... It's difficult to try and parse out exactly "Why" each character and plot is weaved in, but they have some significance and meaning, and a lot of times these digressions are used to reinforce and elaborate on particular themes (of which there are a lot in IJ), to provide counterpoints, or different interpretations. Forgot to say, finished the body of the text last Friday on a plane-catered-coffee-fueled 150-page binge. Now I'm going through the footnotes, since I skipped most of them when I wasn't listening with a book handy. Figured you might appreciate #61: More thoughts will arrive at an undetermined point in the future. I'm still deciding which of the remaining mysteries / questions I'd like to think more about.The term for such a splayed-out world is an Encyclopedic Novel. The ability to not just regurgitate common narratives, but instead investigate their origins and the fractionation amongst the belief systems, and where the knowledge to build these ideologies comes from is central to this stylistic choice (he does this a lot with his elaborations on trope-y sayings ("One day at a a time") the context of their meaning and assmiliation). It is not a whimsical one done idly. This is a driving force amongst post-modern lit to discuss our relationship with knowledge and information, which I believe to be an important aspect considering we now live in such a fractalized and information-rich society.
An après-garde digital movement, a.k.a. 'Digital Parallelism' and 'Cinema of Chaotic Stasis,' characterized by a stubborn and possibly intentionally irritating refusal of different narrative lines to merge into any kind of meaningful confluence, the school derived from both the narrative bradykineticism of Antonioni and the disassociative formalism of Stan Brakhage and Hollis Frampton, comprising periods in the careers of the late Beth B., the Snow brothers, Vigdis Simpson, and the late J. O. Incandenza (middle period).