Pages 673–682
The match's third set, still 11 November, and the point of view settles fully into Steeply on the cold bleachers — bracketed by two opposed commentators. On one side prorector Thierry Poutrincourt, ex-pro, Québécoise, who slides into French for the real content; on the other Aubrey deLint with his charts and player-by-player "gestalt" rankings. Above them all, Troeltsch broadcasts the match into his empty fist. Much of this scene's actual action runs through its endnotes — have a finger ready at the back.
Terms, in order of appearance
- Collyrium (p. 673) — real eyewash brand; Hal's set-break errand.
- étoile (p. 673 ff.) — French: star; endnote 273's gloss — "Stars, shooting stars, falling stars" — is the whole theme in three words.
- ephebe (p. 675) — real Greek term: a youth on the edge of adulthood.
- Lenglen / Evert (p. 675) — real prodigies: Suzanne Lenglen, Chris Evert; the catalog's anchors.
- endnote 275 (p. 678) — the verb Poutrincourt chooses for "cancel each other out"; one line.
- endnote 276 (p. 679) — what her one slipped word reveals she knows; the scene's trapdoor.
- raison de faire (endnote 277) — Trois-Rivières idiom: a reason to get out of bed.
- genre-dysphoric (p. 681) — Orin's reported term for his father: unhappy in one's genre.
After you read: three things
1. The étoile seminar is the answer key. Poutrincourt's French lays out the arc: everything top tennis needs is achievable by puberty; then "you awaken to the fact that you are loved for winning only.... The from-noplace winning created you" (pp. 676–77); then the two dooms — attainment that "does not have the meaning," or the Endless Party. The children, she notes, are "versed in what is called the saga of Eric Clipperton" — you are too (pp. 407–410, 430–434). Her quiet close: "So to survive here for later is, finally, to have it both ways."
2. Flip the endnotes; the small talk is a double-blind. Note 274: the "journalist" plans to pull unexpurgated files on his seatmate. Note 276: his seatmate has almost certainly already made him — down to how he holds a lighter. Each is pumping the other while pretending not to see the seeing. Amid the tradecraft, one unguarded detail: Steeply's raglan sweater "had been his wife's" (p. 681).
3. Two entries for your running file. A Hal passing shot veers out "as if some freak gust came out of nowhere and blew it out, and Stice looked more surprised than Hal did" (p. 679) — add it to pp. 636–37 and 654. And deLint's closing read of Hal: "some part of him leaves and hovers and then comes back" (p. 682). In the background, meanwhile, pale small boys drag white trash bags to the dumpsters — the expedition of pp. 666–673 exiting the frame.
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.