performed likeability masking identical, unshared isolation — the solipsism the novel dramatizes at length
echoes
From: A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life
- Early text: Two strangers each make a bid to be liked and then
"drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their
faces"; the man who introduced them "acted as if he did" like them, to
"preserve good relations at all times." [¶1, ¶2]
- IJ echo: The novel's pervasive solipsism and failed contact — Hal's
interior that cannot reach the people watching him (scene 001); the currency of
performed connection over real contact that runs through the E.T.A. and Ennet
House worlds.
- Weight: shared-preoccupation