IJ study archive

Scene 005: professional conversationalist

Scene
5
Pages
27–32
When
1 April, YTMP (2003) — April Fools' Day; Hal is ten
Where
rented office with a blank door, 'upscale district of a vital North American metropolis' — Boston/Enfield, an uphill bike ride from E.T.A.in: metro Boston (unspecified) · E.T.A. (Enfield Tennis Academy) (also)
POV
dialogue only — Hal Incandenza and the 'professional conversationalist' (James O. Incandenza in disguise)

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Open questions this scene bears on

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 9)

Summary

On April Fools' Day of the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad, ten-year-old Hal is sent to a blank-doored office to see a "professional conversationalist" — who is transparently his father, James O. Incandenza, in a fake nose, askew mustache, and his own unmistakable veal-marsala-stained Interdependence-Day sweater-vest. The conversation is a desperate ruse born of JOI's delusion (or premonition) that Hal does not speak: Hal talks fluently and incessantly throughout, defining implore per the O.E.D., needling the disguise, while JOI escalates into a paranoid aria about Avril's infidelities, the DuPlessis/Luria P—— Québec intrigue, and implants in his own "anaplastic cerebrum." It ends with JOI's naked plea — a son who would just converse with him — met, in the scene's cruelest irony, by Hal's typographic silence: "'Son?' '…' 'Son?'"

What to notice

A scene built almost entirely of dialogue, and the dialogue is a machine for double irony: the ten-year-old sees through the disguise instantly (the askew mustache, the running latex, the marsala-stained sweater-vest), while the father inside the disguise cannot perceive the one thing actually happening — a son talking fluently, at length, to his face. Then the typographic knife: as JOI's plea peaks, Hal's lines shrink to bare ellipsis points — the page itself starts rendering Hal's speech the way his father perceives it, the scene's form defecting to the delusion's side. That is worth sitting with, because the book's opening scene is this delusion come true. On a reread the paranoid rant is a buried index: DuPlessis and Luria, the "over thirty Near Eastern medical attachés", the Mondragonoid nose (Avril's maiden name, planted thirty-odd pages before her dossier) all prove out at espionage level later — the paranoia is bad hearing of true signals, which is this family's native pathology. Notice the date, April Fools' Day, the same calendar square the book assigns JOI's suicide and the attaché's fatal viewing; and the five-walled-rooms confession, three generations of fathers who can address their sons only from behind something — a newspaper, a latex nose, and eventually a lens.

Beats — page-by-page
  • p. 27: Section header "1 APRIL — YEAR OF THE TUCKS MEDICATED PAD." Hal arrives ("All I know is my dad said to come here"); offered Seven-Up; age miskeyed as fourteen.
  • p. 28: implore defined verbatim from O.E.D. Condensed Vol. VI; "Good lord she didn't exaggerate did she?"; Hal self-describes: ranked junior player, lexical prodigy, gets beat up, wears a bow tie.
  • p. 29: "Himself is my dad. We call him Himself... We call my mother the Moms" — family monikers explained to the disguised father; "Himself hallucinates, sometimes, lately, you ought to be apprised."
  • p. 29: The conversationalist boasts of "support staff" and "delving"; offers Byzantine erotica as topic — suspiciously on-target for Hal's interests.
  • pp. 29-30: Paranoid escalation: the family's "sordid liaison" with "the pan-Canadian Resistance's notorious M. DuPlessis and his malevolent but allegedly irresistible amanuensis-cum-operative, Luria P———"; deaths by alpenstock and cocktail onion.
  • p. 30: Avril accusations: a bisexual bassoonist; "over thirty Near Eastern medical attachés"; mnemonic steroids in Hal's cereal; Hal: "I'm ten for Pete's sake," and notes the mustache is askew, the face running.
  • pp. 30-31: The implant fantasia (gyroscopic balance sensor, mise-en-scène appropriation card, "priapistic-entertainment cartridge" in JOI's post-surgical brain); Hal IDs the sweater-vest and calls it: "Is this April Fools, Dad, or do I need to call the Moms and C.T.?"
  • p. 31: Mid-fantasia, JOI addresses "your own generous Mondragonoid nose" — Avril's maiden name (Mondragon) planted thirty-odd pages before her dossier (scene 020, p. 64).
  • p. 31: JOI's confession-by-rant: his own father turning the Tucson Citizen into "the room's fifth wall"; "Who's lived his whole ruddy bloody cruddy life in five-walled rooms?"
  • p. 31: Hal's exit pressure: a challenge match with Schacht "in like twelve minutes," and an oral-lyrologist to meet outside Brighton Best Savings at five (lawn-mowing barter for the interview) — the prodigy's day continuing around the father's collapse.
  • pp. 31-32: Hal, exasperated and audibly speaking ("It speaks. It accepts soda and defines implore"); JOI: "Praying for just one conversation... that does not end like all the others: you staring, me swallowing?"; Hal's replies become "…".

Themes in this scene

  • Communication and Solipsism: a father who cannot hear his son's speech and a son who cannot make the father register it — the dialogue literally performs mutual deafness, ending in ellipses.
  • Fathers and Sons: three generations in one rant — JOI's father behind the newspaper, JOI behind the latex nose, Hal behind precocity; silence inherited like the phone-locutions of scene 006.
  • Surveillance and Disguise: the disguised-parent gambit is the family's native mode; prefigures Steeply's Helen persona and JOI's late films of veiled/disguised figures.
  • Family and Hamlet: Avril's (possibly real) infidelities and the DuPlessis/Luria web enter the book through paranoia that later scenes substantiate — the rot in the family-state announced by its ghost-to-be.
  • Language and Grammar: Hal-as-O.E.D.-machine (implore, jew's-ear/jew's-harp progress report); verbal performance substituting for contact.

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • Dating consistency: "ten, eleven in June" on 1 April YTMP (2003) fits the adopted Hal-born-June-1992 ruling exactly.

Forward

  • JOI's delusion that Hal is mute is the seed of the Entertainment itself: the wraith tells Gately he made the film "to contrive a medium via which he and the muted son could simply converse" (pp. 838-840). The YG Hal of scenes 001/003 retroactively makes the delusion prophecy.
  • DuPlessis and Luria P—— (pp. 29-30): first mention of the Québécois-separatist apparatus; DuPlessis dies in Gately's botched burglary in the very next scene-cluster (pp. 55-60, scene 016); Luria runs through the Marathe/A.F.R. plot to the end.
  • "Over thirty Near Eastern medical attachés" (p. 30): the medical attaché of scenes 007/011/014 is later reported — in Steeply's doubly-hedged agency chatter, "possible indications of the victim's prior possible involvement" with JOI's widow (scene 029, p. 91) — as maybe one of them; the rant's wildest item gains a shadow of corroboration, and the Entertainment's first victim may thereby be family-connected.
  • Byzantine erotica (p. 29) triangulates with Hal's application essay "Tertiary Symbolism in Justinian Erotica" (scene 001, p. 7) and the triptych over the attaché's sideboard (scene 007, p. 36).
  • JOI's father's newspaper-as-fifth-wall (p. 31) is fully dramatized in James Incandenza, Sr.'s 1960 Tucson garage monologue (scene 049, pp. 157-169) and its film version As of Yore (n.24).
  • This very scene is dramatized in JOI's filmography as It Was a Great Marvel That He Was in the Father Without Knowing Him (n.24 — see the n024 scene file): "a father (Watt), suffering from the delusion that his etymologically precocious son (Smothergill) is pretending to be mute, poses as a 'professional conversationalist'" — JOI filmed his failure.
  • April 1: JOI's suicide falls on 1 April YTSDB (2004) — a derived date, never stated outright in the text; the attaché receives the Entertainment on 1 April YDAU (scene 007) — the book's fatal date, first instituted here as a Fools' Day gambit.
  • Edition variant (Carlisle via Moore): the first edition gave Hal's age here as twelve/"thirteen in June"; Wallace corrected it to ten/"eleven in June" in later printings. This edition reads ten/eleven — the corrected text.

Notable passages (6)
  • p. 28: Hal's full O.E.D. recitation of implore — the prodigy demonstrated, with "to cry aloud" buried in the etymology.
  • p. 30: "I'm ten for Pete's sake" — Hal puncturing the paranoia while supplying the family dossier (Wild Turkey at 5 A.M., delusions of mouths moving with nothing coming out).
  • p. 30: "I'm not even up to J yet, in the condensed O.E.D., much less Québec or malevolent Lurias." — Hal's deadpan; the plot's entire espionage apparatus filed under unreached alphabet.
  • p. 31: "Who's lived his whole ruddy bloody cruddy life in five-walled rooms?" — JOI's autobiography in one line.
  • p. 32: "And are you hearing me talking, Dad? It speaks. It accepts soda and defines implore and converses with you." — Hal's third-person "It" for himself: the son adopting the family's objectifying grammar at the moment of maximum plea.
  • p. 32: "Praying for just one conversation... that does not end in terror? That does not end like all the others: you staring, me swallowing?" followed by "'Son?' '…'" — the failed conversation that the Entertainment will try to have by other means.

What links here Manuscript differences (2) · Timeline events here (15) · Echoes (5) · Connected from (14) · Cited as evidence by (1) · Passages quoted here (38) · Motifs (2)

Manuscript differences

Timeline events here

Echoes

Connected from

Cited as evidence by

Passages quoted here

Motifs