David Wallace - Infinite jest

Tm serious. You’ve had some background, at least. The only Nuck prorector we ever got taught ceramics.’

‘But you’re the one with the Pleiades and the 5 on the French Achievement boards and the ability to trill your R’s.’

‘That’s Parisian. And now I don’t even watch the sports summaries, much less the political stuff. Just try for just one second. This Subject raised issues that were way out of my depth.’

‘That’s not even coherent enough to be a mixed metaphor, O. Are you honestly telling me you want your depth increased? Or are you just looking for some Cliff-Note summary so you can incorporate the impression of depth into some new panty-removal campaign? Are you going to tell her you studied O.N.A.N.ite politics under the Jesuits?’

‘The whole thing was dicey. I had to tell the Subject that I had to think about it and ponder, that I always took time to ponder at depth before I just dashed off an opinion.’

‘And don’t tell me: this is your Moment profiler? Your Boswell in an E cup? Is this why she’s en route? Was the whole familio-historical profile story last week a dodge? Am I really just supposed to sit down with her and paint you now as a political-minded ex-seminarian who’s married to someone only some sort of heroically proportioned goddess could tempt you to betray? Because I’ll tell you right now that Schtitt’s not going to let any of us here talk to anybody from some glossy rag like Moment without him or deLint sitting right there with us. Gone are the days of Himself not caring how many who’s-the-next-Venus-Williams-hype journalists haunt the grounds, man. Schtitt’s now calling the shots on who talks to whom. DeLint has a whole scathing appendix to the Admissions Manual about junior development and toxic hype.’

‘Helen’ll be able to get in.’

‘Schtitt’s not going to let me hype your political acuity or pseudo-wife or anything else. He’s got C.T. seeing this place as a sort of prophylactic against commercial attention. He thinks junior commercial attention’s deforming. The Manual now invites us to see ourselves as in utero and hype as thalidomide. Schtitt’ll let her in and stick her in with C.T. and let C.T. filibuster her till she throws herself out the window like that journalist from Condé Nast last fall.’

‘Forget the profile. Speak to her or don’t. This is personal.’

‘Meaning you’ve discovered she has small children and maybe a marriage you can deform.’

‘I’m ignoring all this. Helen’s a different sort of Subject. I’ve discovered levels and dimensions to Helen that have nothing to do with profiles.’

‘Meaning she’s a tough nut. Meaning you’ve set your crosshairs and she hasn’t succumbed. And she knows you’re not married and not a tormented Jesuit. She’s Strategy-resistant because she knows too much to fall for a persona.’

‘Co-ponder with me a second, if you’re through. Stop me at any time. Jump right in at any time. On both the ultra-left and — right, the brass ring up there has always been independent secession for Quebec, historically, no? Am I off? The Fronte Liberation and so on? The Fils de Montcalm. Or is it maybe du? Are they the ones in Spandex and pancake makeup? The giant pies dropped on Ottawa after the third Meech Lake Accord?’

‘Parizeau et all and so on. Feel free to stop me or jump in. It all’d been about getting Quebec out of Canada, right? The Meech Lake and Charlottetown revolts. The Crétien assassination. “Notre Rai Pays.” Terrorists in plaid flannel. French Canada for the Fran-cophonic. Acadian Zionism. “La Québecois Toujours.” “On ne parle d’Anglais ici.” ‘

‘With all the terrorism especially directed at Ottawa, pressure on Ottawa and Canada. “Permettez Nous Partir, Permettez Nous Être.” Or we blow up the Frontenac. Or we irradiate Winnipeg. Or we put a railroad-spike through Crétien’s eye. This is not exactly deep-depth, O.’

‘Yes and then but suddenly everything changes when Ottawa, under duress or no, puts itself under the surgically sterile like thumb of O.N.A.N., with the advent of O.N.A.N., Gentle, quote unquote Experialism.’

‘You don’t sound like you need any input from me on all this, O.’

‘But so but then in immediate unison all the various different Separatist groups drop secession and independence like rocks and all transfer their insurgent resentment to O.N.A.N. and the U.S., and now insurge against O.N.A.N. on behalf of the same Canada they’d spent decades treating like the enemy. Does this seem a little bit odd?’

t 5

‘Doesn’t this seem a little odd, Hallie?’

‘I’m really the wrong blood-relative to ask about the intricacies of the Canadian radical mind, O. We have a blood-relative who’s got dual citizenship, if you recall. Who I’m sure’d be overjoyed to ponder Separatist ideological flux with you all you want and then some. I’m sure. Once her jaw recovered from being unhinged by joy that you actually called.’

‘I’m slapping not one but both knees at the dro—’

‘ ‘d you know she’s never once asked me whether Booboo and I hear from you? Not once. A sort of appalled pride. She’s ashamed of even hurting over it, some —’

‘Kidding all off to the side, I’m serious about this. The oddness of it. You know I respect your frontal lobes, Hallie. I’m asking for depth, not any kind of expertise.’

‘You just ignored the meat of everything I just said. You’re like an old person about this. With an old person’s weird selective hearing.’

‘I’m going to let this whole pot-insulting-the-kettle on selective awareness of things just slide right on by. As a gesture that this is a serious call. Why they all seemingly with one mind switched objectives.’

‘And acting on behalf of the whole of Canada, Quebec, suddenly, is what you want explained. Or do you simply want it confirmed as odd?’

‘The Subject cited polls from when they were still bothering to take polls up there that said like upwards of four-fifths of all Canadians wanted out of O.N.A.N. and hoped President Gentle had a ghastly accident in his UV-booth, et cetera.’

‘So the second and final question concerns this shift from anti-Canadian Québecer nationalism to anti-O.N.A.N. Canadian nationalism.’

‘What I was thinking is is this maybe a textbook case of Johnny-Gentle-type-find-an-enemy-for-a-divided-nation-to-come-together-by-blaming-and-hating theory in action? Is this somehow Quebec like circling its wagons with Alberta and all the other provinces in the face of a common enemy?’

‘…’

‘Hal?’

‘You could always point out to the profiler that there’s a nice little irony to Gentle’s strategy ending up bringing Canada together at our expense, when it was pretty obviously meant to bring us together at Canada’s expense.’

‘But you sound like you think the more deeply pondered response would be something else.’

‘All I know is some very basic schoolboy history from Poutrincourt’s class. And from the advantage of occasional contact with the Moms.’

‘Hit me.’

‘The historical record indicates pretty clearly that the one and only nationalism in the Québecois soul is Québecois nationalism. It’s been “Nous v. La Plupart Toujours,” and the more so the farther out on the fringes you get. I can’t see the Séparatisteurs considering Quebec a true part of Canada any more than Lesotho saw itself as part of SOUTHAF. Poutrincourt keeps thumping the fact that there’s no valid comparison between Quebec and our own antebellum South. Why do you think Meech Lake III hfailed? It’s because at root they’ve never seen themselves as anything other than hostages of Ottawa and the Anglophone provinces. Even moderate Séparatisteurs like Parizeau spoke of the final surrender on the Plains of Abraham as a kind of forced property-transfer, the whole original war 1as one in which French-Canadians weren’t the losers so much as the spoils. Booty.’

‘This all checks with the Subject’s take.’

‘The impression I get is that Quebec’s hatred of anglophone Canada transcends anything they could work up against O.N.A.N. Just mention 1759 and the Moms’s lips disappear. Pemulis and Axford keep coming early and putting a big gothic 1759 on the blackboard before GÔcMJ just to watch the Moms’s lips disappear when she comes in and sees it.’

‘My sense is the Subject concurs on the hatred-assessment. They want plain out, always have. Health-care and NAFTA be damned. That’s why they sabotaged all three Meech Lake Accords, she says. She seems to imply the anti-O.N.A.N. thing is some sort of anomalous dodge or something.’

‘I’ve got to confess a sort of curiosity now about this profiler you just last week were preparing to fend off about Himself. Not to mention comparing her to defensive linemen. Rubensian was never your type, I didn’t think.’

‘…’

‘Plus any Subject you’re bothering about even giving the impression of depth to. This is more work than your type of Subject tends to demand, usually, isn’t it?’

‘…’

‘This is something else that isn’t you. You’ve never exactly been shy about discussing Subjects with me.’

‘It’s complex. She’s grown on me.’

‘It’s this certain way she takes notes on your explanation of Coffin-Corner punts.’

‘It’s complicated. There’s a lot I’m not saying. She’s got levels. I’ve discovered levels and dimensions to her I didn’t know were originally there.’

‘Oh O., please don’t let it just be you’ve just discovered she’s married with little kids.

That’s not it by any chance is it? Please let it be something other than little kids.’

‘…’

‘Let it be something other than the hordes of other Subjects I’ve sat and listened to excruciatingly detailed sadistic blow-by-blow Strategic accounts of. Orin “Home-wrecker” Incandenza, this is what the team calls you, in like jest? You sick pup.’

‘I’m a sick pup? I’m the sick one?’

‘… 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, resents even the fact she forgives things like you and Marlon Bain killing her dog —’

‘— a hit-and-run-and-back-up-and-hit-again driver, I told you rep—’

‘— pretends he gets the most retardate PR staffer he can make hold the crayon to send grotesque solecistic pseudo-impersonal replies to her pathetic letters. Jethro Bodine, O.? Jethro Bodine?

‘A private chuckle. She’d never get it.’

‘Disowns her — worse, sicker, tells himself he’s convinced himself she doesn’t even exist, as if she never existed, but by some coincidence has this rapacious fetish for young married mothers he can strategize into betraying their spouses and maybe damaging their kids for all time, and has this apparently even more rapacious compulsive need to call the blood-relative he hasn’t even seen in four years and tell him all about every Subject and Strategy, blow-by-blow, long distance, in nanomicroscopic detail. Let’s stop and ponder this all for a moment, O., what say?’

‘I’m letting all this be just water off a duck’s back. I can tell it’s the tooth talking. I can remember the stress of the place. All I can say is that trust me here: this Moment Subject is like strickenly dissimilar from what you’re indicting. The levels and circumstances aren’t the ones you’re so anxious to call rapacious. Is all I can say at this juncture.’