
[. . .]
‘A writing animal with a knife in its eye.’ (14)

Stylistically, one of the most interesting and enjoyable things about the first chapter is how close we are to Hal’s view of things.  His view is idiosyncratic and finely focused on visual details of the room and his experience of it (and reflections triggered by the same). But, for all that, it isn’t too hard to follow Hal’s thoughts.  What is challenging is DWF’s penchant for giving characters multiple names and nicknames, referring to them by whatever one pleases him, or the character doing the describing, as is common both in the real world and in Russian fiction.  Uncle Chuck is, at various points, “Charles,” and “C.T.” (even before we know his last name).  The same is similar for almost every other character. I find myself drawing lists of characters to keep this all sorted out.  The business with the names adds realism and a bit of mystery, and is clue enough that the author expects us to keep track of things.

(I’ve been using the term “chapter” here, to describe the divisions of the text, but just what counts as a chapter is also a judgement call. Some “chapters,” like the first one, start off with a little circular symbol and a title.  Other have just white space and a title. There are many places where the narrative shifts and the only typographical indication of it is additional white space. I’ve seen a few different numbering schemes for these. So I’ll stick with page numbers, for clarity.)

I think the main takeaway from these opening chapters is to acquaint us with some of the vast cast of characters (the vastness of which also, like the penchant for nicknames, invites a comparison with Russian novels), whose story lines will surely converge and intertwine as time goes on. It also serves to introduce us to some of the range of styles and points of view to expect from DFW.

The second chapter (17-27), where we are introduced to Erdedy, is a case in point.  Here, we move from the chaos and first person point of view of the opening chapter to a third-person point of view centered on Erdedy and following his thoughts in stream-of-consciousness fashion, following his anxieties as he prepares for yet another “one more last time” (19) marijuana binge. This chapter is a stunning and stunningly accurate portrait of anxiety, and it could easily stand on its own as a short story.

If I had any reservations about the novel, this chapter sent them packing. Erdedy’s contemplation (or, really, refusal to contemplate) the bug in his stereo system brings to mind Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Though not physically a bug, sitting almost without motion in his own protective armor, how much does Erdedy already resemble one?  Like Hal, Erdedy also finds himself trapped in lines of anticipation and expectation. And, like Hal, his consciousness is finely focussed, at times to the point of distraction, on the world around him and the thoughts it sparks. DWF clearly has a metaphorical turn of mind, which means we’re in for a lot of fun unpacking what he offers us and making connections between the various characters, events, and symbols in this novel.

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Wallace killed himself in September of last year, at age 46, after a lifelong struggle with depression.  About the time he died, I picked up a copy of his essay collection, Consider the Lobster, which contains the above-mentioned essay, retitled and, perhaps, reworked a bit as “Authority and American Usage.”  I really enjoyed the collection, and decided I’d have to give his masterpiece, Infinite Jest, at some point.

It just so happens that there’s a project kicking off this summer, a virtual reading group of sorts, centered around reading that lengthy and complicated work.  It’s called Infinite Summer, and it kicks off the Sunday, June 21st, and runs through September 22nd.  Even better, Matthew Baldwin, of Defective Yeti fame, is one of the organizers of the project.  That was impetus enough for me.  I bought a copy this week and am now 32 pages into its 1079 (counting the footnotes, which make up about 100 pages of that).

So far, it’s a witty romp which reminds me a bit of John Barth and Lawrence Sterne.  It’s not a fast read, but it’s not needlessly difficult.  And it’s certainly more comprehensible than plenty of other lengthy, sophisticated novels.  So, I think I’m hooked.  I may or may not be able to keep up with the reading schedule, but I’m committed to reading the book and to inflicting my observations about it upon you, gentle reader.

(Harper’s has recently published their DFW pieces as free PDFs.  So, if you’d like a free taste, dive in.)

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The basic idea is simple:  Dropbox provides storage that can be accessed through desktop client software and via a web-based interface.  When you install the client software (for Windows, OS X, and Linux), a special folder is created.  It works like any other folder, but it stays in sync with Dropbox’s servers, so you can access it from wherever you have a client installed and from the web.  There are some other features as well, like being able to share particular files publicly, via a folder designated for that purpose or by right-clicking the particular file and grabbing a public URL for it.  In your operating system, the folder can be accessed like any other, but Dropbox also installs a management app–as a system tray icon on Windows and a menu bar application on OS X–for quick access and status updates.  Pricing ranges from free (2GB) to $19.99/month (100GB).  

So here’s my situation.  I work from home sometimes.  My box at work is a Dell machine running WinXP.  My box at home is an iMac running OS X (10.5.7).  There are a lot of ways to connect to a (Windows) VPN with a Mac, but I do it by running WinXP on top of VMware Fusion.  This lets me connect via work’s Cisco VPN, so I can run Cisco IP Communicator (a virtual phone).  Then I run Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection client to connect my VMware Fusion-hosted WinXP to my Dell box at work.  

Though its a little convoluted, for a long time this setup did just fine.  Lately, I’ve had a lot of lag issues, and I’m still trying to nail down exactly what is causing them.  Windows makes a RDC client for OS X, and I’ve tried it, but I can’t get it to connect.  Cisco supposedly makes an OS X version of their VPN client, but I can’t download it from their labyrinthine site, even though I’m a legitimate customer.  Our IT shop is almost entirely Windows based, so I don’t expect much in the way of OS X support.  

But no matter.  While I continue to search for solutions to minimize or eliminate VPN lag, Dropbox provides a really simple solution to keep me working.  I have it installed now on my work box, my iMac, and my virtual, Fusion-hosted WinXP box.  After I do all the VPN/RDC connection nonsense, I grab a project I want to work on and copy it to Dropbox on my work machine.  Then I copy it locally to either my iMac or my Fusion/XP box (depending upon what sort of file it is and what application I want to use on it).  When I’m done, I copy it back to my work machine.  It doesn’t do anything you couldn’t do via FTP or WebDAV (or a properly functioning VPN), but the setup is cake, the clients keep you apprised of sync status, and the whole thing works seamlessly, allowing me to focus on work rather than cursing the vagaries of network connections and my fate at their hands.

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