“Kertwang”: A Look Into Descriptive Tools

By: Herbie Waters 

Through reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, the tone, setting, and descriptions of the lives of characters such as Hal Incandenza are extremely clear. Wallace uses a myriad of literary devices to accomplish this, from lots of spoken, unfiltered dialogue to words that do not exist in the English dictionary lexicon. One particular example of these words is “kertwang”, first uttered by two of Hal’s peers in a locker room of the tennis academy they attend. There are no definitions of this word in the OED, and only online resources dedicated to Wallace’s works provide semblances of what kertwang means. However, in context, it could be assumed that word is derivative of something tennis-related, and that the boys in the locker room use kertwang as an allegory for situations strange enough that only filler words can describe. Wallace makes up words such as “kertwang” for more accurate images of the atmosphere and attitudes of the characters, leaving it for the reader to interpret it in a way that makes sense in context. 

Due to the constant so-called “neologisms”, otherwise made-up words, in Infinite Jest, multiple online communities have formed discussion boards to try to decipher what Wallace means when he writes words like “kertwang”. A Google search results in URLs such as “definitivejest.blogspot.com”, “infinitesummer.org”, and “dfwvocab.tumblr.com”; all three obviously “fan-made” online poster boards to discuss Wallace. Each page defines “kertwang” differently, with two posters on one site even having different interpretations. However, a consensus between all three rests on “kertwang” meaning a situation akin to striking a tennis ball, but the strings of the racket break, making a “kertwang”-like sound. InfiniteSummer.org poster “levingard” interprets it as “the sound of when you hit a ball and the strings break”, which is a cut-and-dry definition that fits in the tennis locker-room setting. 

In the book itself, the context is first provided during the initial conversation between Hal’s peers, where a hypothetical close tennis match is brought up. “Creepily blue-eyed Audern Tallat-Kelpsa”, a boy, evokes the image: “This is in early rounds. The kind they give you only two balls. Honor systems. All of a sudden there he is kertwanging on you. It happens.” Another boy, Phillip Traub, responds: “Whether he’s outright kertwanging or just head-f***ing you. Do you start kertwanging back? Tit for tat? What do you do?” The conversation continues, until a solution is brought forward: “You do not kertwang back. You play the calls, not a word, keep smiling. If you still win, you’ll have grown inside as a person.” The option for losing the match is stated as “you do something private and unpleasant to his water-jug right before his next round”, ostensibly referring to urinating in it. From these circumstances, it is gathered that these boys, however educated, are “just talking”, and that it would be harder for other words and descriptions to take the place of “kertwang”. By this, Wallace drops you into the locker room, and you experience the conversation to its fullest. 

When searching for the definition of “kertwang”, the Blogspot page offered the “situation” definition, citing page 512 of Infinite Jest where “Avril [Incandenza] had eschewed an office door even before the cleaning-lady kertwang, for simple-enclosure reasons.” While in reverie that I had found something of an answer, and oblivious to the book being spoiled, it is evident that “kertwang” goes past the tennis academy locker room and into everyday life for the Incandenzas. Another example, this time from the Tumblr post, cites page 573 in Infinite Jest, this time in dialogue. “Roger and Jawohl. Here things get abstractly furry and I’ll just skim through the fact that the only kertwang in the whole process environmentally is that the resultant fusion turns out so greedily efficient that it sucks every last toxin and poison out of the surrounding ecosystem, all inhibitors to organic growth for hundreds of radial clicks in every direction.” 

Wallace’s context clues in these later passages serve to solidify the meaning of “kertwang”, and they are somewhat solved by the Internet once again. These situations align most with InfiniteSummer.org poster “JackD”’s interpretation, describing it as “a situation that sends you careening speedily off in a different direction from the one you were going, physically, mentally, or emotionally.” JackD then states examples, such as “a practical joke” or “waking up to find your bed is across the room from where it was when you went to sleep”. The word then goes both ways, seeing that “You can kertwang someone else by creating such a situation, or you can be kertwanged by encountering it yourself.” With these examples, it becomes easier to visualize what “being kertwanged” would be like, and that the “cleaning-lady kertwang” would cause metaphorical racket-strings to break and leave the owner, in this case Avril Incandeza, in a flustered state that Wallace perfectly sets in your mind. 

In Infinite Jest, the first one hundred-something pages are endemic with situations that Wallace describes with such brutal honesty, that words must be made up when a dictionary word won’t accurately depict whatever’s going on. The fact that Wallace has readers discussing the meanings of his “neologisms” after finishing Infinite Jest is enough to know that the made-up words are left for the reader to interpret in a way that makes sense in context. It is interesting to see a word like “kertwang” not only refer to the literal racket strings breaking after striking a tennis ball, but used as an allegory for various situations later in the book. At this point, it would be safe to say fellow readers on Internet boards were kertwanged by Wallace, did their best to come up with a general meaning for the word, and not leave future explorers completely lost in the delivery.

bibliography 

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Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, Einaudi, 2016, pp. 117–118. 

unknown, JackD, and levingard unknown. “Infinite Summer.” Infinite Summer • View Topic - Re: Kertwang, infinitesummer.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=503. 

Myskiw, Jarett. Definitive Jest, Blogspot, 28 Oct. 2012, 00:00, 

definitivejest.blogspot.com/2012/10/entry-kertwang-n.html. 

Dfwvocab, dfwvocab. “Kertwang.” A Linguistic Bestiary of David Foster Wallace, 14 Feb. 2014, dfwvocab.tumblr.com/post/76558672113/kertwang.