the trophy nobody can let be real

Clipperton's whole tragedy is a recognition that won't arrive: he wins by threatening to shoot himself, so the wins — and, the tour senses, Clipperton himself — can never be "treated as real," and he stands receiving the huge trophies in a withering scatter of applause that acknowledges the result while withholding the reality. He is present, victorious, and unmet, a self that has extorted every outward sign of being seen and gotten none of the seeing, which is exactly why he's "so terrifically glum and withdrawn."