IJ study archive

Molly Notkin spills everything — "That, right on the hysterical cusp…"

quote

—That, right on the hysterical cusp where internalized rage can so easily shift to externalized rage, the mother had hurled the low-pH flask at the Daddy, who’d reflexively ducked; and that the rotter, one Orin, right behind, a former tennis champion with superb upper-body reflexes, had instinctively ducked also, leaving Madame Psychosis—dazed and bradykinetic from the sudden venting of so many high-pressure repressive family systems—open for a direct facial hit, resulting in the traumatic deformity.

Context

The deformation itself, at maximum specificity anywhere in the novel: two men duck on reflex and the acid finds the daughter's face. Note "bradykinetic" — Mario's clinical word (n.115) — attached to Joelle at the exact instant she (allegedly) joins the book's company of the deformed: the athletic body that ducks and the slowed body that can't, in one sentence. Still only as good as Notkin's sourcing, which is the point the undecidability ruling protects.

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