Infinite Jest Characters - ETA Students
More Infinite Jest fan art...
More character illustrations: Ennet House residents.
My essays on Infinite Jest: On double binds; On recursion.
My book club podcast episode on DFW
There are so many damn characters. What did I sign up for?
Anyway, here are the students from Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA) to add to the Ennet House residents. I’ll do the Incandenza family separately.
Again, let me know if any are way off.
Sorted by gender and age group. Don’t worry: No big spoilers.
Boys
u18s
Michael Pemulis
(aka Peemster.) u18s #12. Industrious. Witty. Disrespectful towards authority. Good at maths but lazy academically. Friends with Hal Incandenza. Likes drugs. Hates Dr Rusk. Reigning champion of Eschaton.
Trevor Axford
(aka Axhandle.) u18s #4. Average student. Wants to go to Yale to impress family. Sells clean urine with Michael Pemulis. Hates Ingersoll. Fell off his bike onto his head as a child making all food taste horrible.
John NR Wayne
(aka John “No Relation” Wayne.) u18s #1. Quebecois. Joined ETA to skip university and go pro. Plays with machine like beauty. Turns his brain on and off during matches. Casted in the documentary Homo Duplex about the lives of people named John Wayne1.
Jim Troeltsch
u18s #8. Wants to be a sports broadcaster. Constantly pretending to broadcast matches, annoying other students. Badly sick with the flu. Believes that ETA cafeteria secretly uses powdered milk.
Jim Struck
(aka James Albrecht Lockley Struck Jr.) u18s #5. Bad skin. Enjoys telling the story of Eric Clipperton. Plagiarises a paper on the AFR for a school assignment. Advises younger students to hold it in when needing to fart on court.
Ted Schacht
u18s #9. Wants to be a dentist. Dropped rankings after getting Crohn’s disease and injuring his knee. No longer cares about winning which improves his play. Occasionally uses drugs, but doesn’t feel the need to.
Keith Freer
(aka The Viking.) u18s #7. Aggressive and bravado personality. Father invented the Phoneless Cord.
Kyle D. Coyle
u18s #3. From Tuscon. Isn’t used to cold winters. Plays 2 hours of paper-scissors-rock with Mario. Suffers from a suspicious discharge.
Paul Shaw
(aka Tall Paul Shaw.) u18s #6. Tall, presumably.
Hugh Pemberton
u18s C-squad. Hit in the eye by Hal’s baseline return when clumsily approaching the net during the As vs Cs experiment.
u16s
Ortho Stice
(aka The Darkness.) u16s #1. Dysfunctional family. Incongruous face. Annoyed at whoever is moving his bed around. Trains with light weights ever since a gym accident. Hal’s Laertes, minus the poison.
Graham Rader
(aka Yard guard.) Seeks advice from Lyle, the ETA guru, on how to stop being a paralysed perfectionist. May have gotten Jim Troeltsch sick.
Petropolis Kahn
(aka W.M.2) Excessive body hair. Tires easily.
Eliot Kornspan
On steroids. Lifts absurdly heavy weights with Keith Freer.
Anton Doucette
(aka The Booger.) u16s. Has a large mole above his lip. Anxious about failing classes. Anxious that others call him “The Booger” behind his back. Generally anxious.
Zoltan Csikzentmihalyi
Doesn’t speak much English. Coincidentally shares the name of the psychologist who recognised and named the concept of “flow”.
u14s & u12s
LaMont Chu
Member of the Tunnel Club. u14s #1. Played Eschaton. Speaks for John NR Wayne during his Big Buddy session. Desperately wants to become professional and famous. Plays with too much risk aversion because of his fear of losing.
Evan Ingersoll
u12s #3. Disliked by several of the students for somewhat unanalyzable reasons. No eyebrows. Hal’s Little Buddy after Axford didn’t want him. Kicks off the whole Eschaton debacle by hitting a ball at Ann Kittenplan’s head.
Todd Possalthwaite
(aka Postal-Weight.) u14s #5. Best lobber at ETA but limits his game to them. Has Axford as a big buddy after being traded for Ingersoll.
Otis P Lord
Calculus phenom. Stats whiz. Eschaton game master. Arguably ratifies the blurring of the map vs territory distinction. Crashes head first into his computer screen during the Eschaton chaos. Enjoys the Madame Psychosis radio show.
Idris Arslanian
Ethnically ambiguous. u14s #4. Experimenting with playing tennis blindfolded to improve his other senses, as instructed by Coach Thorpe.
Kent Blott
Youngest boy at ETA. 10 years old. SeventhDay Adventist. Wants to get a head start on worrying about puberty related anxieties. Not technically a member of the Tunnel Club but allowed to join to retrace his steps.
Kieran McKenna
Member of the Tunnel Club. Injured during Eschaton when Ann Kittenplan clotheslined him and put him in a headlock.
Joseph Gopnik
Member of the Tunnel Club. Fierce working class kid from Brooklyn. Punches other students during the Eschaton outbreak and the tunnel club search.
Carl Whale
Member of the Tunnel Club. Asks Struck what to do if you need to fart on court during Big Buddy Session.
Phillip Traub
Member of the Tunnel Club. Secretly tickles other member’s necks during the search pretending to be the elusive hamster or a rat.
Audern Tallat-Kelpsa
Member of the Tunnel Club. Creepily blue-eyed.
Peter Beak
u12s #2. Sleeps with his eyes open. Attends Hal Incandenza’s Big Buddy session with Kent Blott, Idris Arslanian, and Evan Ingersoll where they watch looped tennis in painfully high definition.
Jeff Penn
(aka J.J.) u14s #2. Breaks his leg during the Eschaton debacle.
Tim Peterson
(aka Sleepy TP Peterson.) Member of the Tunnel Club. Hates Ingersoll. Looks dazed at the best of times.
Other
Dymphna
Joins ETA late. Highly ranked blind player. The highness of the ranking may be due to the blindness itself. Plays with sonic balls.
Eric Clipperton
Undefeated for years via a successful strategy of playing while holding a gun to his head, threatening to shoot himself if he loses. Gets along with a young Mario Incandenza.
Ross Reat
Former high ranked ETA player. First player to lose to Eric Clipperton and last player to shake his hand. Never quite the same.
Marlon Bain
Former ETA player. Friends with Orin Incandenza. Suffers badly with OCD which may stem from his compulsive sweating. Won’t walk through doorways until he’s checked the frame by hand.
Girls
u18s
Bridget Boone
u18s #3. Introduced Hal Incandenza to weed to help with his bad dreams. Clever but lazy student. Insightful film critic. Sometimes joins the boys’ blunt rotation.
Bernadette Longley
u18s #1. Embarrassed about hooking up with Keith Freer. Joins Hal and Bridget to watch Blood Sister.
Jennie Bash
Strong arms. Joins Hal and Bridget Boone to watch the movie Blood Sister.
Frannie Unwin
Vaguely simian style of play. Joins Hal and Bridget Boone to watch the movie Blood Sister.
Caryn & Sharyn Vaught
Siamese twins attached at the head. Unbeatable in three years in doubles.
u16s
Millicent Kent
(aka U.S.S Millicent3.) u16s #1. Powerful serve and impressive benchpress. Secretly passionate about modern interpretive dance. Likes Mario Incandenza. Has daddy issues from childhood.
Carol Spodek
On steroids. u16s female.
U14s & u12s
Ann Kittenplan
u14s #5. Suspiciously muscular. Gets terrible rages. Ends up pummelling half the players at Eschaton after Ingersoll intentionally hit a ball at her at head.
Felicity Zweig
u14s #3. Doesn’t want Mario to film whiling she’s in a towel.
Gretchen Holt
u14s #4. Bespectacled.
Jolene Criess
u14s #6. Attends the “diddling session” run by Avril.
Tina Echt
Regionally ranked u12s from Rhode Island. Only seven years old but a true cannibal off of the backhand side.
I’ve left off a handful of characters who only get mentioned once or twice without much description4.
Ultimately not used.
Wooly Mammoth.
United States Ship.
Other C-squad players Gloeckner, Stockhausen, and Duncan van Slack who get badly beaten by the A-squad. Other random students Stephan Wagenknecht, Jeff Wax, Brian van Vleck, Sweeny, Bernard Makulic, Virgilio, Redondo, Reynes, Polep, Siress, and Diane Prins.