Pages 386–391
While the puppet-film gala roars in the dining hall, this scene is across the way in the dark, locked weight room: Lyle — the sweat-fed guru of pp. 127–28 and the towel-dispenser drinking sessions of p. 379 — sits lotus in intermittent lightning, receiving a procession of E.T.A. kids who jimmy the lock, sweat up "incentive" in the sauna, and come to him one by one in towels. It opens by humanizing him first: even a guru isn't exempt from "the human pains of stunted desire," and Lyle's memory of a perpetually wet boy, Orin's old Academy doubles partner, is the frame the consultations sit in.
Terms, in order of appearance
- dickie/dicky (pp. 387–88) — slang verb: to jimmy or finesse open; meal-cards versus the latch.
- glabrous (p. 388) — real anatomy word: smooth, hairless.
- the Show (p. 388) — junior-circuit slang for the professional tennis tour.
- I/SPN (p. 388) — InterLace's sports network; the blazers and patches of Chu's daydream.
- Michael Chang (p. 388) — real 1990s tennis star, here "lately expired"; the book quietly kills real pros off.
- Mephistophelan (p. 388) — of Mephistopheles, the Faust legend's devil; E.T.A.'s official view of hype.
- C.F.D.C. (p. 391) — Caffeine Free Diet Coke, Lyle's drink since p. 379; Mario delivers it nightly.
After you read: three things
1. The method is listening, not wisdom. Lyle's Remarks can be as thin as "The world is very old" plus a shrug — and the narrator says outright that "it's the way he listens, somehow, that keeps the saunas full" (pp. 387–88). This is the day's third room built around reception: the AA hall that forgets to blink, the gala that hears everything ironically, and now a dark room where being heard is the whole service.
2. The Chu consult is the scene's center — read it slowly. Eleven-year-old LaMont Chu confesses a burning hunger for fame, and Lyle dismantles it clause by clause: the famous only fear the photographs will stop; "You have been snared by the delusion that envy has a reciprocal"; "You burn with hunger for food that does not exist" (p. 389); "The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you." It ends on the word this whole weekend has been circling: "Fame is not the exit from any cage" (p. 390) — escape requires "awareness of the fact of the cage." The AA pages said the same of the Disease; Lyle says it of ambition.
3. The quick consults set the comic scale. A senior hears a mosquito-whine only she can hear at lunch with her fiancé — "Sometimes suffering's point is almost crying out in a high-pitched whine to be heard" (p. 390; endnote 153's practical prescription is worth the flip); ten-year-old Blott pre-worries about future sins; and Doucette's mole gets referred onward to Mario — "No type or rank of guru is above delegating" (p. 391). Note who E.T.A.'s two working confessors turn out to be: the sweat-licker and Mario.
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.