Rodney Tine
Rodney Tine, Sr. is Chief of the U.S. Office of Unspecified Services (U.S.O.U.S.), President Johnny Gentle's intelligence chief and right-hand man. Tine reaches the reader almost entirely at one remove: through expository narration, a single POV chapter (scene 107), Marathe and Steeply's desert conversation (where Tine's love-life is the recurring mirror to Marathe's), and above all through Mario Incandenza's puppet-film "ONANtiad," a parodic dramatization of the political history Tine engineered. The timeline covers the two halves of his story: the historical half — his architecting of O.N.A.N., the experialist "gifting" of the toxified northeast U.S. to Canada (the Reconfiguration / Great Concavity), and the invention of Subsidized Time to pay for it — and the YDAU-present half, in which he runs the intelligence manhunt for the lethal Entertainment ("the samizdat") out of metro Boston. Threaded through both is the Luria P— affair: his passionate, ill-disguised attachment to a Québec-linked woman near the center of enemy intelligence, which makes his own final loyalty a question the book leaves open. Where the text leaves that loyalty open, the timeline leaves it open; the Luria material is recorded here as attested only — nothing about Luria's identity (or whether she is Avril) is resolved. His son, Rodney Tine Jr., a separate U.S.O.U.S. operative, is distinguished throughout.
Appears with
Arc
The three structures every other character in the novel lives inside are Rodney Tine's: the map (the experialist "gift" of the toxified northeast, the Great Concavity — "We're going to give away the whole benighted smirch of ground," 2), the calendar (Subsidized Time, "conceived on the back of a chintzy Chinese-zodiac paper placemat, by R. Tine," 4), and, in the YDAU present, the manhunt (the code-name "samizdat" is his staff's, the test-subjects his, the countermeasure PSA his meeting, 6, 10). Yet the sourcing of the events tells its own story: almost everything historical reaches us dramatized — Mario's puppet-film, whose accuracy "gets to stand uncontested by fact" — and the one big authorship question the apparatus raises it also refuses to answer: n.156 calls the film's Tine-as-dark-force implication (Gentle the "befuddled figurehead," Tine "pulling Gentle's strings") "simply one theory," foundering on the absence of any motive (2). The architect of the map and the calendar may or may not be the architect of the era; the record holds both readings open.
What the text does hand us directly is the flaw under the Chief. His one POV chapter opens not on the samizdat but on "the only bona fide blackmailable thing about" him — the locked-drawer metric ruler, the every-A.M. measurement kept since twelve, the Franklin-Planner chart (6) — and his last attested scene closes the same loop from the other side, the Chief snapping at his son's ruler-tapping across the conference table (10). Between those two rulers sits the affair that makes him structurally important to the book's espionage plot: the "passionate, ill-disguised attachment" to Luria P—, stenographer to Tine and Girl-Friday to DuPlessis, the enemy's coordinator (5). Does he "double" for Québec out of love, or "triple"? Steeply calls it "a great and maybe even timeless love"; the A.F.R. believe Luria "had him to command"; n.156 rates him simply "hopelessly smitten." The book never rules — and this page doesn't either, recording the affair as attested and leaving Luria's identity, her command, and any Avril link open. What the question buys the novel is its central mirror: the narration measures Marathe's wife-love as "no better than M. Rodney 'the God' Tine" (5) — the U.S. intelligence chief and the A.F.R.'s field man are the same experiment run twice, each a doctrine of loyalty compromised by one attachment, each left open.
The November arc is the builder reduced to substantiation. Dispatched to Boston because his own era's Entertainment has begun eating people (6), Tine works the hunt entirely through instruments: Steeply in the desert and at E.T.A., Flatto's I/O boys around the clock, the Leavenworth lance-corporal strapped to electrodes, his son under the high-watt lamp extracting Notkin's testimony under his aegis and his boyhood-noir interview doctrine (9), the org-chart arrayed silently behind him while he watches the duck pond drain from the Annex window (7) — and the enemy, meanwhile, imagines him as the literal "hand holding the pen" of the President's war declaration (8). Even his failures are systemic: the anti-drowsy-driving spots pressed "to his later embarrassment" while the A.F.R.'s mirrors did the killing (3). The record's last sight of him is perfectly in register — chairing the green-light for a cartoon burro that warns children away from the thing he cannot find (10), the manhunt unresolved, the Luria question unresolved, his final loyalty exactly as the desert dialogue left it: somewhere between doubling and tripling, on the far side of a locked bathroom drawer.
Timeline (10 events)
Key to the timeline
Events are ordered by when they happen in the story, not by where they fall in the book's pages.
★ marks a pivotal event — one that carries this character's arc. Unmarked events add texture around it.
Where an event says how it is known, that basis is one of: narrated (the narration states it), recalled (a character's own memory), reported (secondhand or testimony), claimed (asserted by someone with a stake), or disputed (conflicting versions). Conflicting details are quoted as the book has them rather than resolved.
Dating notes (apparatus)
Consolidated record of false matches and unresolved date/identity puzzles; as printed throughout.
Scenes that only seem to mention Tine. "Tine" hides inside a surprising number of ordinary words, so many scenes that appear to carry his name have no genuine Rodney-Tine material at all; the following are NOT cited in any event's Scene(s):
- 001 — "continent / Continental / continentally" (no name).
- 013 — "routine" (x2).
- 016 — no "Tine" substring at all (empty for Tine; this is the DuPlessis-death scene, a Marathe-frame backdrop, no Tine).
- 034 — "continentally."
- 038 — no "Tine" substring (empty; a Marathe/Steeply desert installment, but Tine unnamed here).
- 052 — "tines" (fork tines).
- 054 — no "Tine" substring (empty).
- 066 — "abstinence / abstinent / intestines / Martinez / routinely."
- 069 — "incontinence / incontinent."
- 074 — "abstinence / incontinence / Martinez."
- 076 — "incontinent."
- 089 — "Continental" (x2).
- 090 — "incontinence / incontinent / routine."
- 095 — "abstinence / Martinez / routine."
- 120 — "intestine."
- 124 — "Abstinent."
- 157 — "abstinence."
- 167 — "serpentine."
- n321 — no "Tine" substring (empty).
That is 19 apparent mentions that dissolve on inspection, versus 15 scenes carrying genuine Rodney-Tine material (029, 031, 035, 070, 083, 086, 087, 091, 098, 103, 107, 121, 147, 159, 168). Note: scene 103 carries genuine Tine material (the "no better than M. Rodney 'the God' Tine" narration, p. 0529) but it is Marathe-focalized and Tine appears only as the mirror-comparison; its Tine content is covered under event 5 rather than cited separately, since the load-bearing Tine attestations for the Luria affair are 029/031/035/087/091.
Additional attestations: six further places carry the name: n156 and n176 (glosses on the two ONANtiads, hung off scenes 086/091 — covered under events 1, 2, 5); n325 (the boyhood-noir-films note hung off scene 159's naming of the Chief — covered under event 9); n257 (Tine Jr.'s NNE-Region operative tag, already cited in the Jr. distinction); scene 151 (a passing name-only mention — Marathe anticipating that the "Services Without Specificity of Steeply and Tine" may also return to Ennet House; no event); and scene 106, whose Tine paragraph belongs with scene 107 (cited there, event 6).
Dating / identity puzzles:
- Events 2 and 4 (historical dating via a puppet-film): the Reconfiguration and Subsidized Time are attested chiefly through Mario's ONANtiad, watched at E.T.A. on Interdependence Day (8 Nov YDAU), which dramatizes Gentle-Era history whose "accuracy... gets to stand uncontested by fact" (scene 086, p. 0400). Events are dated by the content they depict (B.S.-to-early-Subsidized onset), not by the 8-Nov-YDAU viewing frame.
- Event 4 (Subsidized Time chronology clash): the film's own audience notices that Subsidized Time "must have come after formal Interdependence," yet the film makes it seem Tine sold Gentle the revenue scheme "sometime in Orin Incandenza's first major-sport year at Boston U., which ended in the Year of the Whopper, pretty obviously a Subsidized year" (scene 091, p. 0437). Internal tension, as printed; not resolved.
- Event 5 (Luria identity): whether Tine "doubles" or "triples," whether Luria commands him, and Luria's true identity (n.307 implies she is the "Swiss" hand-model honeytrap of Orin; the archive records the Swiss-ness as an A.F.R. cover-flag) are all left open. This account records the Tine-Luria material as attested and resolves nothing about Luria's identity or any Avril link. Kept as printed.
- Event 2 (the dark-force question): whether Tine or Gentle really drove the Reconfiguration is itself flagged in-text as unresolved — n.156 calls the Tine-as-dark-force reading "simply one theory and direction for finger-pointing" that "tends to founder" on Tine's motive, and notes that Himself's own ONANtiad was "considerably more restrained and ambiguous on the whole Tine-as-dark-force issue." Held open, as printed.
- Tine Sr. vs. Tine Jr.: "Rodney Tine Jr." / "R. Tine Jr." is a separate character — Unspecified Services Regional Operative, NNE Region (scene 121, n.257), the U.S.O.U.S. technical interviewer of Notkin (scene 159), and the ruler-tapping "Deputy Regional Coordinator" of the Phil-PSA meeting (scene 168). Distinct from his father the Chief throughout; this page covers Tine Sr., noting Jr.'s appearances where they intersect (7, 9, 10).
- The ruler motif: Tine Sr.'s A.M. penis-measuring ruler (scene 107) and his violent aversion to Tine Jr.'s ruler-tapping (scene 168) are the same object-fixation surfacing twice — noted as a cross-reference, not a puzzle.
- Event 8: the Fortier hand-on-pen sentence sits after scene 147's p. 728 turn, not p. 726 as this page originally cited; corrected above.
- Events 1/5: the whole scene-029 Tine/Luria parenthetical — the architect sentence included — sits after the source text's p. 92 marker, not p. 90 as originally cited (earlier versions of this page and its cross-referencing pages all carried the same mis-pin; the source text's own page markers are the authority); corrected above.
What links here
- Scene 107: tine samizdat dossier
- Scene 121: afr snatches wyyy engineer
- Scene 168: fully functional phil
- Scene 016: gately duplessis burglary
- Scene 029: marathe steeply entertainment
- Scene 031: marathe steeply duplessis
- Scene 035: marathe steeply temple
- Scene 070: prorector classes separatism
- Scene 083: onan headline montage
- Scene 086: concavity cabinet clipperton
- Scene 087: hal tv ad interlace history
- Scene 091: fresno quik subsidized time
- Scene 098: master copies temptation
- Scene 103: odalisque myths
- Scene 147: afr finds entertainment
- Scene 159: notkin spills