Hal's 7th-grade essay foretells the "catatonic hero"

texture · YPW (2005), 21 Feb

• When: 21 February YPW (Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken, 2005); Hal ~12-13, seventh grade; "one year after Dr. James O. Incandenza passed"
• What: "Hal Incandenza's first extant written comment on anything even remotely filmic," an "Introduction to Entertainment Studies" essay contrasting McGarrett ('Hawaii Five-0') and Furillo ('Hill Street Blues') as modern vs. postmodern heroes, graded B/B+. Its unsupported closing prophesies "the hero of non-action, the catatonic hero, the one beyond calm, divorced from all stimulus, carried here and there across sets by burly extras whose blood sings with retrograde amines" — an eerie self-prophecy of Hal's own YG catatonia (and of the Entertainment's viewers). A key early Hal document.