Wayne's Québécois allegiance (and which cell)
This asks whether the star tennis player John Wayne is secretly a Québécois operative, and if so which separatist cell he serves. It is contested because his allegiance is heavily implied — by his masked presence at the grave-dig and a family disgrace buried in a footnote — yet stated outright in no voice anywhere.
Scenes
Adjudication
This crux has an adversarial ledger: Wayne, Avril, and the A.F.R.. The per-reading verdicts are below.
Theories on this crux
| Reading | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Minor structure & design cruxes | favored |
| John Wayne is a covert Québécois operative (allegiance near-text; which cell, live) | favored |
Discussed in
- Community book club 4
- Consider David Foster Wallace: Critical Essays
- Hardcore Literature IJ lecture III: The Map is Not the Territory (pages 489–795)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 20: Taken Ill Shortly After Coming Home From Work — the Antitoi murders from inside the shop, the 1963 mattress scene, the NA marijuana meeting (pp. ~480–508)
- IJ Book Club Ep. 38 (S3 Ep 4 by feed position): Full of the sound and fury... — the off-the-board roadmap session: the head-dig as settled fact, JOI's save-Joelle scheme, the hole-communication mechanism, and the who-is-the-plant fight (no new pages)
- IJ Book Club S2 Ep. 10: The Way We Construct Meaning from Reality — the Poor Tony chase, the AFR provenance chain, Joelle's teeth dream, the finger-saw matrix (pp. ~719–736)
- IJ Book Club S2 Ep. 11: The Vapors — endnote 304 close-read (Struck's plagiarism, le Jeu du Prochain Train, Bernard Wayne) and Joelle cleaning at Ennet House (fn 304 + pp. ~732–~747)
- IJ Lecture IV: The Year of Glad (Hardcore Literature) — the wraith orchestrates, Hal wraith-dosed with DMZ (and maybe shown the film), the too-late head-dig, and the AFR-victory missing year (pp. 795–end)
- an online forum — full-history archive digest
- an online forum — full-history archive digest