David Wallace - Infinite jest

‘A matter of what’s the word personal preference and taste that doesn’t impact 7’s surefire no-miss quality one way or the other. It’s the doomed involuntary conflicted good-man’s-downfall-type quality that no Subject can seemingly resist.’

‘Ainsi, then.’

‘Well O. the thing’s sick. It’s even sicker than 4. Was it 4? The one you said that Loach inspired, where you’d supposedly just that very day dropped out of Jesuit seminary after umpteen years of disciplined celibacy because of carno-spiritual yearnings you hadn’t even been quite in touch with as carno-spiritual in nature until you just now this very moment laid eyes on the Subject? With the breviary and rented collar?’

‘That was 4, yes. 4’s pretty much of a gynecopia also, but within a kind of narrower demographic psychological range of potential Subjects. Notice I never said 4 was no-miss.’

‘Well you must be a very proud young man. This is even sicker. The fake ring and fictional spouse. It’s like you’re inventing somebody you love just to seduce somebody else into helping you betray her. What’s it like. It’s like suborning somebody into helping you desecrate a tomb they don’t know is empty.’

‘This is what I get for passing down priceless fruits of hard experience to somebody who still thinks it’s exciting to shave.’

‘I ought to go. I have a blackhead I have to see to.’

‘You haven’t asked why I called right back. Why I’m calling during high-toll hours.’

‘Plus I feel some kind of toothache starting, and it’s the weekend, and I want to see Schacht before Mrs. Clarke’s confectionery day in the sun tomorrow. Plus I’m naked.’

‘I’m surprised you were even there. In person. I was expecting the Disembodied Voice and asking you to call back ASAP on this. What is it out there, 1600? Why aren’t you outside hard at play? Don’t tell me Schtitt started cancelling P.M.’S for I.-Day Eve.’

‘I tagged this kid Pemberton in the eye up at net. It was inadvertent. We were only four games in. He hit a big soft fluffy goose of an approach and I was trying to handcuff him. I hit it at him only to handcuff him. He never even got his stick up. Right in the left socket. It made a sound like a champagne cork. A prorector named Corbett Thorp said he thought Pemberton might have detached a retina. Something sure seemed detached. He was walking around in diminishing circles like he’d been hit with a mallet.’

‘You sound really, like, remorse-riddled.’

‘Kitchens arid heat, O. I’ve taken my share of balls in various spots. And whence bizarre metric theories about Emily Dickinson all of a sudden, by the way? And what’s up with the lurking figures with wheelchairs?’

‘You’re a Top-Ten junior stickman suddenly now this year, Hallie, what’s Schtitt doing giving you a cloth mouse like Hugh Pemberton to bat around anyway?’

‘You remember him?’

‘Who could forget a kid that looks like he’s curtsying when he serves? With the white visor and the little amber glasses? That kid’s been hanging from the bottom of the ladder by his nails since he was nine.’

‘It’s been carnage all week. Schtitt’s playing the C teams against the A’s. It’s for the C’s development, Donni said. Also because today word’s down from the tower some of the staff thought some of the A’s looked tentative against Port Wash.’

‘They despise tentativity.’

‘I think they want us just short of cocky for the Fundraiser and then the WhataBurger, where Wayne’s got a chance to knock this Veach kid off the pole.’

‘Let’s not forget you though either, H. I can get down for at least the WhataBurger semis if you get there, if you want incentive.’

‘As in in person, O.?’

‘Word is you’re worth watching now.’

‘Word?’

‘I keep my ear to the cement, Hallie.’

‘At least for very short Subjects, I’d imagine.’

‘We take off for the Patriots that Friday, what is that like the 27th or -8th, but it’s a Saturday afternoon game. I can be down there by midday Sunday if you’re still in the thick.’

‘You’ll probably need to wear some sort of sign around your neck so I know it’s you.’

‘So then you’ll be up here just as we’re down there, oddly, playing.’

‘It goes without saying you’d give me the advance skinny if anybody I didn’t want to see was by any chance flying down there with you guys.’

‘The C versus A thing’s been more like grotesque than confidence-building. Guys are taking out stress in kind of twisted ways. Struck beat Gloeckner in 40 minutes and then made a show of revealing he’d had 3-kilo ankle-weights on under his socks. Wayne made van Slack cry right there in front of everybody.’

‘Word is Wayne has exactly one gear.’

‘Then Thursday Coyle had his left wrist tied to his right ankle and was still beating this new kid Stockhausen until Schtitt sent Tex Watson down to tell him to knock it off.’

‘So but the reason I’m really calling, Hallie.’

‘And you’re being evasive about the dread about the disabled. The like rolling stalkers.’

‘I haven’t seen wheel one in days. I’m thinking possibly this was a kind of very shy sort of fan club of people without legs that look up to me —’

‘Grotesque entendre, O.’

‘— as, like, the ultimate leg. They use different ruses to follow me around and never come close or say anything because they’re really shy because they don’t have legs. So now my mind’s resting easier.’

‘Now if the roach- and spiders-at-heights fears’d subside you could really hold the head high.’

‘So the reason I’m calling.’

‘I already said I’d let you know when and if. No sightings of any journalists. Your Moment profiler.’

‘I’m actually glad I got you in person. I was going to ask you to call me ASAP.’

Tm pleased to call you a sap whenever you like, O.’

‘That’s below you. And I can hear you still chewing that grisly shit. That shit’s going to make your lower jaw fall right off. I’ve seen it happen down here, believe me. And you’re wondering why the tooth problems all the time suddenly.’

‘Snuff’s saliva-stimulating. It’s actually oral-hygiene-enhancing, when you factor in all the extra brushing. The caries are Himself’s legacy. You know that. The Himself whose root canals put Dr. Zegarelli’s kids through Andover.’

‘This basically nonsocial call, H., is because I need your feedback on some issues from these half-dozen or so very complex and far-ranging and in-depth conversations I had with a certain Subject.’

‘Not the mobile-home person, surely.’

‘Whole different ballpark of Subject. The Dickinson theory I have to admit came from these conversations.’

‘Sounds like one deep lady.’

‘Whole levels and dimensions to this one. We’ve had a whole series of very intense verbal interchanges. Transcendentalist poetics was just one of the in-depth issues ranged over. This subject keeps me on the cerebral toes.’

‘Dickinson’s about as Transcendentalist as Poe. Your Subject’s 0 for 2.’

‘This is all off to the side of the call. I told this Subject I’d consider certain issues very carefully before I really responded.’

‘Which meant you’d consider what she wanted to hear and how to ladle it on until she begs you to have intercourse with her.’

‘I hence need considered-sounding responses to two basic questions.’

‘Why this sick thing of making me complicit in these Strategic pursuits when you know I think they’re troubled and sick? It’s like asking somebody to help you culture anthrax or something.’

‘Just two questions is all.’

‘Now I’m beginning almost to be able to feel my pulse in the tooth, it feels like the infection’s gathering force so fast.’

‘Firstly, what does the following word I can’t find in the dictionary mean: s-a-m-i-z-d-a-t.’

‘Samizdat. Russian compound noun. Soviet twentieth-century idiom. Sam — stem: “self”; izdat — undeclined verb: “to publish.” I think the literal denotation’s technically archaic: the sub-rosa dissemination of politically charged materials that were banned when the Eschaton-era Kremlin was going around banning things. Connotatively, the generic meaning now is any sort of politically underground or beyond-the-pale press or the stuff published thereby. There’s no real samizdat in the U.S. per se, First Amendment-wise, I don’t think. I suppose ultra-radical Québecois and Albertan stuff could be considered O.N.A.N.ite samizdat.’

Tow.’

‘Not just Séparatisteur pamphlets, now. It’d have to be more incendiary. Materials advocating violence, destruction of property, disruption of Grids, anti-O.N.A.N. terrorism and so on. I don’t think O.N.A.N.’s got technical bans per se, I don’t think, but Poutrincourt said the R.C.M.P.s are empowered to impound literature and even desktop-publishing and InterLink hardware et cetera without any sort of warrant.’

‘R.C.M.P.’

‘Mounties, O.’

‘The Nelson Eddy guys in silly hats and equestrian jaspers.’

‘Close enough. Next question.’

‘So you’d have no idea why The Mad Stork’s name would come up in connection with somebody saying samizdat.’

‘This is the second question?’

‘Call it l(a).’

‘Not in any strict sense of the term. I guess I could see some Séparatisteurs trying to read The ONANtiad or Brick as anti-Reconfiguration films. Maybe stuff like Poultry in Motion. A lot of Himself’s stuff was self-distributed, too. And Immanent Domain’s allegedly on one level an allegory about the Concavity, though that overlooks that Gentle wasn’t even President when the thing came out. But you can tell your Subject that Himself’s work was all very self-consciously American. His interest in politics was subordinate to form. Always. And none of it’s banned. Whatever’s still on the InterLace back-menus is inter-Grid: you can order The ONANtiad in Manitoba, Vera Cruz, anywhere.’

‘Speaking of Quebec Separatism, interestingly.’

‘Why do I get a sinking feeling this is going to be l(a)-point-one or something. Maybe I could call you back tomorrow and we could chat on and on. I’m going to be here reading for Boards till the Eschaton at 1400. Holiday tolls are low.’

‘It’s my nickel, here.’

‘Or maybe you could simply call the person who’s really the person to chat with about all issues Canadian, O.’

‘Droll.’

‘Moving right along to question 2, then — my Epsom salts are getting cold.’

‘The big one is what you’d have to say if some tough-minded and spectacular Subject asked you what you have to say about the way every Nuck Séparatisteur up there, from the Bloc Québecois and Fils de Montcalm all the way out to the really bug-eyed radical fringe-type sects and terroristic cells —’

‘I’m going to have to object to the word Nuck, O.’

‘Beg pardon. The issue being why the whole Québec-Séparatisteur collection up there dropped the original Quebec-independence objective like a rock and switched seemingly overnight to putting everything into agitating against O.N.A.N. and the Reconfiguration and forcing the return of the Concavity to our map.’

‘O., this is O.N.A.N.ite politics. I’d look my Subject right in the big blue eye and tell her straight-out that the field of nanomicroscopy is not yet advanced enough to measure my interest in the intricacies of O.N.A.N.ite politics. Poutrincourt’s class is disquieting enough. The whole thing’s unpleasant and dry and repetitive and mostly dull. Thevet has a kind of compelling romanto-historical yarn to spin, though, about —’