Endnote 234 (from page 565)

Randy Lenz, out at night · first-time reader guide · all scenes

You were sent here from page 565 — when you're done, head back to pages 565–567.

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

You've just been sent to endnote 234 from page 565, mid-scene with Orin and his newest Subject. The note runs pp. 1038–44 and is a document: "TRANSCRIPT-FRAGMENTS" from the interview series for the "PUTATIVE MOMENT MAGAZINE SOFT PROFILE" of punter O. J. Incandenza, by "putative Moment Magazine soft-profile writer Helen Steeply," November Y.D.A.U. Only Orin's answers appear; every question is redacted to a bare "Q." and some answers get only a silence ("..."). It's a new format — you reconstruct the interviewer from what her questions produce — and it reads fast, mostly as one long Orin monologue about his parents.

Terms, in order of appearance

putative (p. 1038) — real word: supposed, so-called; the header applies it to both the profile and the writer.
"Fresh Air" (p. 1038) — real NPR interview program; where the Found Drama beans got spilled.
Psy-Ops (p. 1041) — real military term: psychological operations.
Rototiller (p. 1041) — real machine: a motorized garden tiller, notoriously hard to steer.
NAFTA (p. 1041) — real 1990s trade agreement; dates the garden anecdote to before Subsidized Time.
rhombusoid (p. 1042) — Orin's coinage: rhombus-shaped; the patch of mold.
espadrilles (p. 1042) — real: rope-soled canvas shoes.
eschatologies (p. 1043) — real word: doctrines of the world's end; "all quality eschatologies" keep a card unturned.
Saprogenic Greetings (p. 1043) — company name; saprogenic is a real word: producing decay.

After you read: three things

1. The header has already told you the truth twice. "Putative" profile, "putative" writer — the apparatus flags the cover as cover, and you've known since the mountainside on pp. 87–95 what "Helen" is. Orin doesn't. Read his on-tape courtship that way: "no matter how lovely you're looking in that pantsuit" (p. 1038), the "strange bond" speech answered only by "..." (p. 1044) — and, mid-interview, Orin explaining Psy-Ops to his interviewer "for your info" (p. 1041).

2. His defense of both parents is one argument: they function. "Insane is just like a catch-term" (p. 1038) — so the father was a daily-blind-drunk delusional who simultaneously built an academy, patented glass, and made films; the fallout from the Found Drama hoax you read about in endnote 145 (the burned New Yorker critic) explains the "psychotic psyche" school of criticism. The mother's compulsions are "compulsively efficient": the grammar squads, the five-week IT'S billboard crusade, a first floor built without doors (pp. 1039–40). Notice how often Orin catches the topic infecting his own usage.

3. You've heard the mold story before — 1,030 pages ago. The half-eaten "rhombusoid patch of fungus," the smiley-face slippers, "I ate this," and "Help! My son ate this!" screamed in tight right-faces inside a string border: a compressed version of this surfaced on pp. 10–11. Here Orin, who was standing in the garden, tells it whole — and adds the detail at the glass door: Himself watching with his palms out and thumbs together, making a film-frame, and Mario at his knee trying to make the frame too (p. 1044).

Written only from this endnote and pages before its callout on p. 565. Safe to read before you start.