dawn drills; Schtitt’s second world — "Charles Tavis knows what James Incandenza…"
Charles Tavis knows what James Incandenza could not have cared about less: the key to the successful administration of a top-level junior tennis academy lies in cultivating a kind of reverse-Buddhism, a state of Total Worry.
Context
The whole succession stated as a difference in temperament. The dead founder "could not have cared about less" about matriculations, quotas, room assignments, the grinding administrative machine — and the successor is defined precisely by caring about exactly that, to the point of a "reverse-Buddhism, a state of Total Worry" that hauls him out of bed twitching before dawn. It's the theme's most economical account of what changed when the uncle replaced the father: not a coup so much as a temperamental inversion, the visionary indifferent king succeeded by the sedulous worried administrator, and the school running better for it. Claudius, in this reading, is the one who actually does the job — which is its own kind of indictment of the king, and its own kind of the successor's justification.