A third political party finally achieved viability “the two established mainstream parties split open along tired philosophical lines in a dark time when all landfills got full and all grapes were raisins and sometimes in some places the falling rain clunked instead of splatted, and also, recall, a post-Soviet and -Jihad era when—somehow even worse—there was no real Foreign Menace of any real unified potency to hate and fear, and the U.S. sort of turned on itself and its own philosophical fatigue and hideous redolent wastes with a spasm of panicked rage that in retrospect seems possible only in a time of geopolitical supremacy and consequent silence, the loss of any external Menace to hate and fear” (382).
Oh, well, we need not fear that future for a while, eh fear-based politics?
*sigh*. Go read Infinite Jest. With us at infinite summer.
NaptimeWriting 
The more quotes you post, the more I want to gush how impressive it is for someone to have read IJ once, much less MORE than once, as you have.
You should put that on your CV.
Oh, Ink, I totally needed that buoying. I love the novel. I really do. And I’m finding so much in a second read. But man, with all that’s going on, even seventy pages a week is way too much. Only because P had a 24 hour fever and lay like a lump next to me while I read between our several naps that day am I on schedule with Infinite Summer. I feel it like an obligation, but other, more important things are falling by the wayside.
I wanted to do my dissertation on IJ, and may yet. My thesis committee refused to read it, so I moved on to my fourth or fifth topic. I should send you that, btw. I’m still pretty proud of it.
I predict that dissertating on IJ will be allowed. And yes, you should send that to me, btw. I’d love to read it. (Have I sent you anything to read, yet? Maybe I should pick something, swallow my nervousness, and share already.)