Orin and the Swiss hand-model
that all else is gone: that her sense of humor is gone, her petty griefs, triumphs, memories, hands, career, betrayals, the deaths of pets—that there is now inside her a vividness vacuumed of all but his name: O., O. That he is the One.
Context
Orin is a one-man Entertainment, engineering in each Subject exactly what the cartridge does to viewers. What he needs from the seduction isn't sex or love but the moment the woman is emptied of everything but him — "her sense of humor is gone, her petty griefs, triumphs, memories, hands, career, betrayals" all vacuumed away until there's "a vividness vacuumed of all but his name." That is the samizdat's signature effect stated almost word-for-word: the collapse of an entire inner life to a single bright point, "empty of intent" (101) except for the One. The son induces in each Subject the annihilation his father's film induces in each viewer — total fixation, all else gone, the self reduced to reception of a single object. Where the Entertainment makes the viewer its addict, Orin makes each woman his; both are appetites for a person's whole attention that end by hollowing the person out, and the family resemblance between the punter's seductions and the auteur's cartridge is the theme's quiet, chilling suggestion.