SOUNDTRACK: VOIVOD-Nothingface (1989).
In light of Marathe and the Antitois, and Quebec separatists everywhere, I figured I’d mention my favorite CD by a rocking Quebecker band. When Voivod started they were a rumbling thrash band. They put out an album with the wonderful title of RRRÖÖÖAAARRR. They were very fast, very loud, and their singer had a really peculiar delivery style. I later learned that this was because he’s a Quebecker and French is his first language. Since he sings in English, his stresses and emphases are off-kilter, (and the guitarist seems to play to this particular feature, so the music is off-kilter as well) making for a very surreal experience.
They were probably my first inroduction to really cool French names. Because even though they had stage names (Piggy, Blacky, Snake, and my personal favorite: Away) their real names were foreign and cool like Denis D’Amour and Jean-Yves Theriault.
Nothingface is the pinnacle of their prog-creative energies. It is a fantastic progressive-rock/heavy metal hybrid. There are fascinating time-changes, with cool atmospheric aspects that counterpoint the heavy sections. And the overall theme of the album is technology gone awry.
On their previous records, melody was not really evident. And it’ hard to believe that a disc that is so full of time changes could still be melodious. Yet the bridge of “Nothingface” is quite pretty, which, again, counterbalances the weird chord structures of the solo section. There’s even an awesome cover of Pink Floyd’s “Astronomy Domine” that adds some cool metal guitars to an already trippy song The Floyd version is spacey and psychedelic. Voivod add an element of menace to the song. Very cool.
And then there’s a song like “Missing Sequences” which has 4 different sections in the span of less than two minutes. An opening that is slow and spacey, interrupted by a loud “Now!” which brings to a weirdly chorused verse that morphs into a rough staccato bridge followed by a speedy guitar break and then yet another verse style. By the time we hit the 2:30 mark, the song breaks down into a bass-only sequence. And then it mostly repeats itself. That is, until the ending minute which is something new entirely. It sounds impossible on paper and yet it is done seamlessly and is one of my favorite tracks on the disc.
There’s also the weirdly propelling and compelling “ground and rock and sand come crumble tumble down” sequence of “Pre-Ignition” that throws a cool catchy riff in the midst of a fast charging song. And “Into My Hypercube” has some fantastic riffs, including another really cool bass-only section.
And the whole album works great with headphones.
In the 1990s, metal bands experimented with lots of different genres and effects, but it was this 1989 release that really highlighted what kind of fantastic music you could make within the strictures of heavy metal. Voivod makes some pretty unusual sounds with their instruments (guitar most of all), and the album can be a challenge, especially if you like you music light and easy), but for me, this is one of the best discs around.
[READ: Week of August 2] Infinite Jest (to page 508)
50% through.
Halfway House, er, I mean Half Way Home.
Thoughts:
The rewards are coming quickly now. There seems to be a payoff every few pages. I am totally loving this book and the environment it has created.
Since the Boston Marathon is mentioned in the book, I’ll say that we are currently at the 14 or so mile point (downtown Wellesley). Congratulations, you have just made it through “Screech Tunnel.” [See the Boston Marathon route here.]
I’ve been going on and on about chronological years and when exactly Subsidized years started. I even quoted other people who had calculated the actual year that Subsidized time was set up.
And, of course, all this time, all we had to do was to look at the NAME of the Year of Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge…. As this clever thread shows, others figured out pretty early in the reading that the 2007 in the year was a pretty big clue as to what year Subsidized Time began.
(Presumably non O.N.A.N. countries do not follow Subsidized Time? And the, again, presumably Japanese made Yushitsu is on numerical-year-time. Or is that a thread that has already been discussed already?).
I am pretty embarrassed to have realized this at this late a date, and I’m delighted that everyone let me figure it out for myself (and that no one was cruel enough to rub it in.)
Now if you wanted to argue against the Yushityu 2007 as a dead giveaway to the year, you could say that, for instance, Microsoft Products don’t always indicate the year that they came out. But for confirmation of Yushityu, we can use a perpetual calendar.
We learned that November 7th is the the day of the exam that Schacht is taking. This is a Saturday class. The perpetual calendar show that Nov 7th falls on a Saturday in 2009. Therefore YDAU=2007. I’ve been trying to use all this logic to puzzle this information out, and here the author basically just TELLS us it from–well, not the get go exactly–but from a pretty early point.
All of this self-flagellation is also because of my own lack of clock-watching in the book. I have somewhat obtusely not been following the chronological dates very carefully. It was only when I consciously realized that Marathe and Steeply are having their mountainside chat in April/May of the YDAU when all of the events at E.T.A. and Ennet House are taking place in November that it dawned on me that the time line was not only present, it was pretty important.
So, I spent some time crafting a general timeline of events–something I haven’t seen anywhere else, (but then I haven’t actively been looking for it because I don’t want to get Spoiled). So at the end of this post I’m going to put my timeline of events thus far. I’ll see how important it is to update it in future posts.
But now on to the book:
This week’s reading jumped back and forth between topics a bit more frequently.
We begin with Gately, and have a look at his “sunlighting” job. Gately works from 5 to 8 AM at the Shattuck Shelter for Homeless Males as a janitor. He got this job because Ennet House residents need to be gainfully employed after 30 days as part of their contract for staying there. Gately had about 3 days left before his probation ran out, so he scored this janitorial job. Gately has stuck with this job despite how disgusting it is. He basically cleans every conceivable bodily fluid off of every conceivable surface (except in the bathroom, which seems to be oddly clean). His boss Stavros charges the government for 8 hours of work even though they finish in 3 (and Gately only gets paid for 3). Stavros also has an unreasonable stash of women’s shoe catalogs.
We then return to Eric Clipperton, in spirit anyway. We learn that achieving success in competitive tennis can be even more damaging that not succeeding. An unnamed player reached the number one spot. After the victory party, he added sodium cyanide to a glass of Nestle Quik and drank the whole thing. When his father found him and tried to resuscitate him, he inhaled some of the poisoned Quik, and suffered the same fate. And this transfer of laced Quik proceeded down the family line until all of the members of this family were lying dead on the kitchen floor. Despite the horrifyingly tragic nature of this event, the details come across as darkly humorous (or else I’m becoming immune to the horrors DFW has to unleash).
So, then we move back to President Gentle (within Mario’s film, (and I will correct my error from last week that the walls around the Concavity are lucite, not glass)). In a round table meeting, he dismisses claims that acromegalic babies are roaming the concavity. Frankly, he is more concerned with how to pay for the fiscal wallop that O.N.A.N. is taking from the Territorial Reconfiguration (the Official name of the Concavity). Since all of these states no longer generate income, they need to get money somehow!
And, no, they can’t add new taxes. Remember the C.U.S.P. simplified platform: 1) deal with waste 2) no new taxes 3) find someone outside our border to blame.
So, witness the Chinese zodiacal placemats on the table and how there is, for instance, the Year of the Rat. And, recall also that President Gentle was recently at a Boston University football game (with an amazing punter, whose name he could not remember (but whom we all know and love)). And this bowl game, formerly known as the Forsythia Bowl is now the Ken-L-Ration-Magnavox-Kemper-Insurance-Forsythia-Bowl. QED.
Jumping back to Gately, we see him now speaking at an AA meeting for the Tough Shit But You Still Can’t Drink Group. Gately gets up there and admits that he simply cannot conceive of a Personal God. He (at home) gets on his knees and prays because he is supposed to, but when he looks for this God, even after ten months in the program, all he sees is Nothing. And it scares him. And he is utterly shocked when The TSBYSCD Group gives him a standing ovation and pats him on the back and tells him to Keep Coming Back.
And the thing about the TSBYSCD Group is that they are mostly bikers. Bad-ass bikers in leather chaps. And they intimidate even him. Although, in a comment that made me laugh out loud, Gately wonders why in the hell anyone would be a biker if they were sober, it would be all polishing leather and “playing really precise pool.”
The thing that they never tell you but that is fundamental to AA is that being sober is painful. More painful than you can imagine. But the pain means it is working (and other cliches that are actually deeper than their vapid-soundingness would indicate).
Oh, and it’s not Lyle this time, but a hardened biker–on a chopper that’s a long as a car, wearing a leather vest and no shirt, with a babe clinging to his waist–who spouts the actual joke (about the fish) that leads off Wallace’s This is Water! [I commented in last week’s review that I thought he quoted from IJ in that commencement speech. But it’s not until this week’s reading thatI learned he not only quotes from IJ, but the introduction to the speech (and even the title of the book) comes from this biker.]
And just to give Gately more depth, we learn about his past. How his mom was an alcoholic. How she drank Stoli with vegetables floating in it. How his father (whose name (Bulat) he only discovered by rooting through his mother’s things) left before he was born, but not before breaking his mother’s jaw. And how his mom then married a military man who kept track of the beers he drank, and would beat Gately’s mom with a steadied concentration.
And when Gately’s mom passed out on the chair with her bottle of Stoli unfinished, Gately would take the bottle and first add it to some Diet Coke, and eventually drink it straight, always being sure to leave a little bit left in the bottom of the bottle for when she woke up.
When Gately was young he was nicknamed BIM, which stood for Big Indestructible Moron. Gately’s mom didn’t know the reason for the nickname, and actually called him Bim from time to time (which is rather heartbreaking). When she was ultimately diagnosed with Cirrhosis of the liver, young Gately thought it was an Arthurian character; Sir Osis of Thuliver. Gately has not visited his mom in the ten years she has been in the hospital.
But now his new sobriety won’t let him forget that he hasn’t visited her.
There’s a short section about Hal. He is plagued by dreams that his teeth are falling out. When he wakes up he finds that Mario is not there and his bed is made. Mario has been staying at the Moms’ house, forlornly leaning into the speakers tuned to WYYY listening for the absent Madame Psychosis. [Unless I am misreading the timeline (see I’m paying attention), this scene with Mario happens a few days before M.P.’s suicide attempt, which means that she may have taken some time off the air first??]
Mario even went to the station to find out where she was and when he learned that she DJ’d from behind a screen he found this very agitating. And nothing agitates Mario. After the her replacement Miss Diagnosis was sent packing, WYYY decided to just play M.P.’s background music by itself. Which Hal describes as sounding “like somebody’s mind coming apart right before your ears.”
As the reading continues, I hope I’m not being remiss if I don’t include lots of details about the next two sections. I’ll try to capture major events, but there’s just too many details to include vis a vis the drills.
The E.T.A. drills. As morning dawns we learn that the A team is stuck with the perk of getting up at dawn to engage in A.M. workouts. It is deemed (by all players, but verbalized by just one) that it is wholly unfair that the likes of Pemulis get to sleep in while the really strong players have to be out in the 5A.M. cold. The details of the workout are pretty excruciating, and yet I have to assume that any high caliber athlete would do things like this regardless of the sport. (So I’m not going to detail all of the brutal exercises that would have me hurling in an industrial sized bucket along with most of the kids.)
However, we learn that there are still a few pieces of laptop glass glittering on the court. We also learn that J.J. Penn is not at practice and that Otis P. Lord is (as rumor has it) lying in bed with the monitor frame around his head because they are afraid of removing it and having him further cut by the glass. And Hal obliterated his ankle when he was 15, so he wears a crazy- looking brace and exercises a little gingerly during some drills.
Oh, and in a line that comes shortly after the narrator tells us that “It’s all the sort of thing that’s uninteresting unless you’re the one responsible,” Uncle Charles muses that Mario MIGHT BE HIS OWN SON!!!
True, the narrator was talking about running a school and scheduling and what not, but just as you think, hmm, I’m not that interested in the details (that we know you’re going to give us) about running a school, he throws in this whopper.
There’s also the intense humiliation from Schtitt (and Aubrey deLint) that goes on as a way to build character. (We also learn that Hal has an obsessive dislike for deLint, believing him to be a cartoon cutout or holographic projection). And, my favorite line of the tennis section, spoken about Schtitt: “there is something creepy about a very fit older man, to say nothing of jackboots w/Fila warm-ups of claret-colored silk.”
Oh, and Dolores Rusk, the official counselor at E.T.A. is seen as next to useless. All she does is repeat the last thing you say in the form of a question. Why do you think she repeats everything in the form of a question?
Back to Gately and his life at Ennet House. We learn about his admission into the house, and a whole lot more about Pat Montesian. Pat is in her late thirties and was a major user. She suffered a stroke which was her Bottom. When she cleaned up (and rehabilitated herself physically as well as addiction-wise) she still had a pronounced limp and the slightly paralyzed look of a stroke victim, but she was still quite pretty. In her entry interview with Gately, Gately petted her dog (who has epilepsy) and admitted to not remembering any blackouts he may have had (which Pat got but didn’t acknowledge as a joke).
Pat also has a bitchin’ car a 1964 Ford Aventura. Despite his previous DWIs (and his suspended license) Pat lets Gately drive this beauty on trips to the Purity Supreme Market. This shows just how much faith and trust she has in Gately (and maybe Gately even, kind of, loves Pat) [outside the book: Purity was acquired by Stop and Shop and basically put out of business in 1997; I’m 90% certain I shopped in the Purity that Gately goes to]. Gately loves the car even though he barely fits, and “he’d drive the car if the driver’s seat was just a sharp pointy spike.”
And as Gately drives, we get an explanation of legal matters in MA. How Ennet house is basically off limits to police. How pretty much all of Gately’s charges have been blue-foldered (meaning they are sort of filed away but can be reopened if he falls off the wagon). And, that the accidental murder of DuPlessis (officially a Murder-2 with a funny comment about drug thieves not being particularly detail oriented) has been transferred, with the new suspects believed to be politically motivated. There’s also a reiteration of Gately’s rote following of AA policies, including the morning and evening kneeling. And how unexpectedly for him, after 4 months it suddenly Worked, and he realized that he wasn’t thinking about Substances 24/7 anymore.
There’s also bit about cake (yet another cliche Gately has to deal with), about how A.A. is like reading instructions on the side of the box of cake. Even if you don’t know how to cook or even believe it will become a cake, if you follow the directions you will get a cake. When Gately reached his one year mark he was given a cake and actually (although he doesn’t admit it) cried in front of people. I felt like the cake was tied into the cake instruction bit although it may have be a coincidence.
And, of course, part of Gately’s duties are to cook meals on weeknights. Amusingly, Gately never bothered to see that there were instructions on the pasta box, and he boils his pasta for an hour. (Meanwhile, most of his other meals are somewhat worryingly undercooked). The folks there all tease Gately about his cooking, but, wisely, never when he’s within earshot.
Marathe and Steeply continue their discussion (no sign of sunrise yet) about pleasure. Steeply reminds Marathe of a study conducted in Manitoba about neural implants which stimulate the pleasure center so intensely that rats continued to press the lever even if it meant not eating/drinking/rutting. The Pleasure-tissue or p-terminal experiment was accidentally discovered during what was a search for assistance for epilepsy patients (which triggers a flashback of Marathe remembering his dad had a pacemaker, and him getting killed from a videophone sonic interruption). Once people became aware that they were looking for volunteers for the p-terminal tests, average Canadians were practically smashing each other to be first in line. So, indeed, it’s not just U.S.A. kids who so intensely want the pleasure. (Although Marathe also points out that Manitoba is not Quebec).
When we jump back to Gately serving dinner we learn that two new residents have dietary restrictions (which Gately thinks is a bit too bad, frankly, since the whole point of Ennet House is to tough it out, and heck, Pat herself ate bricks to prove how sincere she was about getting straight (and has chipped teeth to prove it)). So Gately travels all the way to Bread & Circus in Inman Square to get fancy food for the young ladies (Joelle van Dyne being a vegetarian), partly to show his displeasure about the special treatment and party because he gets to drive again.
There’s also a footnote about the Storrow 500 that I remember so well. Storrow Drive is so intense and crazy with random exits and lane switching and no speed limit that, basically cops don’t even have to go there. I always wondered if the cop part was true when I was driving on it.
As Gately is speeding through Cambridge, he passes by the Antitoi’s place of business. In what was a very cinematic moment, we follow a piece of garbage that Gately sped over which then flies through the air and raps on the door of Antitoi Entertainment. Lucien Antitoi opens the door and then blames the Brazilian kids in the neighborhood for playing pranks. We learn a lot about Lucien (who, inexplicably, never learned French, except for “La Chier Putain”–the fucking shit) and his brother Bertraud (clearly the brains of the pair) and how they are basically minor thugs in the anti-O.N.A.N. movement; they were under the tutelage (so to speak) of M DuPlessis.
There’s a nice flashback to how they acquired the fabled Pemulis DMZ–an old hippy (who flashed them the peace sign which Lucien thought must be a rude gesture) traded them in (telling them they had better write their names on their palms if they were to drop the Tu sais quois–What you know) for an apothecary’s mirror.
For, in addition to selling all kinds of drugs (in a subversive attempt to corrupt the youth of USA) they also sell novelties (joy buzzers, etc) and all kinds of TP cartrdiges. It is Lucien’s job to view and label the cartridges that Bertraud finds in various places. On this occasion, he found some in streetfront displays just lying around (much like the ones Joelle saw when she was wandering Newbury Street, which at this point we MUST assume is the Entertainment).
Lucien gets bummed when he plays cartridges that don’t even have the courtesy to show static when they are blank. In a footnote, we learn that the reason there’s no static is because Master copies of a tape play at 585 rpm while Read-Only cartridges (which is what most of the ones are) play at 450 rpm. The Read Only machines can’t acknowledge the master copy so the screens are just blank. In fact, we learn the details about this in two footnotes because it turns out to be important!
And but suddenly Lucien sees some wheelchairs trudging (what verb would you use here) up the street through the snow. He hears the telltale squeak of the Wheelchair Assassins. And before he can get to the back to tell his brother what’s up, the Assassins are in the building. And the have already gotten to Bertraud (with a spike through the eye). Before they dispatch Lucien (in an egregiously awful manner involving a sharpened broom) they reveal that they are there for the Master Copy of The Entertainment (see, the footnote was important!). This master copy was stolen from M. DuPlessis’ apartment (ahem).
When we get back to Marathe and Steeply we learn that just about every anti-O.N.A.N. cell has a Read Only copy of the Entertainment. Steeply wonders (as we all do at this point) what it is about The Entertainment that can be so pleasurable. He speculates that it must have holographic qualities that overwhelms the brain’s pleasure receptors (Steeply knows that Jim had been experimenting with holographs). But they can never learn about the true nature of the Entertainment because as soon as you look at it, you become addled.
Marathe states that he has never had any interest in watching it.
There’s then a fascinating flashback into Jim as a youngish fellow (from 1963). According to Endnote 208, this reminiscence appears in chapter 16 of The Chill of Inspiration: Spontaneous Reminiscences by Seventeen Pioneers of DT-Cycle Lithiumized Annualar Fusion. Jim relates a lengthy story about his father diagnosing a squeak in a mattress. The details are extensive, and often hilarious.
My favorite line about Jim’s father: “My father’s mood surrounded him like a field and affected any room he occupied.” Boy you can learn a lot about a person from what they say about others.
Jim’s father portrayed the Man from Glad in commercials (which, is that a sick bit of continuity that the final year of the book is the Year of Glad or is it just super funny). The Man from Glad is decked out in all white with a white wig. And Jim’s father is still in costume from the shoot, with his makeup coming off on many surfaces.
The image of a man in gleaming white hauling a king-sized mattress and box spring out of the room, cursing up a storm and then coming face to face with a huge pile of dust under the bed is quite striking. As he is trying to fix the bed, Jim’s father gets stomach distress, which is evidently common for him, and he winds up vomiting tomato juice all over the floor. And then passing out in it.
Please, now, don’t forget that this whole scenario is recounted in a ferociously expensive hardcover book.
Jim, in his bow tie and with an athletic strap on his glasses (which he said was for tennis but which he asked for because his dad constantly slapped him on the back quite robustly), basically ignores his father lying in his own filth. He leaves the room with his father lying there. First he helps his mother with the vacuum cleaner (she being unaware of what happened to Jim’s dad) and then he quickly runs up to his room because he hates the sound of the vacuum cleaner.
As he swan dives onto his bed, he knocks his lamp over which shears off the door handle of his closet. The handle describes a fascinating mathematical arc (the kind of arc that would result if you nailed your hand to the floor and did somersaults). And that was how he got into math. Fascinating.
After that heady flashback, we get a funny return to Ken Erdedy. Johnette Folz, another supervisor at Ennet House takes him and Kate Gompert to an N.A. meeting that deals specifically with marijuana. Erdedy and Gompert follow along half-heartedly. Then at the end, the group physically enacts the Hugs Not Drugs cliche. Erdedy tries to weasel his way out of the hugs by being supremely interested in the literature station. He is approached by a large black man with open arms. This black man turns out to be Roy Tony (of the Clenette story from 450 or so pages ago–evidently he is trying to clean up his act).
The scene continues, with Roy Tony explaining that he ‘s not exactly a “hugger.” “Not comfortable? Who the fuck are you? Don’t even try and tell me I’m coming over feeling comfortable about trying to hug on your James-River-Traders-wearing-Calvin-Klein-aftershave-smelling-goofy-ass-motherfucking-ass…. And now you go and disrespect me in front of my whole clean and sober set just when I gone risk sharing my vulnerability and discomfort with you?” This was hilarious.
The week’s reading comes to a close (technically it’s two pages past the official spoiler line, but it was hard to pass up this last bit), with Steeply saying that they lost a twenty-year man, Hank Hoyne, who tried to rescue an intern who snuck in to view the Entertainment. He was just in the room with the Entertainment, and now he’s just begging for an other look. Just begging.
Marathe says the he and his group are not tempted to know why the Entertainment does what it does, they just respect its power. So they do not fool crazily about.
My general chronology
[Because this post is Week 7, and I amended this chronology after Week 7, I am moving it to my final thoughts post just to spare anyone spoilers].
As always, a great big detailed accounting of the wonders that can be accomplished in 75 pages. OMG. Thank you.
I’ve been having a time-line problem for a post I’m writing about the Entertainment Master. Your time-line confirms the problem. If you can help, please. Sorry for length.
On Nov. 7, Joelle tries to kill herself. On her way to Molly’s, she walks past the statue of Colonel Shaw draped in a Quebecois flag, watching Boston cops take it down. She removes a film-catridge from the 2-D wheelchaired figure, presumes it is an anti-ad, and puts it back. (pp. 223-224)
On Nov. 9, Lucien “recounts” how Bertraund lugged home bags of catridges, including “one or two from the site of the flag-draped Shaw statue.” This was on a “Saturday,” so presumably it must have been that same Nov. 7. (p. 483)
On 8 November, Gately “recounts” the overnight enrollment of Joelle at Ennet House. But first, she’d been at Brigham and Women’s for FIVE DAYS after a horrific OD. (p. 364). This puts Joelle’s arrival sometime around Nov. 12.
I include the Lucien dating because I sometimes wonder if there are “undated” sections in the narrative, that appear to be one day but are really another. Since Gately kicks up a cup that brings Lucien to the door, he must have been driving to get Joelle dinner on that self-same November 9. And putting Joelle and Bertraund “together” on November 7 keeps the time-line very constrained.
It is, also, a bit odd (but not so hugely) that Bertraund was there on Saturday, the day before I-Day, and that the police were already removing the flag, since it is noted (on p. 480) that the flag is typically draped at night and cut down the next a.m. Did Bertraund return to the scene of the crime? Note: Lucien’s viewing of these catridges produces a Master-like blankness on his TP. I had the idea for a bit that the hippie had passed them the Master, but apparently not if Bertraund picked it up and brought it home on Nov. 7. Still, how did the A.F.R. know he had taken it, if he hadn’t had it already from the hippie?
Subsequently, a Q of my own: P.S. Do you know when the hippie sold the DMZ and passed cartridges to the Antitois borthers?
P.P.S. I wasn’t clear that PT died in the seizure. But it is interesting (as I look back on it) that when the pain hit, “There was a squeak and rush of release inside his skull” (p. 305). A squeak, we now know, is a VERY bad sign.
I’m going to reply here, but I think I might try and submit this to Infinite Tasks as well, just so the dialogue doesn’t seem so one sided!
Trying to wrap my head around the exact timeline has been more than a little tough. I noticed that in some sections, like ones that just say Year DAU, within the paragraphs there is often a date thrown in, almost casually (as if DFW does anything casual). I wish I had an example on hand, but I don’t sadly. I just noticed this while trying to construct my own timeline.
I have to say I was a little confused about the Lucien/Bertraud timeline myself. I also wasn’t clear where the flag draping occurred. If it was in the Boston Common, the trip from Inman to Boston Common isn’t that far (even by train), so it’s entirely possible he would make several trips to the area for different reasons. It still doesn’t fully explain the timeline though.
And as for Joelle. The whole things seems to play fast and loose with dates, if Mario is upset in October, and then the 5 days at the hospital.
It seems inconceivable to me that DFW would have plotted this out so intricately but then gotten his timeline wrong. I’m so tempted to go online to find an answer, but that way leads to madness, or at least There Be Dragons.
As for the hippie… I have to assume that the cartridge was stolen from M DuPlessis’ house when Gately inadvertently killed him. But that was a couple of years prior. So somehow the hippie would have gotten his hands on the cartridges in that time.
I hate to get so crazy speculative because surely DFW will answer this eventually, but I would assume that Pemulis went to Antitoi’s from time to time…seems likely, right? So the question is, were they tempting him with the DMZ for a while, or did it just pop in…. Hey, I wonder if in the Pemulis section if he casually mentions that “they just got it” or anything (I don’t have my copy handy, so I can’t find out just yet).
You’re right about Poor Tony. It wasn’t stated conclusively that he died (I wasn’t sure about the fate of Joelle either), although I seem to recall there was some concluding line to that section that made me more certain that he died. Having said that, it could just be that so many people have been dying lately that I may have just added him to the tally.
The thing about all these questions is that I like puzzling them together. And I like trying to guess what’s happening (I know some people just get frustrated by it). However, I hope he clarifies some of these things for us!
Thanks, Paul. Definitely there’s some waiting for us to puzzle this out. I will say that I missed the fact that MP went off the air in October, which is very interesting. Now, I’ve got to stop puzzling and go back to reading, since all this flipping back-and-forth across timelines has meant I’m now a bare 5 pages ahead of the Daily Spoiler line.
It’s funny to think of spending a lot of time flipping through a book but not finishing it first, and yet that’s what I’m doing too.
I’ve been trying to stay right on track for the spoiler line (which actually means I don’t read the book for a few days at a time (which is quite difficult actually)).
[…] 9 she is already at Ennet House. For a full recounting of the time-line problem here, see my conversation with Paul over at I Just Read About That, at the end of his fabulous recounting of these events and meticulous work on the […]
If anyone is reading this far into the comments, you must check out the Infinite Tasks post that resulted from this sections’ reading: Amazing syntheses and very careful reading!
[…] concern of the timeline that I mentioned last week and Infinite Tasks talks about here, Gately says that she has been in Ennet House for about 3 days […]
[…] have talked about Nothingface before, but here it is in sequence with the Voivod […]