Hal horizontal in V.R. 5
Stice had asked whether I believed in ghosts. It’s always seemed a little preposterous that Hamlet, for all his paralyzing doubt about everything, never once doubts the reality of the ghost. Never questions whether his own madness might not in fact be unfeigned. Stice had promised something boggling to look at. That is, whether Hamlet might be only feigning feigning.
Context
Flat on the floor of Viewing Room 5 in the anhedonic fact-shuffle after his panic attack, Hal circles back to Stice's window-side question and produces the arc's thesis statement: the one thing Hamlet never doubts is the ghost. In a novel whose dead father-auteur is at that moment verifiably at work three scenes away, the "preposterous" credulity is the book's own position, smuggled in as literary criticism — and the feigning-feigning rider aims the same doubt at Hal's own condition.