Infinite Jest Part 38

'But not speak to.'

'The kid in the idiotic hat, Pemulis, Mike's got great, great volleys, he's a natural at net, great, great hand-eye. Mike's other strength is he's got the best lob in East Coast juniors bar none. These are his strengths. The reason both of these kids you're looking at out here right now can beat the living s.h.i.+t out of Pemulis is Pemulis's strengths don't give him a complete game. Volleys're an offensive shot. A lob's a baseliner's weapon, counterpuncher. You can't lob from the net or volley from the baseline.'

'He says Michael Pemulis's abilities cancel each other out,' 275 275 Poutrincourt said in the other ear. Poutrincourt said in the other ear.

DeLint made the small salaam of iteration. 'Pemulis's strengths cancel each other out. Now Todd Possalthwaite, the littler kid with the bandage on his nose from the soap-and-shower-slipping thing, Possalthwaite's also got a great lob, and while Pemulis'd take him right now on pure age and power Possalthwaite's the technically superior player with the better future, because Todd's built a complete game out of his lob.'

'This deLint is wrong,' Poutrincourt said in Quebecois, smiling rictally across Steeply at deLint.

'Because Possalthwaite won't come in to net. Possalthwaite hangs back at any cost, and unlike Pemulis he works to develop the groundstrokes to let him stay back and draw the other guy in and use that venomous lob.'

'Which means at fourteen his game, it will never change or grow, and if he grows strong and wishes to attack he will never be able,' Poutrincourt said.

DeLint displayed so little curiosity about what Poutrincourt inserted that Steeply wondered if he had some French on the sly, and made a private ideogram to this effect. 'Possalthwaite's a pure defensive strategist. He's got a gestalt. The term we use here for a complete game is either gestalt gestalt or or complete game complete game.'

Stice aced Hal out wide on the ad court again, and the ball got stuck in an intersticial diamond in the chain-link fencing, and Hal had to put his stick down and use both hands to force the thing out.

'Maybe for your article, though, the p.o.o.p on this kid, the punter's brother - Hal can't lob half as good as even Possalthwaite, and compared to Ortho or Mike his net-play's pedestrian. But unlike his brother when he was here, see, Hal's strengths have started to fit together. He's got a great serve, a great return of serve, and great, great groundstrokes, with great control and great touch, great command of touch and spin; and he can take a defensive player and yank the kid around with his superior control, and he can take an attacking player and use the guy's own pace against him.'

Hal pa.s.sed Stice off the backhand down the line and the ball looked sure to land fair, and then at the last possible second it veered out, an abrupt tight curve out of bounds as if some freak gust came out of nowhere and blew it out, and Stice looked more surprised than Hal did. The punter's brother's face registered nothing as he stood at the ad corner, adjusting something on his strings.

'But perhaps one does attain this, to win. Imagine you. You become just what you have given your life to be. Not merely very good but the best. The good philosophy of here and Scht.i.tt - I believe this philosophy of Enfield is more Canadian than American, so you may see I have prejudice - is that you must have also - so, leave to one side for a moment the talent and work to become best - that you are doomed 276 276 if you do not have also within you some ability to transcend the goal, transcend the success of the best, if you get to there.' if you do not have also within you some ability to transcend the goal, transcend the success of the best, if you get to there.'

Steeply could see, off in the parking lot behind the hideous bulging neo-Georgian cube of the Community and Administration Building, several small boys carrying and dragging white plastic bags to the nest of dumpsters that ab.u.t.ted the pines at the parking lot's rear, the children pale and wild-eyed and conferring among themselves and casting anxious looks across the grounds at the crowd behind the Show Court.

'Then,' Poutrincourt said, 'and for the ones who do become the etoiles, etoiles, the lucky who become profiled and photographed for readers and in the U.S.A. religion the lucky who become profiled and photographed for readers and in the U.S.A. religion make it, make it, they must have something built into them along the path that will let them transcend it, or they are doomed. We see this in experience. One sees this in all obsessive goal-based cultures of pursuit. Look at the they must have something built into them along the path that will let them transcend it, or they are doomed. We see this in experience. One sees this in all obsessive goal-based cultures of pursuit. Look at the j.a.ponois, j.a.ponois, the suicide rates of their later years. This task of us at the Enfield is more delicate still, with the the suicide rates of their later years. This task of us at the Enfield is more delicate still, with the etoiles etoiles. For, you, if you attain your goal and cannot find some way to transcend the experience of having that goal be your entire existence, your raison de faire, raison de faire,277 so, then, one of two things we see will happen.' so, then, one of two things we see will happen.'

Steeply had to keep breathing on the pen to keep the point thawed.

'One, one is that you attain the goal and realize the shocking realization that attaining the goal does not complete or redeem you, does not make everything for your life "OK " as you are, in the culture, educated to a.s.sume it will do this, the goal. And then you face this fact that what you had thought would have the meaning does not have the meaning when you get it, and you are impaled by shock. We see suicides in history by people at these pinnacles; the children here are versed in what is called the saga of Eric Clipperton.' " as you are, in the culture, educated to a.s.sume it will do this, the goal. And then you face this fact that what you had thought would have the meaning does not have the meaning when you get it, and you are impaled by shock. We see suicides in history by people at these pinnacles; the children here are versed in what is called the saga of Eric Clipperton.'

'With two p p's?'

'Just so. Or the other possibility of doom, for the etoiles etoiles who attain. They attain the goal, thus, and put as much equal pa.s.sion into celebrating their attainment as they had put into pursuing the attainment. This is called here the Syndrome of the Endless Party. The celebrity, money, s.e.xual behaviors, drugs and substances. The glitter. They become celebrities instead of players, and because they are celebrities only as long as they feed the culture-of-goal's hunger for the who attain. They attain the goal, thus, and put as much equal pa.s.sion into celebrating their attainment as they had put into pursuing the attainment. This is called here the Syndrome of the Endless Party. The celebrity, money, s.e.xual behaviors, drugs and substances. The glitter. They become celebrities instead of players, and because they are celebrities only as long as they feed the culture-of-goal's hunger for the make-it, make-it, the winning, they are doomed, because you cannot both celebrate and suffer, and play is always suffering, just so.' the winning, they are doomed, because you cannot both celebrate and suffer, and play is always suffering, just so.'

'Our best boy is better than Hal, you'll see him play tomorrow if you want, John Wayne. No relation to the real John Wayne. A fellow compatriot of Terry here.' Aubrey deLint was sitting back up beside them, the cold giving his pitted cheeks a second flush, two feverish harlequin ovals. 'John Wayne's got a gestalt because Wayne's simply got everything, and everything with him's got the sort of pace that a touch-artist and thinker like Hal just can't handle.'

'This was the Founder's philosophy, too, of doom, the punter Incandenza's father, who also I am being told dabbled in filming?' Steeply asked the Canadian.

Poutrincourt's shrug could have meant too many things to note. 'I came after. M. Scht.i.tt, his different goal for the etoiles etoiles is to walk between these.' Nor did Steeply quite notice the woman's s.h.i.+fts between dialects. 'To map out some path between needing the success and mockery-making of the success.' is to walk between these.' Nor did Steeply quite notice the woman's s.h.i.+fts between dialects. 'To map out some path between needing the success and mockery-making of the success.'

DeLint leaned in. 'Wayne's got everything. Hal's strength has become knowing he doesn't have everything, and constructing a game as much out of what's missing as what's there.'

Steeply pretended to arrange the cap but was really adjusting the wig. 'It all sounds awfully abstract for something so physical.'

Poutrincourt's shrug pushed her gla.s.ses slightly up. 'It is contradictory. Two selves, one not there. M. Scht.i.tt, when the Academy Founder died...'

'The punter's father, who dabbled in films.' Steeply's raglan sweater had been his wife's.

Again nodding blandly, Poutrincourt: 'This academic Founder, M. Scht.i.tt tells that this Founder was a student of types of sight.'

DeLint said 'Wayne's only possible limits being also his strength, the tungsten-steel will and resolve, the insistence on imposing his game and his will on his man, totally unwilling to change the pace of his game if he's not doing good. Wayne's got the touch and the lobs to hang back on an off-day, but he won't - if he's down or things aren't going his way, he just hits harder. His pace is so overwhelming he can get away with being uncompromising about attack against North American juniors. But in the Show, which Wayne'll go pro maybe as soon as next year, in the Show flexibility is more important, he'll find. What do you call, a humility.'

Poutrincourt was looking at Steeply almost too carelessly, it almost seemed. 'The studying was not so much how one sees a thing, but this relation between oneself and what one sees. He translated this numerously across different fields, M. Scht.i.tt tells.'

'The son described his father as quote "genre-dysphoric."'

Poutrincourt c.o.c.ked her head. 'This does not sound like Hal Incandenza.'

DeLint sniffed meatily. 'But Wayne's gestalt's chief edge over Hal is the head. Wayne is pure force. He doesn't feel fear, pity, remorse - when a point's over, it might as well have never happened. For Wayne. Hal actually has finer groundstrokes than Wayne, and he could have Wayne's pace if he wanted. But the reason Wayne is Three continentally and Hal's Six is the head. Hal looks just as perfectly dead out there, but he's more vulnerable in terms of, like, emotionally. Hal remembers points, senses trends in a match. Wayne doesn't. Hal's susceptible to fluctuations. Discouragement. Set-long lapses in concentration. Some days you can almost see Hal like flit in and out of a match, like some part of him leaves and hovers and then comes back.'

The Troeltsch person said 'Holy crow crow.'

'So to survive here for later is, finally, to have it both ways,' Thierry Poutrincourt said quietly, in nearly accentless English, as if to herself.

'This emotional susceptibility in terms of forgetting being more commonly a female thing. Scht.i.tt and I think it's a will issue. Susceptible wills are more common to the top girls here. We see it in Longley, we see it in Millie Kent and Frannie Unwin. We don't see this forgetful will in the Vaughts, or in Spodek, who you can watch if you want.'

The Troeltsch person said 'Could we see that again, Ray, do you think?'

Steeply was looking at the side of Poutrincourt's face as deLint on the other side was saying 'But the one we see this most in is Hal.'

14 NOVEMBER.

YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT.

The Man o' War Grille on Prospect: Matty sat in the hot clatter of the Portuguese restaurant with his hands in his lap, looking at nothing. A waiter brought his soup. The waiter had bits of either bloodstain or soup on his ap.r.o.n, and for no discernible reason wore a fez. Matty ate his soup without once slurping. He'd been the neat eater in the family. Matty Pemulis was a prost.i.tute and today he was twenty-three.

The Man o' War Grille is on Prospect Street in Cambridge and its front windows overlook the heavy foot traffic between Inman and Central Squares. As Matty waited for his soup he'd seen across the restaurant and out the front's gla.s.s a bag-lady-type older female in several clothing-layers lift her skirts and lower herself to the pavement and move her scaggly old bowels right there in full view of pa.s.sersby and diners both, then gather all her plastic shopping bags together and walk stolidly out of view. The pile of bowel movement sat there on the pavement, steaming slightly. Matty'd heard the college kids at the next table say they didn't know whether to be totally illed or totally awed.

A big rangy kid, with a big sharp face and tight short hair and a smile and a shave-twice jaw since he was fourteen. Now balding smoothly back from a high clear forehead. A permanent smile that always seemed like he was trying not to but just couldn't help it. His Da always formerly saying to Wipe it off.

Inman Square: Little Lisbon. The soup has bits of calamari that make the muscles in his face flex, chewing.

Now two Brazilians in bellbottoms and tall shoes along the sidewalk across the window over the diners' heads, what might be a brewing street-fight, one walking forward and one walking backward, facing off as they move, each missing the dollop of bowel-movement on the walk, speaking high-volume street-Portuguese m.u.f.fled by windows and hot clatter, but each looking around and then pointing at his own chest like: 'You saying this s.h.i.+t to me? me?' Then the forward man's sudden charge carrying them both past the window's right frame.

Matty's Da'd come over on a boat from Louth in Lenster in 1989. Matty'd been three or four. Da'd worked on the Southie docks, coiling lengths of rope as big around as phone poles into tall cones, and had died when Matty was seventeen, of pancreatic complaints.

Matty looked up from the roll he was dipping in the soup and saw two underweight interracial girls moving across the window, one a n.i.g.g.e.r, neither even looking at the s.h.i.+t everyone's stepping around; and then a few seconds behind them Poor Tony Krause, who because of the trousers and cap Matty didn't even recognize as Poor Tony Krause until he'd looked back down and then up again: Poor Tony Krause looked G.o.dawful: sucked-out, hollow-eyed, past ill, grave-ready, his face's skin the greenish white of extreme-depth marine life, looking less alive than undead, identifiable as poor old Poor Tony only by the boa and red leather coat and the certain way he held his hand to his throat's hollow as he walked, that way Equus Reese always said always reminded him of black-and-white-era starlets descending curved stairs into some black-tie function, Krause never so much walking as making an infinite series of grand entrances into pocket after pocket of s.p.a.ce, a queenly hauteur now both sickening and awesome given Krause's spectral mien, pa.s.sing across the Grille's window, his eyes either on or looking right through the two skinny girls plodding ahead of him, following them out of the window's right-hand side.

His Da'd begun f.u.c.king Matty up the a.s.s when Matty was ten. A f.o.o.k in t'boom f.o.o.k in t'boom. Matty had complete recall of the whole thing. He'd seen sometimes where persons that had unpleasant things happen to them as children blocked the unpleasantness out in their mentality as adults and forgot it. Not so with Matty Pemulis. He remembered every inch and pimple of every single time. His father outside the little room Matt and Micky slept in, late at night, the cat's-eye sliver of lit hallway through the crack in the door Da'd opened, the door on well-oiled hinges opening with the implacable slowness of a rising moon, Da's shadow lengthening across the floor and then the man his very self weaving in behind it, crossing the moonlit floor in darned socks and that smell about him that later Matty'd know was malt liquor but at that age he and Mickey called something else, when they smelled it. Matty lay and pretended to sleep; he didn't know why tonight he pretended not to know the man was there; he was afraid. Even the first time. Micky just five. All the times were the same. Da drunk. Tacking across the bedroom floor. A certain stealth. Managing somehow never to break his neck on the toy trucks and tiny cars scattered on the floor, left there that first time by accident. Sitting on the edge of the bed so his weight changed the bed's angle. A big man smelling of tobacco and something else, his breath always audible when drunk. Sitting on the edge of the bed. Shaking Matty 'awake' to the point where Matty'd have to pretend to wake up. Asking if he'd been asleep, sleeping, there, was he. Tenderness, caresses that were somehow just over the line from true ethnic-Irish fatherly affection, the emotional largesse of a man without a Green Card who daily broke his back for his family's food. Caresses that were in some vague way just over the line from that and from the emotional largesse of something else, drunk, when all the rules of mood were suspended and you never knew from minute to minute whether you were to be kissed or hit - impossible to say how or even know how they were just over those lines. But they were, the caresses. Tenderness, caresses, low soft oversweet hot bad breath, soft apologies for some flash of savagery or discipline from the day. A way of cupping the pillow-warm cheek and jaw in the hollow of the hand, the huge pinkie finger tracing the hollow between throat and jaw. Matty'd shrink away: shy are we sone scared are we? Matty'd shrink away even after he knew the shrinking fear was part of what brought it on, for Da'd get angry: who are we scared of, then? Then who are we, a sone, to be scared so of our own Da? As if the Da that broke daily his back were nothing more than a. Can't a Da show his son some love without being taken for a. As if Matty could lie here with his food inside him under bedding he'd paid for and think his Da were no better than a. Is it a f.o.o.kin you're scared of, then. You think a Da what comes in to speak to his sone and holds him as a Da has nought on his mind but a f.o.o.k? As if the sone were some forty-dollar wh.o.r.e off the docks? As if the Da were a. Is that what you take me for. Is that what you take me for then. Matty shrinking back into a flattening pillow the Da'd paid for, the springs of the convertible bed singing with his fear; he shook. Why then so then I've a mind to give you just what you're thinking t'fear. Take me for. Matty knew early on that his being afraid fueled the thing somehow, made his Da want to. He was unable not to be afraid. He tried and tried, cursed himself for a coward and deserving, all but calling his father a. It was years before he snapped to the fact that his Da'd have f.o.o.ked him in t'boom f.o.o.ked him in t'boom no matter what he'd done. That the event was laid out before the first slim line of doorlight broadened, and whatever Matty'd felt or betrayed made no difference. An advantage to not blocking it out is you can snap to things later, with maturer perspective; you can come to see no sone on the planet could in any way ask for that, regardless. At a certain later age he started lying there when his Da shook him and pretended to sleep on, even when the shakes got to where his teeth clacked together in a mouth that wore the slight smile Matty'd decided truly sleeping people's faces always wore. The harder his father shook him, the tighter Matty'd shut his eyes and the more set the slight smile and the louder the rasps of the cartoon snores he alternated with exhaled whistles. Mickey over in the cot by the window always silent as a tomb, on his side, face to the wall and hidden. Never a word between them about anything more than the chances of being kissed v. hit. Finally Da'd grab both his shoulders and flip him over with a sound of disgust and frustration. Matty thought just the smell of the fear was maybe enough to deserve it, until (later on) he got some maturer perspective. He remembered the oval sound of the cap coming off the jar of petroleum jelly, that special stone-in-pond plop of a Vaseline cap (not Child-Proof even in an era of Child-Proof caps), hearing his Da muttering as he applied it to himself, feeling the ice-cold awful cold finger between him as his Da smeared the stuff roughly around Matty's rosebud, his dark star. no matter what he'd done. That the event was laid out before the first slim line of doorlight broadened, and whatever Matty'd felt or betrayed made no difference. An advantage to not blocking it out is you can snap to things later, with maturer perspective; you can come to see no sone on the planet could in any way ask for that, regardless. At a certain later age he started lying there when his Da shook him and pretended to sleep on, even when the shakes got to where his teeth clacked together in a mouth that wore the slight smile Matty'd decided truly sleeping people's faces always wore. The harder his father shook him, the tighter Matty'd shut his eyes and the more set the slight smile and the louder the rasps of the cartoon snores he alternated with exhaled whistles. Mickey over in the cot by the window always silent as a tomb, on his side, face to the wall and hidden. Never a word between them about anything more than the chances of being kissed v. hit. Finally Da'd grab both his shoulders and flip him over with a sound of disgust and frustration. Matty thought just the smell of the fear was maybe enough to deserve it, until (later on) he got some maturer perspective. He remembered the oval sound of the cap coming off the jar of petroleum jelly, that special stone-in-pond plop of a Vaseline cap (not Child-Proof even in an era of Child-Proof caps), hearing his Da muttering as he applied it to himself, feeling the ice-cold awful cold finger between him as his Da smeared the stuff roughly around Matty's rosebud, his dark star.

It was only the maturer perspective of years and experience that let Matty find something to be thankful for, that the Da'd at least used a lube. The origins of the big man's clear familiarity with the stuff and its nighttime use not even adult perspective could illuminate, let Matty snap to, still, now, at twenty-three.

One hears, say, cirrhosis cirrhosis and and acute pancreat.i.tis acute pancreat.i.tis and thinks of the subject clutching his middle like an old film's gutshot actor and slumping quietly over to eternal rest with lids shut and face composed. Matty's Da'd died choking on aspirated blood, a veritable fountain of the darkest possible blood, Matty coated a spray-paint-russet as he held the man's yellow wrists and Mum lumbered off down the ward in search of a crash-cart team. Particles aspirated so terribly fine, like almost atomized, so that they hung in the air like the air itself over the cribbed bed as the man expired, cat-yellow eyes wide open and face screwed into the very most G.o.dawful rictusized grin of pain, his last thoughts (if any) unknowable. Matty still toasted the man's final memory with his first shot, whenever he indulged. and thinks of the subject clutching his middle like an old film's gutshot actor and slumping quietly over to eternal rest with lids shut and face composed. Matty's Da'd died choking on aspirated blood, a veritable fountain of the darkest possible blood, Matty coated a spray-paint-russet as he held the man's yellow wrists and Mum lumbered off down the ward in search of a crash-cart team. Particles aspirated so terribly fine, like almost atomized, so that they hung in the air like the air itself over the cribbed bed as the man expired, cat-yellow eyes wide open and face screwed into the very most G.o.dawful rictusized grin of pain, his last thoughts (if any) unknowable. Matty still toasted the man's final memory with his first shot, whenever he indulged. 278 278 11 NOVEMBER.

YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT.

First thing after supper Hal drops around to Scht.i.tt's room off the Comm.-Ad. lobby to go through the motions of getting some input on just what had gone so terribly wrong against Stice. Also to get maybe some kind of bead on why he'd had to play The Darkness publicly in the first place, so close to the WhataBurger. I.e. like what the exhibition might have signified. This endless tension among E.T.A.s about how the coaches are seeing you, gauging your progress - is your stock going up or down. But A. deLint's the only one in there, working on some sort of oversized spreadsheetish chart, lying p.r.o.ne and s.h.i.+rtless on the bare floor with his chin in his hand and a pungent Magic Marker, and says Scht.i.tt has gone off on the cycle somewhere after confections, but to sit down. Presumably meaning in a chair. So Hal's subjected to several minutes of deLint's take on the match, complete with stats out of the prorector's head. DeLint's back is pale and constellated with red pits of old pimples, though the back's nothing compared to Struck's or Shaw's back. There's a cane chair and a wood chair. DeLint's liquid-crystal laptop screen pulses grayly on the floor next to him. Scht.i.tt's room's overlit and there's no dust anywhere, not even in the very corners. Scht.i.tt's sound system's lights are on but nothing's playing. Neither Hal nor deLint mentions Orin's profiler's presence in the match's stands, nor the big lady's long interchange with Poutrincourt, which had been conspicuous. Stice's and Wayne's names are at the top of the huge chart on the floor, but Hal's name isn't. Hal says he can't tell whether he'd made some sort of basic tactical error or whether he just wasn't quite up to snuff this afternoon or what.

'You just never quite occurred out there, kid,' deLint apprises him. He has regressed certain figures to back this up, this nonoccurrence. His choice of words chills Hal to the root.

After which, during what's supposed to be mandatory P.M. Study Period, and despite the three chapters of Boards-prep his Boards-prep schedule calls for, Hal sits alone up in Viewing Room 6, the bad leg out along the couch in front of him, flexing the bad ankle idly, holding the other leg's knee to his chest, squeezing a ball but with the hand he doesn't play with, chewing Kodiak and spitting directly into an unlined wastebasket, his expression neutral, watching some cartridges of his late father's entertainments. Anyone else looking at him in there tonight would call Hal depressed. He watches several cartridges all in a row. He watches The American Century as Seen Through a Brick The American Century as Seen Through a Brick and and Pre-Nuptial Agreement of Heaven and h.e.l.l Pre-Nuptial Agreement of Heaven and h.e.l.l and then part of and then part of Valuable Coupon Has Been Removed, Valuable Coupon Has Been Removed, which is maddening because it's all a monologue from some bespectacled little contemporary of Miles Penn and Heath Pearson who was almost as ubiquitous as Reat and Bain in Himself's work but whose name right now Hal can't for the life of him recall. He watches parts of which is maddening because it's all a monologue from some bespectacled little contemporary of Miles Penn and Heath Pearson who was almost as ubiquitous as Reat and Bain in Himself's work but whose name right now Hal can't for the life of him recall. He watches parts of Death in Scarsdale Death in Scarsdale and and Union of Publicly Hidden in Lynn Union of Publicly Hidden in Lynn and and Various Small Flames Various Small Flames and and Kinds of Pain Kinds of Pain. The Viewing Room has insulated panelling behind the wallpaper and is essentially soundproof. Hal watches half of the 'Medusa v. Odalisque' thing but takes it out abruptly when people in the audience start getting turned to stone.

Hal tortures himself by imagining swarthy leering types threatening to torture various loved ones if Hal can't come up with the name of the kid in Valuable Coupon Valuable Coupon and and Low-Temperature Civics Low-Temperature Civics and and Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat.

There are two cartridges on V.R. 6's gla.s.s shelves of Himself getting interviewed in various arty Community-Access-cable-type forums, which Hal declines to watch.

The lights' slight flicker and subtle change in the pressure of the room is from the E.T.A. furnaces kicking on way down in the tunnels below Comm.-Ad. Hal s.h.i.+fts uneasily on the couch, spitting into the wastecan. The very faint smell of burnt dust is also from the furnace.

A minor short didactic one Hal likes and runs twice in a row is Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat. A bureaucrat in some kind of sterile fluorescentlit office complex is a fantastically efficient worker when awake, but he has this terrible problem waking up in the A.M., and is consistently late to work, which in a bureaucracy is idiosyncratic and disorderly and wholly unacceptable, and we see this bureaucrat getting called in to his supervisor's pebbled-gla.s.s cubicle, and the supervisor, who wears a severely dated leisure suit with his s.h.i.+rt-collar flaring out on either side of its rust-colored lapels, tells the bureaucrat that's he's a good worker and a fine man, but that this chronic tardiness in the A.M. is simply not going to fly, and if it happens one more time the bureaucrat is going to have to find another fluorescent-lit office complex to work in. It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological erasure, and the bureaucrat leaves his supervisor's cubicle duly shaken. That night he and his wife go through their Bauhaus condominium collecting every alarm clock they own, each one of which is electric and digital and extremely precise, and they festoon their bedroom with them, so there are like a dozen timepieces with their digital alarms all set for 0615h. But that night there's a power failure, and all the clocks lose an hour or just sit there blinking 0000h. over and over, and the bureaucrat still oversleeps the next A.M. He wakes late, lies there for a moment staring at a blinking 0000. He shrieks, clutches his head, throws on wrinkled clothes, ties his shoes in the elevator, shaves in the car, blasting through red lights on the way to the commuter rail. The 0816 train to the City pulls in to the station's lower level just as the crazed bureaucrat's car screeches into the station's parking lot, and the bureaucrat can see the top of the train sitting there idling from across the open lot. This is the very last temporally feasible train: if the bureaucrat misses this train he'll be late again, and terminated. He hauls into a Handicapped spot and leaves the car there at a crazy angle, vaults the turnstile, and takes the stairs down to the platform seven at a time, sweaty and bug-eyed. People scream and dive out of his way. As he careers down the long stairway he keeps his crazed eyes on the open doors of the 0816 train, willing them to stay open just a little longer. Finally, filmed in a glacial slo-mo, the bureaucrat leaps from the seventh-to-the-bottom step and lunges toward the train's open doors, and right in mid-lunge smashes headlong into an earnest-faced little kid with thick gla.s.ses and a bow-tie and those nerdy little schoolboy-shorts who's tottering along the platform under a tall armful of carefully wrapped packages. Kerwham, they collide. Bureaucrat and kid both stagger back from the impact. The kid's packages go flying all over the place. The kid recovers his balance and stands there stunned, gla.s.ses and bow-tie askew. 279 279 The bureaucrat looks frantically from the kid to the litter of packages to the kid to the train's doors, which are still open. The train thrums. Its interior is fluorescent-lit and filled with employed, ontologically secure bureaucrats. You can hear the station's PA announcer saying something tinny and garbled about departure. The stream of platform foot-traffic opens around the bureaucrat and the stunned boy and the litter of packages. Ogilvie'd once lectured for a whole period on this kid's character as an instance of the difference between an antagonist and a deuteragonist in moral drama; he'd mentioned the child-actor's name over and over. Hal tries whacking himself just over the right eye several times, to dislodge the name. The film's bureaucrat's buggy eyes keep going back and forth between the train's open doors and the little kid, who's looking steadily up at him, almost studious, his eyes big and liquid behind the lenses. Hal doesn't remember who played the bureaucrat, either, but it's the kid's name that's driving him bats. The bureaucrat's leaning away, inclined way over toward the train doors, as if his very cells were being pulled that way. But he keeps looking at the kid, the gifts, struggling with himself. It's a clear internal-conflict moment, one of Himself's films' very few. The bureaucrat's eyes suddenly recede back into their normal places in his sockets. He turns from the fluorescent doors and bends to the kid and asks if he's OK and says it'll all be OK. He cleans the kid's spectacles with his pocket handkerchief, picks the kid's packages up. About halfway through the packages the PA issues something final and the train's doors close with a pressurized hiss. The bureaucrat gently loads the kid back up with packages, neatens them. The train pulls out. The bureaucrat watches the train pull out, expressionless. It's anybody's guess what he's thinking. He straightens the kid's bow-tie, kneeling down the way adults do when they're ministering to a child, and tells him he's sorry about the impact and that it's OK. He turns to go. The platform's mostly empty now. Now the strange moment. The kid cranes his neck around the packages and looks up at the guy as he starts to walk away: The bureaucrat looks frantically from the kid to the litter of packages to the kid to the train's doors, which are still open. The train thrums. Its interior is fluorescent-lit and filled with employed, ontologically secure bureaucrats. You can hear the station's PA announcer saying something tinny and garbled about departure. The stream of platform foot-traffic opens around the bureaucrat and the stunned boy and the litter of packages. Ogilvie'd once lectured for a whole period on this kid's character as an instance of the difference between an antagonist and a deuteragonist in moral drama; he'd mentioned the child-actor's name over and over. Hal tries whacking himself just over the right eye several times, to dislodge the name. The film's bureaucrat's buggy eyes keep going back and forth between the train's open doors and the little kid, who's looking steadily up at him, almost studious, his eyes big and liquid behind the lenses. Hal doesn't remember who played the bureaucrat, either, but it's the kid's name that's driving him bats. The bureaucrat's leaning away, inclined way over toward the train doors, as if his very cells were being pulled that way. But he keeps looking at the kid, the gifts, struggling with himself. It's a clear internal-conflict moment, one of Himself's films' very few. The bureaucrat's eyes suddenly recede back into their normal places in his sockets. He turns from the fluorescent doors and bends to the kid and asks if he's OK and says it'll all be OK. He cleans the kid's spectacles with his pocket handkerchief, picks the kid's packages up. About halfway through the packages the PA issues something final and the train's doors close with a pressurized hiss. The bureaucrat gently loads the kid back up with packages, neatens them. The train pulls out. The bureaucrat watches the train pull out, expressionless. It's anybody's guess what he's thinking. He straightens the kid's bow-tie, kneeling down the way adults do when they're ministering to a child, and tells him he's sorry about the impact and that it's OK. He turns to go. The platform's mostly empty now. Now the strange moment. The kid cranes his neck around the packages and looks up at the guy as he starts to walk away: 'Mister?' the kid says. 'Are you Jesus?'

'Don't I wish,' the ex-bureaucrat says over his shoulder, walking away, as the kid s.h.i.+fts the packages and frees one little hand to wave Bye at the guy's topcoat's back as the camera, revealed now as mounted on the 0816's rear, recedes from the platform and picks up speed.

Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat remains Mario's favorite of all their late father's entertainments, possibly because of its unhip earnestness. Though to Mario he always maintains it's basically goo, Hal secretly likes it, too, the cartridge, and likes to project himself imaginatively into the ex-bureaucrat's character on the leisurely drive home toward ontological erasure. remains Mario's favorite of all their late father's entertainments, possibly because of its unhip earnestness. Though to Mario he always maintains it's basically goo, Hal secretly likes it, too, the cartridge, and likes to project himself imaginatively into the ex-bureaucrat's character on the leisurely drive home toward ontological erasure.

As a kind of weird self-punishment, Hal also plans to subject himself to the horrific Fun with Teeth Fun with Teeth and and Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators, Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators, then finally to one of Himself's posthumous. .h.i.ts, a cartridge called then finally to one of Himself's posthumous. .h.i.ts, a cartridge called Blood Sister: One Tough Nun Blood Sister: One Tough Nun that he'd always found kind of gratuitously nasty and overwrought, but which Hal has no idea that this piece of entertainment actually germinated out of James O. Incandenza's one brief and unpleasant experience with Boston AA, in the B.S. mid-'90s, when Himself lasted two and a half months and then drifted gradually away, turned off by the simplistic G.o.d-stuff and covert dogma. Bob-Hopeless, Hal spits way more than is his norm, now, and also likes having the wastecan right nearby in case he might throw up. That afternoon he'd had zilch in the way of a kinesthetic sense: he couldn't feel the ball on his stick. His nausea has nothing to do with watching his father's cartridges. For the last year his arm's been an extension of his mind and the stick an extension of the arm, acutely sensitive. Each of the cartridges is a carefully labelled black diskette; they're all signed neatly out on the clipboard by the egg-shaped gla.s.s bookshelf and are loaded in the cueing slots and waiting to drop, in order, and be digitally decoded. that he'd always found kind of gratuitously nasty and overwrought, but which Hal has no idea that this piece of entertainment actually germinated out of James O. Incandenza's one brief and unpleasant experience with Boston AA, in the B.S. mid-'90s, when Himself lasted two and a half months and then drifted gradually away, turned off by the simplistic G.o.d-stuff and covert dogma. Bob-Hopeless, Hal spits way more than is his norm, now, and also likes having the wastecan right nearby in case he might throw up. That afternoon he'd had zilch in the way of a kinesthetic sense: he couldn't feel the ball on his stick. His nausea has nothing to do with watching his father's cartridges. For the last year his arm's been an extension of his mind and the stick an extension of the arm, acutely sensitive. Each of the cartridges is a carefully labelled black diskette; they're all signed neatly out on the clipboard by the egg-shaped gla.s.s bookshelf and are loaded in the cueing slots and waiting to drop, in order, and be digitally decoded.

14 NOVEMBER.

YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT.

P. T. Krause: N. Cambridge: that infamous deceptive post-seizure feeling of well-being. That broken-fever, reversal-of-fortune-type highhearted feeling after a neuroelectric event. Poor Tony Krause awoke in the ambulance lizardless and continent and feeling right as rain. Lay there and flirted with the blue-jawed paramedic leaning over him, certain bawdy entendres on expressions like vital signs vital signs and and dilation dilation until the paramedic radioed ahead to Cambridge City's E. Room to cancel the crash-cart. Manipulated his skinny arms in a parodic Minimal Mambo, lying there. Fiddle-de-dee'd the paramedic's warning that post-seizure feelings of well-being were notoriously deceptive and transient. until the paramedic radioed ahead to Cambridge City's E. Room to cancel the crash-cart. Manipulated his skinny arms in a parodic Minimal Mambo, lying there. Fiddle-de-dee'd the paramedic's warning that post-seizure feelings of well-being were notoriously deceptive and transient.

And then also the little-mentioned advantage to being dest.i.tute and in possession of a Health Card that's expired and not even in your name: hospitals show you a kind of inverted respect; a place like Cambridge City Hospital bows to your will not to stay; they all of a sudden defer to your subjective diagnostic knowledge of your own condition, which post-seizure condition you feel has turned the corner toward improvement: they bow to your quixotic will: it's unfortunately not a free hospital but it is a free country: they honor your wishes and compliment your mambo and say Go with G.o.d.

It's a good thing you can't see what you look like, though.

And the serendipity of Cambridge City Hospital being just an eight-block stroll east on Cambridge St. and then south on Prospect, through mentholated autumn air, through Inman Square and up to Ant.i.toi Entertainment, maybe the one last place where a renewed, post-seizure, on-the-diagnostic-upswing if still slightly shaky young gender-dysphoric might yet expect a bit of kindness, pharmacological credit, since the affairs of Wo and Copley Library and heart.

The big brick cake of the hospital behind Krause in purple twilight. The brisk click of his heels on pavement, boa semi-formally loose on his shoulders and down beneath each arm, hand holding red leather collar closed at the throat, head up and staying that way on its own, steady eyes meeting with blase dignity the eyes of whoever pa.s.ses. The dignity of a man risen by will from the ashes of Withdrawal and now on the upswing and with places to go and potentially considerate Canadians to see. A charming and potentially once again in the not-too-distant future gorgeous creature with the renewed wherewithal to now meet the eyes of Inman Sq. pedestrians veering sharply away from the residual smells of men's room stall and subway vomit, the ashes from which he's been rescued and risen once again, feeling righter than rain. A rind of moon hanging c.o.c.ked above a four-spired church. And the emergent stars are yo-yos, you feel, after a seizure: Poor Tony feels as if he could cast them out, draw them in again at will.

The way Poor Tony Krause, Lolasister, and Susan T. Cheese became mercenary adjuncts to something dour Bertraund Ant.i.toi had invited them to call the 'Front-Contre-O.N.A.N.isme' was that, for a heavily cut bundle to split six ways, Lolasister, Susan T. Cheese, P. T. Krause, Bridget Tenderhole, Equus Reese, and the late Stokely ('Dark Star') McNair had had to wear identical red leather coats and auburn wigs and spike heels and go and hang around the lobby of Harvard Square's Sheraton Commander Hotel with six mannish-looking women in the same wigs and coats while an androgynous Quebecer insurgent who filled out h/his red leather coat in a way that made Bridget Tenderhole dig his nails into his palms in sheer green envy came through the Commander's revolving Lucite doors and strode purposefully into the crowded Epaulet Ballroom and threw foul semi-liquid violet waste from a souvenir miniature waste-displacement barrel in the face of the Canadian Minister of Inter-O.N.A.N. Trade, who was addressing the U.S. press from a leaf-shaped rostrum. The decoys were then required to mill hysterically in the lobby, all twelve of them, and then hit the revolving doors and disperse in a dozen different vectors as the androgynous waste-wielding Quebecer legged it out of the Epaulet Ballroom and lobby pursued by white-suited men with earplugs and Cobray M11 subautomatics, so the security guys'd see identical epicene figures high-heeling it away in different directions and get fuddled about who to chase. Susan T. Cheese and Poor Tony'd met the Ant.i.toi Bros. - only one of whom could or would speak, and who'd been in charge of the diversionary aspects of the Sheraton Commander operation, and had clearly been subordinate to still other Quebecers of way higher I.Q. - Krause and S.T.C. had met them at Inman Square's Ryle's Tavern, which had Gender-Dysphoric Night every second Wednesday, and attracted comely and unrough trade, and which Poor Tony pa.s.sed now (Ryle's), just after the Man o' War Grille, now only a block or so from the Ant.i.tois' gla.s.s-and-novelty-shop front, feeling not so much quite ill again as just deeply tired, after only five or so blocks - that post-fever, sleep-for-a-week-type cellular fatigue - and is debating with himself about whether to have a go at the purses of the two young and unstriking women walking just a few steps ahead, both of their purses hanging only by the flimsiest of evening-gown-width straps from slumped shoulders, the duo interracial, rare and disquieting in metro Boston, the black girl talking a click a minute and the white one not responding, her weary stolid plod and air of inattention fairly begging for a purse-s.n.a.t.c.h, both of them with an air about them of routine victimization, the sort of demoralized la.s.situde Poor Tony felt always guaranteed a minimum of protest or pursuit - though the white girl wore formidable-looking running shoes under her tartan skirt. So intent was Poor Tony Krause on the logistics and implications of the possible purses dangled as if by G.o.d right before him - how different to hit the Ant.i.tois' doorstep with liquid a.s.sets, to request a transaction rather than bare charity, more almost a social call than a contemptible Withdrawn snivel for compa.s.sion - so intent as he sidestepped an impressive pile of dog-droppings and pa.s.sed across the broad windows of the Man o' War that he never saw his old former crewmate Mad Matty Pemulis, a sure source of compa.s.sion, looking up and out and down and back up, aghast in recognition of what Poor Tony has come through the corridor to resemble.

Geoffrey Day's noted the way most of the male residents of Ennet House have special little cognomens for their genitals. E.g. 'Bruno,' 'Jake,' 'Fang' (Minty), 'The One-Eyed Monk,' 'Fritzie,' 'Russell the Love Muscle.' He speculates this could be a cla.s.s thing: neither he nor Ewell nor Ken Erdedy have named their Units. Like Ewell, Day enters a certain amount of comparative-cla.s.s data in his journal. Doony Glynn called his p.e.n.i.s 'Poor Richard'; Chandler Foss confessed to the moniker 'Bam-Bam.' Lenz had referred to his own Unit as 'the Frightful Hog.' Day would die before admitting he missed either Lenz or his soliloquies about the Hog, which had been frequent. The p.e.n.i.s in question had been that curious two or three shades darker than the rest of Lenz that people's p.e.n.i.ses sometimes are. Lenz had brandished it at his roommates whenever he wished to emphasize a point. It had been short and thick and blunt, and Lenz described the Hog as a primo example of what he called the Polish Curse, viz. undistinguished length but sobering circ.u.mference: 'Easy on the bottom but tears h.e.l.l out of the sides, brother.' This had been his description of the Polish Curse. A surprising amount of Day's Recovery Journal is filled with quotations from R. Lenz. Lenz's discharge had moved the tax-attorney Tiny Ewell up into the 3-Man room with Day. Ewell was the one man here with whom a conversation of anything remotely approaching depth could be held, so Day was nonplussed when he found himself, after a couple long nights, almost missing Lenz, his obsession with time, his patter, his way of leaning up against the wall upside-down in his briefs, or brandis.h.i.+ng the Hog.

And re Ennet House resident Kate Gompert and this depression issue: Some psychiatric patients - plus a certain percentage of people who've gotten so dependent on chemicals for feelings of well-being that when the chemicals have to be abandoned they undergo a loss-trauma that reaches way down deep into the soul's core systems - these persons know firsthand that there's more than one kind of so-called 'depression.' One kind is low-grade and sometimes gets called anhedonia anhedonia280 or or simple melancholy simple melancholy. It's a kind of spiritual torpor in which one loses the ability to feel pleasure or attachment to things formerly important. The avid bowler drops out of his league and stays home at night staring dully at kick-boxing cartridges. The gourmand is off his feed. The sensualist finds his beloved Unit all of a sudden to be so much feelingless gristle, just hanging there. The devoted wife and mother finds the thought of her family about as moving, all of a sudden, as a theorem of Euclid. It's a kind of emotional novocaine, this form of depression, and while it's not overtly painful its deadness is disconcerting and... well, depressing. Kate Gompert's always thought of this anhedonic state as a kind of radical abstracting of everything, a hollowing out of stuff that used to have affective content. Terms the undepressed toss around and take for granted as full and fleshy - happiness, joie de vivre, preference, love happiness, joie de vivre, preference, love - are stripped to their skeletons and reduced to abstract ideas. They have, as it were, denotation but not connotation. The anhedonic can still speak about happiness and meaning et al., but she has become incapable of feeling anything in them, of understanding anything about them, of hoping anything about them, or of believing them to exist as anything more than concepts. Everything becomes an outline of the thing. Objects become schemata. The world becomes a map of the world. An anhedonic can navigate, but has no location. I.e. the anhedonic becomes, in the lingo of Boston AA, Unable To Identify. - are stripped to their skeletons and reduced to abstract ideas. They have, as it were, denotation but not connotation. The anhedonic can still speak about happiness and meaning et al., but she has become incapable of feeling anything in them, of understanding anything about them, of hoping anything about them, or of believing them to exist as anything more than concepts. Everything becomes an outline of the thing. Objects become schemata. The world becomes a map of the world. An anhedonic can navigate, but has no location. I.e. the anhedonic becomes, in the lingo of Boston AA, Unable To Identify.

It's worth noting that, among younger E.T.A.s, the standard take on Dr. J. O. Incandenza's suicide attributes his putting his head in the microwave to this kind of anhedonia. This is maybe because anhedonia's often a.s.sociated with the crises that afflict extremely goal-oriented people who reach a certain age having achieved all or more than all than they'd hoped for. The what-does-it-all-mean-type crisis of middle-aged Americans. In fact this is in fact not what killed Incandenza at all. In fact the presumption that he'd achieved all his goals and found that the achievement didn't confer meaning or joy on his existence says more about the students at E.T.A. than it says about Orin's and Hal's father: still under the influence of the deLint-like carrot-and-stick philosophies of their hometown coaches rather than the more paradoxical Scht.i.tt/Incandenza/Lyle school, younger athletes who can't help gauging their whole worth by their place in an ordinal ranking use the idea that achieving their goals and finding the gnawing sense of worthlessness still there in their own gut as a kind of psychic bogey, something that they can use to justify stopping on their way down to dawn drills to smell flowers along the E.T.A. paths. The idea that achievement doesn't automatically confer interior worth is, to them, still, at this age, an abstraction, rather like the prospect of their own death - 'Caius Is Mortal' and so on. Deep down, they all still view the compet.i.tive carrot as the grail. They're mostly going through the motions when they invoke anhedonia. They're mostly small children, keep in mind. Listen to any sort of sub-16 exchange you hear in the bathroom or food line: 'Hey there, how are you?' 'Number eight this week, is how I am.' They all still wors.h.i.+p the carrot. With the possible exception of the tormented LaMont Chu, they all still subscribe to the delusive idea that the continent's second-ranked fourteen-year-old feels exactly twice as worthwhile as the continent's #4.

Deluded or not, it's still a lucky way to live. Even though it's temporary. It may well be that the lower-ranked little kids at E.T.A. are proportionally happier than the higher-ranked kids, since we (who are mostly not small children) know it's more invigorating to want want than to than to have, have, it seems. Though maybe this is just the inverse of the same delusion. it seems. Though maybe this is just the inverse of the same delusion.

Hal Incandenza, though he has no idea yet of why his father really put his head in a specially-d.i.c.kied microwave in the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar, is pretty sure that it wasn't because of standard U.S. anhedonia. Hal himself hasn't had a bona fide intensity-of-interior-life-type emotion since he was tiny; he finds terms like joie joie and and value value to be like so many variables in rarified equations, and he can manipulate them well enough to satisfy everyone but himself that he's in there, inside his own hull, as a human being - but in fact he's far more robotic than John Wayne. One of his troubles with his Moms is the fact that Avril Incandenza believes she knows him inside and out as a human being, and an internally worthy one at that, when in fact inside Hal there's pretty much nothing at all, he knows. His Moms Avril hears her own echoes inside him and thinks what she hears is him, and this makes Hal feel the one thing he feels to the limit, lately: he is lonely. to be like so many variables in rarified equations, and he can manipulate them well enough to satisfy everyone but himself that he's in there, inside his own hull, as a human being - but in fact he's far more robotic than John Wayne. One of his troubles with his Moms is the fact that Avril Incandenza believes she knows him inside and out as a human being, and an internally worthy one at that, when in fact inside Hal there's pretty much nothing at all, he knows. His Moms Avril hears her own echoes inside him and thinks what she hears is him, and this makes Hal feel the one thing he feels to the limit, lately: he is lonely.

It's of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It's maybe the vestiges of the Romantic glorification of Weltschmerz, Weltschmerz, which means world-weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it's the fact that most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip - and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It's more like peer- which means world-weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it's the fact that most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip - and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It's more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual p.u.b.erty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we've hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fas.h.i.+on masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to a.s.sume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it's stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete. Sentiment equals naivete on this continent (at least since the Reconfiguration). One of the things sophisticated viewers have always liked about J. O. Incandenza's The American Century as Seen Through a Brick The American Century as Seen Through a Brick is its unsubtle thesis that naivete is the last true terrible sin in the theology of millennial America. And since sin is the sort of thing that can be talked about only figuratively, it's natural that Himself's dark little cartridge was mostly about a myth, viz. that queerly persistent U.S. myth that cynicism and naivete are mutually exclusive. Hal, who's empty but not dumb, theorizes privately that what pa.s.ses for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naive and goo-p.r.o.ne and generally pathetic, is to be in some basic interior way forever infantile, some sort of not-quite-right-looking infant dragging itself anac.l.i.tically around the map, with big wet eyes and froggy-soft skin, huge skull, gooey drool. One of the really American things about Hal, probably, is the way he despises what it is he's really lonely for: this hideous internal self, incontinent of sentiment and need, that pules and writhes just under the hip empty mask, anhedonia. is its unsubtle thesis that naivete is the last true terrible sin in the theology of millennial America. And since sin is the sort of thing that can be talked about only figuratively, it's natural that Himself's dark little cartridge was mostly about a myth, viz. that queerly persistent U.S. myth that cynicism and naivete are mutually exclusive. Hal, who's empty but not dumb, theorizes privately that what pa.s.ses for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naive and goo-p.r.o.ne and generally pathetic, is to be in some basic interior way forever infantile, some sort of not-quite-right-looking infant dragging itself anac.l.i.tically around the map, with big wet eyes and froggy-soft skin, huge skull, gooey drool. One of the really American things about Hal, probably, is the way he despises what it is he's really lonely for: this hideous internal self, incontinent of sentiment and need, that pules and writhes just under the hip empty mask, anhedonia. 281 281 The American Century as Seen Through a Brick's main and famous key-image is of a piano-string vibrating - a high D, it looks like - vibrating, and making a very sweet unadorned solo sound indeed, and then a little thumb comes into the frame, a blunt moist pale and yet dingy thumb, with disreputable stuff crusted in one of the nail-corners, small and unlined, clearly an infantile thumb, and as it touches the piano string the high sweet sound immediately dies. And the silence that follows is excruciating. Later in the film, after much mordant and didactic panoramic brick-following, we're back at the piano-string, and the thumb is removed, and the high sweet sound recommences, extremely pure and solo, and yet now somehow, as the volume increases, now with something rotten about it underneath, there's something sick-sweet and overripe and potentially putrid about the one clear high D as its volume increases and increases, the sound getting purer and louder and more dysphoric until after a surprisingly few seconds we find ourselves right in the middle of the pure undampered sound longing and even maybe praying for the return of the natal thumb, to shut it up.

Hal isn't old enough yet to know that this is because numb emptiness isn't the worst kind of depression. That dead-eyed anhedonia is but a remora on the ventral flank of the true predator, the Great White Shark of pain. Authorities term this condition clinical depression clinical depression or or involutional depression involutional depression or or unipolar dysphoria unipolar dysphoria. Instead of just an incapacity for feeling, a deadening of soul, the predator-grade depression Kate Gompert always feels as she Withdraws from secret marijuana is itself itself a feeling. It goes by many names - a feeling. It goes by many names - anguish, despair, torment, anguish, despair, torment, or q.v. Burton's or q.v. Burton's melancholia melancholia or Yevtuschenko's more authoritative or Yevtuschenko's more authoritative psychotic depression psychotic depression - but Kate Gompert, down in the trenches with the thing itself, knows it simply as - but Kate Gompert, down in the trenches with the thing itself, knows it simply as It It.

It is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. It It is a sense of radical and thoroughgoing evil not just as a feature but as the essence of conscious existence. is a sense of radical and thoroughgoing evil not just as a feature but as the essence of conscious existence. It It is a sense of poisoning that pervades the self at the self's most elementary levels. is a sense of poisoning that pervades the self at the self's most elementary levels. It It is a nausea of the cells and soul. is a nausea of the cells and soul. It It is an unnumb intuition in which the world is fully rich and animate and un-map-like and also thoroughly painful and malignant and antagonistic to the self, which depressed self is an unnumb intuition in which the world is fully rich and animate and un-map-like and also thoroughly painful and malignant and antagonistic to the self, which depressed self It It billows on and coagulates around and wraps in billows on and coagulates around and wraps in Its Its black folds and absorbs into black folds and absorbs into Itself, Itself, so that an almost mystical unity is achieved with a world every const.i.tuent of which means painful harm to the self. so that an almost mystical unity is achieved with a world every const.i.tuent of which means painful harm to the self. Its Its emotional character, the feeling Gompert describes emotional character, the feeling Gompert describes It It as, is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we a.s.sociate with human agency - sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying - are not just unpleasant but literally horrible. as, is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we a.s.sociate with human agency - sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying - are not just unpleasant but literally horrible.

It is also lonely on a level that cannot be conveyed. There is no way Kate Gompert could ever even begin to make someone else understand what clinical depression feels like, not even another person who is herself clinically depressed, because a person in such a state is incapable of empathy with any other living thing. This anhedonic Inability To Identify is also an integral part of is also lonely on a level that cannot be conveyed. There is no way Kate Gompert could ever even begin to make someone else understand what clinical depression feels like, not even another person who is herself clinically depressed, because a person in such a state is incapable of empathy with any other living thing. This anhedonic Inability To Identify is also an integral part of It It. If a person in physical pain has a hard time attending to anything except that pain, 282 282 a clinically depressed person cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell. Everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a h.e.l.l for one. a clinically depressed person cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell. Everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a h.e.l.l for one.

The authoritative term psychotic depression psychotic depression makes Kate Gompert feel especially lonely. Specifically the makes Kate Gompert feel especially lonely. Specifically the psyc