Themes

The thematic anthologies: every passage the archive collected under each theme.

19 total.

• Addiction and Recovery
  Every passage on Substances, the Spider, Boston AA, and getting clean.
• Annularity
  Passages on circles and cycles: annular fusion, waste, and the novel's returning shapes.
• Communication and Solipsism
  Passages on failed connection: conversations that miss, cages of one.
• Depression and Anhedonia
  Passages on the It, the Bird, anhedonia, and the psych-ward view of despair.
• Disability and Deformity
  Passages on damaged and different bodies: the U.H.I.D., wheelchairs, the veil.
• Dreams
  The novel's dream passages: nightmares, the face in the floor, dreams that leak.
• Entertainment and the Self
  Passages on watching and being dissolved by it: cartridges, spectation, the Entertainment.
• Family and Hamlet
  Passages on the Incandenza family system and its Hamlet echoes.
• Fathers and Sons
  Passages on fathers and sons: what gets handed down and at what cost.
• Film and Optics
  Passages on film, lenses, and light: Jim's work and the novel's optics.
• Ghosts and Wraiths
  Passages on the wraith and the novel's other hauntings.
• Irony and Sincerity
  Passages on irony as armor and the risk of meaning what you say.
• Language and Grammar
  Passages on words as a battlefield: usage, prescriptivism, the OED childhood.
• Maps and Territory
  Passages where map and territory blur: Eschaton, representation, the Concavity.
• Memory and Forgetting
  Passages on remembering and burying: trauma, repression, recovered scenes.
• Nationalism and O.N.A.N.
  Passages on O.N.A.N. politics: Subsidized Time, the Concavity, Canada.
• Surveillance and Disguise
  Passages on watching and hiding: disguises, veils, field agents.
• The Body and Tennis
  Passages on the athletic body: drills, injury, the price of the Show.
• Time and Perception
  Passages on subjective time: the Year of, clock-time versus felt time.