this section in 5 parts
p 219-223
YDAU [2009] Nov 7
place Boston
narrated in third person
synopsis:
We meet Joelle van Dyne literally at the end of her rope. She is in Molly Notkin's apartment preparing to kill herself. She thinks of how you can be at a party and not really be there. She thinks that the 'invisible pivot' where a party ends is one of the saddest times she knows. She is perched on one of Molly's chairs [molded in the likeness of great film directors] and her 'feet dangle well off the floor, her squished hamstrings beginning to burn.' Joelle is the daughter of a chemist and a homemaker from Kentucky and 'a lot of fun to be with normally, if you can get over the disconcerting veil.' She was formally a doctoral student in film theory before 'her retreat into broadcast sound.' She feels like she is 'sub-rosa twins' with Molly, whose one true love was/is a film scholar who suffers guilt with each erection, because he believes there are a finite number of erections, and his is depriving a more deserving person. She ponders what if heredity is branching instead of linear, and there are only two people in 'history's mist' and that their differences account for all differences-- 'the deformed and the paralyzingly beautiful...the hidden and the blindingly open.' As she contemplates the end of her life, she sees it as a 'stuttered old hand-held 16mm... from Uncle Bud and twirling to Orin and Jim and YYY.' She thinks back to the walk [to arrive at Molly's] through the rainy streets-- she buys a cigar in a glass tube and throws away the cigar, keeping the tube in her purse. She gives out change to homeless people, and gives one of them [with a Notre Ray Pays' sign] $20. she buys a pepsi and pours it out,and puts the empty bottle in her purse. She is 'excruciatingly alive' and contemplating that 'most self involved act' of locking herself in the bathroom and getting 'so high that she's going to fall down and stop breathing and turn blue and die, clutching her heart. No more back and forth.' On her walk, she gets called 'bitch' approvingly by three young black men. 'No more deciding to stop at 2300h and then barely getting through the hour's show and hurtling back home at 0130h.' No more throwing away 'Material' and then scrounging later for enough to smoke. She likens the blur of the rain's 'wet veil' to the blur created by Jim's lenses-- 'more deforming than fuzzy.' She contemplates the drugs she's about to intake-- 'what looks like the cage's exit is actually the bars of the cage.' She thinks of Jim's film 'Cage III: Free Show'. She no longer enjoys the drugs, nor can she lie to herself about being able to quit. She thinks about the caller saying that the moon never looks away. She contemplates her powerlessness to quit even though she hates it, likening it to what 'they'd made Jim do near the end.' She finally takes the drugs 'weeping and veilless and yarn-haired, like some grotesque clown, in all four mirrors of her little rooms walls.'
p 223
no narration
synopsis:
Chronology of Organization of North American Nations' revenue-enhancing Subsidized Time, by year
[the text has them numbered 1-9 instead of giving the numerical year]
2002 Year of the Whopper
2003 Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad
2004 Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar
2005 Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken
2006 Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster
2007 Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade For Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems For Home, Office, Or Mobile (sic)
2008 Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland
2009 Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment
2010 Year of Glad
p 223-226
YDAU [2009] Nov 8
place Boston
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Orin had once showed Joelle his collection of 'husks of Lemon Pledge' from childhood. Joelle hurries along Boylston St. where the drug dealers are lined up, cops are removing anti-ONAN flags hung in the night by separatists. There is a 2-D display of a man without legs in a wheelchair, with his arms upraised in an ecstatic gesture, with a film cartridge sticking out of a slot in his palm. There is however no title of the cartridge being advertised, and the display cartridge which Joelle removes from the ad's hand is blank. Jim had filmed her at the end of his career. 'After the acid, after first Orin left and then Jim came... only to leave...after taking the veil' Joelle liked to get high and imitate the obsessive cleaning of 'the wife and mother they both declined to shoot.' Joelle 'aka Madame P.' remembers that Jim was the 'world's best hailer of Boston cabs' and hence never rides in cabs. She had smoked freebase cocaine 'for the last time' this morning, and then an hour later gone to find her dealer Lady Delphina to get more. While waiting for the subway, an older man remarks about her veil, and she explains the history of the 'Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed' which was formed in the 40's when Winston Churchill, while inebriated had placed a napkin over the deformed face of wife of a member of the House of Commons.
p 226
no narration-- this section in the form of a resume
synopsis:
The 'putative curriculum vitae of Helen P. Steeply' is given here. She worked successively for Time, Decade, Southwest Annual, Newsweek, Ladies Day, and Moment magazines. While at Ladies Day,she had he purse snatched and vowed never again to live in Manhattan. She's now at the Southwest Bureau of Moment in Erythema, AZ writing about 'medical, soft sports, personality' etc.
p 226-240
YDAU [2009] Nov 7
place Boston
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Joelle is returning from buying drugs to Molly's apartment, where she once lived with Orin, and where she had performed in his father's films. Molly is throwing a party for herself after competing her oral examinations in 'post-millennial Marxist Film-cartridge theory' dressed as Karl Marx. Molly has no idea that Joelle has been 'in a cage' ever since Jim's death in YTSDB [2004]. She has no idea whether they were lovers, or whether Orin left her because they were lovers. [The footnote explains that Orin knew they were not lovers, but Avril did not, and it was learning of Avril's own infidelity which had caused Jim to shoot Joelle 'the weird wobble-lensed maternal "I'm-so-terribly-sorry"-monologue-scene' of his last work.] Nor does she know that Joelle now lives off of a trust willed to her by 'a man she unveiled for but never slept with, the prodigious punter's father, infinite jester, director of a final opus so magnum he'd claimed to have had it locked away.' Joelle arrives at the party and Molly partially lifts the veil to kiss Joelle on the cheek, and offers her some of the 'muddy' apple juice they both love. Joelle feels the urge to 'raise the veil before a mirror' and 'breathe the only uncloth'd gas' she can stand. 'She feels ghastly and sad; she looks like death.' People at the party watch cartridges and listen to a 'Latin revival CD.'Joelle remembers Orin's 'forearm the size of a leg of lamb.' She had been his only lover for 26 months and his father's optical beloved for 21 months. A beautiful girl on Ecstasy watches herself dance in a mirror that Jim had made Joelle stand before and recite the lines of his final film. The girl exclaims 'aren't they beautiful' referring to her breasts, which Joelle finds heartbreakingly sincere. Joelle ponders the difference between suicide and homicide, wondering if she would kill someone else to 'get out of the cage.' She wonders whether Jim's last film was a cage or a door, and wonders whether he had ever edited the 'mother-death-cosmology and apologies she repeated over and over' into anything coherent. He had killed himself less than 90 days later by putting his head in a microwave oven. She wonders how he even rigged it to go on with the door open. She wonders if she killed him 'somehow, just inclining veilless over that lens.' People are applauding the woman's breasts and Joelle's empathy dissipates, and she becomes suicidal. She waits for the bathroom off the bedroom, and ignores party guest who asks about her veil. She half hears the mingling voices of the party, as they discuss everything from the Brady Bunch to Eisenstein to Jim's rumored cartridge, and whether the Great Concavity should be called the Great Convexity. Joelle enters the bathroom and contemplates 'the last thing she will ever smell.' She lifts her veil back 'to cover her skull like a bride' and empties her purse to remove the plastic Pepsi bottle, matches, the glass cigar tube, baking soda, aluminum foil and 4 grams of cocaine. While she freebases the cocaine, a 'bulky thump sounds from behind the large flat-top Enfield hill... a large but relatively shapeless projectile of drums wrapped in brown postal paper' hurtles northward in the sky. Joelle recalls as a child that she and 'her own personal Daddy' would sit in the front row at movies, not one of which she 'didn't just about die of love for' and that she'd never again felt so 'taken care of.' While the average freebase rock 'looks like a .38 round' hers looks like a 'county-fair corn dog.' She contemplates things she will never again get to do like 'invite people to watch darkness dance on the face of the deep' and this reminds her that she had suggested 'Face of the Deep' as the title for Jim's last film, but he had thought it too pretentious and instead chose 'that skull fragment out of the Hamlet graveyard scene.' She hears a helicopter as she makes a pipe for the cocaine, and thinks of all the people she'll never see again, a thought which she considers banal. Someone is knocking and asking whether the bathroom is occupied as she smokes the cocaine, which sends her sliding down the wall 'deveiled, too pretty for words, maybe the Prettiest Girl Of All Time (Prettiest GOAT).' She pulls herself up somehow and vomits into the claw-foot tub as a search helicopter flies overhead.
notes
Joelle is an amazing DFW construction. The prettiest girl of all time who veils her face to the world. Or is she hideously and improbably deformed under that veil. The end of this section seems to spell out that it's the former, and but then somehow we are unsure. She is also the saddest character of all time. Was cocaine ever freebased so wistfully? I wonder if the thumping noise from Enfield Hill and the search helicopters might be a clue to tie the time of this thread to something that happens in another thread on Nov 7. It first seemed to me that the p 226-240 happened the day after 219-223, but I have now decided that they are alternate takes on the same overdose scene.
6/3/09
p 240-258
this section in 2 parts
p 240-242
place ETA
narrated in first person [unknown]
synopsis:
Enfield MA is described as being comprised of almost entirely medical, corporate and spiritual facilities. These include the ATHSCME headquarters [they make the 'really big fans'], The National Cranio-Facial Pain Foundation, the Empire Waste Displacement Co.[they make huge catapults, that fling giant bundles of waste into the Great Concavity, producing a sound like a giant stamping foot], and of course ETA which occupies what is now possibly the nicest spot in Enfield, kind of perched on a hill above the squalor. To 'I think it must be the southwest' of ETA is Sunstrand, where the 'annular-generated' electricity is produced.To the north ETA overlooks 'its hill's steepest, best-planted decline into the complexly decaying grounds of Enfield Marine.
p 242-258
YDAU[2009] Nov 5
place ETA [&Tucson]
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Orin calls Hal again and catches him shooting baskets with his toenail clippings into the wastebasket. They discuss superstitions around breaking your streak, Hal quotes legends of the 'Ahts of Vancouver' from the 'Discursive OED' while Orin talks about what some football players will do to maintain a streak. Orin says that he thinks he's being followed by handicapped people. Hal is more interested in the trailer park where the woman Orin has most recently seduced resides. But the real reason that Orin has called is that someone from Moment Magazine is doing a 'soft profile' on him and wants to know about Himself, aka the Mad Stork. The woman from Moment is 'a girl and a half in all directions' and has the linemen gaga. Hal sums up what the reporter might want to know 'you and tennis, you and the Saints, Himself and tennis, the Moms and Quebec and Royal Victoria, the Moms and immigration, Himself and annulation, Himself and Lyle, Himself and distilled spirits, Himself killing himself, you and Joelle, Himself and Joelle, the Moms and CT, you v. the Moms, ETA, nonexistent films, etc.' Hal reveals that Orin did not come to Himself's funeral, and Hal clearly holds it against him. Hal begrudgingly tells him that CT moved upstairs 2 days before Himself's suicide, and that it had been Hal who had found Himself, who had put his head in the microwave oven, and asks why the sudden interest 'after 4 years 216 days, and with two years of that not even once calling.' Orin says he needs to get a handle on what he's not saying when answering Helen's questions. Orin asks if the PGOAT was there. Hal answers that she hadn't been around since she and Orin split up, and that Himself met her at the brownstone for shooting. Himself had gone underground and barely emerged from his editing, except for a 3 day film related trip on which Kyle probably accompanied him, and a 2 day purge and detox. His suicide was April 1. Orin is surprised because Joelle had told him that Himself had quit drinking in January as a condition of her appearing in his films. Hal explains that Himself had cut a head-sized hole in the microwave door and packed aluminum foil around his neck, and that he had a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey next to him. Hal explains that the scene had to be 'reconstructed' because Himself's head had exploded. Hal describes his grief [he dropped weight, had nightmares of a face in the floor, got Bs on quizzes, but mostly was obsessed with how to outwit his grief counselor. He studies upon exactly how he is supposed to feel, but the counselor doesn't buy it. Finally Lyle suggests that he tackle it from the perspective of what the counselor is 'professionally required to want.' Hal studies up again and then unleashes a tirade at the counselor replete with therapy terms like validate, process and toxic guilt. As he tells about his faux-catharsis, however, it becomes clear that it had become in part a real one. He says that it wasn't his fault that he had found Himself, but that he was hungry and 'something smelled delicious!' He then tells Orin that he has omitted the 'most nightmarishly compelling thing' about the grief therapist was that his hands were never visible,and it was only after the catharsis, on the last day of therapy Hal held out his hand and the therapist revealed that he had extremely tiny hands, and Hal barely made it out of the office before he was overcome with laughter. Hal deflects any further grief-related talk by asking about the trailer's interior.
notes
The opening part explains the mysterious thumping sound during Joelle's bathroom scene. It's curious how the narration lapses into first person just once. The second section explains at least a few things, eg the nightmare [p 61-63] is Hal's and not Troelsch's. And of course fills in many details about Himself's suicide and Orin's absence,and Hal's trauma.
p 240-242
place ETA
narrated in first person [unknown]
synopsis:
Enfield MA is described as being comprised of almost entirely medical, corporate and spiritual facilities. These include the ATHSCME headquarters [they make the 'really big fans'], The National Cranio-Facial Pain Foundation, the Empire Waste Displacement Co.[they make huge catapults, that fling giant bundles of waste into the Great Concavity, producing a sound like a giant stamping foot], and of course ETA which occupies what is now possibly the nicest spot in Enfield, kind of perched on a hill above the squalor. To 'I think it must be the southwest' of ETA is Sunstrand, where the 'annular-generated' electricity is produced.To the north ETA overlooks 'its hill's steepest, best-planted decline into the complexly decaying grounds of Enfield Marine.
p 242-258
YDAU[2009] Nov 5
place ETA [&Tucson]
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Orin calls Hal again and catches him shooting baskets with his toenail clippings into the wastebasket. They discuss superstitions around breaking your streak, Hal quotes legends of the 'Ahts of Vancouver' from the 'Discursive OED' while Orin talks about what some football players will do to maintain a streak. Orin says that he thinks he's being followed by handicapped people. Hal is more interested in the trailer park where the woman Orin has most recently seduced resides. But the real reason that Orin has called is that someone from Moment Magazine is doing a 'soft profile' on him and wants to know about Himself, aka the Mad Stork. The woman from Moment is 'a girl and a half in all directions' and has the linemen gaga. Hal sums up what the reporter might want to know 'you and tennis, you and the Saints, Himself and tennis, the Moms and Quebec and Royal Victoria, the Moms and immigration, Himself and annulation, Himself and Lyle, Himself and distilled spirits, Himself killing himself, you and Joelle, Himself and Joelle, the Moms and CT, you v. the Moms, ETA, nonexistent films, etc.' Hal reveals that Orin did not come to Himself's funeral, and Hal clearly holds it against him. Hal begrudgingly tells him that CT moved upstairs 2 days before Himself's suicide, and that it had been Hal who had found Himself, who had put his head in the microwave oven, and asks why the sudden interest 'after 4 years 216 days, and with two years of that not even once calling.' Orin says he needs to get a handle on what he's not saying when answering Helen's questions. Orin asks if the PGOAT was there. Hal answers that she hadn't been around since she and Orin split up, and that Himself met her at the brownstone for shooting. Himself had gone underground and barely emerged from his editing, except for a 3 day film related trip on which Kyle probably accompanied him, and a 2 day purge and detox. His suicide was April 1. Orin is surprised because Joelle had told him that Himself had quit drinking in January as a condition of her appearing in his films. Hal explains that Himself had cut a head-sized hole in the microwave door and packed aluminum foil around his neck, and that he had a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey next to him. Hal explains that the scene had to be 'reconstructed' because Himself's head had exploded. Hal describes his grief [he dropped weight, had nightmares of a face in the floor, got Bs on quizzes, but mostly was obsessed with how to outwit his grief counselor. He studies upon exactly how he is supposed to feel, but the counselor doesn't buy it. Finally Lyle suggests that he tackle it from the perspective of what the counselor is 'professionally required to want.' Hal studies up again and then unleashes a tirade at the counselor replete with therapy terms like validate, process and toxic guilt. As he tells about his faux-catharsis, however, it becomes clear that it had become in part a real one. He says that it wasn't his fault that he had found Himself, but that he was hungry and 'something smelled delicious!' He then tells Orin that he has omitted the 'most nightmarishly compelling thing' about the grief therapist was that his hands were never visible,and it was only after the catharsis, on the last day of therapy Hal held out his hand and the therapist revealed that he had extremely tiny hands, and Hal barely made it out of the office before he was overcome with laughter. Hal deflects any further grief-related talk by asking about the trailer's interior.
notes
The opening part explains the mysterious thumping sound during Joelle's bathroom scene. It's curious how the narration lapses into first person just once. The second section explains at least a few things, eg the nightmare [p 61-63] is Hal's and not Troelsch's. And of course fills in many details about Himself's suicide and Orin's absence,and Hal's trauma.
p 258-383
this section in 3 parts
p 258-270
YDAU [2009] Nov 6
place Port Washington Tennis Academy [Long Island]
narrated in third person
synopsis:
The ETA team is at Port Washington Tennis Academy [PWTA] for a meet. In any age group. the top 6 players from each team play one another, and then the top 3 doubles teams, which are usually comprised of the top 6 players, except for infrequent cases like Schacht and Troeltsch who grew up together playing doubles. There are 108 total matches, and each year the overall losing team has to sing an embarrassing song, and an even more embarrassing transaction is rumored to take place between the two headmasters. Last year ETA lost, but that was before they had John Wayne,and before Hal's competitive explosion. John Wayne, originally from Montcerf Quebec, near the 'infamously rupture-prone Mercier Dam,'is ranked #2 in the US, and will probably go to #1 at the WhataBurger, where he'll play the #1 player, who seems to be avoiding him. Hal has gone from 43rd to 4th nationally in a year. James Incandenza had spotted John Wayne at age 6, while making a film about people other than the actor with the name John Wayne. Currently Wayne is beating his opponent handily, with his emotionless precision. Pemulis and Schacht are on their way to their matches, and Pemulis is vomiting from pre-game nerves [this match is a must win for him to go to the WhataBurger]. Mario is following them trying to accumulate footage for his annual documentary. The PWTA players all have matching outfits, where the ETA players wear a mix and match of free stuff from corporate sponsors. Schacht has stopped caring about winning [and hence playing better] since his knee injury. Schacht thinks that Pemulis' pre-game nausea has something to do with his withdrawal from substance use before play. Schacht ingests the occasional substance, but doesn't care for the way Pemulis et al ingest/recover from substances and have a whole jargon around it. Schacht is warming up with his opponent, and his knee is OK on the indoor composite surfaces [unlike ETA's outdoor cement courts, which are about to become indoor with the yearly inflation of the lung which requires an ATHSCME fan and helicopters]. Hal considers Schacht's new laissez-faire attitude as a surrender of childhood promise for adult mediocrity, but considers him pleasanter to be around since the knee, and a dependable designated driver. He even sort of admires his stoic relinquishment of the Show, but can't relate it exactly because he's pretty much the opposite. They tacitly agree to not talk about it, or what Schacht thinks of Hal's devolution from occasional to compulsive substance use--which is that Hal's explosion in the rankings has to be a temporary thing,and something has to give. Meanwhile, as Schacht is about to begin playing, Hal is handily beating his opponent.
p 270-281
YDAU [2009] Nov
Ennet House
narrated in third person
synopsis:
[Much of this section is Gately's stream of consciousness]
Gately is having his patience tested by new resident Geoffrey Day, who is complaining to anyone within earshot about the fact that he is being asked to live by a bunch of cliches-- 'one day at a time, easy does it..'[etc] Day is driving the other residents crazy, and they look to Gately who is the resident staffer on duty for help. Day was a junior college professor 'who taught something horseshit sounding like social historicity' and 'manned the helm of a Scholarly Quaterly' and had recently driven his Saab through the window of a sporting goods store, while on Quaaludes. According the Gene M [Gately's counselor], it's the educated newcomers who are the worst, because they identify themselves with their heads, and that's where the 'Disease makes its command headquarters.' Gately has just pulled all night duty and then gone to his janitor shift 4-7am and now is back until 9am. In the morning Gately often still feels a sense of loss [of 'what they'd thought was their one true best friend and lover.'] Gately has seen people like Day before,either they leave early and wind up dead or in jail,or they break down and really ask for help. He thinks Day is the former, but tries to remember that Day is teaching him patience and tolerance. His gifts as a burglar helped him to 'screen input, to do sensory triage' even during his 9 months as a resident. His counselor Gene M [Eugenio Martinez] called Gately's selective attention into question, saying it could be the Spider doing the screening. Gately has been clean for 421 days. Geoffrey Day turns from Charlotte Treat, looking for the next person to engage and piss off, and thus prove he doesn't belong here. Burt F. Smith is 45 going on 70, and lost his hands and feet when he was mugged and left for dead on Xmas eve; he's on about his 50th attempt at sobriety. Gately wonders what color he'd call the ceiling if he had to [white/gray/brown/yellow]. Emil Minty is a former smack-addict punk with an orange mohawk. Gately likes Bruce Green, because he keeps 'his map shut' most of the time. Randy Lenz was a small time coke dealer wanted by both sides of the law, after he freebased 100 g of coke that he was fronted as part of a sting operation. Lenz wears sportcoats and Gately figures him for a knife carrier. Charlotte Treat has crayon-red hair, ghastly wounds in her cheeks, and is a former prostitute with HIV. Gately is 29, and his intimidating size was clearly a factor in him getting the staffer job. Gately is on duty until Pat comes back at 9am. Gately thinks of what he'd say to Day about cliches;that they're soothing, common sense, and that they 'license the universal assent that drowns out silence' and silence is 'pure Spider-food.' Gately thinks that Day will provoke Lenz in order to get himself kicked out and then blame his relapse on Ennet House. Ennet House 'reeks of passing time,' and Lenz is obsessed with knowing the exact time, and gets angry when Day gives him the time as 'right around 0830.' Gately tries to defuse the situation by giving Lenz the exact time.
YDAU [2009] Nov 6
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
The team returns triumphant from Port Washington. John Wayne and Hal both won easily as did the doubles and B teams. PWTA had to sing the silly song this year. Coyle, Troeltsch and Schacht all lost, and Schacht doesn't seem to mind. Pemulis won by default when his opponent became disoriented and decided the balls were too pretty to hit, and then later told the Headmaster's wife that he'd 'always wanted to do her from behind.' On the bus on the way back Hal is reading an SAT prep guide, Mario is playing rock-paper-scissors with a dejected Coyle, and Tavis is talking nonstop at John Wayne who is staring out the window. Bernadette Longley gets very upset because someone has circulated a pamphlet referring to her back-of-the-bus tryst with Keith Freer. They all get to have Mega-breakfast at Denny's next to Empire Waste at 0030.
notes
Burt F. smith was clearly a victim of 'yrstruly' and his crew from the episode on p 128-135. The fact that addiction is nicknamed 'the Spider' may explain, if only metaphorically the Incandenzas' arachnophobia.
p 258-270
YDAU [2009] Nov 6
place Port Washington Tennis Academy [Long Island]
narrated in third person
synopsis:
The ETA team is at Port Washington Tennis Academy [PWTA] for a meet. In any age group. the top 6 players from each team play one another, and then the top 3 doubles teams, which are usually comprised of the top 6 players, except for infrequent cases like Schacht and Troeltsch who grew up together playing doubles. There are 108 total matches, and each year the overall losing team has to sing an embarrassing song, and an even more embarrassing transaction is rumored to take place between the two headmasters. Last year ETA lost, but that was before they had John Wayne,and before Hal's competitive explosion. John Wayne, originally from Montcerf Quebec, near the 'infamously rupture-prone Mercier Dam,'is ranked #2 in the US, and will probably go to #1 at the WhataBurger, where he'll play the #1 player, who seems to be avoiding him. Hal has gone from 43rd to 4th nationally in a year. James Incandenza had spotted John Wayne at age 6, while making a film about people other than the actor with the name John Wayne. Currently Wayne is beating his opponent handily, with his emotionless precision. Pemulis and Schacht are on their way to their matches, and Pemulis is vomiting from pre-game nerves [this match is a must win for him to go to the WhataBurger]. Mario is following them trying to accumulate footage for his annual documentary. The PWTA players all have matching outfits, where the ETA players wear a mix and match of free stuff from corporate sponsors. Schacht has stopped caring about winning [and hence playing better] since his knee injury. Schacht thinks that Pemulis' pre-game nausea has something to do with his withdrawal from substance use before play. Schacht ingests the occasional substance, but doesn't care for the way Pemulis et al ingest/recover from substances and have a whole jargon around it. Schacht is warming up with his opponent, and his knee is OK on the indoor composite surfaces [unlike ETA's outdoor cement courts, which are about to become indoor with the yearly inflation of the lung which requires an ATHSCME fan and helicopters]. Hal considers Schacht's new laissez-faire attitude as a surrender of childhood promise for adult mediocrity, but considers him pleasanter to be around since the knee, and a dependable designated driver. He even sort of admires his stoic relinquishment of the Show, but can't relate it exactly because he's pretty much the opposite. They tacitly agree to not talk about it, or what Schacht thinks of Hal's devolution from occasional to compulsive substance use--which is that Hal's explosion in the rankings has to be a temporary thing,and something has to give. Meanwhile, as Schacht is about to begin playing, Hal is handily beating his opponent.
p 270-281
YDAU [2009] Nov
Ennet House
narrated in third person
synopsis:
[Much of this section is Gately's stream of consciousness]
Gately is having his patience tested by new resident Geoffrey Day, who is complaining to anyone within earshot about the fact that he is being asked to live by a bunch of cliches-- 'one day at a time, easy does it..'[etc] Day is driving the other residents crazy, and they look to Gately who is the resident staffer on duty for help. Day was a junior college professor 'who taught something horseshit sounding like social historicity' and 'manned the helm of a Scholarly Quaterly' and had recently driven his Saab through the window of a sporting goods store, while on Quaaludes. According the Gene M [Gately's counselor], it's the educated newcomers who are the worst, because they identify themselves with their heads, and that's where the 'Disease makes its command headquarters.' Gately has just pulled all night duty and then gone to his janitor shift 4-7am and now is back until 9am. In the morning Gately often still feels a sense of loss [of 'what they'd thought was their one true best friend and lover.'] Gately has seen people like Day before,either they leave early and wind up dead or in jail,or they break down and really ask for help. He thinks Day is the former, but tries to remember that Day is teaching him patience and tolerance. His gifts as a burglar helped him to 'screen input, to do sensory triage' even during his 9 months as a resident. His counselor Gene M [Eugenio Martinez] called Gately's selective attention into question, saying it could be the Spider doing the screening. Gately has been clean for 421 days. Geoffrey Day turns from Charlotte Treat, looking for the next person to engage and piss off, and thus prove he doesn't belong here. Burt F. Smith is 45 going on 70, and lost his hands and feet when he was mugged and left for dead on Xmas eve; he's on about his 50th attempt at sobriety. Gately wonders what color he'd call the ceiling if he had to [white/gray/brown/yellow]. Emil Minty is a former smack-addict punk with an orange mohawk. Gately likes Bruce Green, because he keeps 'his map shut' most of the time. Randy Lenz was a small time coke dealer wanted by both sides of the law, after he freebased 100 g of coke that he was fronted as part of a sting operation. Lenz wears sportcoats and Gately figures him for a knife carrier. Charlotte Treat has crayon-red hair, ghastly wounds in her cheeks, and is a former prostitute with HIV. Gately is 29, and his intimidating size was clearly a factor in him getting the staffer job. Gately is on duty until Pat comes back at 9am. Gately thinks of what he'd say to Day about cliches;that they're soothing, common sense, and that they 'license the universal assent that drowns out silence' and silence is 'pure Spider-food.' Gately thinks that Day will provoke Lenz in order to get himself kicked out and then blame his relapse on Ennet House. Ennet House 'reeks of passing time,' and Lenz is obsessed with knowing the exact time, and gets angry when Day gives him the time as 'right around 0830.' Gately tries to defuse the situation by giving Lenz the exact time.
YDAU [2009] Nov 6
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
The team returns triumphant from Port Washington. John Wayne and Hal both won easily as did the doubles and B teams. PWTA had to sing the silly song this year. Coyle, Troeltsch and Schacht all lost, and Schacht doesn't seem to mind. Pemulis won by default when his opponent became disoriented and decided the balls were too pretty to hit, and then later told the Headmaster's wife that he'd 'always wanted to do her from behind.' On the bus on the way back Hal is reading an SAT prep guide, Mario is playing rock-paper-scissors with a dejected Coyle, and Tavis is talking nonstop at John Wayne who is staring out the window. Bernadette Longley gets very upset because someone has circulated a pamphlet referring to her back-of-the-bus tryst with Keith Freer. They all get to have Mega-breakfast at Denny's next to Empire Waste at 0030.
notes
Burt F. smith was clearly a victim of 'yrstruly' and his crew from the episode on p 128-135. The fact that addiction is nicknamed 'the Spider' may explain, if only metaphorically the Incandenzas' arachnophobia.
p 283-306
this section in 2 parts
p 283-299
no year--backstory
ETA and Boston University
narrated in third person
Orin got out of competitive tennis at age 17 during a period of 'great pre-Experialist upheaval.' He was ranked in the low 70s nationwide, meaning that he had little hope of making the 'Show' and had to settle either for college tennis, or for 'Eurasian satellite pro tour.' Orin decides to attend college at Boston University, much to his mother's delight. Himself probably thought it best for Orin to 'get the hell out of Dodge' but had little input to offer. The Moms on the other hand, passive-aggressively lobbied for Orin to be a away from home, but close enough that he could return when desirable. Orin was easily the best player on the BU team [the low 70s national ranking put him well above anyone at BU] and he immediately exhausted the usefulness of the coach, who seemed as interested in the Moms, as he was in Orin. Tavis had also contributed to getting Orin into BU's program on full scholarship, but it is suggested here that resentment may have played some part in Orin's lack of acknowledgment. Tavis had taken on the the Headmaster duties just as Orin had moved out, during a period when Himself was either shut in his editing studio or in rehab. CT acknowledged that people might resent him, but was also aware that someone had to fill the void. By his third week at college, Orin was attempting a defection to college football. The reason for this was despite his total ignorance of football's rules etc, he had developed an enormous crush on a 'certain big-haired baton twirler.' Although Orin had some experience in this department, he had never been 'decapitated' before. He and his roommate had invented the epithet, 'PGOAT, for the Prettiest Girl Of All Time.' She was 'almost grotesquely lovely' and inspired in Orin and every other male in her vicinity a 'deep phylogenic fear of transhuman beauty' [aka Actaeon Complex.] None of the players had gotten close enough to hear her Southern accent, let alone asked her to dance. Needless to say, the tennis team had no cheerleaders, and so Orin pulls some strings to get a tryout, which is a disaster-- the football coach tells him he has 'some kind of empty swinging sack where his balls ought to be.' As fate would have it, just as Orin was leaving the field in humiliation, the team's punter was rushed by an over zealous tackle and put out of commission. Orin returns the wayward ball by punting it, and the jaws drop all around. Within weeks the 'empty swinging sack' comments were apologized for and Orin was on his way to becoming a football star. Also he was on his way to 'the only really cardiac-grade romantic relationship' of his life as his gazes at the baton twirler began to be reciprocated, and by Columbus Day, *she* approached *him* asking him to autograph a deflated football, he had kicked a hole in, for 'her own personal Daddy' a low pH chemist named Joe Lon van Dyne from Shiny Prize KY. Orin is disarmed and abandons his practiced seduction routine in favor of blurting out that punting is nearly spiritual for him. He has no problem keeping her interest, on account of the fact that no other males dare approach her. By the end of football season, Orin and Joelle had moved in together. Joelle had done Thanksgiving at ETA and Orin Xmas at the von Dyne home in Kentucky, each surviving the dread induced by the Moms and the Personal Daddy. That New Year's Eve [the last before Subsidization] was the first time Orin saw Joelle ingest cocaine. He had declined to take part [if for no other reason- to be mindful of his urine] but not in a 'judgmental or killjoy' way. He actually liked being with her when she was high. Joelle was studying film, and Orin turned her on to art film, partially by way of Himself. Eventually Himself brings Joelle in as an understudy and eventually as an actress [under a pseudonym.] After Orin's only mildly disappointing sophomore season, he went with Joelle and Himself to Toronto to make a film and ingest excessive amounts of alcohol. The next summer Joelle quit her baton twirling and left Orin behind to travel with Himself and make another film. Orin while recuperating from surgery, apparently did a bit of philandering. But Joelle's true ambitions were for behind the camera, and she began filming him, and to his surprise he found her little mini-films highly captivating. Joelle had been 'a maiden' when Orin met her, having repelled every male with her excessive prettiness. Joelle cleans house with a fervor reminiscent of the Moms, the mess 'just disappears sometime during the night.' Orin becomes obsessive about her little 10-second clips of him punting, including one where the recordable disc runs out just as he's about to get pummeled after a bad snap from the center.
p 299-306
YDAU [2009] Nov 14
place Boston
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Poor Tony Krause had a seizure on the metro train, after holing up in a bathroom for a week drinking codeine cough syrup. After he had stolen a woman's purse that contained her artificial heart, and also the incident with Wo and Bobby C, he cannot show his face in public and thus cannot score drugs from any of his usual connections. For a while he had lived in a dumpster and relied on a few lowlifes to score for him, but eventually those sources were eliminated and Poor Tony is forced to rely on the cough syrup. He eventually moves into the men's room of the Armenian Foundation Library because of his incontinence plus his hope of getting his social security check. He sat on the toilet day and night, staving off withdrawal with the cough syrup. [In a passage almost too brutal to summarize] tony goes from bad to worse, to beyond worse as the Withdrawal decimates his body and eventually his mind. He has visions of his dead father and fixates on the sound of the word 'Zuckung.' On his second day after the syrup runs out, he decides to venture to Cambridge in search of the Antitoi brothers, whom he thinks he can maybe turn to for a favor. On the train he imagines ants are crawling over him; he keeps his screams silent, but people keep their distance on account of the incontinence etc. He eventually has a seizure and swallows his tongue while hallucinating that his father is looking up his dress.
notes
The roots of Madam Psychosis and her veil are perhaps laid bare here, in the inference that her beauty was so extreme as to be repellent. Also the fact that her mini-films are so compelling seems to signify something more than just Orin's narcissism. And of course Joelle's similarity to the Moms is as curious as her relation to her own Personal Daddy. Poor Tony of p 128-135 is perhaps drawn closer to the ETA story by way of the Antitoi brothers who supplied the DMZ to Pemulis [p 211-219] just a week prior to this episode.
p 283-299
no year--backstory
ETA and Boston University
narrated in third person
Orin got out of competitive tennis at age 17 during a period of 'great pre-Experialist upheaval.' He was ranked in the low 70s nationwide, meaning that he had little hope of making the 'Show' and had to settle either for college tennis, or for 'Eurasian satellite pro tour.' Orin decides to attend college at Boston University, much to his mother's delight. Himself probably thought it best for Orin to 'get the hell out of Dodge' but had little input to offer. The Moms on the other hand, passive-aggressively lobbied for Orin to be a away from home, but close enough that he could return when desirable. Orin was easily the best player on the BU team [the low 70s national ranking put him well above anyone at BU] and he immediately exhausted the usefulness of the coach, who seemed as interested in the Moms, as he was in Orin. Tavis had also contributed to getting Orin into BU's program on full scholarship, but it is suggested here that resentment may have played some part in Orin's lack of acknowledgment. Tavis had taken on the the Headmaster duties just as Orin had moved out, during a period when Himself was either shut in his editing studio or in rehab. CT acknowledged that people might resent him, but was also aware that someone had to fill the void. By his third week at college, Orin was attempting a defection to college football. The reason for this was despite his total ignorance of football's rules etc, he had developed an enormous crush on a 'certain big-haired baton twirler.' Although Orin had some experience in this department, he had never been 'decapitated' before. He and his roommate had invented the epithet, 'PGOAT, for the Prettiest Girl Of All Time.' She was 'almost grotesquely lovely' and inspired in Orin and every other male in her vicinity a 'deep phylogenic fear of transhuman beauty' [aka Actaeon Complex.] None of the players had gotten close enough to hear her Southern accent, let alone asked her to dance. Needless to say, the tennis team had no cheerleaders, and so Orin pulls some strings to get a tryout, which is a disaster-- the football coach tells him he has 'some kind of empty swinging sack where his balls ought to be.' As fate would have it, just as Orin was leaving the field in humiliation, the team's punter was rushed by an over zealous tackle and put out of commission. Orin returns the wayward ball by punting it, and the jaws drop all around. Within weeks the 'empty swinging sack' comments were apologized for and Orin was on his way to becoming a football star. Also he was on his way to 'the only really cardiac-grade romantic relationship' of his life as his gazes at the baton twirler began to be reciprocated, and by Columbus Day, *she* approached *him* asking him to autograph a deflated football, he had kicked a hole in, for 'her own personal Daddy' a low pH chemist named Joe Lon van Dyne from Shiny Prize KY. Orin is disarmed and abandons his practiced seduction routine in favor of blurting out that punting is nearly spiritual for him. He has no problem keeping her interest, on account of the fact that no other males dare approach her. By the end of football season, Orin and Joelle had moved in together. Joelle had done Thanksgiving at ETA and Orin Xmas at the von Dyne home in Kentucky, each surviving the dread induced by the Moms and the Personal Daddy. That New Year's Eve [the last before Subsidization] was the first time Orin saw Joelle ingest cocaine. He had declined to take part [if for no other reason- to be mindful of his urine] but not in a 'judgmental or killjoy' way. He actually liked being with her when she was high. Joelle was studying film, and Orin turned her on to art film, partially by way of Himself. Eventually Himself brings Joelle in as an understudy and eventually as an actress [under a pseudonym.] After Orin's only mildly disappointing sophomore season, he went with Joelle and Himself to Toronto to make a film and ingest excessive amounts of alcohol. The next summer Joelle quit her baton twirling and left Orin behind to travel with Himself and make another film. Orin while recuperating from surgery, apparently did a bit of philandering. But Joelle's true ambitions were for behind the camera, and she began filming him, and to his surprise he found her little mini-films highly captivating. Joelle had been 'a maiden' when Orin met her, having repelled every male with her excessive prettiness. Joelle cleans house with a fervor reminiscent of the Moms, the mess 'just disappears sometime during the night.' Orin becomes obsessive about her little 10-second clips of him punting, including one where the recordable disc runs out just as he's about to get pummeled after a bad snap from the center.
p 299-306
YDAU [2009] Nov 14
place Boston
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Poor Tony Krause had a seizure on the metro train, after holing up in a bathroom for a week drinking codeine cough syrup. After he had stolen a woman's purse that contained her artificial heart, and also the incident with Wo and Bobby C, he cannot show his face in public and thus cannot score drugs from any of his usual connections. For a while he had lived in a dumpster and relied on a few lowlifes to score for him, but eventually those sources were eliminated and Poor Tony is forced to rely on the cough syrup. He eventually moves into the men's room of the Armenian Foundation Library because of his incontinence plus his hope of getting his social security check. He sat on the toilet day and night, staving off withdrawal with the cough syrup. [In a passage almost too brutal to summarize] tony goes from bad to worse, to beyond worse as the Withdrawal decimates his body and eventually his mind. He has visions of his dead father and fixates on the sound of the word 'Zuckung.' On his second day after the syrup runs out, he decides to venture to Cambridge in search of the Antitoi brothers, whom he thinks he can maybe turn to for a favor. On the train he imagines ants are crawling over him; he keeps his screams silent, but people keep their distance on account of the incontinence etc. He eventually has a seizure and swallows his tongue while hallucinating that his father is looking up his dress.
notes
The roots of Madam Psychosis and her veil are perhaps laid bare here, in the inference that her beauty was so extreme as to be repellent. Also the fact that her mini-films are so compelling seems to signify something more than just Orin's narcissism. And of course Joelle's similarity to the Moms is as curious as her relation to her own Personal Daddy. Poor Tony of p 128-135 is perhaps drawn closer to the ETA story by way of the Antitoi brothers who supplied the DMZ to Pemulis [p 211-219] just a week prior to this episode.
p 306-321
this section in 3 parts with a lengthy footnote [p 1004-1022]
p 306-312
YDAU [2009] Nov 7
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
The prorectors at ETA are required to teach one academic class per semester, and these classes tend to be popular electives among the older ETA students because the classes like the prorectors tend to be kind of nuts. For example Ted Schacht has taken Mary Esther Throde's classes for the past 3 years. This year's 'The Personal is the Political is the Psychopathological: The Politics of Contemporary Psychopathological Double-Binds' in which the exam asks what does an agoraphobic kleptomaniac do to overcome that s/he cannot leave the house but must steal. Schacht is about to loop the d in 'mail fraud' when Jim Troeltsch's pseudo-radio program comes over the intercom as it does twice weekly in the last period of the day. Troeltsch knows that he'll never make the Show, but has his sights set on broadcasting. Since the sports portion is mostly just reading the scores of matches from the week, Troeltsch invents ever more colorful synonyms for 'beat' and 'got beat by.' Of all the prorectors' classes, the only challenging one for Hal thus far has been Thierry Potrincourt's 'Separatism and Return: Quebecois History from Frotenac through the Age of Interdependence.' Although he initially found the topic dull and even distasteful, he has developed 'something of a layman's savvy for Canadianism and ONANite politics.' He sees no way Orin could have known he was taking the class, when he called to enlist Hal's help with Separatism [see footnote below]. Hal had found most of the early Quebec stuff to be dry and repetitive, but as the class started to cover more contemporary stuff, Hal finds it 'more high concept and less dull' than he expected, even though he considers himself apolitical. He is 'both com-and repelled' by the fact that the topic provokes in him a 'queasy feeling' in a 'furtively nauseous kind of sense.' After the Reconfiguration, annexation, the gerrymandering of the Great Convexity [or from US perspective, the Great Concavity] and the establishment of the ONAN, Quebecois separatists had turned their attention away from the rest of Canada [who for the most part took all this 'like good sports'] toward the US. One notable stunt was hauling giant mirrors in front of northbound cars in the region of the Concavity, thus scaring them off the road trying to avoid what the driver assumed would be a head-on collision. It was all a mystery until a drug-addicted would-be suicide drove her car into one of the mirrors instead of veering off the road, much to the embarrassment of Rodney Tine, chief of Unspecified Services who had publicly pressed for anti-driving-when-drowsy public service spots.
p 312-317
no date-- backstory
place Boston
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Mario's 'first birth' happens when the 'tall and eye-poppingly curvaceous' Avril is only 7 months pregnant and not showing. Himself thinks she is dying when her water breaks, and luckily Charles Tavis is there on an extended visit, and gets her to a hospital where Mario is 'scraped out...like the meat of an oyster.' His birth was a complete surprise, and his first months are spent in incubators. He is given the name of his father's grandfather who had invented X-Ray Specs, and left his fortune to his son enabling him to retire from his sad acting career and drink himself to death. Mario's premature and 'arachnoidal birth' left him with a host of physical challenges, and his parents soon became familiar with the prefix 'brady-' which means slow developing. His arms are S shaped [without proper hands] and usable for rudimentary forms of eating, slapping at doorknobs, and tossing tennis balls short distances, and they're pain-resistant, which fact is exploited by his brother Orin. His feet are square blocks that are not great for balance [or much else] which means that Mario falls face first occasionally, in part accounting for his flattened nose which caused breathing trouble, especially at night. His eyes protrude a little further than normal and one eyelid is prosthetic [the original had stuck and peeled away at birth] and has long horsehair lashes. His skin is gray-green with a bark-like reptilian texture, and his thin hair is styled in a comb-over. Mario is slow but *not* retarded. Mario and Himself are inseparable; Mario serves as honorary production assistant, carrying his lenses in a backpack, and occasionally bringing a 'Big Red Soda Water...to the apparently mute veiled graduate-intern down the motel's hall.' When required to stand upright on a shoot, Mario is supported by a police lock, a steel pole that attaches his vest to a slotted lead block on the floor. For his 13th birthday, his father built and willed him a Bolex camera bolted to an aviator's helmet that fits over his oversized head like a scuba mask, and is controlled by a foot treadle. After some practice this has allowed Mario to become the documentary filmer at ETA. Mario is well-liked even idealized by Hal as some kind of walking miracle. Hal fears that the Moms sees Mario as the true prodigy of the family, although his 'academic poverty breaks her heart, the smile he puts on each AM without fail since the suicide of their father makes her wish she could cry.' Hal suspects that it was Mario and the not the Moms who obtained for him his first copies of the unabridged OED. It was the Moms who insisted that Mario live in the subdorms with Hal, but it was Hal who chased off the rep from the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed.
p 317-321
YDAU [2009] Apr 30-May 1
place Tucson AZ
narrated in third person
synopsis:
It's now 'deep at night' as Marathe and Steeply continue their conversation. Marathe suggests that Canadians are not the root of the threat, that the problem is with the USA citizens: 'This is a USA production, this Entertainment cartridge. Made by an American man in the USA. The appetite for the appeal of it: this is also USA.' Marathe refers to the Entertainment as 'samizdat' and asks 'who would die for this chance to be fed this death of pleasure with spoons?' He says that it's not necessary for his organization to force anything on Americans, but they simply need to make the Entertainment available and Americans will choose their demise. He asks how USA will protect itself against that-- by killing Quebecois? He says the death itself will be a formality, because the real death is this 'appetite of your people unable to choose appetites.' He says that this is something that DuPlessis taught the cells, but only the AFR understood. He scoffs at President Gentle's claim that someone is to blame saying that that someone had let Americans forget how to choose. Steeply counters this argument saying that 'there are no choices without personal freedom.' But Marathe shrugs this off saying 'your freedom is the freedom-from... but what of the freedom-to?' He then tells a story of a rich father who allowed his children to choose to eat only candy. Steeply asks rhetorically 'no? you say, not children?... you say what your Fortier believes that we *are* children.... and will kill ourselves for you if you put the candy within arms reach.' Marathe admonishes him for putting words in his mouth. Neither has mentioned how on earth they intend to get down from the mountain in the dark.
p 1004-1022 [footnote 110 from p 311]
YDAU [2009] Nov 7
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Hal is sitting in his room icing his ankle after his match was truncated because his opponent Pemberton took a ball in the eye. Mario is gone preparing his film for the big post-prandial gala and film fest. There's a message on the machine from Orin asking if Hal had ever noticed that all of Emily Dickinson's poems can be sung to the tune of 'The Yellow Rose of Texas.' In Mario's closet is a box of postal correspondence that he has rescued from waste baskets [none of it to or from Mario himself] including a quoted letter from the Moms to Orin [addressed as Filbert] from June 20YW-QMD [2006]. The letter is haughty and formal but still reveals that the Moms 'cried like a fool... embarrassing everyone but Mario, who also cried.' The invariant response is also quoted-- a form letter from the New Orleans Saints acknowledging her letter, and including an autographed photo. Orin calls back and proceeds to tell Hal about 'Speedy Seduction Strategy Number 7' in which he pretends to be happily married and completely oblivious to the charms of the Subject until she starts to draw it out that he is attracted to her and that this makes him a bad husband and eventually the 'doomed involuntary conflicted good-man's-downfall-type quality' proves irresistible. Hal explains why he's back early, Orin says he might make it to see Hal play at the WhataBurger. Hal asks about the wheelchair-stalkers, but Orin says he hasn't seen them recently. Orin explains that he has called to ask two questions, first what the word 'samizdat' means. Hal rattles off an OED style answer and says that now it pretty much means any kind of politically underground press or the stuff they publish. He says that there's no real samizdat in the US, but perhaps some of the radical Quebecois stuff could be considered ONANite samizdat. Orin asks why The Mad Stork's name would come up in connection to samizdat. Hal can't think of an explanation, and suggests Orin speak to the 'one person who's really the person to chat with about all issues Canadian.' Orin says the question is why the Quebecois dropped the independence thing overnight and took up the anti-ONAN, and anti-Reconfiguration activities. Orin says he needs 'depth' from Hal, not expertise, as Hal reminds him that the Moms is the one to talk to. Hal recounts what little he knows, which is that the Quebecois separatists' 'hatred of anglophone Canada transcends anything they could work up against ONAN. Just mention 1859 and the Moms' lips disappear.' Hal confesses to a curiosity about the reporter/Subject, but says 'please don't let it just be that you've just discovered she's married with little kids,' and recounts Orin's reputation as 'home-wrecker' and ties it in to Orin's [lack of] relationship to the Moms: 'wants to blame her, won't admit it, needs to, won't admit it, sweepingly blames the whole affair of Himself on her, won't interface with her or worse even acknowledge her.' This he connects with Orin's 'rapacious fetish for young married mothers he can strategize into betraying their spouses and maybe damaging their kids for all time.' Orin lets all of this bounce off of him, and returns the discussion to the separatists. Hal suggests that Orin just tell the reporter that, it's 'wacko' and shrug it off. As Pemulis comes in the room to fetch Hal and his 'Bob Hope' for their planned Interdependence Day Eve excursion, Orin is trying to raise another question-- even though Quebec bears almost the entire brunt of the Concavity, it doesn't really have a chance of convincing Gentle and ONAN to take it back, why don't they use it as a bargaining tool with Canada to get the independence they always wanted, as in take the Concavity off of Canada's hands. And why then are the Quebecois separatists making a point of carrying out anti-ONAN activities in the name of *all* of Canada-- what if they know well that if ONAN sees all of Canada as the culprits they will make things very difficult for Canada, and what if the separatists are actually doing this as some kind of meta-extortion against Canada-- as in let us separate and we'll take full credit for the terrorism. Hal's response is that all of their terrorism has been 'too hapless and small potato for her theory to work.' At which point Orin says that now Hal is with him, and this is where he needs Hal's hope because it was at this point that she raised the issue of the samizdat. At this point the increasingly impatient Pemulis hangs up the phone on Orin.
notes
The backstory on Mario clears up a lot of the weirdness we've encountered thus far. Is Mario DFW's nod to southern gothic? The other sections, especially the footnote, draw the story lines inextricably together, around the samizdat. The footnote also explains, at least by Hal's lights, the sad roots of Orin's lechery.
p 306-312
YDAU [2009] Nov 7
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
The prorectors at ETA are required to teach one academic class per semester, and these classes tend to be popular electives among the older ETA students because the classes like the prorectors tend to be kind of nuts. For example Ted Schacht has taken Mary Esther Throde's classes for the past 3 years. This year's 'The Personal is the Political is the Psychopathological: The Politics of Contemporary Psychopathological Double-Binds' in which the exam asks what does an agoraphobic kleptomaniac do to overcome that s/he cannot leave the house but must steal. Schacht is about to loop the d in 'mail fraud' when Jim Troeltsch's pseudo-radio program comes over the intercom as it does twice weekly in the last period of the day. Troeltsch knows that he'll never make the Show, but has his sights set on broadcasting. Since the sports portion is mostly just reading the scores of matches from the week, Troeltsch invents ever more colorful synonyms for 'beat' and 'got beat by.' Of all the prorectors' classes, the only challenging one for Hal thus far has been Thierry Potrincourt's 'Separatism and Return: Quebecois History from Frotenac through the Age of Interdependence.' Although he initially found the topic dull and even distasteful, he has developed 'something of a layman's savvy for Canadianism and ONANite politics.' He sees no way Orin could have known he was taking the class, when he called to enlist Hal's help with Separatism [see footnote below]. Hal had found most of the early Quebec stuff to be dry and repetitive, but as the class started to cover more contemporary stuff, Hal finds it 'more high concept and less dull' than he expected, even though he considers himself apolitical. He is 'both com-and repelled' by the fact that the topic provokes in him a 'queasy feeling' in a 'furtively nauseous kind of sense.' After the Reconfiguration, annexation, the gerrymandering of the Great Convexity [or from US perspective, the Great Concavity] and the establishment of the ONAN, Quebecois separatists had turned their attention away from the rest of Canada [who for the most part took all this 'like good sports'] toward the US. One notable stunt was hauling giant mirrors in front of northbound cars in the region of the Concavity, thus scaring them off the road trying to avoid what the driver assumed would be a head-on collision. It was all a mystery until a drug-addicted would-be suicide drove her car into one of the mirrors instead of veering off the road, much to the embarrassment of Rodney Tine, chief of Unspecified Services who had publicly pressed for anti-driving-when-drowsy public service spots.
p 312-317
no date-- backstory
place Boston
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Mario's 'first birth' happens when the 'tall and eye-poppingly curvaceous' Avril is only 7 months pregnant and not showing. Himself thinks she is dying when her water breaks, and luckily Charles Tavis is there on an extended visit, and gets her to a hospital where Mario is 'scraped out...like the meat of an oyster.' His birth was a complete surprise, and his first months are spent in incubators. He is given the name of his father's grandfather who had invented X-Ray Specs, and left his fortune to his son enabling him to retire from his sad acting career and drink himself to death. Mario's premature and 'arachnoidal birth' left him with a host of physical challenges, and his parents soon became familiar with the prefix 'brady-' which means slow developing. His arms are S shaped [without proper hands] and usable for rudimentary forms of eating, slapping at doorknobs, and tossing tennis balls short distances, and they're pain-resistant, which fact is exploited by his brother Orin. His feet are square blocks that are not great for balance [or much else] which means that Mario falls face first occasionally, in part accounting for his flattened nose which caused breathing trouble, especially at night. His eyes protrude a little further than normal and one eyelid is prosthetic [the original had stuck and peeled away at birth] and has long horsehair lashes. His skin is gray-green with a bark-like reptilian texture, and his thin hair is styled in a comb-over. Mario is slow but *not* retarded. Mario and Himself are inseparable; Mario serves as honorary production assistant, carrying his lenses in a backpack, and occasionally bringing a 'Big Red Soda Water...to the apparently mute veiled graduate-intern down the motel's hall.' When required to stand upright on a shoot, Mario is supported by a police lock, a steel pole that attaches his vest to a slotted lead block on the floor. For his 13th birthday, his father built and willed him a Bolex camera bolted to an aviator's helmet that fits over his oversized head like a scuba mask, and is controlled by a foot treadle. After some practice this has allowed Mario to become the documentary filmer at ETA. Mario is well-liked even idealized by Hal as some kind of walking miracle. Hal fears that the Moms sees Mario as the true prodigy of the family, although his 'academic poverty breaks her heart, the smile he puts on each AM without fail since the suicide of their father makes her wish she could cry.' Hal suspects that it was Mario and the not the Moms who obtained for him his first copies of the unabridged OED. It was the Moms who insisted that Mario live in the subdorms with Hal, but it was Hal who chased off the rep from the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed.
p 317-321
YDAU [2009] Apr 30-May 1
place Tucson AZ
narrated in third person
synopsis:
It's now 'deep at night' as Marathe and Steeply continue their conversation. Marathe suggests that Canadians are not the root of the threat, that the problem is with the USA citizens: 'This is a USA production, this Entertainment cartridge. Made by an American man in the USA. The appetite for the appeal of it: this is also USA.' Marathe refers to the Entertainment as 'samizdat' and asks 'who would die for this chance to be fed this death of pleasure with spoons?' He says that it's not necessary for his organization to force anything on Americans, but they simply need to make the Entertainment available and Americans will choose their demise. He asks how USA will protect itself against that-- by killing Quebecois? He says the death itself will be a formality, because the real death is this 'appetite of your people unable to choose appetites.' He says that this is something that DuPlessis taught the cells, but only the AFR understood. He scoffs at President Gentle's claim that someone is to blame saying that that someone had let Americans forget how to choose. Steeply counters this argument saying that 'there are no choices without personal freedom.' But Marathe shrugs this off saying 'your freedom is the freedom-from... but what of the freedom-to?' He then tells a story of a rich father who allowed his children to choose to eat only candy. Steeply asks rhetorically 'no? you say, not children?... you say what your Fortier believes that we *are* children.... and will kill ourselves for you if you put the candy within arms reach.' Marathe admonishes him for putting words in his mouth. Neither has mentioned how on earth they intend to get down from the mountain in the dark.
p 1004-1022 [footnote 110 from p 311]
YDAU [2009] Nov 7
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Hal is sitting in his room icing his ankle after his match was truncated because his opponent Pemberton took a ball in the eye. Mario is gone preparing his film for the big post-prandial gala and film fest. There's a message on the machine from Orin asking if Hal had ever noticed that all of Emily Dickinson's poems can be sung to the tune of 'The Yellow Rose of Texas.' In Mario's closet is a box of postal correspondence that he has rescued from waste baskets [none of it to or from Mario himself] including a quoted letter from the Moms to Orin [addressed as Filbert] from June 20YW-QMD [2006]. The letter is haughty and formal but still reveals that the Moms 'cried like a fool... embarrassing everyone but Mario, who also cried.' The invariant response is also quoted-- a form letter from the New Orleans Saints acknowledging her letter, and including an autographed photo. Orin calls back and proceeds to tell Hal about 'Speedy Seduction Strategy Number 7' in which he pretends to be happily married and completely oblivious to the charms of the Subject until she starts to draw it out that he is attracted to her and that this makes him a bad husband and eventually the 'doomed involuntary conflicted good-man's-downfall-type quality' proves irresistible. Hal explains why he's back early, Orin says he might make it to see Hal play at the WhataBurger. Hal asks about the wheelchair-stalkers, but Orin says he hasn't seen them recently. Orin explains that he has called to ask two questions, first what the word 'samizdat' means. Hal rattles off an OED style answer and says that now it pretty much means any kind of politically underground press or the stuff they publish. He says that there's no real samizdat in the US, but perhaps some of the radical Quebecois stuff could be considered ONANite samizdat. Orin asks why The Mad Stork's name would come up in connection to samizdat. Hal can't think of an explanation, and suggests Orin speak to the 'one person who's really the person to chat with about all issues Canadian.' Orin says the question is why the Quebecois dropped the independence thing overnight and took up the anti-ONAN, and anti-Reconfiguration activities. Orin says he needs 'depth' from Hal, not expertise, as Hal reminds him that the Moms is the one to talk to. Hal recounts what little he knows, which is that the Quebecois separatists' 'hatred of anglophone Canada transcends anything they could work up against ONAN. Just mention 1859 and the Moms' lips disappear.' Hal confesses to a curiosity about the reporter/Subject, but says 'please don't let it just be that you've just discovered she's married with little kids,' and recounts Orin's reputation as 'home-wrecker' and ties it in to Orin's [lack of] relationship to the Moms: 'wants to blame her, won't admit it, needs to, won't admit it, sweepingly blames the whole affair of Himself on her, won't interface with her or worse even acknowledge her.' This he connects with Orin's 'rapacious fetish for young married mothers he can strategize into betraying their spouses and maybe damaging their kids for all time.' Orin lets all of this bounce off of him, and returns the discussion to the separatists. Hal suggests that Orin just tell the reporter that, it's 'wacko' and shrug it off. As Pemulis comes in the room to fetch Hal and his 'Bob Hope' for their planned Interdependence Day Eve excursion, Orin is trying to raise another question-- even though Quebec bears almost the entire brunt of the Concavity, it doesn't really have a chance of convincing Gentle and ONAN to take it back, why don't they use it as a bargaining tool with Canada to get the independence they always wanted, as in take the Concavity off of Canada's hands. And why then are the Quebecois separatists making a point of carrying out anti-ONAN activities in the name of *all* of Canada-- what if they know well that if ONAN sees all of Canada as the culprits they will make things very difficult for Canada, and what if the separatists are actually doing this as some kind of meta-extortion against Canada-- as in let us separate and we'll take full credit for the terrorism. Hal's response is that all of their terrorism has been 'too hapless and small potato for her theory to work.' At which point Orin says that now Hal is with him, and this is where he needs Hal's hope because it was at this point that she raised the issue of the samizdat. At this point the increasingly impatient Pemulis hangs up the phone on Orin.
notes
The backstory on Mario clears up a lot of the weirdness we've encountered thus far. Is Mario DFW's nod to southern gothic? The other sections, especially the footnote, draw the story lines inextricably together, around the samizdat. The footnote also explains, at least by Hal's lights, the sad roots of Orin's lechery.
p 321-379
this section in 8 parts
p 321-342
YDAU [2009] Nov 8 [Interdependence Day]
place ETA
narrated in third person [revealed to be Hal's transcription]
synopsis:
This section lays out the ground rules for a game played by younger kids at ETA called Eschaton. While he didn't invent it, Pemulis, when he was 12, had 'helped make it way more compelling.' The game requires 8-12 players and 400 old tennis balls, representing nuclear warheads. The players are divided into teams representing nations/alliances--AMNAT, SOVWAR, REDCHI, LIBSYR, or IRLYBSYR, and sometimes SOUTHAF and INDPAK. Distribution of the warheads/balls requires a knowledge of calculus, and a computer armed with number crunching software. Different T-shirts and wrist bands are distributed throughout each team's map to signify metropolitan areas and other strategic areas. The warheads can launched only with a racquet [requiring good lobbing skills] which is why the academy tacitly permits the game. This year's gamemaster is Otis P. Lord, whose responsibilities are to be statistician and also to come up with the 'Triggering Mechanism' that starts the game-- an impossibly convoluted set of circumstances which in the end requires AMNAT to initiate attacks against SOVWAR. One might expect that the game consists of 'warheads getting whacked indiscriminately skyward all over the place' but in reality an Eschaton game more resembles a restrained game of chess. The Nov 8 game proceeds with even more 'probity and cold deliberation' than is the norm. Since 11/8 is a mandatory R&R day, Hal watches the game with Troeltsch [who is calling the game as announcer] and Pemulis [who has ingested Tenuate] s Hal is suppressing the urge to get high for the second time today, due to his distaste for doing so in public, especially in front of the 'little buddies.' There is a mysterious mention of an 'idling Ford sedan... conspicuous for the excruciated full color old Nunhagen Aspirin ad on the green of it's right rear door.' About half the megatonnage has been expended and SOVWAR [Sleepy TP Peterson] petitions to have a meeting with AMNAT [LaMont Chu] to avoid an all out escalation, that would probably ensure that neither won the game. While this is happening REDCHI sends a warhead lob to INDPAK, and there is some disagreement as to whether it was a direct hit, which would be Lord's call, but his attention was elsewhere at the time. Lord appeals to the Eschaton guru Pemulis for an independent ruling, but Pemulis refuses. There is then an argument over whether as INDPAK's Penn suggests that the snow on the court would diffuse the effects of the warhead. Pemulis objects strenuously saying that it's 'snowing on the goddamn *map,* not the *territory*' Hal decides to smoke the pot after all. Ingersoll [IRLIBSYR] decides, in order to prevent the AMNAT/SOVWAR summit, and to everyone's surprise, to send a forehand straight into the back of Ann Kittenplan's head. He claims that he has just taken out both AMNAT and SOVWAR's heads of state in the blast kill radius. Lord, over Pemulis' strenuous objections dons the red beanie that means utter global crisis. Pemulis claims that it's a precondition of the game that you can only launch an attack on the territory and not on the players themselves, and that this is the only thing that keeps the game from devolving into chaos. And that's exactly what happens next. The chaos ends when Lord, in a mad dash to try to save the computer from crashing to the ground, stumbles and crashes head first into the monitor screen. Meanwhile 'the idling Ford reveals a sudden face at the driver's-side window.'
p 343-367
YDAU [2009] Nov 8 [Interdependence Day]
place AA meeting near Ennet House
narrated in third person [primarily Gately's perspective]
synopsis:
Ennet House members are required to attend the 'White Flag' AA meeting once a week in the cafeteria of the Provident Nursing Home off Commonwealth Ave [a few blocks from ETA]. At these meetings the speakers are visitors from another Boston AA group, part of an exchange agreement called a 'Commitment.' John L. from Concord is this week's speaker, and his speech is intercut with an explanation [presumably from Gately's perspective] of what it's like to break down and enter AA. John L tells how he lost his job-- one day he showed up for work, and someone else was there doing his job,and his wife-- same story. Meanwhile the other narrative explains that all the speakers' narratives of decline and fall and surrender are alike. It appears that the Substance is the only consolation against the pain of the Losses [suffered because of the substance] and eventually you can't even get that relief anymore, but still you cannot quit. When you hit bottom you have two choices-- you can 'eliminate your own map for keeps' or you can try AA which seems at best like 'Unitarian happy horseshit' or at worst like 'cover for some glazed and canny cult-type thing.' But then comes the shocking discovery that this 'actually does seem to work.' No one knows how it works, you just have to 'Hang In' and keep repeating the cliches. The second speaker is an Irish immigrant who tells the story of his first solid bowel movement in adult life. Gately's gift as a staffer [besides his formidable size] is his ability to explain to newcomers his own initial skepticism, about how he raised his hand at a meeting early on and said that he hates AA, thinks it's 'horseshit' and 'drivel' and how he hates all the people who propagate it, which ended up making him sort of a hero, since as everyone told him, they had felt exactly the same way but hadn't the guts to say it out loud. However one of the 'Crocodiles' [as the old-timers are called] tells him he might be OK if he Keeps Coming, and starts to *listen* in stead of talk. Gately eventually started hanging out with them at their haunt,the 'Elit Diner' next to Steve's Donuts at Enfield Center, where they sit around and relate stories of all the guys who have Come In only to go back Out There and die or go back to 'not living.' Boston's AA is like a 'benign anarchy' --there are no rules only 'suggestions' and you have to *want* to follow them. But if you don't, no one will kick you out; they won't have to. Early in his AA tenure Gately had a dream where he was kneeling in a church basement with many others, when he notices some of the others are being sucked out through the glass wall silently. He then sees the 'authoritative figure' with a giant shepherd's crook who radiates 'good cheer and abundant charm and limitless patience.' The 'slow silent stick with the hook' is what keeps them all kneeling in the basement. Gately didn't have to get assistance from the staffer on 'Dream Duty' to understand the meaning-- AA has 'the planet's most remorselessly hard-ass and efficient sergeant at arms' and he was always on duty 'Out There.' Gately likes the new member Ken Erdedy, although he can't relate to the fact that marijuana could be responsible for landing someone in Ennet House. Erdedy along with the brand new girl Joelle, both object to the AA terms, especially 'miracle' and 'for the grace of God.' Gately explains to Erdedy and Joelle that the phrase 'good to hear you' is used instead of 'you spoke well' because it can't be anybody's place to judge, and that it means two things-- that what the speaker said was helpful, and that the listener was glad to be *able* to hear it. Gately has no handle yet on Joelle, who was admitted overnight without being on the waiting list, after a 'horrific O.D.-type situation.' To Gately's utter incomprehension, Joelle complains that 'But for the grace of God' is a subjunctive, and makes no sense introducing anything but a conditional clause. 'I'm here but for the grace of God' is senseless, regardless of whether she 'hears' it or not. Looking into her veil, Gately is baffled and for a moment seized with panic, that he will someday succumb, and get high again.
p 367
no date/place [backstory]
narrated in third person
synopsis:
The statue of liberty holds aloft a product, which is changed each Jan. 1 by workers with cranes.
p 367-375
YDAU [2009] Nov 8 [Interdependence Day]
place AA meeting near Ennet House
narrated in third person [primarily Gately's perspective]
synopsis:
The next two speakers at the White Flag meeting demonstrate that it's got to be 'real' to get a response-- the first tries a well rehearsed joke, and the second an unintended one, and the former gets an icy response while the latter has them rolling with laughter. It has to be real and irony-free. Ironically you are encouraged to say stuff like 'one day at a time' and 'I'm an alcoholic' until you believe it. The next speaker commits one of the cardinal sins of AA when she says that she was a dope fiend *because* at 16 she had run away from home and become a stripper. She explicates the story in gory detail of how she was adopted by parents who had a biological daughter who was 'totally paralyzed and retarded and catatonic.' The mother was 'crazy as a Fucking Mud-Bug' [in Joelle's words] and forced the adopted daughter to drag *it* [as the speaker referred to her sister] along with her on dates. The father had begun coming into their room at night and molesting the catatonic girl, whom he would call 'Raquel' and equip with a rubber Raquel Welch mask. The adopted daughter would have to cover for him, and remove the mask afterwards for fear that if the mother ever found out it would mean that eventually the focus of the father's attentions would shift to her. What eventually led her to run away was, one night she had to turn the light on to get the Raquel wig untwisted and noticed that the catatonic sister had the same look on her face that she remembered from the picture in the hallway of 'some Catholic statue' with a woman 'whose stone robes were half hiked up.' That was 'what caused it' and why she's here recovering from 'One Day at a Time.' Gately's objection to the story is not that he's known plenty of people with worse childhood experiences, but rather that the *cause* of the disease is really just an excuse. At AA you don't ask why.
p 375
YDAU [2009] Apr 30-May 1
place Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Marathe and Steeply are still in the desert at night,and it's getting cold. Steeply has divulged that he had been on marital leave after his divorce, but is now back in the field undercover as a journalist 'assigned to cultivate some of the Entertainment's alleged filmmaker's relatives and inner circles.'
p 375-376
ca Year of the Whopper [2002]
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Himself emerges from the sauna drunk and depressed by the fact that even the avant-garde critics complain that his narrative films lacked plot. Mario and Joelle are probably the only ones who know that Found Drama and anti-confluentialism came out of the resulting conversation between Himself and Kyle. In a footnote [p 1026-1028] the concept of 'Found Drama' is explained by way of excerpts from Helen Steeply's interview with Orin. Orin interjects his attempts to charm the interviewer with the details-- that 'Found Dramas' were never actually filmed, but consisted simply of choosing a subject at random from the phone book.
p 376-379
YDAU [2009] Nov 8 [Interdependence Day]
place AA meeting near Ennet House
narrated in third person [primarily Gately's perspective]
synopsis:
Boston's AA doesn't recoil from the idea of responsibility, just cause. The 'meeting's last and maybe best speaker' is a 'round pink girl with no eyelashes' who turned tricks and used freebase cocaine all the way through her pregnancy 'even though she knew it was bad for the baby and wanted desperately to quit.' Eventually she gives birth to a stillborn infant, and goes into to complete Denial. She carries the baby around with her rolled up in a blanket, trying to turn tricks and score drugs. Eventually she is turned into Social Services and put in a hospital for four months. When she is released and given SSI checks, she turns from crack to alcohol and ends up facing the two option choice on the window-ledge of a welfare-hotel, and here she is trying to live. Her speech invokes rapt attention all around. No cause or excuse, just what happened.
p 379
ca Year of the Whopper [2002]--?
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Lyle and Himself were the 'odd couple of libations' down in the weight room-- Himself with his Wild Turkey and Lyle with his diet Coke. Often Mario would struggle to stay awake and accompany them. Himself was a 'profound-personality-change drinker' and one night Mario awoke to hear him saying he would give his marriage a C-. Lyle would take things as they came, and would often get out William Blake and read it to Himself in the voices of cartoon characters.
notes
The Ennet House thread is now inextricably linked to the ETA thread and the Tucson thread by the appearance of Joelle at Ennet House. The reason behind Steeply's interviews with Orin are also made explicit here-- they have to do with Unspecified Services' interest in the film cartridge, of which Orin's father is the putative director.
p 321-342
YDAU [2009] Nov 8 [Interdependence Day]
place ETA
narrated in third person [revealed to be Hal's transcription]
synopsis:
This section lays out the ground rules for a game played by younger kids at ETA called Eschaton. While he didn't invent it, Pemulis, when he was 12, had 'helped make it way more compelling.' The game requires 8-12 players and 400 old tennis balls, representing nuclear warheads. The players are divided into teams representing nations/alliances--AMNAT, SOVWAR, REDCHI, LIBSYR, or IRLYBSYR, and sometimes SOUTHAF and INDPAK. Distribution of the warheads/balls requires a knowledge of calculus, and a computer armed with number crunching software. Different T-shirts and wrist bands are distributed throughout each team's map to signify metropolitan areas and other strategic areas. The warheads can launched only with a racquet [requiring good lobbing skills] which is why the academy tacitly permits the game. This year's gamemaster is Otis P. Lord, whose responsibilities are to be statistician and also to come up with the 'Triggering Mechanism' that starts the game-- an impossibly convoluted set of circumstances which in the end requires AMNAT to initiate attacks against SOVWAR. One might expect that the game consists of 'warheads getting whacked indiscriminately skyward all over the place' but in reality an Eschaton game more resembles a restrained game of chess. The Nov 8 game proceeds with even more 'probity and cold deliberation' than is the norm. Since 11/8 is a mandatory R&R day, Hal watches the game with Troeltsch [who is calling the game as announcer] and Pemulis [who has ingested Tenuate] s Hal is suppressing the urge to get high for the second time today, due to his distaste for doing so in public, especially in front of the 'little buddies.' There is a mysterious mention of an 'idling Ford sedan... conspicuous for the excruciated full color old Nunhagen Aspirin ad on the green of it's right rear door.' About half the megatonnage has been expended and SOVWAR [Sleepy TP Peterson] petitions to have a meeting with AMNAT [LaMont Chu] to avoid an all out escalation, that would probably ensure that neither won the game. While this is happening REDCHI sends a warhead lob to INDPAK, and there is some disagreement as to whether it was a direct hit, which would be Lord's call, but his attention was elsewhere at the time. Lord appeals to the Eschaton guru Pemulis for an independent ruling, but Pemulis refuses. There is then an argument over whether as INDPAK's Penn suggests that the snow on the court would diffuse the effects of the warhead. Pemulis objects strenuously saying that it's 'snowing on the goddamn *map,* not the *territory*' Hal decides to smoke the pot after all. Ingersoll [IRLIBSYR] decides, in order to prevent the AMNAT/SOVWAR summit, and to everyone's surprise, to send a forehand straight into the back of Ann Kittenplan's head. He claims that he has just taken out both AMNAT and SOVWAR's heads of state in the blast kill radius. Lord, over Pemulis' strenuous objections dons the red beanie that means utter global crisis. Pemulis claims that it's a precondition of the game that you can only launch an attack on the territory and not on the players themselves, and that this is the only thing that keeps the game from devolving into chaos. And that's exactly what happens next. The chaos ends when Lord, in a mad dash to try to save the computer from crashing to the ground, stumbles and crashes head first into the monitor screen. Meanwhile 'the idling Ford reveals a sudden face at the driver's-side window.'
p 343-367
YDAU [2009] Nov 8 [Interdependence Day]
place AA meeting near Ennet House
narrated in third person [primarily Gately's perspective]
synopsis:
Ennet House members are required to attend the 'White Flag' AA meeting once a week in the cafeteria of the Provident Nursing Home off Commonwealth Ave [a few blocks from ETA]. At these meetings the speakers are visitors from another Boston AA group, part of an exchange agreement called a 'Commitment.' John L. from Concord is this week's speaker, and his speech is intercut with an explanation [presumably from Gately's perspective] of what it's like to break down and enter AA. John L tells how he lost his job-- one day he showed up for work, and someone else was there doing his job,and his wife-- same story. Meanwhile the other narrative explains that all the speakers' narratives of decline and fall and surrender are alike. It appears that the Substance is the only consolation against the pain of the Losses [suffered because of the substance] and eventually you can't even get that relief anymore, but still you cannot quit. When you hit bottom you have two choices-- you can 'eliminate your own map for keeps' or you can try AA which seems at best like 'Unitarian happy horseshit' or at worst like 'cover for some glazed and canny cult-type thing.' But then comes the shocking discovery that this 'actually does seem to work.' No one knows how it works, you just have to 'Hang In' and keep repeating the cliches. The second speaker is an Irish immigrant who tells the story of his first solid bowel movement in adult life. Gately's gift as a staffer [besides his formidable size] is his ability to explain to newcomers his own initial skepticism, about how he raised his hand at a meeting early on and said that he hates AA, thinks it's 'horseshit' and 'drivel' and how he hates all the people who propagate it, which ended up making him sort of a hero, since as everyone told him, they had felt exactly the same way but hadn't the guts to say it out loud. However one of the 'Crocodiles' [as the old-timers are called] tells him he might be OK if he Keeps Coming, and starts to *listen* in stead of talk. Gately eventually started hanging out with them at their haunt,the 'Elit Diner' next to Steve's Donuts at Enfield Center, where they sit around and relate stories of all the guys who have Come In only to go back Out There and die or go back to 'not living.' Boston's AA is like a 'benign anarchy' --there are no rules only 'suggestions' and you have to *want* to follow them. But if you don't, no one will kick you out; they won't have to. Early in his AA tenure Gately had a dream where he was kneeling in a church basement with many others, when he notices some of the others are being sucked out through the glass wall silently. He then sees the 'authoritative figure' with a giant shepherd's crook who radiates 'good cheer and abundant charm and limitless patience.' The 'slow silent stick with the hook' is what keeps them all kneeling in the basement. Gately didn't have to get assistance from the staffer on 'Dream Duty' to understand the meaning-- AA has 'the planet's most remorselessly hard-ass and efficient sergeant at arms' and he was always on duty 'Out There.' Gately likes the new member Ken Erdedy, although he can't relate to the fact that marijuana could be responsible for landing someone in Ennet House. Erdedy along with the brand new girl Joelle, both object to the AA terms, especially 'miracle' and 'for the grace of God.' Gately explains to Erdedy and Joelle that the phrase 'good to hear you' is used instead of 'you spoke well' because it can't be anybody's place to judge, and that it means two things-- that what the speaker said was helpful, and that the listener was glad to be *able* to hear it. Gately has no handle yet on Joelle, who was admitted overnight without being on the waiting list, after a 'horrific O.D.-type situation.' To Gately's utter incomprehension, Joelle complains that 'But for the grace of God' is a subjunctive, and makes no sense introducing anything but a conditional clause. 'I'm here but for the grace of God' is senseless, regardless of whether she 'hears' it or not. Looking into her veil, Gately is baffled and for a moment seized with panic, that he will someday succumb, and get high again.
p 367
no date/place [backstory]
narrated in third person
synopsis:
The statue of liberty holds aloft a product, which is changed each Jan. 1 by workers with cranes.
p 367-375
YDAU [2009] Nov 8 [Interdependence Day]
place AA meeting near Ennet House
narrated in third person [primarily Gately's perspective]
synopsis:
The next two speakers at the White Flag meeting demonstrate that it's got to be 'real' to get a response-- the first tries a well rehearsed joke, and the second an unintended one, and the former gets an icy response while the latter has them rolling with laughter. It has to be real and irony-free. Ironically you are encouraged to say stuff like 'one day at a time' and 'I'm an alcoholic' until you believe it. The next speaker commits one of the cardinal sins of AA when she says that she was a dope fiend *because* at 16 she had run away from home and become a stripper. She explicates the story in gory detail of how she was adopted by parents who had a biological daughter who was 'totally paralyzed and retarded and catatonic.' The mother was 'crazy as a Fucking Mud-Bug' [in Joelle's words] and forced the adopted daughter to drag *it* [as the speaker referred to her sister] along with her on dates. The father had begun coming into their room at night and molesting the catatonic girl, whom he would call 'Raquel' and equip with a rubber Raquel Welch mask. The adopted daughter would have to cover for him, and remove the mask afterwards for fear that if the mother ever found out it would mean that eventually the focus of the father's attentions would shift to her. What eventually led her to run away was, one night she had to turn the light on to get the Raquel wig untwisted and noticed that the catatonic sister had the same look on her face that she remembered from the picture in the hallway of 'some Catholic statue' with a woman 'whose stone robes were half hiked up.' That was 'what caused it' and why she's here recovering from 'One Day at a Time.' Gately's objection to the story is not that he's known plenty of people with worse childhood experiences, but rather that the *cause* of the disease is really just an excuse. At AA you don't ask why.
p 375
YDAU [2009] Apr 30-May 1
place Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Marathe and Steeply are still in the desert at night,and it's getting cold. Steeply has divulged that he had been on marital leave after his divorce, but is now back in the field undercover as a journalist 'assigned to cultivate some of the Entertainment's alleged filmmaker's relatives and inner circles.'
p 375-376
ca Year of the Whopper [2002]
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Himself emerges from the sauna drunk and depressed by the fact that even the avant-garde critics complain that his narrative films lacked plot. Mario and Joelle are probably the only ones who know that Found Drama and anti-confluentialism came out of the resulting conversation between Himself and Kyle. In a footnote [p 1026-1028] the concept of 'Found Drama' is explained by way of excerpts from Helen Steeply's interview with Orin. Orin interjects his attempts to charm the interviewer with the details-- that 'Found Dramas' were never actually filmed, but consisted simply of choosing a subject at random from the phone book.
p 376-379
YDAU [2009] Nov 8 [Interdependence Day]
place AA meeting near Ennet House
narrated in third person [primarily Gately's perspective]
synopsis:
Boston's AA doesn't recoil from the idea of responsibility, just cause. The 'meeting's last and maybe best speaker' is a 'round pink girl with no eyelashes' who turned tricks and used freebase cocaine all the way through her pregnancy 'even though she knew it was bad for the baby and wanted desperately to quit.' Eventually she gives birth to a stillborn infant, and goes into to complete Denial. She carries the baby around with her rolled up in a blanket, trying to turn tricks and score drugs. Eventually she is turned into Social Services and put in a hospital for four months. When she is released and given SSI checks, she turns from crack to alcohol and ends up facing the two option choice on the window-ledge of a welfare-hotel, and here she is trying to live. Her speech invokes rapt attention all around. No cause or excuse, just what happened.
p 379
ca Year of the Whopper [2002]--?
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Lyle and Himself were the 'odd couple of libations' down in the weight room-- Himself with his Wild Turkey and Lyle with his diet Coke. Often Mario would struggle to stay awake and accompany them. Himself was a 'profound-personality-change drinker' and one night Mario awoke to hear him saying he would give his marriage a C-. Lyle would take things as they came, and would often get out William Blake and read it to Himself in the voices of cartoon characters.
notes
The Ennet House thread is now inextricably linked to the ETA thread and the Tucson thread by the appearance of Joelle at Ennet House. The reason behind Steeply's interviews with Orin are also made explicit here-- they have to do with Unspecified Services' interest in the film cartridge, of which Orin's father is the putative director.
p 380-442
this section in 10 parts
p 380-386
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Mario's first 'halfway-coherent' film cartridge is a filmed puppet show explicating the formation of ONAN and the rise of President Gentle to power. It is shown every year at the Interdependence Day dinner, at which students and faculty are encouraged to wear hats and/or face-masks in honor of the president. Also the ETA dietician, a former dessert chef, gets to go nuts and the students are allowed to indulge. Mario's film, which is a remake of his father's 4-hour epic, is strangely more popular with the adults and young adults than the kids. The film opens on an image of Johnny Gentle the one time lounge singer turned B-movie actor, who is Howard-Hughes paranoid in his fear of 'free-floating contamination' [hence the surgical masks.] Gentle eventually becomes standard bearer for a fringe political party called Clean US Party [CUSP] whose motto is ''Let's shoot our wastes into space.' He becomes president on the platform of cleaning the country up very literally-- he delivers his inaugural speech in a microfiltration mask. He promises to find someone to blame. He appoints the president of Mexico and prime minister of Canada to his cabinet. All but the Canadian students are charged up on sugar and having a grand time watching Mario's cartridge. A recreated meeting between Gentle and Canada's P.M. ends in a Motown version of 'It's a small world after all' with 'continent' squeezed in for 'world'
p 386-394
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Lyle is in the weight room on 11/8 recalling a boy named Marlon from a few years back, who sweated so profusely that he was constantly wet, and hence a favorite of Lyle's; 'he told this boy everything he had to tell.' Those who wonder what Lyle does alone in the weight room every night obviously don't know that he's rarely alone. The boys often lurk around the weight room door after taking a sauna, to exchange their sweat for some advice from the 'guru' Lyle. He coaches LaMont Chu on his crippling obsession with fame and specifically getting his picture in the tennis magazines. Lyle tries to clue him in to the fact that 'fame is not the exit from any cage.' Kent Blott age 10, comes to Lyle worried about what kind of porn he'll watch when he begins to masturbate. Anton Doucette expresses debilitating anxiety about the mole beneath his nose. Meanwhile Mario's film shows a mixture of real and fake news headlines-- these go from bad to worse as NATO is abolished ONAN formed, Burger King Pilsbury granted the rights to the first year of subsidized time, doctors remove a railroad spike from Canadian PM's eye, barges loaded with waste collide near Gloucester causing toxic spill, and possible 'reconfigurative options.'
p 394-395
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Lyle tells Ortho [the Darkness] Stice not to underestimate objects. Stice is worried that his somnambulism may hurt his chances for the Show-- he has been waking up with his bed moved to different parts of the room. Lyle's response is to tell a story of a man who would hustle bets by way of his ability to levitate the chair he was standing on.
p 395-398
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Hal has a nicotine addiction which he satisfies by chewing tobacco. He also has a sugar problem [related to his pot problem] but ordinarily can't handle the emotional states that it produces in him on court. As he watches Mario's cartridge with a mouthful of baklava, he muses on how Mario adopted his father's penchant for puppets/theater. He thinks back to Himself's 'The Medusa v The Odalisque' which is a plotless battle between the Medusa who's so hideous that she turns to stone those who gaze upon her, and the Quebecois Odalisque who's so inhumanly gorgeous to the same end. For obvious reasons the audience never gets to see the faces of the characters, and thus the film was ill-received. But perhaps the most hated film of Himself's oeuvre was 'The Joke' which played only in Cambridge and Berkeley and which intellectuals would pay to see even in spite of a sign warning them not to pay money to see this film. The film consisted of nothing more than a projection from a camera trained on the audience, and ended as soon as the last person had left the theater. This was an obvious precursor for the 'Found Dramas' that followed.
p 398-410
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
More headlines from Mario's film describe the toxic dumpsites in New England. This segues into a recreation of the 'Concavity Cabinet' meeting wherein Rodney Tine, Chief of Unspecified Services explains to the cabinet [including the leaders of Canada and Mexico] Gentle's idea to 'give away' the befouled territory. Various members of the cabinet raise questions and objections; the Mexican president asks how Gentle expects to convince Canada's PM to 'accept vast arenas of egregiously poisoned terrain on behalf of his peoples.' Tine gives the answer: 'statesmanship.gamesmanship...brinksmanship.' More headlines explain that Canada refused the 'offer' and Gentle handcuffed himself to the 'Black Box of US nuclear codes' and threatens to bomb his own nation and toxify his neighbors unless they concede. This is Mario's nod to the legend of Eric Clipperton, tennis player from the last BS years, who played with a 'Glock 17 semiautomatic sidearm' pointed at his temple and threatened to commit suicide if he ever lost. Hence no one is willing to beat him and risk having the suicide on their conscience. Mario is one of the only people that ever actually befriended him, which occurred during filming of Himself's documentary. Mario also has some of the only footage of Clipperton.
p 410-418
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Hal is feeling the effects of 4 pot-smoking excursions and 4 chocolate cannolis and is finding Mario's film depressing, in part because it reminds him of Himself. The film is showing the early stages of the Reconfiguration, the ATHSCME fans, the EWD displacement installations, and Tine's disastrous love interest with the 'Quebecois fatale known publicly only as Luria P____'. The concept of Subsidized time was supposedly sketched on the back of a placemat by Tine. This part Hal knows well on account of the paper he wrote in 7th grade, on the fate of broadcast television and the American ad industry in the period concurrent with Mario's film. The Big Four networks' arch foe was the American Council of Disseminators of Cable [ACDC] which was challenging the viewer's 'Freedom to Choose and the Right to Be Entertained.' Viney and Veals, a Boston ad agency delivered an unintentional coup de grace to the Networks with a campaign that began with ads for Nunhagen aspirin that featured paintings depicting cranio-facial pain. Viewers found the ads too excruciating to watch, and so even though sales for the aspirin went through the roof, the ratings actually declined. Ditto with it's subsequent ads for LipoVac, a chain of walk-in liposuction clinics, and finally the ads for NoCoat tongue scrapers. The result was that 3 of the 4 Networks went under, and ABC began showing nothing but 'Happy Days' marathons. The ironic consequence of this was that the ad agencies themselves also went down. Then what happened was Noreen Lace-Forche, a video rental mogulette, convinced the remains of the combined Big 4 to consolidate, formed InterLace TelEntertainment, and hired Veals for her campaign, which was basically that the 'cable kabal's' promise of 'empowerment' was nothing more than a choice of one of the 504 choices they'd already made for you. What if the view could '100% choose what was on at any given time?' Everything in the vaults of the big 4 would be made available on 'pal-sized 4.8-mb PC-diskettes Interlace was marketing as "cartridges."' Viewable on computer or TV, and eventually via InterLaces optical pulses on 'Teleputers.' But the point of Hal's paper is that there could be no ads included on InterLace cartridges, and the advertising agency was doomed. Things were so bad that Veals took a job managing PR for an unlikely fringe candidate and former crooner.
p 418-430
YDAU [2009] Apr 30/May 1
place Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Steeply and Marathe are still out on the shelf in the desert, hours have passed and neither has slept. Steeply refuses to sit down, for fear his concealed weapon will be exposed beneath his skirt. They are both reluctant to broach the subject of how they will get down. Marathe recognizes that Steeply has a special gift for enduring the humiliating field-personae he's been required to assume. Steeply confesses that his organization cannot comprehend the AFR in the same way as other terrorist cells, because its actions seem random, without any clear objective. Marathe asks what that might be for Americans, and Steeply answers 'standard old American dreams and ideals. Freedom from tyranny, from excessive want, fear, censorship of speech and thought.' Marathe retorts with 'high quality entertainment...maximize pleasure, minimize displeasure.' Steeply says that what 'gives us the fantods about the AFR' is that they apparently derive pleasure from someone else's pain. Marathe poses the hypothetical situation of a single serving can of soup that they both want, and asks how they decide who should eat it. Steeply tries out all manner of answers which Marathe rejects-- bidding on the soup, bonking each other on the head. Marathe daydreams of his time in Boston during the summer, and of his two brothers who met their deaths head on with a train. The ponderous rectangles of light are the 'Barges of Land' gathering trash for eventual displacement launch northward. Marathe loathes the way Steeply anticipates his responses. Marathe asks why and how although two USA citizens desire the soup now, they will delay the gratification. Steeply calls it 'enlightened self-interest' and says that it can't be hammered into you, it has to be chosen. As Steeply digs for a cigarette, Marathe recalls that when his wife was born without a skull, it had been suggested that the parents' smoking had been the cause. He asks which type more resembles Americans- the one who bonks the other on the head and eats the soup, or the mature who one sees down the road. He asks how the AFR could hurt all of the USA by 'making available something as momentary and free as the choice to view only this one Entertainment.' He asks why make it samizdat if Americans can really make enlightened choices. Steeply says 'get real' explaining that this 'insidious enslaving process' can't be compared to cans of soup. Marathe concedes that this is true after the first viewing, but points out that the first viewing is still a choice.
p 430-434
2001[last pre-Subsidized year]-Year of the Whopper [2002]
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
After each of his 'victories' Eric Clipperton would accept his trophies and disappear to wherever he lived and trained. He was regarded by the USTA as having no official ranking. When USTA became ONANTA however, a new systems analyst, knowing nothing of the illegitimacy of Clipperton's victories, and subsequently ranks him as #1. Bets are taken by Pemulis as to whether he'll just retire now. But then one day he shows up at ETA, with no racquet and not even his Glock 17's custom case, and asks for entry and counsel. James Incandenza is sent for, and they agree to an interview as long as they can film it [to protect themselves under ONANTA regulations]. So as Mario films, He pulls out the magazine announcing his #1 ranking and the concealed Glock 17 and puts the gun to his temple and fires. Himself brings Mario to the funeral in Indiana, where Clipperton was living with his parents, who had no idea of his tennis career. Mario insists on being the one to clean the room. Afterwards it is locked up and designated as the Clipperton Suite, which Schtitt invites junior players to go visit when they get too whiny.
p 434-436
YDAU [2009]
place Ennet House & environs
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Five days a week, whether he's getting off all-night staff duty or not, Gately catches a 4:30am train to his janitorial job at Shattuck Center for Homeless Males in Jamaica Plain. from 5-8am he hoses excrement off the floor of the shower, etc. His boss is Stavros Lobokulas, who bills the state for an 8 hour job and pays Gately for 3. Gately often runs into guys he knew from his days of B&E. Stavros's dream is to save up enough to open a women's shoe store.
p 436-442
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Next to Clipperton the most ghastly buckling-under-the-pressure-of-competive-tennis story is that of a kid from Fresno who drank a glass of Quik laced with cyanide and dropped dead. His whole family then follows suit, attempting to give him [and then one another] mouth to mouth-- they had all recently completed a CPR course. For this reason all tennis academies are required to have PhD-level counselor. The ETA counselor is Dr. Dolores Rusk, who is regarded by the students as 'slightly worse than useless.' She simply repeats the last dependent clause of what she's told back to the student as a question. Around the time of the Clipperton/Gentle parallel, many of the kids are losing interest in Mario's film, as they begin to crash from the sugar. There's another scene of a meeting between Gentle and his secretaries, at which Gentle just back from a football game is going on about the punter who must be Orin [which the narration points out is not chronologically feasible]. They are discussing how to pay for the Reconfiguration. The advertising man, Veals and Tine's mistress Luria P__ are in attendance. Tine says that cutting programs or raising taxes will make the public 'whinge' and introduces the placemats on which the idea of Subsidized Time has been sketched. Gentle tells them the name of the football game from which he has just come: the 'Ken-L-Ration-Magnavox-Kemper-Insurance-Forsythia Bowl.'
notes
This section is filled with parodies of various themes in the book. There's the Gentle/Clipperton theme. The TV ads that are so compellingly unwatchable makes a parallel to the Entertainment, and Madame Psychosis also comes to mind. Madame P comes to mind in the synopsis of the 'The Medusa v The Odalisque' as well.
p 380-386
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Mario's first 'halfway-coherent' film cartridge is a filmed puppet show explicating the formation of ONAN and the rise of President Gentle to power. It is shown every year at the Interdependence Day dinner, at which students and faculty are encouraged to wear hats and/or face-masks in honor of the president. Also the ETA dietician, a former dessert chef, gets to go nuts and the students are allowed to indulge. Mario's film, which is a remake of his father's 4-hour epic, is strangely more popular with the adults and young adults than the kids. The film opens on an image of Johnny Gentle the one time lounge singer turned B-movie actor, who is Howard-Hughes paranoid in his fear of 'free-floating contamination' [hence the surgical masks.] Gentle eventually becomes standard bearer for a fringe political party called Clean US Party [CUSP] whose motto is ''Let's shoot our wastes into space.' He becomes president on the platform of cleaning the country up very literally-- he delivers his inaugural speech in a microfiltration mask. He promises to find someone to blame. He appoints the president of Mexico and prime minister of Canada to his cabinet. All but the Canadian students are charged up on sugar and having a grand time watching Mario's cartridge. A recreated meeting between Gentle and Canada's P.M. ends in a Motown version of 'It's a small world after all' with 'continent' squeezed in for 'world'
p 386-394
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Lyle is in the weight room on 11/8 recalling a boy named Marlon from a few years back, who sweated so profusely that he was constantly wet, and hence a favorite of Lyle's; 'he told this boy everything he had to tell.' Those who wonder what Lyle does alone in the weight room every night obviously don't know that he's rarely alone. The boys often lurk around the weight room door after taking a sauna, to exchange their sweat for some advice from the 'guru' Lyle. He coaches LaMont Chu on his crippling obsession with fame and specifically getting his picture in the tennis magazines. Lyle tries to clue him in to the fact that 'fame is not the exit from any cage.' Kent Blott age 10, comes to Lyle worried about what kind of porn he'll watch when he begins to masturbate. Anton Doucette expresses debilitating anxiety about the mole beneath his nose. Meanwhile Mario's film shows a mixture of real and fake news headlines-- these go from bad to worse as NATO is abolished ONAN formed, Burger King Pilsbury granted the rights to the first year of subsidized time, doctors remove a railroad spike from Canadian PM's eye, barges loaded with waste collide near Gloucester causing toxic spill, and possible 'reconfigurative options.'
p 394-395
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Lyle tells Ortho [the Darkness] Stice not to underestimate objects. Stice is worried that his somnambulism may hurt his chances for the Show-- he has been waking up with his bed moved to different parts of the room. Lyle's response is to tell a story of a man who would hustle bets by way of his ability to levitate the chair he was standing on.
p 395-398
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Hal has a nicotine addiction which he satisfies by chewing tobacco. He also has a sugar problem [related to his pot problem] but ordinarily can't handle the emotional states that it produces in him on court. As he watches Mario's cartridge with a mouthful of baklava, he muses on how Mario adopted his father's penchant for puppets/theater. He thinks back to Himself's 'The Medusa v The Odalisque' which is a plotless battle between the Medusa who's so hideous that she turns to stone those who gaze upon her, and the Quebecois Odalisque who's so inhumanly gorgeous to the same end. For obvious reasons the audience never gets to see the faces of the characters, and thus the film was ill-received. But perhaps the most hated film of Himself's oeuvre was 'The Joke' which played only in Cambridge and Berkeley and which intellectuals would pay to see even in spite of a sign warning them not to pay money to see this film. The film consisted of nothing more than a projection from a camera trained on the audience, and ended as soon as the last person had left the theater. This was an obvious precursor for the 'Found Dramas' that followed.
p 398-410
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
More headlines from Mario's film describe the toxic dumpsites in New England. This segues into a recreation of the 'Concavity Cabinet' meeting wherein Rodney Tine, Chief of Unspecified Services explains to the cabinet [including the leaders of Canada and Mexico] Gentle's idea to 'give away' the befouled territory. Various members of the cabinet raise questions and objections; the Mexican president asks how Gentle expects to convince Canada's PM to 'accept vast arenas of egregiously poisoned terrain on behalf of his peoples.' Tine gives the answer: 'statesmanship.gamesmanship...brinksmanship.' More headlines explain that Canada refused the 'offer' and Gentle handcuffed himself to the 'Black Box of US nuclear codes' and threatens to bomb his own nation and toxify his neighbors unless they concede. This is Mario's nod to the legend of Eric Clipperton, tennis player from the last BS years, who played with a 'Glock 17 semiautomatic sidearm' pointed at his temple and threatened to commit suicide if he ever lost. Hence no one is willing to beat him and risk having the suicide on their conscience. Mario is one of the only people that ever actually befriended him, which occurred during filming of Himself's documentary. Mario also has some of the only footage of Clipperton.
p 410-418
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Hal is feeling the effects of 4 pot-smoking excursions and 4 chocolate cannolis and is finding Mario's film depressing, in part because it reminds him of Himself. The film is showing the early stages of the Reconfiguration, the ATHSCME fans, the EWD displacement installations, and Tine's disastrous love interest with the 'Quebecois fatale known publicly only as Luria P____'. The concept of Subsidized time was supposedly sketched on the back of a placemat by Tine. This part Hal knows well on account of the paper he wrote in 7th grade, on the fate of broadcast television and the American ad industry in the period concurrent with Mario's film. The Big Four networks' arch foe was the American Council of Disseminators of Cable [ACDC] which was challenging the viewer's 'Freedom to Choose and the Right to Be Entertained.' Viney and Veals, a Boston ad agency delivered an unintentional coup de grace to the Networks with a campaign that began with ads for Nunhagen aspirin that featured paintings depicting cranio-facial pain. Viewers found the ads too excruciating to watch, and so even though sales for the aspirin went through the roof, the ratings actually declined. Ditto with it's subsequent ads for LipoVac, a chain of walk-in liposuction clinics, and finally the ads for NoCoat tongue scrapers. The result was that 3 of the 4 Networks went under, and ABC began showing nothing but 'Happy Days' marathons. The ironic consequence of this was that the ad agencies themselves also went down. Then what happened was Noreen Lace-Forche, a video rental mogulette, convinced the remains of the combined Big 4 to consolidate, formed InterLace TelEntertainment, and hired Veals for her campaign, which was basically that the 'cable kabal's' promise of 'empowerment' was nothing more than a choice of one of the 504 choices they'd already made for you. What if the view could '100% choose what was on at any given time?' Everything in the vaults of the big 4 would be made available on 'pal-sized 4.8-mb PC-diskettes Interlace was marketing as "cartridges."' Viewable on computer or TV, and eventually via InterLaces optical pulses on 'Teleputers.' But the point of Hal's paper is that there could be no ads included on InterLace cartridges, and the advertising agency was doomed. Things were so bad that Veals took a job managing PR for an unlikely fringe candidate and former crooner.
p 418-430
YDAU [2009] Apr 30/May 1
place Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Steeply and Marathe are still out on the shelf in the desert, hours have passed and neither has slept. Steeply refuses to sit down, for fear his concealed weapon will be exposed beneath his skirt. They are both reluctant to broach the subject of how they will get down. Marathe recognizes that Steeply has a special gift for enduring the humiliating field-personae he's been required to assume. Steeply confesses that his organization cannot comprehend the AFR in the same way as other terrorist cells, because its actions seem random, without any clear objective. Marathe asks what that might be for Americans, and Steeply answers 'standard old American dreams and ideals. Freedom from tyranny, from excessive want, fear, censorship of speech and thought.' Marathe retorts with 'high quality entertainment...maximize pleasure, minimize displeasure.' Steeply says that what 'gives us the fantods about the AFR' is that they apparently derive pleasure from someone else's pain. Marathe poses the hypothetical situation of a single serving can of soup that they both want, and asks how they decide who should eat it. Steeply tries out all manner of answers which Marathe rejects-- bidding on the soup, bonking each other on the head. Marathe daydreams of his time in Boston during the summer, and of his two brothers who met their deaths head on with a train. The ponderous rectangles of light are the 'Barges of Land' gathering trash for eventual displacement launch northward. Marathe loathes the way Steeply anticipates his responses. Marathe asks why and how although two USA citizens desire the soup now, they will delay the gratification. Steeply calls it 'enlightened self-interest' and says that it can't be hammered into you, it has to be chosen. As Steeply digs for a cigarette, Marathe recalls that when his wife was born without a skull, it had been suggested that the parents' smoking had been the cause. He asks which type more resembles Americans- the one who bonks the other on the head and eats the soup, or the mature who one sees down the road. He asks how the AFR could hurt all of the USA by 'making available something as momentary and free as the choice to view only this one Entertainment.' He asks why make it samizdat if Americans can really make enlightened choices. Steeply says 'get real' explaining that this 'insidious enslaving process' can't be compared to cans of soup. Marathe concedes that this is true after the first viewing, but points out that the first viewing is still a choice.
p 430-434
2001[last pre-Subsidized year]-Year of the Whopper [2002]
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
After each of his 'victories' Eric Clipperton would accept his trophies and disappear to wherever he lived and trained. He was regarded by the USTA as having no official ranking. When USTA became ONANTA however, a new systems analyst, knowing nothing of the illegitimacy of Clipperton's victories, and subsequently ranks him as #1. Bets are taken by Pemulis as to whether he'll just retire now. But then one day he shows up at ETA, with no racquet and not even his Glock 17's custom case, and asks for entry and counsel. James Incandenza is sent for, and they agree to an interview as long as they can film it [to protect themselves under ONANTA regulations]. So as Mario films, He pulls out the magazine announcing his #1 ranking and the concealed Glock 17 and puts the gun to his temple and fires. Himself brings Mario to the funeral in Indiana, where Clipperton was living with his parents, who had no idea of his tennis career. Mario insists on being the one to clean the room. Afterwards it is locked up and designated as the Clipperton Suite, which Schtitt invites junior players to go visit when they get too whiny.
p 434-436
YDAU [2009]
place Ennet House & environs
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Five days a week, whether he's getting off all-night staff duty or not, Gately catches a 4:30am train to his janitorial job at Shattuck Center for Homeless Males in Jamaica Plain. from 5-8am he hoses excrement off the floor of the shower, etc. His boss is Stavros Lobokulas, who bills the state for an 8 hour job and pays Gately for 3. Gately often runs into guys he knew from his days of B&E. Stavros's dream is to save up enough to open a women's shoe store.
p 436-442
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Next to Clipperton the most ghastly buckling-under-the-pressure-of-competive-tennis story is that of a kid from Fresno who drank a glass of Quik laced with cyanide and dropped dead. His whole family then follows suit, attempting to give him [and then one another] mouth to mouth-- they had all recently completed a CPR course. For this reason all tennis academies are required to have PhD-level counselor. The ETA counselor is Dr. Dolores Rusk, who is regarded by the students as 'slightly worse than useless.' She simply repeats the last dependent clause of what she's told back to the student as a question. Around the time of the Clipperton/Gentle parallel, many of the kids are losing interest in Mario's film, as they begin to crash from the sugar. There's another scene of a meeting between Gentle and his secretaries, at which Gentle just back from a football game is going on about the punter who must be Orin [which the narration points out is not chronologically feasible]. They are discussing how to pay for the Reconfiguration. The advertising man, Veals and Tine's mistress Luria P__ are in attendance. Tine says that cutting programs or raising taxes will make the public 'whinge' and introduces the placemats on which the idea of Subsidized Time has been sketched. Gentle tells them the name of the football game from which he has just come: the 'Ken-L-Ration-Magnavox-Kemper-Insurance-Forsythia Bowl.'
notes
This section is filled with parodies of various themes in the book. There's the Gentle/Clipperton theme. The TV ads that are so compellingly unwatchable makes a parallel to the Entertainment, and Madame Psychosis also comes to mind. Madame P comes to mind in the synopsis of the 'The Medusa v The Odalisque' as well.
p 442-489
this section in 6 parts
p 442-449
YDAU [2009] ca July
place Ennet House & environs
narrated in third person
synopsis:
On a 'Commitment' to the 'Tough Shit But You Still Can't Drink Group' in Braintree, Gately reveals that he still has no solid understanding of the 'Higher Power' to which he is supposed to turn over his diseased will. He notes that those with a religious background have it easier, because even if they reject the notion of god that they've been taught, at least they have that notion to start with, whereas Gately has to start from scratch. He admits that he goes through the motions, but feels *nothing*. And then it happens again, the audience erupts in applause. The crowd is 'over 50% bikers and biker-chicks' and one of the bikers 'Bob Death' congratulates Gately,and asks if he's heard the one about the fish-- in which a wise old fish sees three young fish and asks them how the water is, to which they respond 'what the fuck is water?' On the ride home Gately is wracked with pain-- they always neglect to mention in AA that the way you get better is by way of pain. It turn out that the more vapid the AA cliche the more ghastly the thing it represents really is. After about 8 months sober, Gately began to recover memories of his childhood. His real father is an Estonian, who fled the scene early on. His mother was an alcoholic with a live-in lover a former Naval MP who would beat her,but do so only in her mid-section to keep the bruises out of sight. Gately would pretend to watch TV until his mother passed out, and then he would drink nearly all of the remaining vodka in her bottle, and then return the bottle to beside his mother, who would never know the difference in the morning. When she was sober she'd call him Bimmy or Bim, not knowing that his friends had invented the moniker , which is short for 'big Indestructible Moron.' In June, Gately had 'Got In Touch' with the memory of finding his mother covered in blood, after a cirrhotic hemorrhage. It had been ten years since he even thought of her in 'the long-term place' and he has never been to visit. His dreams the night of the Braintree meeting, Gately dreams he under a deep sea whose water is 'silent and dim and the same temperature that he is.'
p 449-450
YDAU [2009] very late October
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Hal is having a recurring dream that his teeth are crumbling and rotting away. As he's pricing dentures, he wakes to find Mario's bed made up, because he has been spending nights at HmH, in front of the radio in an uncharacteristic state of agitation over the unannounced sabbatical of Madame Psychosis from her nightly radio program.
p 450-461
YDAU [2009] Nov 9
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
ETA is 16 males under capacity and females over capacity, meaning that they have to house some of them in the male dorms, which creates some problems, hormonal and technical. This also creates in terms of scheduling drills before class, problems which get Charles Tavis out of bed early in the morning. This particular morning Mario, 'the thing it's not entirely impossible he may have fathered' is asleep right next to the sound system. Dawn drills are under way for the top players, and it's very cold. Schtitt overseas the drills from which JJ Penn is 'ominously missing.' Players practice backhands, forehands, 'tap & whack,' wind sprints, etc. Next are the star drills which require having a bucket nearby for 'distress,' and then the side to sides which are particularly hard on Hal's ankle. Everyone accepts clean towels from 'a halfway-house part-time black girl.' Schtitt admonishes the players for sluggish drilling, and singles out LaMont Chu, who has been heard complaining about the cold, telling him it will always be 'something that is too' -- too cold, too hot, too bright etc. Schtitt's ends his monologue by testing Hal to reiterate his point that the players have to be here in mind as well as body, Hal answers' The human head, sir, if I got your thrust. Where I'm going to occur as a player.'
p 461-469
YDAU [2009] ca July
place Ennet House & environs
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Part of Gately's job at Ennet House is to cook dinner on weekdays, which means that he gets to borrow Pat Montesian's 1964 Ford Aventura, which is a mint condition antique sports car with a driver's seat that Gately can barely squeeze into. He doesn't care; he loves that car. Gately lost his license permanently in YWQMD [2006] when he was arrested for DUI while driving on a suspended license. He also has these on his record-- bad-check forgery, malicious destruction of property, 2 D&Ds, 'a bullshit Public Urination,' breaking and entering, possession with intent. Then there's also 'a certain darker issue' of the upscale Brookline home that he broke into, whose owner had been eulogized in all the papers. Gately had a court stenographer who had been a former client check into the issue for him and learned that, over the objections of the ADA, the Murder-2 investigation had been taken over by the 'Non-Specific Services Bureau' and now focussed on 'certain shadowy Nucko-political bodies' in Quebec. Most of Gately's pending cases had been 'Closed Without Finding' contingent on his treatment and sobriety, all except for the driving DUI with a suspended license which carries a mandatory 90-day sentence. Gately did 17 months in Billerca at age 24 for assaulting two bouncers. He had beaten senseless the first and only guys who had tried to mess with him. He's more worried now about the availability of drugs and the lack of access to AA in jail. He had told Pat Montesian up front at his interview that he was basically coming to Ennet House to stay out of jail, and had no hope of getting clean. He had rubbed Pat's dog's scabby stomach, as she told him that his honesty, hopelessness and desperation were key to his recovery. Pat is in her late 30s and is literally half pretty having suffered a stroke which debilitated half of her face and body. Her first husband had divorced her because of her alcoholism, and after the stroke she Surrendered and came to Ennet House in a wheelchair and purportedly tried to eat the rocks when told to do so. Her right arm had 'atrophied into a kind of semi-claw' and she walks with 'dignified but godawful lurch.' She treated as a favorite, and went with him on most of his court-dates, driving him in the Aventura at excessive speeds. About 4 months into his residency the desire to ingest drugs magically disappeared. He had simply done what they said to do, gotten downb on his knees every morning and night, even though he didn't believe in any of it. It was like the 'infamous Boston AA cake analogy' that Gene M had explained: just imagine that you're following the instructions on the side of the cake box-- you don't have to believe a cake will result, or understand how, you just have to follow the directions, and the cake will get made. So he did, and it did work. He still can't figure out how. One of the Crocodiles, Ferocious Francis G explained that 'anything minor-league enough for Don Gately to understand probably wasn't going to be major-league enough to save Gately's addled ass.' Months later, Gately no longer cares that he doesn't understands. On his one year anniversary Francis G presented him with a cake and he cried, although he later claimed otherwise. As a staff chef, Gately leaves something to be desired; he prepares overcooked spaghetti, boiled hot dogs, 'dense damp meat loaf with little pieces of American cheese and half a box of cornflakes on top, for texture.' But the house members don't dare complain, at least not directly.
p 470-475
YDAU [2009] May 1, pre-dawn
place Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Steeply asks Marathe if he remembers a Canadian experimental procedure, where electrodes were used to stimulate the brain in various places with varying results. Marathe relates this to his father's pacemaker. Steeply continues describing how the researchers by trial and error located the 'p-terminals' which when stimulated would produces intense pleasure. When they rigged lab rats with a lever that caused the electrode to stimulate the p-terminal, the rat would eventually stimulate itself to death. the eventually tried it on other animals with the same results, and they wished to find human subjects, but couldn't legally use prisoners. However word of the experiments had been leaked and soon after they had a line of volunteers at the clinic, who 'by free choice' wanted to have the electrodes implanted. Steeply invites Marathe to 'see the analogy' implicit to the Entertainment, and points out that these were Canadians. Of course, the CIA and the Canadian C7 immediately shut it down, and destroyed the lab.
p 475-489
YDAU [2009] Nov 8 [or later?]
place Ennet House and later Antitoi Entertainent [sic]
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Pat M asks Gately to go the Purity Supreme market to buy some eggs because the two new residents Amy J and Joelle van D cannot eat the boiled hot dogs, he was about to prepare. Gately views this as catering to the 'addict's claim of special uniqueness,' but then again he does love driving Pat's Aventura. Whenever he takes the car out to do errands, he makes up for time spent going out of way, by driving like a maniac. He takes the car down Commonwealth Ave through Brighton, Allston and past the Unexamined Life where he no longer goes. As he 'blasts though BU country' he sees the college girls and thinks about sex, which he's never had sober. He gets away with smoking menthols in the car by keeping the windows down for cross-ventilation. He gets on the Storrow 500 and heads toward Cambridge to go a health food store, the Bread & Circus in Inman Square, which he can use as an excuse for the delay. As he speeds through Inman Square the Aventura kicks up a 'backwash' of debris. One such piece of debris lands with a clunk on the door to Antitoi Entertainent. In mid paragraph the narrative shifts entirely from Gately's drive to the action inside Antitoi Entertainent. Lucien Antitoi comes to the door in his ammo belt Colt 44 and flannel shirt and is annoyed to find no one there. He lives in the back of the store with his brother Bertraund, where they sleep on cots,smoke pot and constitute a 'not very terrifying insurgent cell' who had been under DuPlessis, but then spurned by the FLQ after his death. Lucien cannot speak French, and this means that Bertraund runs the show, which consists of harebrained schemes like draping the Canadian flag over the civil war statue on Interdependence Day, and fashioning doormats bearing President Gentle's image, and recently selling harmful pharmaceuticals as an attack on local youth. Bertraund had recently bartered with an old hippie for something that sounds much like DMZ, for among other things a garbage bag full of unlabeled read-only cartridges. The door squeaks loudly as Lucien closes it, and continues to squeak after he's bolted it. He has a broom with the end of the handle sharpened to a point, which doubles as a weapon. It's Lucien's job to watch all of the obscure unlabeled video cartridges that his brother acquires, and although they're in no discernible order, he knows what's on them. Bertraund's latest acquisition is a couple of tapes he picked up from a commercial display, and contained only the slogan in tiny raised letters--'il ne faut plus qu'on pursuive le bonheur' [happiness need no longer be pursued] and a stamped smiley face. Much to Bertraund's chagrin the cartridges were apparently blank. In a footnote, it's pointed out that this doesn't mean they are blank, since copy-capable cartridges require a 585 rpm machine to run,and the Antitoi's is a standard 450-drive. As Lucien sweeps he notices first one then another figure in a wheelchair outside the door, and he begins to hear squeaks. He realizes that this means the 'worst possible scenario' -- the AFR. As he pulls his Colt from his pants, the gun catches on his pants and along with the weight of his massive belly causes the pants to rip, and fall down around his ankles. He hobbles to the back room to warn his brother, but instead finds him with a railroad spike through his eye. The AFR members knock him to the floor, take his gun, and hit over the head with it as he listens in incomprehension to the their questions. The leader asks him to direct them to the 'Copy-capable' entertainment cartridge. Lucien understands none of this. His head is pulled back by the hair, and the sharpened broomstick is shoved down his throat skewering him. He has visions of childhood and his mother as he dies.
notes
That CT might have fathered his half-sister's child, Mario could possibly explain the unique deformities. It seems like DFW purposely pointed out [p 312-317] that CT was staying with the Moms and Himself on an extended stay at the time Mario was born, It seems odd that Hal's nightmare scene is from very late October, and Madame P is already off the air, since her suicide attempt was not until Nov 7. This section made me rethink my take on the two suicide-attempt scenes [p 219-223 and p 226-240] which I now think take place the same day, Nov 7, and are alternate takes on her overdose. This would mean that the murder of the Antitoi brothers probably takes place on Nov 8, since that has been established as Joelle's first night at Ennet House. The narrative shift in the last section seems unique thus far in the book, and this makes me wonder whether the point is to set it off as key. Another explanation might be that this occurs pretty close to the book's midpoint.
p 442-449
YDAU [2009] ca July
place Ennet House & environs
narrated in third person
synopsis:
On a 'Commitment' to the 'Tough Shit But You Still Can't Drink Group' in Braintree, Gately reveals that he still has no solid understanding of the 'Higher Power' to which he is supposed to turn over his diseased will. He notes that those with a religious background have it easier, because even if they reject the notion of god that they've been taught, at least they have that notion to start with, whereas Gately has to start from scratch. He admits that he goes through the motions, but feels *nothing*. And then it happens again, the audience erupts in applause. The crowd is 'over 50% bikers and biker-chicks' and one of the bikers 'Bob Death' congratulates Gately,and asks if he's heard the one about the fish-- in which a wise old fish sees three young fish and asks them how the water is, to which they respond 'what the fuck is water?' On the ride home Gately is wracked with pain-- they always neglect to mention in AA that the way you get better is by way of pain. It turn out that the more vapid the AA cliche the more ghastly the thing it represents really is. After about 8 months sober, Gately began to recover memories of his childhood. His real father is an Estonian, who fled the scene early on. His mother was an alcoholic with a live-in lover a former Naval MP who would beat her,but do so only in her mid-section to keep the bruises out of sight. Gately would pretend to watch TV until his mother passed out, and then he would drink nearly all of the remaining vodka in her bottle, and then return the bottle to beside his mother, who would never know the difference in the morning. When she was sober she'd call him Bimmy or Bim, not knowing that his friends had invented the moniker , which is short for 'big Indestructible Moron.' In June, Gately had 'Got In Touch' with the memory of finding his mother covered in blood, after a cirrhotic hemorrhage. It had been ten years since he even thought of her in 'the long-term place' and he has never been to visit. His dreams the night of the Braintree meeting, Gately dreams he under a deep sea whose water is 'silent and dim and the same temperature that he is.'
p 449-450
YDAU [2009] very late October
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Hal is having a recurring dream that his teeth are crumbling and rotting away. As he's pricing dentures, he wakes to find Mario's bed made up, because he has been spending nights at HmH, in front of the radio in an uncharacteristic state of agitation over the unannounced sabbatical of Madame Psychosis from her nightly radio program.
p 450-461
YDAU [2009] Nov 9
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
ETA is 16 males under capacity and females over capacity, meaning that they have to house some of them in the male dorms, which creates some problems, hormonal and technical. This also creates in terms of scheduling drills before class, problems which get Charles Tavis out of bed early in the morning. This particular morning Mario, 'the thing it's not entirely impossible he may have fathered' is asleep right next to the sound system. Dawn drills are under way for the top players, and it's very cold. Schtitt overseas the drills from which JJ Penn is 'ominously missing.' Players practice backhands, forehands, 'tap & whack,' wind sprints, etc. Next are the star drills which require having a bucket nearby for 'distress,' and then the side to sides which are particularly hard on Hal's ankle. Everyone accepts clean towels from 'a halfway-house part-time black girl.' Schtitt admonishes the players for sluggish drilling, and singles out LaMont Chu, who has been heard complaining about the cold, telling him it will always be 'something that is too' -- too cold, too hot, too bright etc. Schtitt's ends his monologue by testing Hal to reiterate his point that the players have to be here in mind as well as body, Hal answers' The human head, sir, if I got your thrust. Where I'm going to occur as a player.'
p 461-469
YDAU [2009] ca July
place Ennet House & environs
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Part of Gately's job at Ennet House is to cook dinner on weekdays, which means that he gets to borrow Pat Montesian's 1964 Ford Aventura, which is a mint condition antique sports car with a driver's seat that Gately can barely squeeze into. He doesn't care; he loves that car. Gately lost his license permanently in YWQMD [2006] when he was arrested for DUI while driving on a suspended license. He also has these on his record-- bad-check forgery, malicious destruction of property, 2 D&Ds, 'a bullshit Public Urination,' breaking and entering, possession with intent. Then there's also 'a certain darker issue' of the upscale Brookline home that he broke into, whose owner had been eulogized in all the papers. Gately had a court stenographer who had been a former client check into the issue for him and learned that, over the objections of the ADA, the Murder-2 investigation had been taken over by the 'Non-Specific Services Bureau' and now focussed on 'certain shadowy Nucko-political bodies' in Quebec. Most of Gately's pending cases had been 'Closed Without Finding' contingent on his treatment and sobriety, all except for the driving DUI with a suspended license which carries a mandatory 90-day sentence. Gately did 17 months in Billerca at age 24 for assaulting two bouncers. He had beaten senseless the first and only guys who had tried to mess with him. He's more worried now about the availability of drugs and the lack of access to AA in jail. He had told Pat Montesian up front at his interview that he was basically coming to Ennet House to stay out of jail, and had no hope of getting clean. He had rubbed Pat's dog's scabby stomach, as she told him that his honesty, hopelessness and desperation were key to his recovery. Pat is in her late 30s and is literally half pretty having suffered a stroke which debilitated half of her face and body. Her first husband had divorced her because of her alcoholism, and after the stroke she Surrendered and came to Ennet House in a wheelchair and purportedly tried to eat the rocks when told to do so. Her right arm had 'atrophied into a kind of semi-claw' and she walks with 'dignified but godawful lurch.' She treated as a favorite, and went with him on most of his court-dates, driving him in the Aventura at excessive speeds. About 4 months into his residency the desire to ingest drugs magically disappeared. He had simply done what they said to do, gotten downb on his knees every morning and night, even though he didn't believe in any of it. It was like the 'infamous Boston AA cake analogy' that Gene M had explained: just imagine that you're following the instructions on the side of the cake box-- you don't have to believe a cake will result, or understand how, you just have to follow the directions, and the cake will get made. So he did, and it did work. He still can't figure out how. One of the Crocodiles, Ferocious Francis G explained that 'anything minor-league enough for Don Gately to understand probably wasn't going to be major-league enough to save Gately's addled ass.' Months later, Gately no longer cares that he doesn't understands. On his one year anniversary Francis G presented him with a cake and he cried, although he later claimed otherwise. As a staff chef, Gately leaves something to be desired; he prepares overcooked spaghetti, boiled hot dogs, 'dense damp meat loaf with little pieces of American cheese and half a box of cornflakes on top, for texture.' But the house members don't dare complain, at least not directly.
p 470-475
YDAU [2009] May 1, pre-dawn
place Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Steeply asks Marathe if he remembers a Canadian experimental procedure, where electrodes were used to stimulate the brain in various places with varying results. Marathe relates this to his father's pacemaker. Steeply continues describing how the researchers by trial and error located the 'p-terminals' which when stimulated would produces intense pleasure. When they rigged lab rats with a lever that caused the electrode to stimulate the p-terminal, the rat would eventually stimulate itself to death. the eventually tried it on other animals with the same results, and they wished to find human subjects, but couldn't legally use prisoners. However word of the experiments had been leaked and soon after they had a line of volunteers at the clinic, who 'by free choice' wanted to have the electrodes implanted. Steeply invites Marathe to 'see the analogy' implicit to the Entertainment, and points out that these were Canadians. Of course, the CIA and the Canadian C7 immediately shut it down, and destroyed the lab.
p 475-489
YDAU [2009] Nov 8 [or later?]
place Ennet House and later Antitoi Entertainent [sic]
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Pat M asks Gately to go the Purity Supreme market to buy some eggs because the two new residents Amy J and Joelle van D cannot eat the boiled hot dogs, he was about to prepare. Gately views this as catering to the 'addict's claim of special uniqueness,' but then again he does love driving Pat's Aventura. Whenever he takes the car out to do errands, he makes up for time spent going out of way, by driving like a maniac. He takes the car down Commonwealth Ave through Brighton, Allston and past the Unexamined Life where he no longer goes. As he 'blasts though BU country' he sees the college girls and thinks about sex, which he's never had sober. He gets away with smoking menthols in the car by keeping the windows down for cross-ventilation. He gets on the Storrow 500 and heads toward Cambridge to go a health food store, the Bread & Circus in Inman Square, which he can use as an excuse for the delay. As he speeds through Inman Square the Aventura kicks up a 'backwash' of debris. One such piece of debris lands with a clunk on the door to Antitoi Entertainent. In mid paragraph the narrative shifts entirely from Gately's drive to the action inside Antitoi Entertainent. Lucien Antitoi comes to the door in his ammo belt Colt 44 and flannel shirt and is annoyed to find no one there. He lives in the back of the store with his brother Bertraund, where they sleep on cots,smoke pot and constitute a 'not very terrifying insurgent cell' who had been under DuPlessis, but then spurned by the FLQ after his death. Lucien cannot speak French, and this means that Bertraund runs the show, which consists of harebrained schemes like draping the Canadian flag over the civil war statue on Interdependence Day, and fashioning doormats bearing President Gentle's image, and recently selling harmful pharmaceuticals as an attack on local youth. Bertraund had recently bartered with an old hippie for something that sounds much like DMZ, for among other things a garbage bag full of unlabeled read-only cartridges. The door squeaks loudly as Lucien closes it, and continues to squeak after he's bolted it. He has a broom with the end of the handle sharpened to a point, which doubles as a weapon. It's Lucien's job to watch all of the obscure unlabeled video cartridges that his brother acquires, and although they're in no discernible order, he knows what's on them. Bertraund's latest acquisition is a couple of tapes he picked up from a commercial display, and contained only the slogan in tiny raised letters--'il ne faut plus qu'on pursuive le bonheur' [happiness need no longer be pursued] and a stamped smiley face. Much to Bertraund's chagrin the cartridges were apparently blank. In a footnote, it's pointed out that this doesn't mean they are blank, since copy-capable cartridges require a 585 rpm machine to run,and the Antitoi's is a standard 450-drive. As Lucien sweeps he notices first one then another figure in a wheelchair outside the door, and he begins to hear squeaks. He realizes that this means the 'worst possible scenario' -- the AFR. As he pulls his Colt from his pants, the gun catches on his pants and along with the weight of his massive belly causes the pants to rip, and fall down around his ankles. He hobbles to the back room to warn his brother, but instead finds him with a railroad spike through his eye. The AFR members knock him to the floor, take his gun, and hit over the head with it as he listens in incomprehension to the their questions. The leader asks him to direct them to the 'Copy-capable' entertainment cartridge. Lucien understands none of this. His head is pulled back by the hair, and the sharpened broomstick is shoved down his throat skewering him. He has visions of childhood and his mother as he dies.
notes
That CT might have fathered his half-sister's child, Mario could possibly explain the unique deformities. It seems like DFW purposely pointed out [p 312-317] that CT was staying with the Moms and Himself on an extended stay at the time Mario was born, It seems odd that Hal's nightmare scene is from very late October, and Madame P is already off the air, since her suicide attempt was not until Nov 7. This section made me rethink my take on the two suicide-attempt scenes [p 219-223 and p 226-240] which I now think take place the same day, Nov 7, and are alternate takes on her overdose. This would mean that the murder of the Antitoi brothers probably takes place on Nov 8, since that has been established as Joelle's first night at Ennet House. The narrative shift in the last section seems unique thus far in the book, and this makes me wonder whether the point is to set it off as key. Another explanation might be that this occurs pretty close to the book's midpoint.
p 489-538
this section in 7 parts
p 489-491
YDAU [2009] May 1
place near Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Steeply asks Marathe if he's ever been tempted to view the Entertainment. Marathe muses on the fact that his father's death was caused by a videophonic pulse [from a call that Marathe had answered] which had stopped his father's pacemaker. Steeply reveals that the US has a team working on it, searching for possible non-lethal viewing possibilities. He says that one theory is that it's some kind of advanced holography. Marathe retorts that his people find theories of content irrelevant.
p 491-503
BS 1963 Winter
place Sepulveda, CA
narrated in first person by James Incandenza
synopsis:
James relates a story from his youth [revealed in a footnote to be a part of a memoir explaining how he became interested in annulation]. His father has just come home from shooting a TV commercial and is still dressed in all white with wig and makeup. After making himself a 'tomato juice beverage' he begins inspecting his bed to determine where the squeak is happening. He tells Jim he is fed up with the 'miserable cock-sucking bed your mother felt like she needed to hang onto' and what they need to do is take the mattress off and expose the frame. Jim suggests that it may be the mattress, but his father insists that the frame is old. On TV is father plays the 'Man from Glad' who's a faux-superhero who shows up and saves the day by pointing out the proper storage bag for the situation. Much struggling and cussing ensues as Jim helps his father remove the mattress and then the box spring and leaning them up in the hallway. Exposing the bed frame reveals a great deal of dust, and his father complains, asking when the last time his mother had cleaned in there. Jim points out that his bed squeaks too, but that it doesn't bother him. His father says that he's well aware of this, and can hear every squeak. His father asks his mother to go get the vacuum, as he balances on the bed frame testing for the squeak. He is seized by a coughing fit and is then 'taken ill' which is not uncommon when he's 'relaxing' after work. He pitches forward and passes out face down in the dust breaking the bed frame in the process. Jim's mother arrives with the vacuum and he squeezes past the mattress in the hallway, and runs to his room, jumping onto his own bed trying to make it squeak. In the course of doing this he knocks over a lamp, which in turn knocks the brass knob off of his closet door. The bolt that holds the knob in place fell to the floor and begins to turn circles within circle's reminding him of "L'Hopital's solution to Bernoulli's famous Brachistochrone Problem' which seems to him what it would be like for 'someone to try to turn somersaults with one hand nailed to the floor.' and this was how he first became interested 'the possibilities of annulation.'
p 503-507
YDAU [2009] Nov 9
place Ennet House & environs
narrated in third person
synopsis:
EH staffer Johnette Foltz accompanies Ken Erdedy and Kate Gompert to an NA meeting for beginners where the focus is marijuana. Everyone shares the ravages of pot-- 'slowly but thoroughly was the consensus' and then the horrors of withdrawal. Erededy is surprised that no one comes out and uses clinical terms for depression. After the meeting everyone says an 'Our Father' and then begins hugging each other. Erdedy recoils to the back of the room to avoid being hugged, but is approached anyway by Roy Tony, a 'tall heavy African-American fellow with a gold incisor' who opens his arms for a hug. Erdedy says that he doesn't like to hug, which causes Roy Tony to burst into a tirade. 'You think I fucking like to go around hug on folks' etc. He points out that they had surrendered their wills in the group,and says that Erdedy better hug him or he'll rip off his head. Erdedy gives him a vigorous hug.
p 507-508
YDAU [2009] May 1
place near Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Steeply says that they've lost a couple of people during the testing of the Entertainment. An intern got a clearance card and began to view it, and his supervisor tried to pull him out, and now he's on a feeding tube. Steeply again asks if Marathe ever considers what it'd be like. Marathe says he's tempted in a different way-- by the efficacy of the Entertainment. Steeply says he's as much terrified as he is intrigued. Marathe says he never feels this temptation, but respects its power, thus does not 'fool crazily about.'
p 508-527
YDAU [2009] Nov 10
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Hal is in the waiting room outside the Headmaster's office with Pemulis, Axford and Ann Kittenplan. The majority of the objects in this room are blue. The receptionist is known as Lateral Alice Moore, because she had been a traffic reporter and survived a helicopter crash, which left her with a neurological condition that restricted her movement to lateral. The four have them have presumably been summoned here in conjunction with the Eschaton fiasco. There are two offices Mrs. Incandenza's and Charles Tavis' and hers has no door. She is in her office with all of the younger girls, performing a 'diddle check' which is essentially a thorough questioning to make sure that none of them are being abused, which became mandatory after an incident with Coach Bill ['Touchy'] Phiely in California. Ordinarily Dr. Rusk does the diddle check, so Hal surmises that she must be in the office with Tavis assisting with what's going to go down. Pemulis is worried that he's going to get the lion's share of the blame, and perhaps be denied the trip to the WhataBurger. Pemulis absolutely detests Rusk, for reasons Hal has never been clear on. Fortunately for Pemulis, Hal never gave him up for wiring Rusk's doorknob and electrocuting a cleaning lady. Pemulis sidles over to Lateral Alice Moore's desk and is trying to find out whether his name is in the stack of WhataBurger invitations. Hal feels at his swollen gum where his tooth had been removed. Avril is questioning the uncomprehending girls about being touched inappropriately. Kittenplan proffers that the other 3 are 'in for some serious Pukers' referring to the Tap & Whack drills. Pemulis tries to rebut saying that Eschaton was firmly entrenched before any of them came along. Hal wonders why it's taken 48 hours for the summons. Hal is often surrounded by his family but spends little time thinking of them as such, except for Mario. Tavis, like Himself, was an indecisive mix of athletics and hard science. He had become a civil engineer and had built stadia, until an embarrassing incident where the stadium he built in Toronto turned out to afford it's spectators a view of people having sex in the hotel adjacent. When a bored cameraman began broadcasting the images on the instant replay board, most of the heat fell upon Tavis. Hal thinks his uncle is very shy and tries to hide it by being open and expansive to the point of being unsettling. As Headmaster he is both ineffectual and fearsome. The only other time Hal had been summoned to the Headmaster's office this year, was in August when he had been asked to take temporary charge of a new 9 year old student, who had been evacuated too late from Ticonderoga NNY, leaving him legally blind, but still a solid player in spite of the oversized head, and the need to drag around an oxygen tank. Hal was waiting in the same place then for Tavis, who was finishing an entrance interview with 'tiny little Tina Echt' who had been as much as thrown out of the car instead of dropped off. Tavis is physically small in the way of 'something that's farther from you than it wants to be plus it's receding.' Hal feels an 'involuntary rush of affection' for his uncle with his comb-over hair, his unsymmetrical mustache and his eyes that are set at different angles. The narrative flashes back to Nov 10, briefly, and then back to the interview with Tina. Tavis tells her that they will take her apart as a little girl and put her back together as a tennis player, that they will 'take apart your skull and very gently reconstruct a skull for you.' As Hal listens Ortho Stice comes and goes, and then the Moms enters, establishing herself in "the exact center" of the room as always. She asks about his ankle, which he says is tender. She lights a cigarette and holds it with smoking arm up and elbow resting in the crook of the other arm, as always. Tavis is apologizing for making Tina cry. The Moms notes that Hal must be hungry and produces an apple, which she insists that she doesn't want and he should take. Orin and Hal call this the 'politeness roulette' wherein you feel bad for telling her any problem, because of the consequences for her. They discuss Tina Echt, and Hal laments how ten years at ETA will leave her burned out like coal at the bottom of a grill or ready for the Show. The Moms asks what the term for coal reduced to residue, and Hal quotes the OED derivation of 'clinkers' but reminds her that a grill wouldn't have clinkers, because charcoal is refined to burn to ash. She offers to have him for dinner, and then to give him the key to the kitchen, both of which he declines saying that he and Stice and perhaps Pemulis are going to 'blast down the hill and grab something.' The narrative shifts back to Nov 10, and Hal at the dentist just before being summoned, having his tooth pulled. The quartet wait on Tavis, and things are tense. Tavis when he loses his composure is like a cornered rat; when he suddenly gets very silent it's a danger sign. Because then he seems to grow, to rush at you. Lateral Alice Moore gets buzzed to bring them in, and Axford 'needs three tries' to open the door while ann Kittenplan is regally calm. Inside the office is Clenette, the custodial temp and her cart has a crazy wheel. Dr. Rusk is also inside with Otis P. Lord, with the computer monitor still over his head, with glass shards keeping him from moving his head. The room's final occupant is revealed to be an ONANTA urine expert, presumably there for a surprise test.
p 528-530
YDAU [2009] May 1
place near Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Steeply insists that it's not just a USA thing, citing 'multicultural Oriental myths' of a woman covered with fine blond hair with whom men would be drawn
to have sex and then be paralyzed or killed outright. As dawn approaches, Marathe thinks of boys with legs and bicycles. Both Steeply's and Marathe's superiors know of the meetings and look forward to them. This is their sixth or seventh meeting. According to Steeply, the BSS doesn't know that Fortier knows about Steeply knowing that Fortier knows Marathe is here. Fortier doesn't know however that Marathe now puts his wife before his cause.If he did know this, Marathe would surely have a railroad spike through his eye by now. Steeply continues, citing the myth of Odalisk, who is so beautiful that she turns those who gaze upon her to an opal, like the Greek 'Medusa in reverse.' Marathe explains that the Greeks did not fear beauty, they feared ugliness. Steeply smoked a cigarette in the same fashion as Avril, cradling his smoking arm's elbow with the other arm. Marathe invites Steeply to sit down for a moment, gesturing at his uncomfortable shoes, and then announces that he must soon leave. Steeply says the possibility of things crawling up the skirt makes him sensitive about 'plopping down.'
p 531-538
YDAU [2009] Nov 11 4:50am
Ennet House
no narration
synopsis:
This section is a dialog between Gately and Joelle in the front office of Ennet House. Gately is explaining an incident in bar where one of his friends makes the moves on another guy's girl and then humiliates the guy in front of her. The humiliated guy comes back with a gun and shoots Gately's friend in the head. Gately and his friends try to keep the victim on his feet, until the ambulance came, but to no avail. Joelle interjects a story of seeing someone cut off his hand with a chainsaw, and watching her Daddy use his belt to save him. Gately asks Joelle about the veil. She tells him about the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed [UHID]. He asks why she's in it, though. She answers by describing the ceremony where the members first don the veil. Gately expresses his incomprehension and inability to see the UHID concept through the lens of AA, viz why would someone want the veil when they've finally found a support group wherein they can 'step out of the cage and quit hiding.' Joelle explains that the urge to hide is accompanied by shame about that urge. People stare but try to conceal the stare because they're ashamed to stare. So without the veil, you hide your need to hide by appearing as if you don't care how you appear to others. Gately notes that her voice changes when on this topic and asks her to use few words. The first step of UHID is acceptance of the powerlessness over the need to hide-- donning the veil. When Gately grasps what she's said, she notes that he didn't need fewer words after all, and that although he worries that he's 'not bright,' he is 'not not bright.' She uses this to point up a difference between AA and UHID which would say that it's fine to feel shame of being not bright, but if you begin to feel ashamed of that shame it becomes an insidious cycle. Gately says this makes his head hurt. He reveals that he got kicked off his football team for flunking English. She reacts with interest asking him what position he played, and telling of her baton twirling. He asks again what she's hiding under the veil, and again she ducks the question. He says the Staff part of him wants to say, if you don't want to answer just say so. She answers that he's more bugged by the possibility that she's treating him as unbright, than about her inability to refuse to answer his question. She says that she's already been upfront about her stuff, but it's his shame about his perceived unbrightness that's getting 'buried under this dead horse' of her deformity. He understands nothing and asks if her skin is deformed, even though everywhere else it looks--. She says he was about to say perfect. She says finally that she's perfect, ''Once they've seen me they can't think of anything else and don't want to look at anything else and stop carrying out normal responsibilities.' He takes this as sarcasm. She says 'I am so beautiful I am deformed.' He calls for six extra-strong aspirin. She asks again what position he played.
notes
The question of whether Joelle is actually deformed under the veil seems to be answered once and for all here, by her. Or is it? The idea of a beauty so sublime that it harms its beholder is clearly one of the primary themes that unifies the converging story lines. Another theme is simply the head which is hit upon many times in this section, so to speak. From Mario on down, there are a myriad of characters with large, unusual and often deformed heads, and heads are almost always the point of impact of violence, self inflicted or otherwise. Heads are where the game of tennis purportedly takes place, and hence are the object of much of the ETA-training regimen. Tavis' head is clearly reminiscent of Mario's, suggesting again the incest possibility. Then there's Himself who put his own head in a microwave oven. Also of note is the near comical [in spite of what they often portend] recurrence of squeaks in a good majority of scenes.
p 489-491
YDAU [2009] May 1
place near Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Steeply asks Marathe if he's ever been tempted to view the Entertainment. Marathe muses on the fact that his father's death was caused by a videophonic pulse [from a call that Marathe had answered] which had stopped his father's pacemaker. Steeply reveals that the US has a team working on it, searching for possible non-lethal viewing possibilities. He says that one theory is that it's some kind of advanced holography. Marathe retorts that his people find theories of content irrelevant.
p 491-503
BS 1963 Winter
place Sepulveda, CA
narrated in first person by James Incandenza
synopsis:
James relates a story from his youth [revealed in a footnote to be a part of a memoir explaining how he became interested in annulation]. His father has just come home from shooting a TV commercial and is still dressed in all white with wig and makeup. After making himself a 'tomato juice beverage' he begins inspecting his bed to determine where the squeak is happening. He tells Jim he is fed up with the 'miserable cock-sucking bed your mother felt like she needed to hang onto' and what they need to do is take the mattress off and expose the frame. Jim suggests that it may be the mattress, but his father insists that the frame is old. On TV is father plays the 'Man from Glad' who's a faux-superhero who shows up and saves the day by pointing out the proper storage bag for the situation. Much struggling and cussing ensues as Jim helps his father remove the mattress and then the box spring and leaning them up in the hallway. Exposing the bed frame reveals a great deal of dust, and his father complains, asking when the last time his mother had cleaned in there. Jim points out that his bed squeaks too, but that it doesn't bother him. His father says that he's well aware of this, and can hear every squeak. His father asks his mother to go get the vacuum, as he balances on the bed frame testing for the squeak. He is seized by a coughing fit and is then 'taken ill' which is not uncommon when he's 'relaxing' after work. He pitches forward and passes out face down in the dust breaking the bed frame in the process. Jim's mother arrives with the vacuum and he squeezes past the mattress in the hallway, and runs to his room, jumping onto his own bed trying to make it squeak. In the course of doing this he knocks over a lamp, which in turn knocks the brass knob off of his closet door. The bolt that holds the knob in place fell to the floor and begins to turn circles within circle's reminding him of "L'Hopital's solution to Bernoulli's famous Brachistochrone Problem' which seems to him what it would be like for 'someone to try to turn somersaults with one hand nailed to the floor.' and this was how he first became interested 'the possibilities of annulation.'
p 503-507
YDAU [2009] Nov 9
place Ennet House & environs
narrated in third person
synopsis:
EH staffer Johnette Foltz accompanies Ken Erdedy and Kate Gompert to an NA meeting for beginners where the focus is marijuana. Everyone shares the ravages of pot-- 'slowly but thoroughly was the consensus' and then the horrors of withdrawal. Erededy is surprised that no one comes out and uses clinical terms for depression. After the meeting everyone says an 'Our Father' and then begins hugging each other. Erdedy recoils to the back of the room to avoid being hugged, but is approached anyway by Roy Tony, a 'tall heavy African-American fellow with a gold incisor' who opens his arms for a hug. Erdedy says that he doesn't like to hug, which causes Roy Tony to burst into a tirade. 'You think I fucking like to go around hug on folks' etc. He points out that they had surrendered their wills in the group,and says that Erdedy better hug him or he'll rip off his head. Erdedy gives him a vigorous hug.
p 507-508
YDAU [2009] May 1
place near Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Steeply says that they've lost a couple of people during the testing of the Entertainment. An intern got a clearance card and began to view it, and his supervisor tried to pull him out, and now he's on a feeding tube. Steeply again asks if Marathe ever considers what it'd be like. Marathe says he's tempted in a different way-- by the efficacy of the Entertainment. Steeply says he's as much terrified as he is intrigued. Marathe says he never feels this temptation, but respects its power, thus does not 'fool crazily about.'
p 508-527
YDAU [2009] Nov 10
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Hal is in the waiting room outside the Headmaster's office with Pemulis, Axford and Ann Kittenplan. The majority of the objects in this room are blue. The receptionist is known as Lateral Alice Moore, because she had been a traffic reporter and survived a helicopter crash, which left her with a neurological condition that restricted her movement to lateral. The four have them have presumably been summoned here in conjunction with the Eschaton fiasco. There are two offices Mrs. Incandenza's and Charles Tavis' and hers has no door. She is in her office with all of the younger girls, performing a 'diddle check' which is essentially a thorough questioning to make sure that none of them are being abused, which became mandatory after an incident with Coach Bill ['Touchy'] Phiely in California. Ordinarily Dr. Rusk does the diddle check, so Hal surmises that she must be in the office with Tavis assisting with what's going to go down. Pemulis is worried that he's going to get the lion's share of the blame, and perhaps be denied the trip to the WhataBurger. Pemulis absolutely detests Rusk, for reasons Hal has never been clear on. Fortunately for Pemulis, Hal never gave him up for wiring Rusk's doorknob and electrocuting a cleaning lady. Pemulis sidles over to Lateral Alice Moore's desk and is trying to find out whether his name is in the stack of WhataBurger invitations. Hal feels at his swollen gum where his tooth had been removed. Avril is questioning the uncomprehending girls about being touched inappropriately. Kittenplan proffers that the other 3 are 'in for some serious Pukers' referring to the Tap & Whack drills. Pemulis tries to rebut saying that Eschaton was firmly entrenched before any of them came along. Hal wonders why it's taken 48 hours for the summons. Hal is often surrounded by his family but spends little time thinking of them as such, except for Mario. Tavis, like Himself, was an indecisive mix of athletics and hard science. He had become a civil engineer and had built stadia, until an embarrassing incident where the stadium he built in Toronto turned out to afford it's spectators a view of people having sex in the hotel adjacent. When a bored cameraman began broadcasting the images on the instant replay board, most of the heat fell upon Tavis. Hal thinks his uncle is very shy and tries to hide it by being open and expansive to the point of being unsettling. As Headmaster he is both ineffectual and fearsome. The only other time Hal had been summoned to the Headmaster's office this year, was in August when he had been asked to take temporary charge of a new 9 year old student, who had been evacuated too late from Ticonderoga NNY, leaving him legally blind, but still a solid player in spite of the oversized head, and the need to drag around an oxygen tank. Hal was waiting in the same place then for Tavis, who was finishing an entrance interview with 'tiny little Tina Echt' who had been as much as thrown out of the car instead of dropped off. Tavis is physically small in the way of 'something that's farther from you than it wants to be plus it's receding.' Hal feels an 'involuntary rush of affection' for his uncle with his comb-over hair, his unsymmetrical mustache and his eyes that are set at different angles. The narrative flashes back to Nov 10, briefly, and then back to the interview with Tina. Tavis tells her that they will take her apart as a little girl and put her back together as a tennis player, that they will 'take apart your skull and very gently reconstruct a skull for you.' As Hal listens Ortho Stice comes and goes, and then the Moms enters, establishing herself in "the exact center" of the room as always. She asks about his ankle, which he says is tender. She lights a cigarette and holds it with smoking arm up and elbow resting in the crook of the other arm, as always. Tavis is apologizing for making Tina cry. The Moms notes that Hal must be hungry and produces an apple, which she insists that she doesn't want and he should take. Orin and Hal call this the 'politeness roulette' wherein you feel bad for telling her any problem, because of the consequences for her. They discuss Tina Echt, and Hal laments how ten years at ETA will leave her burned out like coal at the bottom of a grill or ready for the Show. The Moms asks what the term for coal reduced to residue, and Hal quotes the OED derivation of 'clinkers' but reminds her that a grill wouldn't have clinkers, because charcoal is refined to burn to ash. She offers to have him for dinner, and then to give him the key to the kitchen, both of which he declines saying that he and Stice and perhaps Pemulis are going to 'blast down the hill and grab something.' The narrative shifts back to Nov 10, and Hal at the dentist just before being summoned, having his tooth pulled. The quartet wait on Tavis, and things are tense. Tavis when he loses his composure is like a cornered rat; when he suddenly gets very silent it's a danger sign. Because then he seems to grow, to rush at you. Lateral Alice Moore gets buzzed to bring them in, and Axford 'needs three tries' to open the door while ann Kittenplan is regally calm. Inside the office is Clenette, the custodial temp and her cart has a crazy wheel. Dr. Rusk is also inside with Otis P. Lord, with the computer monitor still over his head, with glass shards keeping him from moving his head. The room's final occupant is revealed to be an ONANTA urine expert, presumably there for a surprise test.
p 528-530
YDAU [2009] May 1
place near Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Steeply insists that it's not just a USA thing, citing 'multicultural Oriental myths' of a woman covered with fine blond hair with whom men would be drawn
to have sex and then be paralyzed or killed outright. As dawn approaches, Marathe thinks of boys with legs and bicycles. Both Steeply's and Marathe's superiors know of the meetings and look forward to them. This is their sixth or seventh meeting. According to Steeply, the BSS doesn't know that Fortier knows about Steeply knowing that Fortier knows Marathe is here. Fortier doesn't know however that Marathe now puts his wife before his cause.If he did know this, Marathe would surely have a railroad spike through his eye by now. Steeply continues, citing the myth of Odalisk, who is so beautiful that she turns those who gaze upon her to an opal, like the Greek 'Medusa in reverse.' Marathe explains that the Greeks did not fear beauty, they feared ugliness. Steeply smoked a cigarette in the same fashion as Avril, cradling his smoking arm's elbow with the other arm. Marathe invites Steeply to sit down for a moment, gesturing at his uncomfortable shoes, and then announces that he must soon leave. Steeply says the possibility of things crawling up the skirt makes him sensitive about 'plopping down.'
p 531-538
YDAU [2009] Nov 11 4:50am
Ennet House
no narration
synopsis:
This section is a dialog between Gately and Joelle in the front office of Ennet House. Gately is explaining an incident in bar where one of his friends makes the moves on another guy's girl and then humiliates the guy in front of her. The humiliated guy comes back with a gun and shoots Gately's friend in the head. Gately and his friends try to keep the victim on his feet, until the ambulance came, but to no avail. Joelle interjects a story of seeing someone cut off his hand with a chainsaw, and watching her Daddy use his belt to save him. Gately asks Joelle about the veil. She tells him about the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed [UHID]. He asks why she's in it, though. She answers by describing the ceremony where the members first don the veil. Gately expresses his incomprehension and inability to see the UHID concept through the lens of AA, viz why would someone want the veil when they've finally found a support group wherein they can 'step out of the cage and quit hiding.' Joelle explains that the urge to hide is accompanied by shame about that urge. People stare but try to conceal the stare because they're ashamed to stare. So without the veil, you hide your need to hide by appearing as if you don't care how you appear to others. Gately notes that her voice changes when on this topic and asks her to use few words. The first step of UHID is acceptance of the powerlessness over the need to hide-- donning the veil. When Gately grasps what she's said, she notes that he didn't need fewer words after all, and that although he worries that he's 'not bright,' he is 'not not bright.' She uses this to point up a difference between AA and UHID which would say that it's fine to feel shame of being not bright, but if you begin to feel ashamed of that shame it becomes an insidious cycle. Gately says this makes his head hurt. He reveals that he got kicked off his football team for flunking English. She reacts with interest asking him what position he played, and telling of her baton twirling. He asks again what she's hiding under the veil, and again she ducks the question. He says the Staff part of him wants to say, if you don't want to answer just say so. She answers that he's more bugged by the possibility that she's treating him as unbright, than about her inability to refuse to answer his question. She says that she's already been upfront about her stuff, but it's his shame about his perceived unbrightness that's getting 'buried under this dead horse' of her deformity. He understands nothing and asks if her skin is deformed, even though everywhere else it looks--. She says he was about to say perfect. She says finally that she's perfect, ''Once they've seen me they can't think of anything else and don't want to look at anything else and stop carrying out normal responsibilities.' He takes this as sarcasm. She says 'I am so beautiful I am deformed.' He calls for six extra-strong aspirin. She asks again what position he played.
notes
The question of whether Joelle is actually deformed under the veil seems to be answered once and for all here, by her. Or is it? The idea of a beauty so sublime that it harms its beholder is clearly one of the primary themes that unifies the converging story lines. Another theme is simply the head which is hit upon many times in this section, so to speak. From Mario on down, there are a myriad of characters with large, unusual and often deformed heads, and heads are almost always the point of impact of violence, self inflicted or otherwise. Heads are where the game of tennis purportedly takes place, and hence are the object of much of the ETA-training regimen. Tavis' head is clearly reminiscent of Mario's, suggesting again the incest possibility. Then there's Himself who put his own head in a microwave oven. Also of note is the near comical [in spite of what they often portend] recurrence of squeaks in a good majority of scenes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)