The testimony on Orin: sincerity with a motive, the pose of poselessness, truth as constructed

pivotal · Nov YDAU

• When: November YDAU (Bain's answering letter, n269, dated "November Y.D.A.U.")
• What: Bain's numbered answers — (1), (3c), (3e), (5), (7), the skipped numbers part of the joke — carry the novel's fullest outside diagnosis of Orin, delivered with Bain's own caveat up front: "Orin and I are on the outs a bit at the moment, so some of my judgments may be temporarily short on charity." Unpacking his earlier "vailed warning," Bain tells Steeply to take what Orin says "in a fairly high-sodium way": not a classic pathological liar, but proof "there can be such a thing as sincerity with a motive" — the fail-safe pick-up Strategy ("Tell me what sort of man you prefer, and then I’ll affect the demeanor of that man") anatomized into the great hyphenated Look-At-Me-Being-So-Totally-Open chain and condemned as self-defeating. His verdicts: Orin regards truth "as constructed instead of reported," an idea come by "educationally" — "almost eighteen years at the feet of the most consummate mind-fucker I have ever met" (the person unnamed; the reference is contested apparatus, carried as written) — and escape-through-hatred is no escape: "Defining yourself in opposition to something is still being anaclitic on that thing, isn’t it?" Around the edges: the football excursus (codpieces, Swinburne) aimed, in full dramatic irony, at the cross-dressed operative, and his prediction "if Orin wishes it I am afraid I can predict your feelings for him will be strong." All of it is Bain's attested opinion, hedged as he hedges it.