Pages 651–654
Another 11 NOVEMBER header: the book loops back two days, to the afternoon everyone was buzzing about at supper (pp. 627–638) — the ordered Hal-versus-Stice match itself, on Show Court 6, the same court that hosted the Eschaton carnage of pp. 321–342. You already know how it ends (7–5 in the third, from p. 627), and the narration proceeds as if it knows you know. On court: Hal in an ankle brace, Stice in all-black. In the bleachers: "Helen Steeply of Moment" in a fuchsia ski cap, with Aubrey deLint ordered to keep her "in direct sight at all times," while Mario films the set from the transom overhead.
Terms, in order of appearance
- AirStirrup (p. 652) — real brand of rigid ankle brace; the bulge in Hal's left shoe.
- McEnroe-Esconja tradition (p. 652) — John McEnroe's famously closed, side-on service stance is real; Esconja is the book's own.
- book / anti-book (p. 653) — "book" is the statistical percentage play; anti-book is refusing it on purpose.
- R.A.S.U. (p. 653) — endnote 265 unpacks the acronym in one line; a bleacher.
- cathected (p. 653) — real psychoanalytic term: invested with emotional energy; the profiler is the punter's.
- the Lung (p. 654) — the courts' inflatable winter dome, not yet up; its absence was Troeltsch's gripe on p. 631.
After you read: three things
1. You're holding Stice's version; now watch the original. At supper Stice privately recalled balls from this match swerving "against wind and their own vectors," favoring him alone (pp. 636–37). This is that afternoon from the outside. Keep his account in your pocket as you watch — and note the transom's "monolithic shadow, black as ink," wheeling over the court "like some giant hooded shadowed moving presence, brooding" (p. 654), which the narration says gives everyone but Hal the fantods.
2. Learn to read a point the book's way. The pp. 652–53 rally is a free lesson in match cognition: the axiom ("the man who has to hit up from the net is going to get passed"), then "a moment of total mentation as the ball hung there," the crowd able to "feel Hal feel Stice letting the point go," and Hal's flat inside-out pass — "faultless and on Hal's part imaginative, anti-book." DeLint's chart logs it as "One of very few total inspired points from Incandenza." Inspired-versus-book is the axis to watch.
3. Count the layers of watching. A federal operative in a rooster-comb ski cap, taking notes on a boy she's forbidden to approach; deLint under explicit orders to watch her watching; Schtitt smoking above; Mario filming it all; bleachers filling because word spread that this match was ordered. The tennis is the least surveilled thing on the court.
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.