IJ study archive

Scene 178: joelle q interview master

Scene
178
Pages
938–941
When
?/20 Nov YDAU (2009) — the interview following Steeply's sidewalk grab (scene 176)
Where
unstated (Steeply debriefing Joelle, presumably near St. E.'s/Ennet House); rendered as transcript with the questions redacted to 'Q.'in: No fixed setting · St. Elizabeth's Hospital (Trauma Wing) (also)
POV
Joelle van Dyne (dialogue only — her answers; Steeply's questions suppressed)

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Open questions this scene bears on

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 12)

Summary

Joelle's interrogation about the Entertainment, given entirely in her answers to Steeply's redacted questions: she was in exactly two scenes — a revolving-door loop in which she and an epicene stranger whirl endlessly each trying to follow the other, and the crib scene, shot through an "auto-wobble" lens bolted into a bassinet, in which she leaned over the camera in a flowing white gown and delivered twenty-plus minutes of permutations of "I'm sorry." She testifies that lenses, not cameras, were what Jim "had to bring to the whole enterprise" (Leith handled cameras; "the son" carried the lenses), that the wobbling, milky, long-stalked lens was built to reproduce a neonatal visual field, and that her own face "wasn't important." On the central questions she is categorical: she never saw a finished Master and doubts one exists; the unreleased Masters were willed into the grave with him; "perfection" talk was always an ironic in-joke at her own "lethally beautiful" U.H.I.D. pose, derived from the Medusa-Odalisk film — "he never talked about an anti-version or antidote for God's sake"; and what killed him was not the film but sobriety kept as a promise. Her closer is the book's geographic punchline: where he's buried is itself now buried — "It's in your annulation-zone. It's not even your territory" — and if the U.S. wants the thing, "he'd enjoy the joke very much, I think. Oh shit yes very much."

What to notice

The transcript format is the scene's first joke: only her answers survive, every question redacted to "Q.", so the interviewer who lives by disguise is erased from his own interrogation — Joelle, who hides her face, is present as pure voice, while Steeply, who is all costume, gets no voice at all. Watch the punctuation carry the drama: "Q." for the routine probes, "…" where an answer has left him silent, and — when she finally stops answering — "Q, Q, Q.", three questions battering against her own ellipsis before she releases the geographic punchline. Her opening words, "Oh for Christ's sake then.", start the scene with capitulation already chosen, and from there her guard is legible in answer-length: paragraphs, freely given, on lens mounts and neonatal nystagmus; near-monosyllables on the veil, the will, the Master. Grief breaks the deposition's flat surface exactly once — "No I never saw his fucking will. He told me. He told me things." — the obscenity, then the softened repetition. There is a barb tucked into "I assume you can Identify": an epicene character described, in recovery-speak, to an enormous man in a dress whose cover she read at a glance. And notice that her testimony ends as a wager — "Call it an educated bet" — the hunt's destination offered not as fact but in gambling idiom, with the dead man dealt the last laugh.

Beats — page-by-page
  • pp. 938-939: scene one — the glass revolving door: random-chance meeting with someone "supposedly formerly very close," mutual shocked looks, each revolving to follow the other out/in, "we whirl in the door like that for several whirls"; the actor male, not one of Jim's regulars; the character epicene — "It wasn't obvious that the character was supposed to be a male character. I assume you can Identify."
  • p. 939: scene two — camera bolted inside a stroller/bassinet; the incredible white floor-length gown; leaning in over the camera "and simply apologized": "I'm so sorry. I'm so terribly sorry… very, very, very sorry" — at least twenty minutes of permutations; "Not exactly. Not exactly veiled."
  • pp. 939-940: the lens — crib's-eye POV, but what drove the scene was the "auto-wobble"/ocular wobble: ball-and-socket behind the mount, tiny whirring noise; long skinny projecting mount "like an eye-stalk or a night-vision scope"; "Lenses were Jim's forte… He made all his own"; Leith was cameras, "the son was lenses" (Mario); the infantile visual field — neonatal nystagmus, milky blur, the newer-born the more wobble; "My face wasn't important. You never got the sense it was meant to be captured realistically by this lens."
  • p. 940: the Master questions — never saw it, no idea; "They were buried with him. The Masters of everything unreleased. At least that was in his will"; "It had nothing to do with killing himself. Less than nothing"; "No I never saw his fucking will. He told me. He told me things."; "He'd stopped being drunk all the time. That killed him. He couldn't take it but he'd made a promise."
  • pp. 940-941: against the perfection rumors — "These are academic rumors"; "too perfect" was always ironic, a "sly little jab at me": her own veil-joke of lethal beauty taken from "the Medusa-Odalisk thing"; even in U.H.I.D. "I hid by hiddenness, in denial about the deformity itself"; "Even in jokes he never talked about an anti-version or antidote for God's sake"; "Jim's humor was a dry humor."
  • p. 941: the educated bet — if a Master exists it's "in there with him. Buried"; and the part of the joke Jim didn't know: "Where he's buried is itself buried, now. It's in your annulation-zone. It's not even your territory. And now if you want the thing — he'd enjoy the joke very much, I think. Oh shit yes very much."

Themes in this scene

  • Film and Optics: the most technical inside account of the Entertainment we ever get — auto-wobble lens, neonatal nystagmus, mount-as-eye-stalk — JOI defined by lenses ("what he had to bring… Of himself"); the apparatus, not the face, drives the lethal scene.
  • Entertainment and the Self: the samizdat's actual content per its star: an infant's-eye mother apologizing forever, and a revolving door that never lets either party leave — passive spectation's two perfect traps described from inside; against which Joelle insists the lethality is rumor.
  • Family and Hamlet: a maternal figure apologizing to the camera-as-infant — JOI's grave-deep family repair attempt (mother-apology the son never got); the willed burial of the Masters with the father's body makes the grave the family archive; Gertrude/Hamlet shadows in the apologizing mother and the poisoned entertainment.
  • Irony and Sincerity: Joelle's whole testimony turns on tone — "It was entirely clear that it was an ironic joke. To me." — the fatal possibility being that the joke was also entirely sincere; "he always meant it ironically" is exactly what cannot be verified once viewers start dying.
  • Disability and Deformity: "Even in U.H.I.D. I hid by hiddenness, in denial about the deformity itself" — the veil doctrine self-diagnosed; the lethal-beauty pose as her own entertainment-myth, seeded by JOI's Medusa-Odalisk.
  • Annularity: "Where he's buried is itself buried… It's in your annulation-zone" — the Master inside the head inside the Concavity: the waste-zone the U.S. excreted now contains the thing the U.S. most wants back; the book's ring closes on a literal annular joke.

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • Continues scene 176's sidewalk grab (p. 934); the Q-format matches Steeply's other suppressed-question transcripts — n.234 (Orin interview; see scene n234) and the Bain questionnaire (n.269).
  • Versus Molly Notkin's secondhand account to the same services (pp. 788-795, scene 159): Notkin had the crib scene veiled and freighted with the death-mother cosmology; Joelle here says "Not exactly veiled," denies the perfection doctrine, and roots the "too perfect" line in a private joke — the book's two testimonies about the lethal scene disagree on nearly everything except the lens.
  • "He'd stopped being drunk all the time. That killed him." — Joelle hands Pemulis his n.321 argument (quit cold and die inside) against Hal's furious Wild-Turkey rebuttal; see scene n321.
  • The burial geography: the adopted n.234 ruling (Avril's family plot, "Heart of the Concavity"); Hal's funeral memory of St. Adalbert "fewer than five clicks west of the Great Concavity" (scene 172, p. 910); Gately's Too-Late head-digging dream four pages earlier (scene 175, p. 934); Hal's Year-of-Glad memory of digging with Gately while Wayne stands masked watch (scene 003, p. 17). This page is where the hunt's destination is finally said aloud — to the U.S. government.
  • The revolving-door scene's epicene stranger and the wobble-lens infant POV connect to the n.24 filmography's Infinite Jest entries (unfinished, unseen — scene n024) and the wraith's lenses/figurant confessions to Gately (~pp. 829-845); "the son was lenses" gives Mario a hand in the Entertainment's optics.
  • The Medusa v. the Odalisque (the JOI film Hal recalls at pp. 395-397, scene 085) is named as the source of Joelle's lethal-perfection joke — "the Medusa-Odalisk thing"; the myth-pair of looking-that-kills, which Marathe and Steeply also invoke over the Entertainment (pp. 528-530, scene 103), now explicitly the Entertainment's private genealogy.

Forward

  • The A.F.R. side already believes the Master is findable through her (Marathe at Ennet House; the Antitoi raid's read-only copies, pp. 481-489, scene 097): her closing taunt — "It's not even your territory" — sets the table for the endgame convergence on the grave that the novel leaves outside its covers.

Notable passages (6)
  • pp. 938-939: the revolving-door description ("we whirl in the door like that for several whirls") — the Entertainment as pure annular trap; anchor passage for entertainment-self and annularity.
  • p. 939: "my lines were various apologies. 'I'm so sorry. I'm so terribly sorry…'" — the lethal scene's script; the apology the novel's mothers and fathers never deliver in life.
  • pp. 939-940: "Lenses were Jim's forte… Lenses Jim said were what he had to bring to the whole enterprise. Of filmmaking. Of himself." — JOI's self-definition through optics; film-optics keystone.
  • p. 940: "He'd stopped being drunk all the time. That killed him. He couldn't take it but he'd made a promise." — the sobriety-death thesis from the person who extracted the promise; essential anthology passage.
  • p. 941: "That even in U.H.I.D. I hid by hiddenness, in denial about the deformity itself." — Joelle's clearest self-reading; disability-deformity anchor.
  • p. 941: "Where he's buried is itself buried, now. It's in your annulation-zone… he'd enjoy the joke very much, I think. Oh shit yes very much." — the novel's geographic punchline and the endgame's map; essential anthology passage.

What links here Timeline events here (19) · Echoes (1) · Connected from (8) · Cited as evidence by (1) · Passages quoted here (25) · Motifs (5)

Timeline events here

Echoes

Connected from

Cited as evidence by

Passages quoted here

Motifs