Pages 391–394

Interdependence Day evening — Mario's movie · first-time reader guide · all scenes

When you've finished these pages: three things worth a second look, at the bottom.

Same gala, same evening: Mario's film shifts gears into a time-lapse montage of headlines, subheaders, and news-cartridge voiceovers — his father's old device of mixing real and fake news — carrying the story from NATO's unraveling to the signing of the O.N.A.N. pact. The dining-hall frame is held lightly (Schtitt's pipe, Avril's Benson & Hedges, the kitchen's dessert vents); mostly you're reading capitalized headlines, and the register-collisions between them are deliberate. This is exposition at speed: four pages that install the rest of the book's political furniture.

Terms, in order of appearance

NOT IN MY NATION, BABE (p. 391) — Gentle on NATO's therm waste; therms are real units of heat energy, here Manitoba's exportable power.
Finlandization (p. 391) — real Cold War term: a small nation trimming its policy to suit a giant neighbor; the separatists' word for O.N.A.N.
Pillsbury / PepsiCo headers (p. 391) — real conglomerates bidding on the calendar; see thing 1.
Chrétien (p. 392) — Jean Chrétien, Canada's actual 1990s prime minister, cameo-ing in the fake history.
Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation (p. 392) — real place on the Manitoba–North Dakota line; where the therms get moved instead of dismantled.
sigmoid colon (p. 393) — real anatomy: the large intestine's last bend.
Viney & Veals (p. 393) — the Boston ad agency; Erdedy's employer, per p. 360, exonerated here in a passing header.
Bethesda (p. 393) — the real naval hospital that treats U.S. presidents; Gentle's "hygienic stress."
B.S. (p. 394) — Before Subsidization, the label for solar-calendar time; the initials' other reading comes free.

After you read: three things

1. Watch Subsidized Time get born. "BURGER KING'S PILLSBURY AWARDED RIGHTS TO NEW YEAR" (p. 391), with PepsiCo crying bid-rigging — the calendar you've been living inside since page 3 turns out to be a revenue measure, auctioned off year by year. The montage ends on the hinge itself: Gentle's first State of the O.N.A.N. Address falls "on the very last day of 'B.S.' solar time" (p. 394).

2. The form is half the content. Real papers, tabloids, ad-industry sheets, and a running gag — the "Veteran but Methamphetamine-Dependent Headliner" who can't stay inside his verbal parameters — all tumble together, and Mario's apparatus stays visibly homemade: the headlines twirl against black acetate that is Stice's old Fila warm-up top (p. 394). You are never allowed to forget you're watching a kid's puppet film about how the world got this way; how much of the "news" is dickied-with is left genuinely unclear.

3. Two futures flicker at the montage's edges. Separatist violence: Québec rallying against "Finlandization," a railroad spike in a Canadian P.M.'s eye (p. 392) — the grievance you've heard argued on the Tucson ledge, born here in headline form. And waste: capsized barges off Gloucester, "'WE ARE NOT THIS CONTINENT'S SIGMOID COLON,' GENTLE WARNS" (p. 393). The film is comedy; both of its running gags are the book's live ammunition.

Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.