Lyle as conduit of JOI's confessions about his own films

texture · UNDATED (JOI's anticonfluential middle period, recalled)

• When: UNDATED — JOI's "anticonfluential middle period," recalled by Hal in the narrative present
• What: In Hal's meditation on Himself's audience-obsessed films (The Medusa v. The Odalisque, The Joke), the one datum about authorial intent comes through Lyle: "Mario said Lyle had said Incandenza had confessed that he'd loved the fact that The Joke was so publicly static and simple-minded and dumb," and that critics who defended its stasis as thesis "were dead wrong, as usual." Lyle is Himself's confessor and the chain by which the confession reaches his sons.