Orin, Hal's oldest brother, plateaus in his tennis achievement around age fifteen and, instead of trying to go pro or trying to improve on a satellite tour, he matriculates at Boston University on a full scholarship with a stipend for tennis. are significantly less than those of the rest of the students. Mario, the middle Incandenza brother, acted as James's assistant and protégé, which he could do because due to a long list of developmental and congenital issues, Mario is unable to play tennis, so his commitments at E.T.A. He focused more, in the final years of his life, on making films than on administrating a school. takes over the Headmaster position after James ends his own life with a rigged microwave.Īt Enfield, James had become increasingly withdrawn.

Avril grew up on a Quebecois potato farm, and Charles Tavis is her step-brother (arguably half-brother, but evidence later in the book suggests that C.T. When James founds E.T.A., the family moves from Waltham to Boston, which is a hard move for Avril who likes their suburban life.

James's father was also a commercial actor of small acclaim, and the combination of tennis and film followed James into his own adult life in a major way. James was introduced to tennis by his own father, who had ambitions of being a great player but destroyed his knees in a match and could never fully recover. James opens the Enfield Tennis Academy when Orin is a preadolescent child still competing in regional tennis. Incandenza is a physicist and Avril is a grammarian and English professor at Brandeis. This memory returns as an important moment for Hal and his brother Orin, because at this moment Avril's usually extremely collected and curated facade of self is exposed both brothers look to this moment as a 'true' depiction of the crippling anxiety that simmers just beneath the surface of Avril's public persona.

His mother, Avril Incandenza, freaks out and parades Hal around their backyard screaming for help from the neighbors. Hal's personal arc begins when he's a toddler and he swallows a clump of strange mold from his family's basement. The interview devolves into chaos as Hal seems to have a panic attack and is promptly rushed to the hospital. The novel opens with a scene of Hal Incandenza, unable to verbally communicate for reasons as yet undetermined, undergoing an admissions interview with faculty and coaching staff at the University of Arizona. A novel that almost defies summary, Infinite Jestbegins with a scene at the latest chronological point in the purview of the novel: in the 'Year of Glad,' the final year of nine-year-long Subsidized Time calendar in O.N.A.N., a nation made up of parts of the former United States and Canada.

Infinite jest first edition