“None but the most street-hardened Ennet residents would ever hazard an open crack about the food, which appears nightly at the long dinner table still in the broad steaming pans it was cooked in, with Gately’s big face hovering lunarly above it, flushed and beaded under the floppy chef’s hat Annie Parrot had given him as a dark joke he hadn’t got, his eyes full of anxiety and hopes for everyone’s full enjoyment, basically looking like a nervous bride serving her first conjugal dish, except this bride’s hands are the same size as the House’s dinner plates and have jailhouse tatts on them, and this bride seems to need no over-mitts as he sets down massive pans on the towels that have to be laid down to keep the plastic tabletop from searing” (469).

Everybody loves a bad-cook joke. Especially a bad-cook-with-jailhouse-tatts joke.

Can anyone tell I’m just posting Wallace quotes because I can’t think any clear thoughts of my own lately? No? Good. Just checking.