the Steeply–Poutrincourt colloquy: the greater brain, building a game out of what's missing

Hal's whole game is a compensation, and that's its genius. He can't lob like Possalthwaite, his net-play's "pedestrian," Wayne is flatly the more complete athlete — and yet "Hal Incandenza has the greater tennis brain." His edge "has become knowing he doesn't have everything, and constructing a game as much out of what's missing as what's there." The torturer's architecture is negative space made into strategy: a body that turns its own gaps into a plan.