Infinite Jest: Chapter 58 Summary & Analysis

Selected Snippets From the Individual-Resident-Informal-Interface Moments of D.W. Gately, Live-In Staff, Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, Enfield MA, On and Off From Just After the Brookline Young People’s AA Mtng. Up to About 2329h., Wednesday 11 November Y.D.A.U. In the transcripts from these “interfaces” between Don Gately and the Ennet House residents, the residents complain about mundane things, usually voicing their irritation with other people or features of the house. One resident complains that the “H” faucet on one of the taps should stand for “Holy Cow That’s Cold.” Another, Yolanda, has been sexually harassed by a man in her AA meeting. Gately advises her to avoid him at all costs, before realizing she’s referring to Randy Lenz, though Yolanda refuses to confirm if this is true.

In a hotel room, Orin is having sex with a Swiss hand-model he met in Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport after dropping off Helen Steeply at departures. (An endnote here provides more transcript fragments of Steeply’s interview with Orin for Moment magazine. In the interview, Orin insists that James was insane in the last years of his life, which is demonstrated by his chosen suicide method. Orin no longer speaks to Avril because he doesn’t trust her. He believes that she has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder but that because she is so high-functioning it has never been diagnosed. Orin’s former doubles partner also had OCD, but in that case the man’s life fell apart because of it.)

(In the same endnote, Orin also accuses Avril of “worship[ing] Mario,” treating him as a “secular martyr.” However, he then starts refusing to answer Helen’s questions, pointing out that Hal will read the article and then show it to Mario. He suggests that Hal and Mario won’t understand how insane their mother is until they finally leave E.T.A. He then tells the story about Hal eating the piece of house mold as a young child. He recommends that Helen get in touch with a man called Bain if she wants more information about Avril and James.)

Back in the main narrative, it is noted that the Swiss woman approached Orin at the airport and asked him to sign a football for her “toddler-age son.” Orin was sure this was the universe’s way of saving him from any negative feelings triggered by Helen’s departure.

Idris Arslanian, Ted Schacht, and others are blindfolded in the hall by the weight room. They can hear Anton Doucette crying to Lyle; apparently some of the other boys are watching him “like it’s entertainment.” Troeltsch and Pemulis are there too. The boys discuss other E.T.A. students, then nuclear fusion. They then discuss annular medicine, which involves practices like “treating cancer by giving the cancer cells themselves cancer.” This medical breakthrough is now seen as normal, but was once unimaginable. There is now a theory that a similar principle could be applied to the Great Concavity—that injecting toxic material into an already toxic site could actually de-toxify it.

After Orin leaves the hotel, he thinks about a man in a wheelchair he saw there, and reflects that this man and the Swiss model had the same accent. Meanwhile, Lenz continues to chatter away to Green, telling excessively detailed stories about his obese mother and her eventual death. Green’s own parents both died when he was a toddler, but he has deeply repressed this traumatic memory to the point that it is actually difficult to recall any details. Green’s father had been a highly successful aerobics instructor until one day, at the peak of his career, his legs became oddly mismatched in size.

Unable to continue teaching aerobics, Green’s father worked for a practical joke company instead. One Christmas, a very young Bruce played a joke on his parents, giving his mother a gift that she thought was her favorite brand of macadamia nuts, but which in fact contained a snake on a spring. Green’s mother’s shock at the protruding snake was so intense that it caused her to have a heart attack and die. Green’s father had a “psycho-spiritual” breakdown after the death of his wife. Not long after, he was arrested and given the death penalty for fatally putting real explosives inside his company’s “Blammo Cigars.”

It is a very misty night, and Green keeps losing sight of Lenz before finding him again. Green recalls a Hawaiian beach-themed party that he and Mildred Bonk once went to in a Harvard dorm, where Green had got so drunk that he shit his pants. He now sees Lenz holding out a piece of meatloaf to a dog and then slyly retrieving something from his sleeve that Green can’t quite see. Lenz then picks up the dog by its throat, says something like “How dare you,” and dashes the dog down onto the yard.

Green wants to call out to stop him but is strangely suffocated and can’t say anything at all. Lenz then stabs the dog with what Green can now see is a knife. People gather around the dog, shouting in distress and pointing out that Lenz is running away. Some of the surrounding people are in wheelchairs.

On November 25, Mario will turn 19. When he was six, the disability he’d had since birth was diagnosed as Familial Dysautonomia, a condition that means he doesn’t properly feel pain. Hal has always been slightly jealous of Mario for this. Mario is still distressed about the disappearance of Madame Psychosis and also worried about Hal, whose feelings he used to be able to intuit but who now seems distant and mysterious. Mario sometimes takes walks alone at night. Tonight, he walks past Ennet House and listens to the snippets of conversation emerging from behind its walls.

Suddenly, Mario hears the sound of a recording of Madame Psychosis’s radio show coming through an open window. He has noticed that more and more whenever he tries to talk about “real” things people around him get uncomfortable. Gately, meanwhile, has a long list of evening duties to complete, some of which are more pleasant than others. Checking if the bathroom cleaning chore has been completed inside the women’s bathroom provides a rude awakening that women behave just as disgustingly in the bathroom as men. Kate Gompert has been making allusions to self-harm, and Gately calls Pat to report it.

A new resident has arrived named Ruth van Cleve, and Gately has to oversee her introduction and orientation to the House. In general, he has to intervene in the rumors circulating around the house, keeping speculation in check but encouraging anyone who has even the smallest hint that a resident might be taking Substances to come forward.

Orin can only give and not receive pleasure, to the delight of many of his Subjects but not Orin himself. While he is still with the Swiss model, someone knocks on the hotel room door and the model hides under the bed, fearing that her husband will find out. The man at the door is in a wheelchair and announces that he is conducting a survey. He gives almost a dozen reasons for the survey, saying it is an academic project, a “commerce survey,” and a demographic evaluation. Orin happily complies, supplying basic information about himself.

The man in the wheelchair asks Orin what he misses, elaborating that he wants to know what Orin feels nostalgia or yearning for. Orin comments that he misses TV and TV commercials, speaking at length about the specific aspects of TV culture that he recalls fondly. The man in the wheelchair then asks what Orin doesn’t miss, and Orin asks how much time the man has. The man in the wheelchair looks in Orin’s room and observes that he is perhaps currently “engaged.”

Ennet House’s curfew is 11:30 pm, and at 11:15 Clenette and Yolanda return from Footprints (an endnote explains that this is “a depressing new Sober Club” in Davis Square). Two other residents return together, and Gately concludes from their body language that they may be conducting a forbidden relationship. Lenz slips in moments before Gately locks the door for the night, and by 11:30 Amy J. and Bruce Green are both still missing. At 11:36 pm Green shows up; Gately lets him in and gives him a week’s “Full House Restriction” while aggressively asking if there are any problems he should know about.

Gately dislikes the fact that he must now ask Green for a urine test, as the two of them are friends, but Green complies with reassuring speed. Meanwhile, several of the residents have left their cars in spots where they will be towed. Recovering addicts tend to be in a kind of denial about the law, and although other staffers recommend that residents’ cars should be towed “at least once” to teach their owners a lesson, Gately is determined to intervene. He assembles a group of car-owning residents, and in doing so notices that Lenz is clearly high.

Despite his recent scolding, Green offers to move a mis-parked car belonging to a resident lying in bed with a fever brought on by diverticulitis, a condition suffered by alcoholics new to sobriety. Stepping outside, Gately sees Lenz being chased in a circle by two men with “vaguely non-U.S. beards.” A third man standing nearby is holding a gun, which seems to frighten some of the assembled residents but not others. Gately isn’t sure what he’s feeling. He approaches and sees one of the men pull out a knife.

Gately explains to the non-American men that he is responsible for the people assembled there and that he doesn’t want to fight. The men curse him out in Quebecois French. A fight breaks out. Gately dislocates one of the men’s shoulders and is slashed in the calf in return. One of the men then breaks Gately’s toe. Gately manages to kick him, and then suddenly feels that he’s been shot in the shoulder. The fight continues with Nell Gunther and Green joining in as Joelle shouts something inaudible from her window. More residents get involved and Joelle climbs out onto her balcony, still holding a toothbrush, shouting Gately’s first name.

Joelle keeps climbing and ends up dangling and kicking her legs, while other residents keep fighting and Charlotte Treat repeatedly recites the Serenity Prayer. Joelle successfully lands on the ground and runs toward Gately, who’s decided he needs to immediately lie down on the ground. The residents crowd around Gately, frantically discussing whether they should call Pat, an ambulance, or someone else. Gately asks Lenz and Green to carry him inside and insists that nobody call anyone until this is done. He tells Joelle that he’s going to jail, but she assures him that he has dozens of eyewitnesses on his side.

Despite Gately’s insistence, several residents are trying to make calls anyway. An Enfield Marine Hospital security guard strolls by and Gately forces Erdedy to go and distract him. Meanwhile, Gately tells Joelle that he’s realized she’s Madame Psychosis, and that he was sure he knew her from somewhere. Joelle squeezes Gately’s arm, and Lenz and Green lift him up.

The next paragraph lists technological and cultural innovations that have emerged in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. These technological developments cannot be thought of as “bad” because, although they have their downsides, no one can now imagine living without them. Rodney Tine is standing in the State House Annex in central Boston, looking out at the Boston Duck Pond undergoing its annual draining. Tine’s son Rodney Tine Jr., who—like Hugh Steeply—is a O.U.S. operative, is sitting with Steeply in the same conference room as his father.

The grad student WYYY engineer has been taking endless calls from worried listeners, neither confirming nor denying rumors that Madame Psychosis has committed suicide, been institutionalized, or undergone a pilgrimage. In reality, all the engineer knows is that she is receiving “treatment” somewhere. The engineer is standing out on the cold street when suddenly he is grabbed by a man in a wheelchair, who grabs the engineer’s glasses from his face and runs them over.