So way behind. And I’m about to throw in the towel on this project because as the CUNY conference looms large and I changed my paper topic and now I have to bust a move in two months to get it done.

Plus, I miss a few days due to, like, life (and feeling like hell and puking non-stop and raising a kid and trying to freelance and do academic work all while maintaining sanity, some personal hygiene, some domestic order and cleanliness, a marriage, and staving off the bill collectors) and I miss 40 of the densest and most plot-flying-by pages of the novel. Geez.

So. I give you Mario and Hal in bed at a crossroads:
‘You remember my hideous phobic thing about monsters, as a kid?’
‘Boy do I ever.’
‘Boo, I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants or vampires or whatever. I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there’s simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away.’
‘But then how do you know they’re monsters, then?’
‘That’s the monstrosity right there, Boo, I’m starting to think.’
‘Golly Ned.’
‘That they walk among us. Teach our children. Inscrutable. Brass-faced.’ (774)

And I give you Marathe and Gompert enjoying a beverage at a bar after both hit a new kind of sober bottom, in classic funny-but-not-at-all-and-really-painful Wallace style:
‘I know of this meaning. I am spending a day to find someone I think my friends will kill, all the time I am awaiting the chance to betray my friends, and I come here and telephone and betray them and I see this bruised person who strongly resembles my wife. I think: Remy, it is the time for many drinks.’
‘Well I think you’re nice. I think you just about saved my life. I’ve spent like nine weeks feeling so bad I wanted to just about kill myself, both getting high and not. Dr. Garton never mentioned this. He talked plenty about shock but he never freaking mentioned Kahlua and milk.’ (776)

And Molly Notkin telling U.S.O.U.S. operatives what she understands about the Entertainment, which is about as reliable as…hell we have nothing reliable in this narrative, so how do we even gauge her version of the truth as she’s never seen it? But holy revelation, if they are, on the Entertainment’s content and form, and the Personal Daddy stuff we totally could have seen coming, and the Orin bashing we so totally needed, even if it’s hyperbole. (788-95)

And the hilarious kertwang of Hal finding the Inner Infant group rather than NA (and, seriously, Boswell’s musings on anti-Lacanian sentiment in IJ, I really need to tell you about my as-yet-secret paper post haste but first I have to develop it and submit it so you can’t all run right out and write a 25 page paper on the same topic) and especially the are-you-kidding-me-how-early-90s, John Bly reference. Plus, way to make me feel better, Wallace, for not letting my kid cry alone in a crib, ever. 796-808.

That does it. The lame ass round-up of not even quotes but borderline-summary that will win me no awards and get me no readers but will help me further postpone the seven other things I have to be doing RIGHT THIS MINUTE.

Kahlua and milk sounds really good, though.