Gately, the wraith, and the figurants (iii)
Wraith, not figurant, Gately meant, he corrects himself. He’s lying here correcting his thoughts like he was talking. He wonders if his brain-voice talks fast enough for the wraith not to have to like tap its foot and look at its watch between words. Are they words if they’re only in your head, though?
Context
Gately, conversationally trapped by a ghost who can only hear brain-voice, starts self-editing his thoughts like speech — the book's least prescriptive character suddenly policing his own mental grammar out of courtesy. And then the flood's philosophical residue, put in Gately's plain register: "Are they words if they're only in your head, though?" — the whole language-versus-thought problem the Incandenzas do with the O.E.D., done in one line from a hospital bed.