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.

Week Eight

Before we get into the horror that is Randy Lenz, we meet up with Roy Tony once more, wait out the repercussions of Eschaton in the HrH’s very blue waiting room, the morning sun is about to rise on Marathe and Steeply, Pemulis has some very important info about Avril, Joelle and Don have a hard time talking with each other, and Orin is seduced by a hand model.

Recap

November 9 – NA Beginner’s meeting with Ken Erdedy, Kate Gompert and Roy Tony
Our first introductions to the pains of addiction came from Ken and Kate and their struggles with pot. 500 pages later, we are briefly brought back through the NA meeting, where Ken notes that the feeling of anhedonia, while not mentioned outright, “seemed to hang fog-like just over the room’s heads” (p. 504). Ken makes a critical error trying to avoid a hug from Roy Tony (a serious badass if you will recall from Clenette’s tale of Wardine and Wardine’s momma and Roy Tony p. 37).

November 10 – Hal, Pemulis, Kittenplan, Axford wait outside CT’s office, while Avril “diddle-checks” the girls
What to make of the parallels between the Hal sitting in the waiting room outside Tavis’ office, with it’s deep blue pile rug, and Pemulis’ “rodential squeaking” of his chair (p. 509), and the blue rug of JOI’s father’s bedroom and the “rodential squeaking” of the bedframe from last week’s section? Also, Clenette has been in CTs office the entire time?

CT, an “odd and delicate specimen” (p. 517) has a “pathological openness of manner” (p. 519) and Avril seems to be a master manipulator, in a way only a mother truly can be. (We get a very chilly analysis of Avril from Orin in endnote 234.)

So many instances of the ridiculous presented as the mundane here: Otis Lord still with monitor affixed, eye holes cut out of the monitor’s base, the story of the multi-eyed, yet blind kid with “cranium-issues” who had to wheel an IV cart with a metal brace for his head around on the court (though weirdly this Dymphna, who we know Hal is playing in the Whataburger in Year of Glad is only 9 years old in this segment and would be in the 16s next year?), Lateral Alice Moore (I enjoyed how long DFW dropped references to LAM before finally letting us in on the reason behind the nickname).

Marathe and Steeply
I feel like my criticisms of these sections are starting to imitate the very thing that drives me bonkers about them! If you compiled the entirety of their conversation together, it would read as so repetitive, cyclical, and heavy handed. Yes, the “Oriental myth” and Medusa/Odalisque again brings home the idea that humans will freely choose deadly temptation. We do learn that Marathe is by all accounts a quadruple agent, or perhaps a rogue agent, as he has chosen his wife over the cause. I’d be curious to hear others’ opinions on these conversations on the desert ledge.

November 11 – Don and Joelle have a stilted conversation
Don relates a story from his days Out There, and tries to get Joelle to talk about the veil. Joelle’s movement from plain, relatable language to her academic tone when talking about UHID becomes a sore point for Don, which then devolves into an argument. When JvD finally caves to Don’s repeated question about what exactly is wrong with her, she says she is ‘deformed with beauty.’

November 9 – Pemulis catches Avril and John Wayne together
Beyond the great visual of Avril in splits and John Wayne in a jock strap and football pads, we now know that Pemulis has this information locked and loaded when he enters CT’s office the next day. He definitely planned this “accidental” discovery. How did he know?

Goddamn Randy Lenz
How do we talk about someone like Randy Lenz? Wallace provides so much insight into his psyche, yet I was still left entirely emotionally unconnected to him. He is such a detestable person, mostly for me because of his sense of entitlement and his ‘specialness.’ And of course, his abuse of animals is really, really disturbing. We are given so much time with Lenz that I wanted to shower afterwards. Also in this section, the comedic/tragic death of Green’s mother and the bizarre situation of his father’s irregular leg lengths and descent into murderous despair.

Orin doesn’t seem safe at all
‘Helen’ is gone, after the interview turns a bit sour, and Orin’s wheelchair ‘fans’ are back, as well as a stunning hand model, who seems to know exactly how to woo him, and whose accent is suspiciously similar to the “legless surveyor”(p. 575)

Coaticule Complex
Idris Arslanian (why does a Pakistani have an Armenian name?) gets schooled by Pemulis on the details of Annular Fusion, as Lyle works with poor Doucette, who can’t wrap his head around it, especially “the temporal-flux stuff.”

Reflections

This week, we walk right into rejection, like walking into the wall that is righteously pissed off Roy Tony. You reject his hug, like Erdedy does. Roy Tony isn’t looking for a hug, Roy Tony doesn’t like to hug. But Roy Tony has surrendered his will, has risked sharing his “vulnerability and “discomfort” and Erdedy risks the ass-kicking of his lifetime by acting like he, Erdedy, is somehow above this all and can reject AA’s tenet of Hugs Not Drugs.

Marathe and Steeply do their own Medusa v Odalisque-esque dance of rejection, itself a fitting double bind (or quadruple bind?). The complete essence of their conversation is to offer up and reject each other’s ideologies, disdain loosely hidden behind their sparrings. And yet both have also on some level rejected their own governments (a deep betrayal on Marathe’s part, and a less impactful but still self-positioned semi-betrayal on Steeply’s).

The conversation-slash-argument between Gately and Joelle has always left me feeling very very sad. They speak over each other, and Don gets really testy – the first jerk-like behavior I’ve really seen in him. He seems purpose-driven to share the AA message and actively tries to live according to a moral code. So he really comes up short in this passage (IMHO), rejecting JvD’s assertion that he is driven by shame about what “might be perceived as a lack of brightness” (p. 537). And his bull-headed persistence asking about her hideous deformity forces Joelle to reject his approach and his questions over and over. Neither Don nor Joelle connect with each other, or even listen to each other.

And finally, how do you solve a problem like Lenz? His “impotent rage and powerless fear” (p. 541) is bred deep. Lenz seems borne from a rejection by the entire universe, so his work to “resolve his issues” escalates, as we know it must, with little effect. And then, when faced with a real-life opportunity to connect with Bruce Green, Lenz fears rejection of such intensity that he is paralyzed to tell Green that he likes him (and to leave him alone).

I love DFW’s acceleration techniques. There is a cinematic, madcap, almost Stoogeian feel to the way he stacks narratives on top of each other, alternately piling them up like a swaying tower of bricks, or layering them on like oppressive, heavy blankets. And then to play with this comic technique by paring it with truly grim subject matter (Lenz’ progression from rats to dogs, the Drano deaths, Doony’s accident with the bucket of bricks, the Entertainment itself). It is just so freaking effective. So imagine my delight when I caught up with Pemulis as he talked about “accelerated phenomena which is actually equivalent to an incredible slowing down of time” (p. 573) because that right there is what makes it so great. The slowing down of time becomes this parodic, car-crash scenario that you just can’t pull yourself away from.

Orin’s chasing of various Subjects with toddler-aged children is of course a classic cover for deep feelings of rejection. And Tavis is riddled with fear of rejection too.

I would love to see serialized treatments of the smaller character studies in IJ, like poor Bruce Green’s family saga- done Black Mirror style.

Week Seven

Each week while I prep for this recap, I grab the pages I’ve just read between my fingers and am always amazed at what a small sliver of the book the week’s reading represented, and within that 1/4 – 1/2 inch of paper how many stories were covered.

This week, we wrap up a few threads that began last week (Clipperton, the rest of Mario’s film), we spend a lot of time with Don, and learn the intricacies of am drills at E.T.A, get the back story on Pat Montesian, hang out on the ledge with Marathe and Steeply, are privvy to the last moments of the Antitoi Bros. lives, and hear JOI’s voice for the first time, as he reflects on a childhood experience that later became the film “Valuable Coupon Has Been Removed”

Recap & Reflections

The Death of Eric Clipperton
I got a Columbine-shiver at the description of Eric as a “spectral trench-coated figure.” I am intrigued by the relationship between Mario and Eric, and how Mario has never shared even with Hal the details of their conversations, and Mario’s need to clean the room on his own. He and Eric obviously bonded on a very real level. Thoughts on what Clipperton represents? The ultimate desire for the win, the show, taken to its morbid end? Is this the path LaMont Chu is on?

The second cautionary tale, of the un-named kid from Fresno, devolves into dark comedy with the continued Drano poisonings (and the pathos of the little pajama-clad feet -Damn DFW is good with pathos), and very much mimics the death of the Medical Attache et al.

Back to E.T.A, November 8, Interdependence Day film screening
By now, “Hal’s eyes are fevered and rolling around in his head” (p. 438) That seems bad. Mario includes Orin in the history of subsidized time, though a note on chronology states that this would have been historically inaccurate.

My Respect Grows for Don Gately
His steadfast commitment to sobriety, including his daily cleaning of the (shudder) Shattuck shelter, his honesty about struggling to name a higher power, and the story of lil Bim and his vodka-soaked mother…I just want to hug that big galoot. And I don’t want to know what happened to Nimitz the kitty. I loved the description of him driving Pat’s car, and just want happiness for him. But every time I think I am falling in love with Gately, DFW goes an mentions that terrible Prince Valiant haircut.

Time jump back to late October
Hal is dreaming about losing his teeth, and Madame Psychosis is off the air. Mario is agitated after seeing her screen in the booth. This confused me for a moment because I assumed that Joelle’s OD at Molly’s party on Nov 7 was when she would have stopped doing the show, but apparently she had quit the show earlier.

Back to November 9 at E.T.A – Drills and skills
Hal appears to be better than he was yesterday, at least physically. Otis P Lord is back after the Eschaton debacle, but with the monitor screen still on his head with shards dangerously pointing at his throat. Schtitt lectures the boys, speaks of the new type of citizen they are turning the boys into, ones who are “Citizens of this sheltering second world” of the tennis court, inspiring, or demanding, that they put aside the complaints of the outside world (too hot, too cold) and grab the opportunity for a “chance to occur” (pg. 459) within this second world, which is both the court and the mind. Anyone else get a Werner Hertzog vibe from Schtitt?

Marathe and Steeply talk p-terminals, MK-Ultra, and Canadian experiments
I doubt there is a Canadian of a certain age who read this passage without thinking of this Heritage Minute ad (Doctor, I smell burnt toast!). Steeply’s discussion of Canadian scientists developing p-terminal stimulation techniques, and the non-deviant young Canadians who lined up for the leathal treatment is a bit heavy handed in its regard to the Entertainment. We also know that both sides have copies of the Entertainment at the ready!

Bonjour/AuRevoir, Antitios Brothers
I love how Wallace is weaving all of the stories together. As Gately drives Pat’s car through the streets of Boston, the tires send a plastic cup into the air, hitting the window pane of Antitois Entertainment, sending Lucien (who cannot speak French!) to investigate. As he closes the door, it oddly continues to squeak, until he discovers that it is indeed the AFR, come for the master Entertainment tape they believe is being kept by the brothers. Oh that demise. So terrible. It reminded me of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

Why does AFR think the master was stolen in the DuPlessis burglary and that the Antitois would have it? Did Steeply plant it then tip them off? Why? If Gately actually did take it while “stripping the Brookline home as bare as a post-feral-hamster meadow” (p. 58) where is the master?

A Different Kind of Squeak
We end this week with an excerpt from “The Awakening of my Interest in Annular Systems,” where JOI, as a recognized pioneer of annual fusion, reflects on the day he realized, um, something important, about how the “cycloid’s standard parametric equations were no longer apposite” and I’m just gonna have to take your word on that James. BUT first, we are treated to the tale of JOI’s drunken father’s attempt to find the cause of a squeak in his bed.  Another amazing example of DFW’s stellar characterizations and dialogue. The filmed version of this story, a ‘possible Scandinavian-psychodrama parody’ actualizes the father’s claim that it sounds like rodents.