the captive listener whose interior can't be reached

Green is the perfect complement to Lenz's compulsive broadcast precisely because he is nearly mute: a man whose whole traumatic interior is buried under "strata and substrata of silence," his post-detox cognition slowed to one thought a minute. He can receive Lenz's endless monologue and give almost nothing back, which is exactly why Lenz keeps him — the captive ear as a near-silent surface. The theme's two failure modes, the man who can't stop transmitting and the man who can't, walk side by side down Brainerd Rd. [sweep · shared-ground addiction-recovery]