Endnote 331 — the avant-garde roots of James's slapstick

Explains "Picaresque" as a nod to the comic-Surrealist Bay Area avant-garde of Peterson and Broughton, whose work — the mother-and-Death material of "Peterson's Potted Psalm" (p. 1072) and the cranial-imprisonment and eyeball imagery of The Cage — are clear touchstones in Himself's more parodic-slapstick films.