Infinite Jest: Chapter 43 Summary & Analysis

8 November Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment Interdependence Day Gaudeamus Igitur. Most Boston AA meetings are speaker meetings, meaning that members of a particular group come and speak at another group’s meeting on a reciprocal basis. The White Flag Group of Enfield meets in a nursing home on Sundays. Tonight they are hosting a group from Concord, a Boston suburb. In Boston AA, sobriety is seen as a “cosmic loan” that you must pay forward to other people. The chairperson of the Concord group shares his story while Gately listens from the front row. Despite the Interdependence Day holiday, the meeting is still packed.

The next speaker is called John L. Ennet House requires its residents to attend meetings and encourages them to get as close as possible to the speaker in order to identify with their story. John L. talks about how he lost his job due his alcoholism, but manages to make it funny. He then describes how he lost his wife, and although he uses the same joke structure few people laugh this time. Following this, John’s life became like “a fuckin livin death.” It is at this point in an addict’s life that their addiction becomes most horrifying; they lose all sense of themselves and although it doesn’t even get them high any more, they can’t stop taking their Substance.

Most speakers’ stories conclude “at the same cliff’s edge,” where the choice is between death or sobriety. In a sense, every AA meeting is like a “reunion” for survivors of the same disaster. Newcomers are often skeptical of AA, and this skepticism gives way to shock when they find that it actually does help to keep you sober. Gately was actually disturbed when he initially realized that AA worked, convinced that he must be in “some sort of trap.” He didn’t get how it could possibly work, but he kept coming anyway. People in AA always tell newcomers to keep coming and so, “robotically,” they do.

AA newcomers find themselves obeying the instructions of older members as if they have no will of their own. An Irish member of the Concord group tells his story in a heavy, almost incomprehensible accent. One of Gately’s best assets as an Ennet House staffer is his skill in explaining how he came to trust AA after initially hating it. He tends to implore that no matter what you say in AA, they will not kick you out. There’s even a member of the White Flag group that chooses to worship Satan as his personal Higher Power.

In Gately’s first month of sobriety, he was comforted by telling everyone present at the meeting how he thought AA was “horseshit.” After this, older members would come up and pat him on the back, saying that at least he seemed “ballsy” while encouraging him to keep coming. The oldest guys in White Flag cluster together in meetings and are nicknamed “the Crocodiles.” They often discuss the countless people they’ve seen start coming to meetings and not be able to stick it out. Some return again, once more “beaten to shit” by their addiction. Sometimes they even point out men on the street who’ve tried—and failed—to come to meetings.

If a new member “slips” and consumes a Substance, they are not supposed to be judged but rather welcomed back to meetings. Even those who attend meetings drunk are tolerated as long as they don’t cause too much disruption. The Boston AA groups have about a dozen “basic suggestions,” which are comparable to the “suggestion” that someone jumping out of an airplane should wear a parachute. Eugenio Martinez, a volunteer staffer at Ennet House, calls addiction “The Spider” and argues that you have to Starve the Spider, which requires wanting to follow the rules of staying sober.

It’s strange that clichéd truths exist, suggesting that “the truth is usually not just un- but anti-interesting.” One of Gately’s jobs as a live-in staffer is to be on “Dream Duty,” taking care of people new to sobriety who have horrifying, traumatic dreams. Gately himself once had a dream about AA whose meaning was almost embarrassingly obvious, and it was at this point that he finally decided to fully surrender to the meetings. At the same time, there are still some things about Boston AA that bother him. There is too much silly jargon, and the meetings are too long.

Gately is fond of Ken Erdedy, who is at Ennet House to tackle his marijuana addiction. Kate Gompert, who is rarely able to leave her bed, is also there because of weed. Gately used to smoke weed “like it was tobacco,” but now he doesn’t really miss it. Gately is now speaking with Erdedy and Joelle van Dyne. There are a handful of veiled people from U.H.I.D. there that night. Joelle has just moved into Ennet House after a grisly overdose and Gately is unsure how to treat her. She seems to have made a special arrangement for her treatment with Pat that involves no minimum-wage “humility job.”

Erdedy is attracted to Joelle, partly because of her gorgeous body but also because of her veil. Joelle says she finds it odd that people say they are “here But For the Grace of God,” because “But For the Grace of God” is a subjunctive phrase and thus should introduce a conditional clause. Hearing her voice, Gately feels like he’s met her before. He thinks she’s expressing her denial through this kind of intellectual posturing.

A brief note mentions that the Statue of Liberty holds a product in her raised arm, and each year on January 1 this product is swapped by workers hoisted up there on cranes.

The next speaker at White Flag is overly rehearsed and affected. He is followed by a man who speaks in an anxious, pained manner, yet who receives a better reception because what he’s speaking his own truth. Irony is not tolerated at Boston AA meetings, and neither is blaming one’s addiction on some particular factor or other. A young woman now speaking blames her addiction on the fact that she was a teenage sex worker, that she’d been fostered by crazy parents who were in denial that their biological daughter was brain dead. The father would molest the daughter’s lifeless body in a twisted ritual.

It is not considered acceptable to blame one’s addiction on personal circumstances like this, no matter how terrible the personal circumstances are. People in the meeting react to the story with awkward discomfort. Boston’s “classically authoritarian” dictum has been carved into the men’s room: “Do not ask WHY / If you dont want to DIE / Do like your TOLD / If you want to get OLD.”