Endnote 269 (from page 665)

E.T.A., Ennet House, and the A.F.R., cross-cut · first-time reader guide · all scenes

You were sent here from page 665 — when you're done, head back to pages 663–665.

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

You've just been sent to endnote 269 from p. 665, where the main text showed you "Helen Steeply's" mailed questionnaire — a letter consisting entirely of Qs. This note (pp. 1047–52) is the reply: Marlon Bain's typed answers, numbered (1), (3c), (3e), (5), (7) to questions you never see, on the stationery of Saprogenic Greetings, Inc. — motto: "WHEN YOU CARE ENOUGH TO LET A PROFESSIONAL SAY IT FOR YOU." Bain is the man Orin handed over as a "secondary source" at the end of endnote 234: his childhood doubles partner, a fixture of the old Weston household, now housebound by his Disabilities. The prose is fastidious, funny, and aimed; it carries three lettered sub-footnotes of its own.

Terms, in order of appearance

the Jamaica Way (p. 1047) — real Boston parkway; where the traffic-report helicopter came down on Bain's parents.
Swinburne (p. 1047) — real Victorian poet, notorious for flagellation themes; the hinge of the football joke.
anaclitic (p. 1048) — real psychoanalytic term: dependent on, leaning against.
the Rose Garden (p. 1049) — White House press setting; "I have no response to that" as podium-speak.
Longwood (p. 1049) — real: the Longwood Cricket Club, historic Boston-area tennis venue.
monilial (p. 1049) — from Monilia, a yeast; the internist's specialty.
neurasthenic (p. 1050) — dated real term: an invalid of the nerves.
furcated (p. 1051) — real word: forked, branching.
Amotivational Syndrome (sub-footnote a, p. 1052) — real pop-clinical label for marijuana apathy; the footnote argues it's a misnomer.

After you read: three things

1. Watch the addressee line decay. Bain answers "Ms. Helen Steepley," then Steeples, Steeley, Starkly, Starksaddle, and finally "Ms. Bainbridge" (p. 1052) — the cover identity eroding under a correspondent too scrupulous to get a name wrong by accident. Add the lecture on football's "repressed homoeroticism" and the letterhead's "Wacky Disguises," and the document keeps winking at facts about its addressee that its writer cannot know and you do.

2. The diagnosis arrives with its own live demonstration. Bain's thesis: Orin "has come to regard the truth as constructed instead of reported"; his famous openness is "a pose of poselessness" (p. 1048). Exhibit: the S. Johnson story — "Let's call it a nubbin" (p. 1049) — and the living-room lie about a swerving "pulverize-and-run driver." Now recall the phone call of endnote 110: Orin interrupted Hal to re-assert exactly that lie, years later, mid-sentence (p. 1014). You've already watched the constructed truth in operation.

3. Two withholdings are the text, not defects. The word that appeared on the fogged Volvo window "in the days prior to Dr. Incandenza's felo de se" — which "cast a conjugal pall in all sorts of directions" — is never given; the letter says "This is it." and moves on (pp. 1047–48). And the closing warning to the addressee is an image, not a claim: Orin's old party impression of his Moms, "a person closing in, arms open wide, smiling" (p. 1052). The letter trusts its reader to sit with both; so does the book.

Written only from this endnote and pages before its callout on p. 665. Safe to read before you start.