Week Twelve

Hal tries to go to an NA meeting, Gately meets a wraith, we don’t know what happened to Kate, and Ortho Stice is stuck.

Recap & Reflections

November 19 (?) – Kevin Bane nurtures his Inner Infant
Following the meeting schedule booklet Johnette has given him, Hal travels to Quabbin Recovery Systems for an N.A. meeting, feeling “pathetic and absurd” (p. 796). There’s an intense level of description of the building, the hallways, the colours, the carpet. Hal’s not sure what to expect (he’s brought a couple hundred dollars with him just in case there are fees), and he realizes he’s in the wrong meeting (and that he knows snuffling, infantile large, bearded Kevin). Hal will later remember Kevin’s “head up on a wobbly neck and looking up and past Hal, his face unspeakable” (p. 808).

November 11- 19 (?) Gately lays in the hospital
We spend 35 uninterrupted pages and then another 16, with Gately in his hospital bed, wracked with pain, slipping in and out of consciousness and maddeningly unable to extract the info he wants from his visitors, who mostly treat him like a “huge empty confessional booth” (p. 831). Herman the Breathing Ceiling reminds me of the Face in the Floor. 

Tiny Ewell tells his story of a” third-order crime. Of theft cubed” (p. 814). The way the situation quickly ran out of his control must be similar to other “white-collar” criminals who end up in an elaborate, yet doomed plan to cover their own asses.

In the dream Gately has about his mother being caught up in a hurricane, Don’s “mother’s tiny rotating imago faded against the ceiling” I initially thought that was a typo, but perhaps Wallace really did mean the last stage an insect attains during metamorphosis (thanks Wikipedia!)

Calvin Thrust lays out what has happened at Ennet since the shooting. Thrust let Lenz “rikky-tick out of there” (p.822), and Kate Gompert never returned from NA (p. 824). We learn about Dave K. the man who scuttled on hands and feet like a crab that Marathe had seen earlier.

Gately’s recurring nightmare of the “tiny acne-scarred Oriental woman looking down at him” (p. 828) has parallels to Infinite Jest’s wobble-eyed crib-perspective camera work, though later when Gately dreams of that (or rather the Wraith puts it in his head on p.850), he doesn’t consider the similarities.

And we meet the Wraith (p. 829). There is some REALLY important reason the wraith has taken the energy required to make himself known to Don. JOI’s spirit pays multiple visits to Don. The words he puts into his head: ANNULATE..CHIAROSCURO… etc also includes a few Hamlet references “LAERTES…POOR YORICK” (p. 832). We are introduced to the concept of “figurants” and how trapped and encaged they are in their own “mute peripheral status” (p. 835). The wraith confirms that IJ VI was made as an attempt to reach out to Hal. Though we are still unsure of JOI’s assertion that Hal had become “blank, inbent, silent, frightening, mute” (p.838) is accurate, we know what path Hal is on the in the Year of Glad. Maybe JOI saw past Hal’s attempts at presenting normally, to the figurant he was becoming. I second Don’s question of why JOI isn’t trying to interface with Hal directly. (p. 840)

I appreciated Don clocking James’ “poor me, poor me, pour me a drink” attitude. 

I was entranced by the passages that spoke of building a wall around each moment to be able to take the pain of withdrawal, the psychic battle of addiction.

Also Nom from Cheers! – lol. 

November 19 – The AFR make their moves on ETA
We learn that Marathe has not told DuPlessis that he found Madame Psychosis (p.845). Poor Tony and Lenz have been paired up in the screening room. Lenz, even when submitted to the Entertainment is able to remove Poor Tony’s digits instead of his own. Maybe he really can regrow his own fingers!  Luria P___ and DuPlessis are off to have a ‘technical interview’ with Orin (we last left off at DuPlessis’ arrival at Orin’s door on Nov 11) and the AFR are planning on diverting/killing (!) a school bus full of Quebeker tennis kids to trade places at the academy showcase.

November 20 – Stice gets Stuck and Hal isn’t himself
In one of the few first-person Hal perspectives (has it really been since page 67?) Hal wanders the halls of ETA. He is now presenting completely differently than he is feeling. Stice, who can’t even see his expression, thinks he is laughing, and Kenkle the janitor tells Hal his face is “a hilarity-face. it’s working hilariously. At first it merely looked a-mused. Now it is open-ly cach-inated” (p. 875).

There is also a figure in the stands as the snow swirls around – is it the Wraith? (p. 867).

Why is the Wraith manipulating Stice? Why was he picked to be the witness to the moving furniture (he promises to show Hal “some parabnormal shit that’ll shake your personal tree but good” (p. 871)) and was he compelled to this fenestration by the Wraith?

Week Eleven

As the reading winds up (only two weeks left!) I am appreciative (?) of how Wallace has left a few major details to the last quarter of the book: this week we finally get the story of Joelle’s disfigurement and the details of Marathe’s wife. As well, Marathe infiltrates Ennet House and later gets drunk with Kate Gompert, we see the Incandenzas through Joelle’s and Molly Notkins’ perspectives, Mario asks about sadness, Hal comes clean, and Pemulis gets the boot.

Recap

November 14 – Yours Let You Keep Your Teeth?
As Marathe infiltrates Ennet House as an “addicted and deformed” Swiss, we hear snippets of conversation between two former cult members, and get his perspective on the house and the other residents, one that paints a lurid picture of the residents, as “a man without hands and feet tried to navigate a stairway…a tormented-appearing man scuttled like a crab…another young girl seemed to remove her eye from her head and placed it in her mouth..” (pp. 730-731).

We also meet Selwyn, who believes the residents are the 26 ‘metal people’ that exist as we live our Matrix-like existence inside a room with “pro-jections” that change where we think we are.

Once Marathe realizes he has found Madame Psychosis, and also discovers there are several smiley-faced cartridges in Pat Montesian’s office (donated from ETA) (p. 750), he is torn between sharing that info with the AFR and Steeply. We also learn that Marathe’s stomach is not really in the game anymore, and he hasn’t really firmed up his plan on how to extricate himself from his quadruple-agent work. He ends up in a bar, drinking heavily. By coincidence, Kate Gompert has also come in to the bar after her run in with Poor Tony. Here we finally get the story of Marathe’s wife. At the end, Marathe offers Kate a glimpse of the Entertainment (p. 782). Is this just a theoretical conversation, or would he really take her to it if she said yes?

Joelle remembers her introduction to the Incandenzas
As she cleans her room at Ennet house (presumably while Marathe is downstairs? This section is not date-stamped), Joelle – prompted by her feelings for Gately – recalls her first meetings with James, Avril et al, as well as more background on her own Personal Daddy. At first Orin “felt his mother was the family’s pulse and center, a ray of light incarnate” (p. 737), so something has markedly changed to shift his opinion of Avril to the absolute nadir of the other side.

Orin feels his father is unreachable, an “expressionless stare from a great height” (p. 737). Joelle gradually appreciates JOI’s filmmaking, and gets the Howling Fantods from Avril for reasons that are maddeningly difficult to articulate (this seems to be Avril’s super-power).

November 11 – Hey Moms? Mario and Avril talk about sadness
There are remnants of Avril and John Wayne’s dalliance in Avril’s office as Mario asks her “How can you tell if somebody’s sad?” Specifically, if someone is acting  “even less low than normal. But still these suspicions are in your mind.” (p. 764). There is a discussion about existentialism, about having “a fragile sense of yourself as a person. As existing at all.” (p. 765).

November 12 – Hal comes clean to Mario
From Mario’s “All last night people were coming up going where is Hal” (p. 770) I assume this conversation is happening the evening of Nov 12. Here Hal admits his addiction to pot, and asks Mario for advice. He also talks about masks (vis a vis Pemulis and his lies to the ONANTA guy) and asserts that monsters are not “faces in the floor” but “the type of liar where there’s no way to tell” (p. 774).

November 17 – Hal visits Ennet House
Johnette opens the door to a young boy who’s “talking had a burbly, oversalivated quality Johnette knew all too wicked well” (p. 787). There is a teaser here with the sentence “Much later, in subsequent events’ light, Johnette F. would clearly recall the sight of the boy’s frozen hair slowly settling.” (p. 787)

November 17 – Two Jump-Cut Endnotes (324 / 332)
Not attached to any text, we have two endnotes that float untethered, both on November 17. Pemulis tries to give Possalthwaite a pep talk on math as the one sure thing. We also learn that Wayne was in Pemulis’ room grabbing some of Troelstch’s Seldane, making Pemulis nervous, as he had circulated a leaflet about Avril and Wayne’s tryst. (p. 1069). At the end of this note, Stice drops in to say that “Troelstch’s got Wayne on the air and Wayne has lost his mind.” (p. 1072).

The second endnote jumps ahead a few moments, as Pemulis is being raked over the coals by DeLint. Wayne’s “Seldane” was actually some of Pemulis’ Tenuate, and now the prorectors have Pemulis over a barrel. And Avril is not taking his blackmail anymore.

Molly Notkin tells all…or does she?
We learn a lot of necessary information that has been a long time coming from Molly Notkin. She outlines the accident that deformed Joelle (another Thanksgiving!), provides more detail about the contents of IJ and claims that Avril and Orin were potentially lovers. She also says that JOI had a “belief in a finite world-total of available erections” (p. 789), which we know was a trait she attributed to her own boyfriend (P. 220). So what kind of reliable narrator is Molly?

Reflections

Most all of this section focuses on truth. And by extension, lies. Conversations are stilted, one-sided, disingenuous, or just plain sad.

Marathe is in disguise as Swiss drug addict Henri [Foreign & Unpronouceable], scoping out Ennet House for Madame Psychosis. When we finally meet the “real” Marathe at the bar with Kate, the man who just a few months prior was expounding to Steeply on “the appetite of your people unable to choose appetites, this is the death” (p. 319) expresses how he “was allowed to choose something as more important than my thinking of my life. Her, she allowed this will without thinking.” (p. 778). There’s something here about Marathe admitting he has given over his will to his wife as a way to be released from his cage that definitely echoes the AA process, but also that seems contradictory to his comments to Steeply. I need to talk this one out further!

Joelle’s reflections on the Incandenzas include information on how Orin at the beginning of their relationship still had a strong connection to Avril, noting that her presence was required for Orin to have any kind of conversation with James and  that he was desperate to know if Joelle liked her (p. 747). Joelle’s take is that the entire family was “lousy with secrets.” (p. 751). What really makes Joelle’s POV (that’s Point of View) a full kertwang is how when we get Molly’s story of Joelle, we now know that secrets are what killed her own mother and ultimately led to her disfigurement. The level of detachment Joelle is capable of to analyze the Incandenzas while holding her own story is just, whoa.

Mario’s interaction with LaMont Chu is both comedic and very sad. “Are you saying this, or is this what happened?”  Mario is unable to have a conversation as he can’t see his way out of the film and into the world. “This is going very well!” (p. 759). When he later speaks to Avril he can’t be straight with her and just say who he is worried about, and she can’t be straight with him and meet him where he actually is at.  The back and forth of “Moms” and “Right here for you” in varied versions is so frustrating.

When Hal talks to Mario that night and confesses his addiction, we are finally given some relief from these disconnected conversations when Hal asks Mario what to do and Mario says “I think you just did it” (p. 785) meaning to tell the truth.

Week Ten

Now that we are very significantly past the half way mark, are you feeling speculation about where the novel is taking us? What our final destination will be? We know Hal ends up non-verbal, trapped inside his own, unreliable body, but where will the AFR’s search for the samizdat lead? What journey is Don on, or Joelle, or even Lenz?

Recap and Reflections

November 11 – Incandenza vs Stice
We get to witness the match that was referenced last week, a game seemingly arranged for the benefit of Moment magazine’s Helen Steeply, and as the match plays out, we get a first-hand account of the odd behaviours of Stice’s ball, seemingly moved by “mysterious curves and downdrafts that seemed to favour The Darkness alone” (p. 637) when Hal’s ball makes “an abrupt tight curve out of bounds” (p. 680) while Hal’s face “registered nothing”

Even while speaking with DeLint, Steeply seemed to take on the verbal patterns of Marathe, but that was ratcheted up when talking with Poutrincourt. It was an interesting switcheroo.  To me this convo between Steeply and Poutrincourt seemed to fill the same role as the outcropping conversations. And with Theirry and Steeply seeming to clock each other, I wonder if they were both aware of each others’ roles before Hugh/Helen arrived.

There is also a quick re-set of some characters, recalling their place in time this afternoon of November 11. Don is waking up, and will be shot later that night. Poor Tony is still trapped in the confines of his bathroom stall. Pemulis and Struck are reading up on the potency of DMZ, CT is dealing with the aftermath of Eschaton, Avril is MIA, and Orin is being lured into a trap.

I would also connect the later info that an “employee at the Academy of Tennis of Enfield had been recruited and joined the Canadian instructor and student already inside” (p. 726) to mean that Poutrincourt was indeed the agent/instructor, and likely John Wayne the agent/student. Who would the employee be? Clenette?

Letters from Marlon Bain
Saprogenic Greetings – Saprogenic meaning “causing or produced by putrefaction or decay” – is a part of the same company Bruce Green’s father worked for, which I am guessing also supplies the novelties for the Antitoi Bros. store. In another grotesque ‘coincidence’ it also seems that the very accident that caused Alice Moore to become Lateral also caused the deaths of Marlon’s parents.  Marlon, he of the persistent sweating, holds nothing back in his evisceration of Avril’s character, and sheds some key intel on Orin as well. The story of the nubbin-like remains of ol S. Johnson is a sorry tale indeed and reveals depths of issues from both mother and son.

What word do you think Avril post-coitally wrote on the fogged up window of the Volvo? I always assume it was a name. There’s a weird call back energy to a standout sentence waaay back on page 16 when Hal says “I once saw the word ‘knife’ written on the steamed mirror of a non-public bathroom” but the connection isn’t sticking for me. 

Also – Marlon’s voice in this letter seems so similar to our humble “narrator” I was expecting an “and but so” to show up. 

Also also – Marlon claims that “methoxy-psychedelic experiences left me with certain Disabilities” (p. 1047) – assuming this is his persistent sweating? 

Nov 11 – The Tunnel Club Explores
As Hal and Orin play, the younger kids are exploring the tunnels, clearing them for the erection of the Lung, and keeping their eye out for feral hamsters. Not much happens, until later Blott comes by to tell Hal about “something disturbing they encountered” (p. 714).  Surely he doesn’t just mean the gross fridge?

Nov 14 – The sad and horrible story of Pemulis’ brother Matty + Poor Tony purse snatches
Matty Pemulis sees Poor Tony walk by a window of the Man ‘O War Grille. Then we get his back story. Ugh. nuff said.

Poor Tony, who has been released from the hospital, causes Kate Gompert to have a serious concussion while purse-snatching from her and Ruth in the hopes that he can come to the Antitois Bros with cash instead of asking for charity. We learn that PT has helped the anti-ONAN Quebecers before.

A broader discussion of depression, from both Kate and Hal’s p.o.v
We learn that Hal “hasn’t had a bona-fide intensity-of-interiour-life-type emotion since he was tiny” – a possible connection to the eating of the mold?  Kate’s psychotic depression seems bone-chillingly horrible. There is mention of the man who became depressed from the head injury, and later Kate has a head injury of her own. Maybe it will reverse her condition, like an old-timey movie trope?

There is a gap at the bottom of page 692 that I have on good authority is a misprint or at least not in the original manuscript.

In this same section, there is a similar touch point on what characters are up to that I assume is time-stamped Nov 14 also, incl. Pemulis grabbing something (likely illicit) from the ceiling panel, Avril calling Moment magazine, Schitt and Mario going to get ice cream, and Lyle levitating. (p. 700)

Nov 11 – Hal watches some JOI films / Joelle goes to an NA meeting
Blood Sister: One Tough Nun (p. 703) could be a Grindhouse flick by Tarantino. Joelle shows her true southern racial biases at the NA meeting. (p. 707)

Nov 14 – Lenz is prowling the streets
And he’s about to rob two Chinese ladies of their shopping bags. That new disguise! (p. 716)

Nov 14 – The AFR are still at the Antitois Bros, looking for the samizdat
They find a read-only copy, we learn the cardboard cut out was in fact the FLQs handiwork, the engineer hasn’t fared well, and if Poor Tony is on his way there, it will get ugly. Also, the AFR’s motivations are pure chaos, wanting  to “render Canada itself unwilling to face the U.S.A retaliation…[so that] Quebec would not be so much allowed, as required by Ottawa to secede, to face on its own the wrath of a neighbour struck down by its own inability to say ‘Non’ to fatal pleasures” (p. 722).

They are also looking for Joelle, combing the recovery houses of Boston, having learned from the engineer that she is in treatment.

Week Nine

In which Lenz’s nightly assaults catch up to him, Mario is missing Madame Psychosis, Orin has been entrapped by the “Swiss hand model,” the WYYY engineer gets scooped up by the AFR, objects are moving around E.T.A, Steeply’s father obsessed over M*A*S*H and Day articulates the dark, billowing shape. Compared to other weeks that have been filled with back stories, mathematics, and tennis lessons, this week we get some serious action.

Recap

November 11 – Lenz picks the wrong Polynesian ‘Nuck party
As Lenz’s nightly escapades have been hampered by his walks with Bruce Green, it’s no surprise that Lenz eventually breaks away to continue his self-treatment for his “raging Powerlessness.” Green unintentionally becomes a witness to the death of the large dog (Bebe, or Pepe), and may have accidentally appeared to the AFR across the street as a potential ONAN-ite agent, with his finger in his ear seeming like “he’s maybe receiving communiques from some kind of earpiece” (p. 589)

The tension is beautifully built here, long before the Nucks show up outside of Ennet House, brandishing Lenz’ moustache as well as their serious weaponry. The descriptions of Gately’s efforts to get everyone in under curfew, the frustration of trying to then get everyone back out to move their cars, filled me with anxiety even before the Nucks arrived. The situation unfolds over twelve breathlessly paced pages. Very cinematic. I had major Uncut Gems anxiety reading this passage. 

The Lenz story is a really giant part of the middle of this book – running almost 44 pages (pp. 538-548 / 553-562 / 575-589 / 608-619). And compared to other sections that discuss conceptual/emotional/spiritual ideas, I would say the Lenz section’s role is mostly to move one significant plot point ahead (Gately getting shot).

Orin is in trouble
We are left at the precipice of Orin getting into some serious trouble as it is slowly revealed that not only is the wheelchair’d ‘fan’ someone a little more nefarious (duh) but that the swiss hand model is complicit, hiding under the covers with an oxygen mask and firearm. The AFR agent’s ‘survey’ about what Orin misses the most (television, mostly re-runs, how “the familiarity was inflicted”), and what he misses the least, which we don’t get to hear. At least we know Orin is not (yet) dead, because of the reference to “what struck Orin later as odd.” (p. 600).

The WYYY engineer gets nabbed
In another highly cinematic scene, an AFR assassin moguls down the hill by the lake, scooping up the engineer in a sort of snowplow attachment to the wheelchair, to be deposited in the van waiting below. Do Tine and Steeply watch this unfold through their 8th story window?  In the preamble to this scene, Wallce predicts remote work (p.612) but misses the mark with the extension that because of this people miss being in large spaces together and that spectacles (like watching the pond drain) are a thing. I wish we did that as a community. Also I really felt the line “Nobody but Luddite granola-crunching freaks would call bad what no one can imagine being without” (p. 620) w/r/t social media and AI (for me at least). 

Nov 11 – There are a lot of strange things happening at E.T.A.
Hal, Pemulis et al have come out of the meeting with Tavis apparently unscathed. We learn that Hal is going clean (p. 635) and the excessive saliva may be the first sign of pot-withdrawl. Ortho’s near-win against Hal has him thinking he may be able to will objects to move, which may explain his bed moving, as the ball on the court curved “like a drenched spitter” in play. Also, objects are appearing in odd places, even suspended from walls with no apparent means of attachment.

Steeply’s father’s obsession with M*A*S*H
This story reminded me of how many episodes of M*A*S*H I probably watched as a kid. I couldn’t get enough, and lord knows it was literally on four times a day. Fortunately, I did not dive into madness like Mr. Steeply. One more bizarre/funny/weird endnote issue – the ‘author’ is compelled to insert [sic] endnotes re: Betamax (e. 263) AND recycling (e. 264) but lets Steeply’s mis-naming the actor who played Burns (Larry Linville) as Maury Linville go un-noted.

Day articulates Kate Gompert’s ‘feeling’
The “large, dark, billowing shape” that Day accidentally ‘frees’ during a session of violin playing seems to really resonate with Kate, and is much like what she was trying to explain to the doctor when she was in the psych ward.