I’m on
page 950.
This is an entirely self-indulgent blogging project, meant mostly for
myself; I’m just trying to do it.
Right now two important things are happening . . .
1. Gately is
hospitalized, trying to resist Demerol for serious pain, and we’re getting a
trip down his memory lane.
2. Hal gets a whole,
big first person point of view section.
Listening
for the lovely moments:
HOW ONE
WALKS IN THE CITY: “Lenz walked by with urban dignity, like he both saw them
and didn’t.”
LIFE IN
REHAB: “Marathe and the others were invited to sit in the living room with a
cup of unpleasant coffee.”
WHEN
YOU MEET SMART-ASS PRETENTIOUS TYPES: “. . . the sort of guy . . that knew how
to long-divide and say whom but
didn’t even know how to look up shit in the Yellow Pages.”
I think
the only two characters I feel fully engaged with are Gately and Joelle.
Joelle’s story of bringing Orrin home to Kentucky, her father’s unnatural
affection for her, and her mother’s breaking point are amazing. Beginning on
page 793 and continuing . . . ending, tragically, in the chemical disfigurement
of Joelle and the suicide of the mother.
GATELY
HOSPITALIZED: “ . . . each breath was a hard decision. . .”
RE: THE
TENNIS KIDS WATCHING PORN: “bombed by their own glands—they were pop-eyed at
the prospect . . .”
A
COUPLE INSTANCES OF GOLD: “. . .shaken him like a margarita . . .”
“Yes,
she did look witchy, but who over fifty didn’t?”
“[the
sexy nurse] comes over and puts a cool soft hand on Gately’s forehead in a way
that makes the forehead want to die with shame . . .”
MORE
CRAZY INFO ON FILM AUTEUR J. O. INCANDENA’S “LETHALLY ENTERTAINING” FILM CALLED
“INFINITE JEST”:
This is
from Molly Notkin . . .
“ . . it features Madame Psychosis as some
kind of maternal instantiation of the archetypal figure Death, sitting naked,
corporeally gorgeous, ravishing, hugely pregnant, her hideously deformed face
either veiled or blanked out by undulating computer-generated square of color .
. . sitting there nude, explaining in very simple childlike language to whomever
the film’s camera represents that Death is always female, and that the female
is always maternal. I.e. that the woman who kills you is always your next
life’s mother.”
“—That
Madame Psychosis and the film’s Auteur had not been sexually enmeshed, and foe
reasons beyond the fact that the Auteur’s belief in a finite world-total of
available erections rendered him always either impotent or guilt-ridden.”
“That
Madame Psychosis had never mentioned the fate or present disposition of the
unreleased cartridge . . . and had described it only from the perspective of
the experience of performing in it, nude, and had never seen it, but had a hard
time believing it was even entertaining, let alone lethally entertaining, and
tended to believe it had represenred little more than the thinly veiled cries
of a man at the very terminus of his existential tether . . .”
“That
it seemed pretty unlikely to her, Molly Notkin, that the Auteur’s widow had any
connections to any anti-American groups, cells, or movements, no matter what
the files on her indiscreet youth might suggest, since from everything Molly
Notkin’s heard the woman didn’t have much interest in any agendas larger than
her own neurotic agendas. . .”
“ . .
the widow struck her as very possibly Death incarnate.”
“and it
had struck Madame Psychosis as bizarre that it was she, Madame Psychosis, whom
the Auteur kept casting as various feminine instantiations od Death when he had
the real thing right under his nose, eminently photogenic to boot . . .
apparently a realrestaurant-silencer0type-beauty even in her late forties.”
Notkin “testifies” that the film might’ve had less to
do with lofty theoretical mumbo-jumbo, “but rather much more likely to do with
the fact that his widow-to-be was engaging in sexual enmeshments with just
about everything with a Y-chromosome . . . including possibly with the Autuer’s
son.”
Joelle also “testifies”? She says of Incandenza, “He’d
stopped being drunk all the time. That killed him. He couldn’t take it but he’d
made a promise.” She says, “There wasn’t anything unendurable or enslaving in
either of my scenes. Nothing like these actual perfection rumors. These are
academic rumors. He talked about making something too perfect. But as a joke.” She continues, “I used to go
around saying the veil was to disguise lethal perfection, that I was too
leathally beautiful for people to stand . . . I hid by hiddenness, in denial
about the deformity itself. So Jim had a failed piece and told me it was too
perfect to release—it’d paralyze people. It was entirely clear that it was an
ironic joke.”
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