The Eschaton debacle — "It’s snowing on the goddamn map…"

The novel's most-quoted line on representation, delivered by Pemulis in his capacity as Eschaton's éminence grise, raging up and down outside the theater's chainlink fence as the season's first snow falls on four tennis courts that are also the earth. This is the theme's center of gravity: the map has weather now, and the argument over whose weather it is ends with real blood on the real courts inside ten minutes. Everything else in this collection orbits this line.