Did you understand the title of this essay? Probably not. Neither would I have understood, to be frank, were I not the author. That’s because when I was coming up with a title for this essay, which, in my mind, arose as an allergic reaction to the garbage that David Foster Wallace’s book, “The Infinite Jest” is, I was sort of trying to convey the idea that I was going to write an essay about the fact that some people among us are merely marginally functional–functional enough to be considered legally sane–but otherwise are actually seriously mentally ill, and that, this was a joke that was going to cause tears, not laughter.

Did I make sense in my previous paragraph? Of course I did, but that’s because I possess a healthy mind and I can push my mind to make coherent sentences out of a clear idea or insight that has been generated under the combination of many years of knowledge and experience; and the resultant outcome of using this combination is to critically think about some observation (in this case, Wallace’s book, “Infinite Jest”).

I proceed then, based on this axiomatic hypothesis, to claim that one criteria for solid, undisturbed mental health is the ability to formulate clear logic, articulate expression, and works of art or rhethoric that do not confuse, and therefore do not frustrate. Of course, allowance must be made with regard to the level and readiness of the reader: when the reader is incompetent, an otherwise clear and sublime text could be labeled as ‘confusing’, abstruse or otherwise ’not that great’.

But this is not that big of a problem. I can speak from personal experience, as, when I read something deep and esoteric that was above my intellectual capacities and personal experiences, while I did not understand what I read, I understood just enough to realize it was logical or made sense in a way that was not available to me yet; works written in classical Persian, by Sufi Mystics or ancient Persian and Arab philosophers, works written by Descartes and Leibnitz, often contain elements that require more research, more erudition and a certain mindset and experience.

For instance, in Mathnavi book 1, our beloved teacher Mawlawi Rumi Balkhi writes (I translate):

	The sun is the proof for the sun
	If you want proof, don't turn away from it

(آفتاب آمد دلیل آفتاب گر دلیلت باید از وی رو متاب)

The superficial meaning as described by some commentators online is that the sun itself is the proof of the existence of the sun, so there is no need to seek the proof of the existence of the sun; all you need to do is not turn away from it (or close your eyes). This might make some sense, but judging from the deep and wide erudition possessed by our Mawlawi Balkhi, I don’t think it has this meaning, although I am not 100% sure what meaning it has.

It does not baffle me, nor does it confuse me. It excites in my mind, reverence for a cryptic reference that is probably open to those who earn the knowledge to understand this. I don’t understand it fully, but yet, I understand enough to realize it is not nonsense: the sentences are sublimely artistic (even in translation) and the art shines forth through a masterful blend of form and content, so that it is at once both understandable and cryptic!

It invites me to think, to challenge my assumptions, to doubt my knowledge and overcofidence, to awaken my intellectual curiosity, in short, it promises a reward if I engage with it. Thus, the text is actually somewhat opaque but all the same, it retains the elegance that is gained when complex is couched within the simple.

Over the years, I have thought long and hard about this verse, and I have come to certain nonclusive conclusions. One is that reasons don’t prove but proofs reason. Instead of saying ’there is a sun because….’ It is better to say: ’there is no need to say there is a sun’! Another possible interpretation is that the sun, in these verses, allegorically represent knowledge and wisdom, and one must pursue them not as means to some end but as ends unto themselves. This does not make intuitive sense, but some thinking will reveal its essence: why do I love my cats? I know I do, but I can’t find the reason. There is no external reason. My loving my cats is not a means to some other end, it is the end itself.

And so forth, I could go on and on about all the possibilities. Regardless of my conjectures, though, I understand that there is a deeper meaning hidden in there that perhaps I could somehow discover someday, the same way Descartes discovered analytical geometry when he was observing spiders crawling along a 3D plane in the corner of his room.

But when we talk about books like “Infinite Jest”, we come across the symptom of larger problem: undetected mental defect, that stays below the radar because the person who is ill is not so ill as to be officially classified incapable of proper mental functioning. But this is being conservative. When mental illness exists, other clues also emerge and a conclusive proof can be obtained. In the case of Wallace, it is easy to find reports of his being in and out of psychiatric hospitals, which fully confirms the original hypothesis that he was unwell.

As is very clearly known by most people, not all mental illnesses are the same. This specific category then, involves muddled thinking, and an inability to function optimally. It reminds of one guy I used to play basketball with. He was otherwise as normal as it gets, but his pants and clothes were very dirty and he smelled like garbage. This is an example of the failure in the ability to function optimally. The person is unwell because he does not realize he is dirty, or if he does, does nothing to address it.

Thus, muddled thinking is a similar malaise, that the either the person suffering from it is somehow aware of, and is either unable or unwilling to remedy. There are a number of muddle-brained thinkers whose books are still being published, whose ideas are read by a different sort of mentally incapacitated people whom I will dub “the unperceiving”–a category whose brains are unable to detect wheat from chaff, garbage from sublime, good from bad, clear from unclear, and so on.

Some of such mentally incapacitated writers are Nietzhche (misspell is intentional), Fraud (I mean Freud), Shakespeare (who invents 1700 words!!?) and so forth. There are also degrees to how muddled someone’s thinking is. James Joyce qualifies for 99%, whereas Wallace follows closely with probably 80%. Consider the following samples. The first one is by the most seriously mentally deranged James Joyce:

Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: 'Sir Tristram, violer d’amores,   
fr’over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from   
North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of   
Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor   
had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated  
themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went  
doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from   
afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick:  
not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad   
buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s  
fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth   
with twone nathandjoe.'  

I challenge the gentle reader to decipher what this paragraph is really saying! Mishe mishe?, tauftauf? It borders on retardation.

Here is another piece of work, Gertrude Stein’s Tender Box:

A BOX. Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness   
comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research,   
out of selection comes painful cattle. So then the order   
is that a white way of being round is something suggesting  
 a pin and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so   
 udimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance    
 strangely, it is so earnest to have a green point   
 ot to red but to point again.  

Those are more advanced cases of mental illness, but Wallace is not that far behind:

(from “Infinite Jest”)

"The puppet-film’s auteur was a former optician named   
Gerhardt Schtitt, who’d been born in the Black Forest but   
had emigrated to the U.S.A.in 1962 and had somehow ended  
up in Tucson AZ, where he’d taken a lot of peyote and  
become obsessed with the idea of making a film that   
would re-create the visionary experience of a Hopi  
Indian mystic on a spirit-quest,using only handmade   
puppets and natural lighting."      

Not so bad, but the specifity of origin and date of birth betray mental disturbance: the exactness is uncalled for, and unnecessary for it does not connect to anything else in the novel.

"The medical attaché’s wife, who is even more stunning up close,   
stunning enough to cause sexual side-effects in the old-fashioned  
 sense of the term, is standing at the head of the bed, holding  
  a sort of brass urn with a blue-flame pilot-light at its base  
   and a long rubber tube that runs  from the urn to a steel   
   nozzle, which nozzle she is inserting deep into the medical  
    attaché’s  right nostril."    

Now you see the ill mind at work; the picture created is a verbalization of how crazy people think or feel. There’s nothing artistic about it, nor it is relevant to the novel, which seems to have no arch.

"The Moms is an abstract figure of maternal authority  
 who makes her first appearance in the   novel as a   
 gigantic and terrifying head that looms over the   
 Incandenza family’s tennis court   during a thunderstorm,  
  shouting out cryptic warnings and commands in   
  a ‘clap/boom’-like voice."    

Another example of bizzareness.

In case you think I have an agenda, let’s see third-party reviews from Amazon:

Kat writes:

'My desire to finish was driven to find if there   
was some big "Ah Ha" moment. There was none.   
And maybe that was the art - IDK - but seems like   
a waste of a 1100 page book.'    

Aman Fly writes:

This is like reading the work of a ADHD   
child who is extremely bored; or a schizophrenic   
patient who is not on meds and had a revelation.   
The run on sentence makes everything hard to read.   
I gave a try but just couldnt finish the book.  

You can see how Aman has also realized Wallace was unwell.

David Giard writes:

It's a difficult book to follow for the following reasons  
	-It is extremely long, has many characters, and many subplots  
	-It contains hundreds of footnotes and some of   
	  the footnotes have footnotes  
	-It sometimes switches backward and forward in time   
	   and even to long descriptions of characters' dreams  

Some of the storylines came together; but many did not  
 (or, if they did, I didn't see it). And that frustrated me.  

As you can see, I am not alone in this assessment. Fortunately, I did not read beyond the first 20 pages to realize Wallace was mentally ill.

And this brings me to my main thesis. The fact that he got published, and people out there read him and gave his book four or five stars is almost comi-tragic, as it reflects a more serious issue: how many readers are mentally unwell? And what are the varying levels of such illness?

Unfortunately, the classification of insane that the law has forgotten and the layfolk don’t understand or see through are not easy to be detected because on the surface, they seem to be quite normal. The person holds a job, earns a living, has a family, does things normal people do–there’s no reason, at least legally speaking, to doubt the sanity of someone who is somewhat ‘strange’ but functioning in the society as expected.

It’s a joke but nobody will laugh if they understand how serious this problem is. The problem of the psychopaths, narcissists, schizophrenics, muddleheads, weirdos, etc. etc. who are living mostly normal lives because they do what is expected of them (in the main) and only occasionally deviate. Problems like these are serious because some of these marginally normal people can be extremely dangerous: Hitler, Chengiz Khan, Churchill, Lenin etc. are all examples of mentally ill people who were sane enough to mask their insanity, but whose insanity can be definitively found in their actions and words, if you know what to look for.