Madame Psychosis

One name, two referents, and the novel trades on the confusion. (1) Joelle van Dyne's on-air persona: her cult midnight program on M.I.T.'s WYYY is "Sixty Minutes More or Less with Madame Psychosis" (p. 591; the show itself pp. 181-193); the name began as the stage name James Incandenza gave her — she "let Himself give her a stage name" — when she started appearing in his films (p. 297). (2) A Boston street name for the drug DMZ (see that entry), taken from the radio persona: "DMZ is sometimes also referred to in some metro Boston chemical circles as Madame Psychosis, after a popular very-early-morning cult radio personality on M.I.T.’s student-run radio station WYYY-109" (p. 170). Context decides: a voice on the radio or in a film credit is Joelle; a lozenge, capsule, or dose is the drug.