David Wallace - Infinite jest

Each of the eight to ten prorectors at the Enfield Tennis Academy teaches one academic class per term, usually a once-a-week Saturday thing. This is mostly for certification reasons, [104]plus all but one of the prorectors are low-level touring professionals, with low-level professional tennis players in general being not exactly the most candent stars in the intellectual Orion. Because of all this, their classes tend to be not only electives but Academy jokes, and the E.T.A. Dean of Academic Affairs regards prorector-taught classes — e.g., in Fall Y.D.A.U., Corbett Thorp’s ‘Deviant Geometries,’ Aubrey deLint’s ‘Introduction to Athletic Spreadsheets,’ or the colon-mad Tex Watson’s ‘From Scarcity to Plenty: From Putrid Stuff Out of the Ground to the Atom in the Mirror: A Lay Look at Energy Resources from Anthracite to Annular Fusion,’ etc. — as not satisfying any sort of quadrivial requirement. But the older E.T.A.s, with more latitude credit- and elective-wise, still tend to clamor and jostle for spots in the prorectors’ seminars, not just because the classes can be passed by pretty much anybody who shows up and displays vital signs, but because most of the prorectors are (also like low-level tennis pros as a genus) kind of bats, and their classes are usually fascinating the way plane-crash footage is fascinating. E.g., although any closed room she’s in soon develops a mysterious and overpowering vitamin-B stink he can just barely stand, E.T.A. senior Ted Schacht has taken Mary Esther Thode’s perennially batsoid ‘The Personal Is the Political Is the Psy-chopathological: the Politics of Contemporary Psychopathological Double-Binds’ all three times it’s been offered. M. E. Thode is regarded by the up-perclassmen as probably insane, by like clinical standards, although her coaching proficiency with the Girls’ 16’s is beyond dispute. A bit on the old side for an E.T.A. prorector, Thode had been a pupil of Coach G. Schtitt back at Schtitt’s infamous old crop-and-epaulette Harry Hopman program in Winter Park FL and then for a couple years at the new E.T.A. as a top and Show-bound if kind of rabidly political and not too tightly wrapped female junior. Later blacklisted off both the Virginia Slims and Family Circle professional distaff circuits after trying to organize the circuits’ more politically rabid and unwrapped players into a sort of radical post-feminist grange that would compete only in pro tournaments organized, subsidized, refereed, overseen, and even attended and cartridge-distributed exclusively to not only women or homosexual women, but only by, for, and to registered members of the infamously unpopular early-interdependence-era Female Objectification Prevention and Protest Phalanx, [105]given the shoe, she’d come, practically with a bandanna-tied stick over her shoulder, back to Coach Schtitt, who for historico-national reasons has always had a soft place inside for anyone who seems even marginally politically repressed. Last spring’s airless and B-redolent section of Thode’s psycho-political offering, ‘The Toothless Predator: Breast-Feeding as Sexual Assault,’ had been one of the most disorientingly fascinating experiences of Ted Schacht’s intellectual life so far, outside the dentist’s chair, whereas this fall’s focus on pathologic double-bind-type quandaries was turning out to be not quite as compelling but weirdly — almost intuitively — easy: E.g., from today’s:

The Personal Is the Political Is the Psychopathological: The Politics of

Contemporary Psychopathological Double-Binds

Midterm Examination

Ms. THODE November 7, Yr. of D.A.U.

KEEP YOUR ANSWERS BRIEF AND GENDER NEUTRAL

ITEM

(la) You are an individual who, is pathologically kleptomaniacal. As a kleptomaniac, you are pathologically driven to steal, steal, steal. You must steal.

(Ib) But, you are also an individual who, is pathologically agoraphobic. As an agoraphobic, you cannot so much as step off your front step of the porch of your home, without undergoing palpitations, drenching sweats, and feelings of impending doom. As an agoraphobic, you are driven to pathologically stay home and not leave. You cannot leave home.

(Ic) But, from (la) you are pathologically driven to go out and steal, steal, steal. But, from (Ib) you are pathologically driven to not ever leave home. You live alone.

Meaning, there is no one else in your home to steal from. Meaning, you must go out, into the marketplace to satisfy your overwhelming compulsion to steal, steal, steal. But, such is your fear of the marketplace that you cannot under any circumstances, leave home. Whether your problem is true personal psychopathology, or merely marginalization by a political definition of’psychopathology,’ nevertheless, it is a Double-Bind.

(Id) Thus, respond to the question of, what do you do?

Schacht was just looping the d in mail fraud when Jim Troeltsch’s pseudo-radio program, backed by its eustacian-crumpling operatic soundtrack, came over 112 West House’s E.T.A.-intercom speaker up over the classroom clock. When no away-tournaments or meets were going on, WETA student-run ‘radio’ got to ‘broadcast’ E.T.A.-related news, sports and community affairs for ten or so minutes over the closed-circuit intercom every Tuesday and Saturday during the last P.M. class period, like 1435-I445h. Troeltsch, who’s dreamed of a tennis-broadcast career ever since it became clear (very early) that he would be in no way Show-bound — the Troeltsch who spends every last fin his folks send him on his staggering InterLace/SPN-pro-match-cartridge library, and spends almost every free second calling pro action with his room’s TP’s viewer’s volume down; [106]the kind of pathetic Troeltsch who shamelessly kiss-asses the InterLace/SPN sportscasters whenever he’s on the scene of an I/SPN-recorded jr. event, [107]pestering the sportscasters and offering to get them doughnuts and joe, etc.; the Troeltsch who already owns a whole rack of generic blue blazers and practices combing his hair so that it has that glassy toupee-like look of a real sportscaster — Troeltsch’s been doing the sports portion of WETA’s weekly broadcast ever since Schacht’s old man died of ulcerative colitis and Ted came up to join his old childhood doubles partner at the Academy in the fall of the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar, which had been four months after the late E.T.A. Headmaster’s felo de se, when the flags were still at half-mast and everybody’s bicep was banded in black cotton, which the mesomorphic Schacht got excused from because of biceps-size; Troeltsch’d already been doing WETA sports when he came, and he’s been undislodgeable from the post ever since.

The sports portion of WETA’s broadcast is mostly just reporting the outcomes and scores of whatever competitive events the E.T.A. squads have been in since the last broadcast. [108]Troeltsch, who approaches his twice-a-week duties with all possible verve, will say he feels like the hardest thing about his intercom-broadcasts is keeping things from getting repetitive as he goes through long lists of who beat whom and by how much. His quest for synonyms for beat and got beat by is never-ending and serious and a continual source of irritation to his friends. Mary Esther’s exams were notorious no-brainers and automatic A’s if you were careful with your third-person pronouns, and even while he listened closely enough to Troeltsch to be able to supply the audience-feedback that tonight’s dinner-table would be inescapable without, Schacht was already on the test’s third item, which concerned exhibitionism among the pathologically shy. 11/7’s broadcast results were from E.T.A.’s 71–37 rout of Port Washington’s A and B teams at the Port Washington annual thing.

‘John Wayne at A-l 18’s beat Port Washington’s Bob Francis of Great Neck, New New York, 6–0, 6–2,’ Troeltsch says, ‘while A-2 Singles’ Hal Incandenza defeated Craig Burda of Vivian Park, Utah, 6–2, 6–1; and while A-3 K. D. Coyle went down in a hard-fought loss to Port Wash’s Shelby van der Merwe of Hempstead, Long Island 6–3, 5–7, 7–5, A-4 Trevor “The Axhandle” Axford crushed P.W.’s Tapio Martti out of Sonora, Mexico, 7–5, 6–2.’

And so on. By the time it’s down to Boys A-i4’s, Troeltsch’s delivery gets terser even as his attempts at verbiform variety tend to have gotten more lurid, e.g.: ‘LaMont Chu disembowelled Charles Pospisilova 6–3, 6–2; Jeff Penn was on Nate Millis-Johnson like a duck on a Junebug 6–4, 6–7, 6–0; Peter Beak spread Ville Dillard on a cracker like some sort of hors d’oeuvre and bit down 6–4, 7–6, while 14’s A-4 Idris Arslanian ground his heel into the neck of David Wiere 6–1, 6–4 and P.W.’s 5-man R. Greg Chubb had to be just about carried off over somebody’s shoulder after Todd Possalthwaite moonballed him into a narcoleptic coma 4–6, 6–4, 7–5.’

Some of Corbett Thorp’s class on geometric distortions a lot of kids find hard; likewise deLint’s class, for the software-inept. And though Tex Watson’s overall handle on Cold-Containment DT-annulation is shaky, his lay-physics survey of combustion and annulation has some sort of academic validity to it, especially because he some terms gets Pemulis to guest-lecture when he and Pemulis are in a period of detente. But the only really challenging prorected class ever for Hal Incandenza is turning out to be Mile. Thierry Poutrincourt’s ‘Separatism and Return: Québecois History from Frontenac Through the Age of Interdependence,’ which to be candid Hal’d never heard much positive about and had always deflected his Moms’s suggestions that he might profitably take until finally this term’s schedule-juggling got dicey, and which (the class) he finds difficult and annoying but surprisingly less and less dull as the semester wears on, and is actually developing something of a layman’s savvy for Canadianism and O.N.A.N.ite politics, topics he’d previously found for some reason not only dull but queerly distasteful. The rub of this particular class’s difficulty is that Pou-trincourt teaches only in Québecois French, which Hal can get by in because of his youthful tour through Orin’s real-French Pléiade Classics but has never all that much liked, particularly sound-wise, Québecois being a gur-gly, glottal language that seems to require a perpetually sour facial expression to pronounce. Hal sees no way of Orin’s knowing he was taking Poutrincourt’s ‘Separatism and Return’ when he called to ask for help with Separatism, which Orin’s asking for help from him with anything was strange enough in itself.

‘Bernadette Longley reluctantly bowed to P.W.’s Jessica Pearlberg at 18 A-l Singles 6–4,4-6, 6–2, though A-2 Diane Prins hopped up and down on the thorax of Port’s Marilyn Ng-A-Thiep 7–6, 6–1, and Bridget Boone drove a hot thin spike into the right eye of Aimee Middleton-Law 6–3, 6–3’; and so on, in classroom after classroom, while instructors grade quizzes or read or tap a decreasingly patient foot, every Tues./Sat., while Schacht sketches prenatal dentition-charts in his exam’s margins w/ a concentrated look, not wanting to embarrass Thode by handing the no-brainer exam in too soon.

Most of the early-Quebec stuff about Cartier and Roberval and Cap Rouge and Champlain and flocks of Ursuline nuns with frozen wimples covered up to like U.N. Day Hal’d found mostly dry and repetitive, the wig-and-jerkin gentlemanly warfare stilted and absurd, like slow-motion slapstick, though everyone’d been sort of queasily intrigued by the way the English Commander Amherst had handled the Hurons by dispensing free blankets and buckskin that had been carefully coated with smallpox variola.