Infinite Jest: Chapter 38 Summary & Analysis

6 November Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. It is the annual meet between E.T.A. and the Port Washington Tennis Academy, hosted at P.W.T.A. in Long Island as it is every year. Players from the losing school have to sing a silly song during the end-of-meet supper, and the headmasters have to partake in an “even more embarrassing tradition,” though no one knows what it is. Last year E.T.A. lost, but this was before the school gained John Wayne, who is from Quebec and was the top ranked player in Canada at the age of 16. He is now #2 in the U.S.T.A., only a couple of points behind #1, who is believed to be “hiding out” from him.

Hal, meanwhile, who was ranked #43 in the U.S.T.A., has undergone a “quantumish competitive plateau-hop” and is now ranked #4. Wayne begins to play; his game has “a kind of automatic beauty.” He falls backwards at one point and his body makes a dramatic sound hitting the tarp, but he is okay and returns to the match immediately. His game is “less alive than undead.” At E.T.A., he spends most of his time alone. No one knows how he feels about the fact that his Canadian citizenship has been revoked. His “undead” disposition will likely make him a cool, effective, businesslike professional tennis player.

Pemulis has been vomiting from nerves before his match. He needs to win if he’s going to make the traveling list for WhataBurger. Most E.T.A. students receive corporate sponsorship in the form of gifts (they are not permitted to receive money). Wayne is sponsored by Dunlop and Adidas, and Hal by Dunlop, Nike, and Air Stirrup (a brace company). Teddy Schacht has stopped caring about winning, and ever since has started playing better tennis. He glances up at Wayne’s match and, although he is too far away to see the score, he can tell that Wayne is decimating his opponent.

Coach Schtitt’s attitude to success at tennis is that in order to succeed, one must “both care a great deal about it and also not care about it at all.” Wayne and Hal’s games are both at the point of “carnage.” All the adults in the audience wear the kind of tennis outfits that indicate that the wearer does not actually play tennis.

Both Pat Montesian and Don Gately’s AA sponsor say that Gately should take a lesson in “patience and tolerance” from Geoffrey Day, a new resident at Ennet House. During morning meditation, Day talks about how he practices gratitude and accepts the truth of various clichés. He has been at Ennet House for six days, having just detoxed from his red wine and Quaalude addiction. He is a professor at a junior college in Medford and has spent the past few years “in and out of a blackout.”

Gately has witnessed dozens of people enter Ennet House only to relapse, end up in prison, or die. He could tell Day that the clichés are easy to believe but “hard to actually do.” Gately has been “Substance-free” for 421 days. One resident, Burt F. Smith, is attempting sobriety for about the 50th time. Gately, who has been working at Ennet House as a residential staffer for four months, is suspicious of another resident, Charlotte Treat, and her obsession with embroidery, considering how it revolves around needles.

Gately has been taking mental notes on all the residents. Emil Minty is a punk heroin addict who has been homeless since the age of 16. Bruce Green, who has the MILDRED BONK tattoo, has even worse insomnia than the average Ennet House resident. Randy Lenz is a “seedily handsome” low-level cocaine dealer. Charlotte Treat is a former sex worker who is now exceptionally “prim.” Gately himself is 29; before he became an AA devotee, his Substance of choice was oral narcotics. Today Pat is interviewing three potential new residents. Time passes slowly and painfully in Ennet House. Lenz asks Day the time, and this provokes a squabble between them. Gately farts.

The E.T.A. players make a triumphant return from P.W.T.A., having watched their opponents sing the silly song. As usual, Schtitt does not ride in the bus with the students back to E.T.A., but instead takes his own mysterious private route. In the bus, someone passes round a leaflet offering a kingdom to the person who “could pull Keith Freer out of Bernadette Longley.” Freer and Longley had been discovered having sex under an Adidas blanket during an E.T.A. bus trip back in September. Now, Longley’s doubles partner says that it’s a shame someone on the bus is “so immature.”

Orin left the world of competitive tennis when Hal was 9 and Mario 10. As a tennis player, Orin peaked at 13. Still, he had good grades and, considering that “mediocrity is relative” when it comes to junior tennis, he received several good offers from colleges. He chose to attend Boston University, which is not a strong school for tennis. Avril helped him make the decision, believing it was good for him to leave home but important that he be able to come back easily. With Avril and Uncle Charles’s help, Orin agreed to play for B.U.’s tennis team and secured a full ride with added benefits.

On April 1 of Orin’s senior year of college (Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar), James killed himself. Later, in a Convocation address to E.T.A., Uncle Charles explained that it would have been absurd for Avril to become Headmistress on top of her many other responsibilities, not to mention her grief. Earlier in his college career, Orin had decided not to play competitive tennis at B.U. after all, and instead, during his freshman year, made the “unlikely” switch to competitive football. This was because he’d developed an enormous crush on a sophomore baton-twirler. Although Orin had slept with many girls, he’d never felt like this before.

Orin and his doubles partner nicknamed this girl P.G.O.A.T., or Prettiest Girl Of All Time. She was so beautiful that she was “almost universally shunned,” because even the most confident guys could not bring themselves to talk to her. (It is hinted here that the girl is Joelle.) Orin wanted to switch to football to be closer to her, a decision that greatly upset the B.U. tennis coach. Yet his tryouts for the football team were “too pathetic to describe.” However, just as he was walking glumly away there was a dramatic accident involving the team’s best defensive tackle and the punter, in which all the punter’s bones were broken.

While everyone’s attention was focused on the collision, Orin kicked the football from where it had landed near him back toward them. He had never kicked a football before, but it turned out that he had an extraordinary talent for it, and he made the team after all. Orin soon developed a 69 yard-per-kick average, and his full ride scholarship was renewed for football. Within four weeks his talent at football far exceeded any talent he’d had for tennis. Then, during a Columbus Day Major Sport event, Joelle asked him to autograph a football for her father. By the end of Orin’s freshman fall, they were living together in an East Cambridge co-op.

That year, Joelle spent Thanksgiving with Orin’s family and Orin spent Christmas with hers in Kentucky. On New Year’s Eve, Orin watched Joelle take “very small amounts” of cocaine (which he himself declined). Joelle was a “film fanatic” and Film/Cartridge major. Via Orin she developed an enthusiasm for art films and soon after began acting in James’s productions. In her junior year, she skillfully films Orin playing a football game.