Annular shapes / circles / rings

This is the novel's master geometry: rings, orbits, loops, and revolutions that turn up at every scale, from the physics of "cold annular fusion" (pp. 63-64) to the quit/binge loop of Erdedy's new-bong ritual (pp. 17-27) to the "recursive loop" of the attaché's rigged, self-repeating death by cartridge (pp. 54-55, 87). The circle is by turns cosmic, addictive, and formal: "seven moons orbiting a dead planet" (p. 193), the "gradual cycle" and "circular routine" of E.T.A. drug use (p. 53), pain figured as a "repetitive gerbil-wheel" (pp. 443-446), and the endnote apparatus itself ringing back on its own drug-glosses. The image gathers its charge at p. 222, where the annular closes into a trap — "the ultimate annular fusion: that of exhibit and its cage" — so that recursion, elsewhere a figure for renewal or fusion, becomes the shape of a loop with no exit. Late in the book even burial is annular: Jim, who invented annulation, lies "in your annulation-zone" (p. 941).