Lenz, Green, and the dog
Mrs. L. lost all will to Data Process or cook or clean, or nurture, or finally even move, simply reclining in a custom-designed 1.5-meter-wide recliner watching InterLace Gothic Romances […] until four months after the huge settlement she ruptured and died, her mouth so crammed with peach cobbler the paramedics were hapless to administer C.P.R.
Context
The attaché's death rewritten as an ordinary American civilian portrait — no lethal cartridge required. Lenz's obese mother, handed a settlement fortune, "lost all will to … even move," and spent her last four months reclining in a custom 1.5-meter recliner, watching InterLace Gothic Romances, fed high-lipid pastry on gold trays by a chef on 24-hour call, until she ruptured with her mouth full. Every element of the pleasure-death is here — the oversized recliner, the immobility, the continuous feeding-while-viewing, the death in the chair — but there's no samizdat, no A.F.R., no smiley cartridge. This is just what happens when someone has the means and the will collapses: the terminal viewing posture arrives on its own, as the natural resting state of a person with unlimited pleasure and nothing to want. The Entertainment doesn't create this end-state; it perfects and accelerates a posture the culture reaches by itself, given money and a recliner and something on the screen.