endnote n.294: the absent 'Jim'
It’s a Boston-colored thing on Commitments to make all speech a protracted apostrophe to some absent ‘Jim,’ Joelle’s observed in a neutral sociologic way.
Context
Endnote 294 entire, glossing a speaker's "like fucking sang, Jim" in Joelle's Cocaine-Anonymous material of scene 139. Joelle — radio-trained, lexically armed — files Boston AA oratory under the correct rhetorical term: apostrophe, address to an absent one, and the note is careful that her observation is "neutral sociologic," classification without judgment. Pairs with Madame Psychosis's on-air "valid art" claim (p. 592, above) — same term, same mind, and of course in this book the absent Jim is never just generic. ("Joelle's observed" is a has-contraction, as written.)