Molly Notkin's party: Joelle's overdose (pp. 234–235)
Low-budget celluloid horror films created ambiguity and possible elision by putting ? after THE END, is what pops into her head: THE END? amid the odors of mildew and dicky academic digestion? Joelle’s mother’s family had no indoor plumbing. It is all right. She represses all bathetic this-will-be-the-last-thing-I-smell thought-patterns. Joelle is going to have Too Much Fun in here.
Context
Locked in Notkin's bathroom, the film scholar to the last: her death framed as a title card with a question mark, the sentimentality of last-things policed as "bathetic" — the suicide's self-management of its own pathos.