IJ study archive

the Disease in the head: command headquarters, The Spider, DIS-EASE — "Gene called the Disease The Spider…"

quote

Gene called the Disease The Spider and talked about Feeding The Spider versus Starving The Spider and so on and so forth.

Context

The one datum this scene lands that the theme's Spider and DIS-EASE passages do not: Gene M.'s teaching that the Disease "makes its command headquarters in the head," so "the newcomers with some education" are the worst — the educated addict who identifies his whole self with his intellect is the most defended and therefore the most doomed. That command-headquarters-in-the-head beat is 066's distinct contribution here. The other two doctrines these blockquotes voice are landed in full elsewhere and are carried as cross-refs rather than re-taught: the Spider — Feeding versus Starving it, the will as the web the Disease spins in — is the theme's core model at 074 (p. 357, spine); DIS-EASE, the hyphen-trick and Geoffrey Day's tireless objection to it, is landed at 056 (p. 203). Day is diagnosed against the command-headquarters model in real time — "You can almost hear his Disease chewing away inside his head, feeding" — the parasite doing the newcomer's thinking for him.

In anthology