Ennet House arrival and the clichés-harangue: Denial as fortification

pivotal · early Nov YDAU (Day's first week)

• When: early Nov YDAU; scene 066 is an A.M. when Day "has been at Ennet House six days"
• What: Day, forty-six, arrives insisting on "Geoffrey (not Geoff, Geoffrey)," in chinos and "Eastern-European-type Hawaiian shirts," and immediately turns his cleverness on the Program — mock-lamenting to Charlotte Treat that at forty-six he has come "to learn to live by clichés," to "turn my will and life over to the care of clichés," reciting them in a monotone with his arms out straight like a zombie. To Gately he is "like a wide-open interactive textbook on the Disease": the educated newcomer who "identif[ies] his whole self with his head," using abstraction and sarcasm to stay "separated off isolated inside himself" and, Gately reads, angling to goad a public beef so he'll get bounced and the relapse "won't be his fault." At the White Flag meeting he is seen "erect[ing] Denial-type fortifications with some kind of intellectualish showing-off"; at supper he needles Gately's cooking (event 8). Pat and Gately's sponsor keep reframing Day as a "valuable teacher of patience and tolerance."