who mailed the samizdat copies
undecidable-by-design
Someone mailed the lethal Entertainment out into the world, and this crux asks whether that someone was Orin Incandenza. It stays contested because the act happens entirely off the page: the postal trail and a revenge motive point at Orin, but rival senders — Avril, JOI's own lawyer, and others — are never ruled out.
Scenes
- Scene 005: professional conversationalist
- Scene 007: attache receives cartridge
- Scene 010: hal mario moms sadness
- Scene 012: orin phoenix morning
- Scene n024: joi filmography
- Scene 029: marathe steeply entertainment
- Scene 048: urine day
- Scene 064: hal orin phone joi suicide
- Scene n110: orin hal phone
- Scene 071: mario birth defects
- Scene 077: marathe steeply betrayal
- Scene 107: tine samizdat dossier
- Scene 115: orin wheelchairs return
- Scene 119: orin survey wheelchair man
- Scene 143: afr two ways
- Scene 145: afr antitoi search
- Scene 147: afr finds entertainment
- Scene 163: afr mirror ambush plan
- Scene 184: orin tumbler roaches
Adjudication
This crux has an adversarial ledger: Who Mailed the Samizdat. The per-reading verdicts are below.
Theories on this crux
| Reading | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Orin mailed the Entertainment to JOI's enemies (and breaks under AFR torture) | favored |
Discussed in
- Community book club 2
- Community book club 4
- Hardcore Literature IJ lecture III: The Map is Not the Territory (pages 489–795)
- I Hate Infinite Jest ep. XXXII (pp. 938–981, the end) — guest Tim Eastwood: the ending-theories finale — the Lyle-toothbrush DMZ walkthrough, the single-quote narrator argument, and the Marathe ER identification
- IJ Book Club Ep. 02: Are they addicted to the process, the secrecy, or the drug? — early-pages session, Orin's phone call through the pump room
- IJ Book Club Ep. 04: Hatred of the work is just part of the work — Schtitt & Mario, Tiny Ewell, the first Marathe–Steeply desert section, and the ETA locker room (pp. ~79–121)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 22 (S2 Ep 2): The Back-Door Slip — the government-side samizdat briefing, the Avril/Wayne tableau, Lenz & Green, the hand-model scene with endnote 234, and Arslanian's fusion lecture (pp. ~548–575)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 40 (S3 Ep 6 by feed position): Dilaudid-colored Sky — the toothbrush fight arrives: Tim's duck-symbolism decode of the Stice window scene, the is-Hal-really-laughing dispute, Lyle the unreincarnated prankster, and Gately's Demerol dream (pp. ~876–891)
- Infinite Notes — co-(re)-reading notes for Infinite Jest
- Mapping the Zone Ep. 04: I just need to put the book down and go for a walk — monthly IJ read-through, pp. 198–306 (Joelle's overdose, the Schacht match, Ennet House, Orin's backstory, Poor Tony)
- Mapping the Zone Ep. 05: Like Last Time, Only Moreso — pp. ~306–410 (Troeltsch, Mario/Avril, Marathe/Steeply, Eschaton, Boston AA, Mario's puppet film, Lyle)
- an online forum — full-history archive digest