IJ study archive

Scene 060: joelle walk uhid

Scene
60
Pages
223–227
When
7 Nov YDAU (2009), continuing scene 058 — Saturday, eve of Interdependence Day
Where
Boylston St. along Boston Common — the Shaw/54th memorial, the F.A.O. Schwartz block; flashback to the Davis Square Red Line platform that morningin: Downtown Boston · Cambridge (Harvard/Central Sq, other) (also)
POV
3rd person inside Joelle; walk present-tense with morning flashback

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Open questions this scene bears on

Endnotes

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 9)

Summary

The walk resumes after scene 059's interpolated chronology: Orin's collection of Lemon Pledge husks — molded legs, arms, five-holed masks on nails, "Not all the husks had names below them" — surfaces as Joelle passes the Shaw/54th memorial, which Québécois militants have draped overnight with a fleur-de-lis altered so the irises' stems are red blades; "the encaged and suicidal have a really hard time imagining anyone caring passionately about anything." Outside F.A.O. Schwartz, past the gauntlet of dealers, she stops at an uncanny anti-ad: a 2-D figure of a wheelchaired man, face reddened "with some terrible joy" between mirth and fury, eyes cast up, arms in submission-or-triumph, a conspicuously unlabelled black cartridge protruding from a slot in his palm — she removes it, looks, shoves it home with a click. Jim, she remembers, "had used her several times," filmed her "at prodigious and multi-lensed length, and refused to share what he'd made of it, and died w/o a note" (n.79) — her name for him: "Infinite Jim." The flashback supplies the morning: the final binge, the trip toward Lady Delphina for farewell weight at double rate, and on the Davis platform a courteous older man asking about the veil — to whom she shows the laminated U.H.I.D. card with its Churchill founding-legend ("while she, dear lady, would tomorrow still be hideously and improbably deformed") in type so tiny "the card looked somehow both blank and defaced."

What to notice

The interior of a person walking to a planned death, and the first thing to notice is the flatness: errands, etiquette, double-rate farewell weight from the dealer, paraphernalia discarded "again for the final time" — suicide conducted as logistics. The scene's biggest facts arrive in subordinate clauses: "Jim had used her several times", the filming "at prodigious and multi-lensed length", the refusal to share it, "and died w/o a note" — the lethal Entertainment's existence disclosed grammatically sideways, by the woman who is in it, who then names it "Infinite Jim". The sidewalk anti-ad is the year's entire plot on an easel — wheelchaired figure, ecstatic-catatonic face, conspicuously unlabelled cartridge — and its own star handles it, clicks the cartridge home, and walks on without decoding it: dramatic irony played at walking pace. Notice who actually reaches her: two strangers (the moon caller of her broadcast, the courteous Davis Square gentleman) engage her without consuming her, the only such exchanges in her orbit. And the U.H.I.D. card ends the scene on the veil's whole paradox in laminate — type so tiny the card looks "both blank and defaced", concealment as both wound-dressing and credential.

Beats — page-by-page
  • p. 223: Orin — "punter extraordinaire, dodger of flung acid extraordinaire" — and his childhood collection of Lemon Pledge husks; the nameless husks.
  • p. 223-224: The Shaw memorial in emergent sunlight, draped with the blade-stemmed fleur-de-lis "on the eve of Interdependence"; cops with shears; "thinking anyone cares whether they hang things from historic icons"; the suicidal's inability to imagine passionate caring.
  • p. 224: The dealer gauntlet ("Certain salesmen have only to stand there"); the anti-ad — wheelchaired figure, terrible joy, hairless head cast back, "his ecstasy terrible to see," the bare unlabelled cartridge-spine like a tongue out of his lineless palm; "It's some kind of anti-ad.... Lead up to an inevitability you deny"; she removes the cartridge and clicks it home; a dealer calls her Mama, "where's the funeral at."
  • p. 224-225: "Jim had used her several times. Jim at the end had filmed her at prodigious and multi-lensed length, and refused to share what he'd made of it, and died w/o a note" (n.79: video farewells déclassé by YTSDB); "Infinite Jim"; the timeline — first Orin left, then Jim came with the filmed apology-scene, vanished, returned "but only to--only four years seven months six days past--to leave."
  • p. 225: After taking the veil: getting "really high and clean" — scrubbing grout with Incandenza's toothbrush, imitating "the wife and mother they both declined to shoot."
  • p. 225: JOI the conjurer of Boston cabs in impossible places, "her true heart's friend"; "Never again a cab in four-plus years"; she walks — "surrendered, suicidal, eschews tumbrel or hack."
  • p. 225-226: The morning: the last freebase, the burnt-acetate panties, paraphernalia discarded "again for the final time"; the T toward Upper Brighton and Lady Delphina — "so hard to just cut it off in mid-binge, on a Saturday" — farewell weight at twice the 8-gram rate.
  • pp. 225-226: The Davis Square gentleman — hat tipped, in-ter-es-ted in four syllables, which Joelle, from Kentucky, enjoys; she "engaged with him completely, which was extremely rare."
  • pp. 226-227: The U.H.I.D. founding legend: Churchill, port and toddy, the cross-eyed carbuncular foundress; the Union's mission — "the scopophobic empathic fellowship and the genesis of sturdy inner resources through shame-free and unconstrained concealment" (p. 226); "tomorrow still be hideously and improbably deformed" (the sentence turns onto p. 227), cigar in the sherry, the finger-bowl napkin over her face; the card "both blank and defaced" (p. 227).

Themes in this scene

  • Disability and Deformity: the U.H.I.D. origin myth — concealment institutionalized as response to casual cruelty; the veil as both wound-dressing and credential ("blank and defaced").
  • Entertainment and the Self: the anti-ad is the Entertainment's whole semiotics on a sidewalk — wheelchair, ecstatic-catatonic viewer's face, unlabelled cartridge — and Joelle, its star, handles it and walks on.
  • Film and Optics: "filmed her at prodigious and multi-lensed length"; the apology-scene; "Infinite Jim" — the lethal film named, obliquely, by the woman in it.
  • Addiction and Recovery: the mid-binge logistics of quitting-by-dying; Lady Delphina's farewell weight; "again for the final time."
  • Nationalism and O.N.A.N.: the I-Day-eve flag action and its futility; the dealers and cops sharing a street in mutual professional indifference.
  • Memory and Forgetting: the last walk is conducted through a suite of Jim-recall — "Jim had used her several times... and died w/o a note" arriving in subordinate clauses (pp. 224-225), the interval counted to the day ("four years seven months six days past"), the grout-scrubbing imitation of "the wife and mother they both declined to shoot" (p. 225); a suicide's memory keeping ledger-exact books on the dead.

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • The Lemon Pledge husks point back to scene 051 (p. 174, Pledge-as-sunscreen) — Orin's collection literalizes the E.T.A. childhood as molted skins, masks with no names.
  • The five-holed Pledge husk-masks also belong to the book's mask/disguise system — the videophony masks on hooks (p. 148, scene 047) and the U.H.I.D. veil itself (Carlisle's routing; our Pledge-as-sunscreen link to scene 051 stands alongside).

Forward

  • "Dodger of flung acid" plus "the wife and mother they both declined to shoot" are the compressed first telling of the Thanksgiving acid catastrophe and Joelle's filmed life, unpacked in Molly Notkin's U.S.O.U.S. interview (pp. 788-795, scene 159 area) and Joelle's own versions to Gately (+); whether the veil hides ruin or unendurable beauty stays suspended exactly as here.
  • The anti-ad's wheelchaired ecstatic with unlabelled cartridge fuses the attaché scenes (007/011/014/025/028: the viewer's face), the unlabelled samizdat case (scene 007), and A.F.R. wheelchair iconography (scene 046; the beggar in scene 058) — placed the day before I-Day, it reads in retrospect like the year's whole plot on an easel.
  • "Died w/o a note" + "four years seven months six days" — the count lands precisely on 7 Nov from a 1 April; per the archive's adopted ruling, as printed (the year-arithmetic is one of the text's known internal inconsistencies) — and n.79's video-farewell rundown makes JOI's notelessness pointed: the filmmaker left no footage for his own death, unless the Entertainment is it.
  • Lady Delphina recurs in Joelle's Ennet-era backstory — and was already in the book: yrstruly's crew knows of her at p. 131 (scene 040), one dealer shared across the Joelle and Poor Tony worlds (Carlisle's cross-key). The Davis Sq. gentleman's dignified curiosity rhymes with scene 053's moon caller — the two strangers who address her without consuming her.
  • Carlisle states the anti-ad's irony flat where we hedge: the display "is presumably an advertisement for the very film she just remembered making," its star handling it undecoded; he also asks whether the case holds a live cartridge — open, recorded. And he corrects her "over four years" to "actually... over five" (Apr YTSDB → Nov YDAU = 5y7m) — arithmetically right under the shared 1-Apr anchor, but our convention cites the text's count as written.
  • Scene 062 (pp. 234-240, scene 062) picks up at Notkin's bathroom: this walk's purse — tube, bottle, Chore Boys, Delphina's weight — is the kit she locks the door with.

Notable passages (6)
  • p. 223: "Not all the husks had names below them." — the Pledge-husk collection; anonymity inside the prodigy factory, eight words.
  • p. 224: "his ecstasy terrible to see" / "the case's spine itself bare black slightly pebbled generic plastic, conspicuously unlabelled" — the anti-ad; the master-image of the entertainment-and-the-self material.
  • p. 224: "Jim had used her several times.... and died w/o a note." — the Entertainment's existence stated in a relative clause; "Infinite Jim" two lines later.
  • p. 226: "the scopophobic empathic fellowship and the genesis of sturdy inner resources through shame-free and unconstrained concealment" — U.H.I.D.'s mission statement verbatim; the disability-deformity anthology's charter text.
  • pp. 226-227: "while she, dear lady, would tomorrow still be hideously and improbably deformed." — the Churchill legend; U.H.I.D.'s primal scene.
  • p. 227: "the card looked somehow both blank and defaced." — the scene's closing paradox; the veil's logic on laminate.

What links here Timeline events here (14) · Connected from (11) · Passages quoted here (39) · Motifs (5)

Timeline events here

Connected from

Passages quoted here

Motifs