IJ study archive

Scene 160: hal inner infant meeting

Scene
160
Pages
795–808
When
Tues 17 Nov YDAU (2009), evening; Meeting listed 1730h (same day as Wayne's WETA meltdown / Pemulis's expulsion)
Where
tow-truck drive from E.T.A. via Rte. 9 to Natick MA; Quabbin Recovery Systems (Q.R.S.), Rte. 27 — windowless room 32Ain: Other single-scene locales · E.T.A. (Enfield Tennis Academy) (also)
POV
Hal Incandenza (3rd person, Hal-attached; tense drifts past→present, ends future-retrospective)

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Open questions this scene bears on

Endnotes

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 7)

Summary

A week-plus into quitting marijuana cold ("Abandoning All Hope," n.334), Hal — wretched, oversalivating, his own head "having at him like a well-revved chain-saw" — secretly drives E.T.A.'s tow truck fifty clicks to the remotest meeting in a Recovery Options booklet, hoping to scout Narcotics Anonymous. The booklet is two years stale: room 32A at Quabbin Recovery Systems is actually an Inner-Infant men's-movement group — bearded cross-legged men in socks clutching identical teddy bears. Hal watches in mounting horror as the sobbing focal member — recognized as Kevin Bain, older brother of Orin's old doubles partner Marlon — is coached by the leader Harv to name his Infant's needs, beg his dead parents to come hold him, and finally crawl on all fours toward a mild-faced stranger named Jim who will hold him in loco parentis. Hal, praying sincerely for the first time in years not to be recognized, is left with the indelible image of Bain crawling toward him, "his face unspeakable."

What to notice

The trap of the scene is precise: Hal, the ironist, lands not in AA — whose banal clichés the book has spent hundreds of pages certifying as load-bearing — but in sincerity's toxic parody, encounter-group kitsch with teddy bears; the satire cuts at therapy culture while leaving the real Program untouched. Notice Hal's approach: he comes for data, not fellowship, Xeroxing the O.E.D. in his head and rehearsing "My name's Mike" into the rearview — irony's reflex operating even en route to help. The details are planted cruelly: the needs-meeter who ignores eleven progressively louder pleas is named Jim, like the dead father; and Hal — held, dandled, loudly loved all through infancy — finds himself envying a man with parents to blame, the book's flat refusal of tidy etiology. The title flickers through in one line: "At a certain point hysterical grief becomes facially indistinguishable from hysterical mirth", it appears. And watch for the crack in the irony: Hal's plea not to be recognized is "the first really desperate and sincere prayer" since footed pajamas — sincerity arriving as terror. The closing tableau, Kevin Bain crawling toward his needs with "his face unspeakable", is a mirror held to Hal, who cannot move toward his at all.

Beats — page-by-page
  • pp. 795-796: Hal rushes his P.M. matches and skips supper for the males-only "Q.R.S.–32A" listing from "the incisorless nostril-pierced girl down at The Ennet House" (n.333: the Mass. 12-Step directory); his motive isn't craving but the horrific head-state since "Abandoning All Hope" (n.334: Pemulis-inspired trope for quitting the daily Bob Hope — a self-pitying frame, Boston AA would say).
  • pp. 796-799: dusk drive down Rte. 9 with Kodiak plug and NASA spit-glass; Hal mentally Xeroxes the O.E.D. on Anonymous — facts in lieu of feeling — and practices "My name's Mike" into the rearview; Q.R.S. itself a smoked-glass "child-titan's" cube (glass Hal's late father once repudiated in Lens & Pane), its deserted lobby so silent "Hal can hear the squeak of blood in his head"; the square hallway circuit, booklet held "like a crucifix."
  • pp. 799-803: room 32A: bearded middle-class men in chinos and socks, each clutching an identical bear with red corduroy tongue so they "look oddly throttled"; Harv invites all Inner Infants to hear "Kevin's Inner Infant expressing his grief and loss"; affirmation litany ("You're crying for two, guy"); treacly ambient CD ("like Philip Glass on Quaaludes"); Kevin names his Infant alone in its crib — "And nobody's coming!"; parents smooshed by a falling traffic helicopter en route to Couples Counselling.
  • pp. 803-804: Hal's head jerks up — it's Kevin Bain of Dedham, Wharton M.B.A., Simulated-Reality arcade money (home-Simulating killed the arcades, p. 804 main text; n.335's wry exception is the hardwired porn-addict fellowships; n.336 sources the marshmallow "wild time" to "his sudoriferous and agora-compulsive younger brother, M. Bain"); this is the Men's-Movement thing Coyle's stepdad attended, not NA; the booklet's cover reads Jan. YDPAH — he may have been "kertwanged."
  • pp. 804-805: Pemulis's hydroponic Ziplocs remembered as "bags of little teddy-bear arms"; Hal, held and dandled and loudly loved all through infancy, envies a man with parents to blame.
  • pp. 805-806: Kevin's bear points Hal's way — Hal covers his face — but it's aimed at Jim, the yogurt man behind him; Hal hops his chair out of the line of transit; Harv hand-signals Jim not to move no matter what; Jim ignores eleven progressively louder pleas; Kevin's projectile weeping.
  • pp. 806-808: the room chants "Meet Those Needs!" in 'Block That Kick!' meter while Hal mentally flees to Aruba, the Appian Way, the Azores; the passivity lesson sprung — Kevin must go actively to Jim; all-cello "I Don't Know (How to Love Him)," the opera Lyle plays at night (Lyle and Marlon Bain "particularly tight"); Kevin rises, mime-walking against a gale; Hal's prayer not to be recognized is "the first really desperate and sincere prayer" since footed pajamas.
  • pp. 808-809: "Is this how an Infant moves towards its needs, Kevin?" — future-tense close: Hal's most vivid memory will be Bain on all fours, dipping and rising on three limbs, "his face unspeakable."

Themes in this scene

  • Addiction and Recovery: Hal's first, botched reach toward the Program — he wants data on withdrawal, not fellowship, and the stale booklet routes him to therapy-culture instead of the thing that saves Gately.
  • Irony and Sincerity: the ironist trapped in weaponized sincerity that is itself bogus — encounter-group kitsch, not AA's banal clichés that work; "My name's Mike" is irony's reflex even en route to help.
  • Depression and Anhedonia: the head "perched on the bedpost" — Hal's mind as torturer, prefiguring the It-like interior of his last sections.
  • Communication and Solipsism: Hal mentally absents himself (Aruba, Addis Ababa) rather than connect; his one genuine communication is a silent prayer to remain unseen.
  • Family and Hamlet: Kevin begging "Please, Mommy and Daddy, come love and hold me" against Hal's inverse wound — loved loudly and still empty; the needs-meeter who never comes when called is named Jim, like Hal's dead father.

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • Hal's quitting-cold arc: pump-room secrecy (pp. 49-52); Pemulis's warning that quitting abruptly is how you "die inside" (scene n321); urine-deal backstory at scene n324.
  • Same calendar day as Wayne's meltdown and Pemulis's expulsion (scene n332) — Hal off-campus, oblivious, while his pharmacological lifeline is severed.
  • Kevin completes the Bain dossier: Marlon's sweat/O.C.D./Saprogenic Greetings in scene n269 and scene n234.
  • The booklet-girl is from Hal's recent reconnaissance toward Ennet House (pp. 785-787, scene 158) — this scene is that thread's dead end.

Forward

  • The held-and-dandled-yet-empty credo (pp. 804-805) counterweights Avril's smothering love (n.269) and sets up the wraith's figurant grief (pp. 837-839); Hal's sincere prayer has no sequel — the novel never shows him at a real meeting again (the one later echo is Kevin Bain crawling through his sleep, p. 851, scene 165); this misfire is the thread's dead end.

Notable passages (5)
  • p. 796: "Glad You're UP I've Been Wanting To TALK To You" — withdrawal-head as chainsaw; anchor for Hal's endgame.
  • pp. 804-805: "getting held and told you were loved didn't automatically seem like it rendered you emotionally whole or Substance-free" — essential anthology passage; the book's anti-etiology credo.
  • p. 807: "At a certain point hysterical grief becomes facially indistinguishable from hysterical mirth" — infinite jest in miniature.
  • p. 808: "the first really desperate and sincere prayer Hal can remember offering since he'd stopped wearing pajamas with feet in them" — irony cracking; rhymes with Gately's coerced knees.
  • p. 809: "down on all fours on a Dacronyl rug... his face unspeakable" — closing tableau: a grown man crawling toward his needs; mirror for Hal, who cannot.

What links here Timeline events here (16) · Connected from (6) · Passages quoted here (36) · Motifs (10)

Timeline events here

Connected from

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Motifs