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?