yes have read it before

 but did not understand how it demonstrates Wittgenstein, nor how it dramatizes Ortovertism, and much else.  Now on page 297 and ready to end it.  However.  Maybe take a day break from it and read more Handke or some of Dunderhead.  

Kim coming to see us mid-week this coming week.  Ordered a new kindle for Bela.  Need to find another Isabel Allende author.  

the talking bird, does it foresee AI even??  

330-331  These membranes withstand the onslaught of the countless Other-set, ceaselessly battering the Others, their heads coated with filth, their underarms clotted with fungus, they batter and the secure membrane/ovum waits patiently, strong, aloof, secure and, yes, occasionally with let an Other in, will suck it in, on the membrane's terms, will suck it in like a sperm, will take it inside itself to renew, to create itself anew. 

well at least AI assure's me I got the Key Passage, right here, right before your eyes!  Something I had no clue about thirty or forty years ago when I did read the book ---

is the membrane passage on pp. 330-331 the key to the whole meaning of DFW's Broom of the System? https://share.google/aimode/rpe4k3WnAnryzzKe2 

[1, 2]

While the novel's title points directly to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language (meaning is determined by its use, like a broom), Dr. Jay's hysterical psychological lecture on the "strong, clean membrane"provides the psychological and existential framework for every major character's conflict. [1, 2, 3]

The passage unlocks the core themes of David Foster Wallace's debut novel in several crucial ways:

1. The Conflict of Self vs. Other

On pages 330–331, Dr. Jay tells Lenore Beadsman that a healthy identity requires a membrane that acts like a "strong, clean ovum". He asserts that a proper membrane "chooses what to suck inside itself and lets all the rest bounce dirtily off" to withstand the "onslaught of the countless Other-set".
This is the central anxiety of the novel: Where does the individual end and the outside world begin? [1, 2, 3]

2. Lenore vs. Rick (Opposite Membrane Failures)

The entire narrative is driven by two characters with fundamentally broken, diametrically opposed membranes: [1, 2]

• Lenore's Broken Membrane (Total Permeability): Lenore is terrified that she has no internal self. She believes her thoughts, feelings, and life script are entirely dictated by the "Outside"—specifically by her great-grandmother's Wittgensteinian control and her family's corporate legacy. Her membrane lets everything in, leaving her feeling like a character in someone else's story. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• Rick's Broken Membrane (Total Isolation): Rick Vigorous suffers from the exact opposite pathology. He cannot let the outside world penetrate his membrane. He is completely trapped in his own neuroses and uses fictional stories (like his Monroe Fieldbinder drafts) to control reality rather than experiencing it. As Dr. Jay notes elsewhere, Rick is like a sperm without a tail—unable to break through and achieve real union. [1, 2, 3]

3. The Trap of Solipsism

Wallace uses the membrane metaphor to dramatize the "double bind" of postmodern life. If your membrane is too thick, you fall into solipsism (the lonely belief that only your mind exists). If your membrane is too thin or non-existent, you lose your agency entirely and get swallowed up by the systems around you. [1, 2, 3, 4]

4. Wallace's Satire of the Solution

Importantly, the passage is also a comedic trap. Dr. Jay is eventually revealed to be a deeply unhinged neurotic who is obsessed with literal, physical hygiene and scrubbing himself with antiseptics. By having a fraudulent, absurd therapist deliver the "key" theory of the book, Wallace is satirizing the very idea that human connection and existential loneliness can be easily solved by a clean, clinical formula. The tragedy of the book is that a perfectly "impenetrable" membrane keeps you safe, but it also leaves you entirely alone. [1, 2]

If you are writing an essay or unpacking this for a reading group, let me know:

• If you want to connect the membrane passage to the ending of the novel
• How this connects to Wittgenstein's ideas about the limits of language
• If you want to analyze how Gramma Beadsman influenced Lenore's broken membrane

• Our desires and reflections about the world are deeply entangled with the world and the things we do and experience in the world – even the most mundane things like listening to the radio or watching sports.   And so, we catch a glimpse of a vision of forming and re-forming culture from within.   The tragedy of Wallace’s life, however, is that despite his engagements with the culture around him – from the broader sorts of cultural engagement, like watching television or listening to the radio, to the more personal engagements like teaching students and dancing with the members of a local church – Wallace lived a fairly isolated life and one gets the sense that he saw humanity forging and being forged by culture primarily as individuals, as opposed to communities doing so in specific places.  One wonders, therefore, to what extent this philosophical – and to a lesser extent, lived – isolation contributed to the eventual taking of his own life.  His life was not that of Camus’s stranger Meursault, detached and floating through a life without meaning, but rather one of being deeply submerged in a life that was rich with meaning, but finding in that meaning a pain too much for one person to bear.

  Wallace’s philosophical explorations in Broom, which were enjoyable to me, can become a bit heavy-handed as the book wears on.   Broom does seem to fit its place as Wallace’s first novel, and as I understand it, is much rougher in comparison with his masterpiece Infinite Jest, but yet is a careful and probing piece of literature that still stands head and shoulders above most contemporary fiction.  Wallace (in Although of Course…) says that he is not proud of Broom, noting that it was “written very quickly, rewritten sloppily” and that he avoided “doing the hard work” that was suggested to him in the editorial process.  I do intend to read Infinite Jest in the near future (though I may first tackle Wallace’s soon-to-be-released essay on freewill, Fate, Time and Language), and hopefully my appreciation of it will be even deeper given the background of having worked through the text of Broom.

  Wallace’s life and writings represent one of the keenest minds of our times, and there is much that we can learn from his valiant struggles to make sense the world.  However, it is a great tragedy that the powers of individualism and displacement in our world formed him in a way that essentially left him to fight these battles alone, a fight for which even our best and brightest are, in the end, not fit.  by C Christopher Smith  in The Englewood Review of Books