Characters
Hal Incandenza. Student and tennis player at Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA). Son of James and Avril Incandenza. Brothers: Orin (older), Mario (younger). Hamlet insert.
Charles Tavis. Hal's Uncle. Avril's step-brother. Mario's father. Headmaster at Enfield Tennis Academy.
Aubrey DeLint. Prorector at Enfield Tennis Academy.
Coach Kirk White. Tennis coach at University of Arizona trying to recruit Hal Incandenza to the school's team for Hal's college years.
UA Dean of Admissions.
UA Dean of Academic Affairs.
UA Dean of Athletic Affairs.
UA Director of Composition.
Characters Mentioned
Maurly Klamkin. Predecessor to Coach White.
James Orin Incandenza. Founder of the Enfield Tennis Academy. Hal's father.
Orin Incandenza. Hal's brother.
Gerherdt Schtitt. Tennis Coach at Enfield Tennis Academy.
Scene: the Dean's office at the University of Arizona. Also inside Hal's head. We are in there.
This first chapter is the only chapter clearly stated as taking place in the final year of Subsidized Time, the Year of Glad (Is it the final year because the world ends? Subsidized Time gets shitcanned? Or simply because it's the ultimate year mentioned in the book? Or did I read the part wrong where it's mentioned that it's the final year of Subsidized Time? Did I make it up? This is why I'm re-reading this book!). That means that the first chapter is the final chronological scene in the story. It's told in first person perspective from Hal's point of view which is odd being that the rest of the book remains third person perspective from various characters' points of view (except for the final chapter which reverts to Hal's first person narration. It's probably important that from a specific point in time, possibly when Hal stops doing drugs, we begin to see the world directly through Hal's eyes when the story's told from his perspective as opposed to a third person view from Hal's perspective). Hal has been playing at this year's Whataburger Classic, a major tournament of the youth tennis scene. We never actually see the previous year's tournament or its results even though it's a major plot point, a weekend when Hal and Michael Pemulis plan on taking a military grade hallucinogenic. We're never even quite sure if Michael Pemulis makes it to the tournament before being kicked out of Enfield for accidentally getting John "No Relation" Wayne high on speed. Neither do we find out if they take the drug.
We discover Hal has been doing quite well at this year's tournament even though there seems to be something incredibly wrong with Hal. He seems to have lost the ability to communicate at all and to control his facial expressions and bodily movements. His ability to still play tennis at a professional level must be a result of the training at Enfield where the boys spend so much time training that their abilities are no longer thought-based, just pure reflex. So something's critically wrong with Hal and only his tennis remains unaffected. What has happened to Hal is either hidden somewhere in the text or simply supposed to be gleaned from following the projection of the end of the story. Did Hal watch his father's deadly entertainment, Infinite Jest? Or did he lose his mind from the military grade hallucinogen, as suggested by his "Call it something I ate"? Which also suggests that it could have been a latent effect of having eaten the strange mossy, mildewed fungus when he was a child? We're never explicitly told what caused Hal's current affliction.
The second paragraph of the book is simply, "I am in here." The suggestion could be that all the victims of James Incandenza's entertainment still retain their rational minds locked deep inside themselves. The suggestion is that we all exist at a level within ourselves that can never be properly communicated to anybody else which causes communication with others to always break down at some level. Context cannot be gleaned by those listening. The context of one's entire history of existence cannot be communicated in any simple statement but which adds to the nuance of every one of anybody's statements.
I am in here. It could also be David Foster Wallace reminding the reader that he is in and cannot be separated from his writing. He is here. He is always here. He will always be here.
Charles Tavis is introduced as Hal's mother's half-brother. Most people believe the half-brother claim to be true but it seems apparent that when Avril's father remarried, the woman was already pregnant by a man with deformities or other traits that manifested in Avril's son (and all but plainly stated, Charles's son), Mario. Much like Gwendolyn, Hamlet's mother, immediately took up with Hamlet's father's brother in Hamlet, it seems Avril and Charles did some technical incest.
Charles Tavis awkwardly does all the talking in the interview. Hal sits silently but observing everything perceptively and intelligently. Hal's uncertainty about his body movements and facial expressions are evidence of some terrible problem extant within Hal. As David Bevington puts it in his discussion about Hamlet in The Complete Works Shakespeare (Fourth Edition), "A recurring motif in Hamlet is of a seemingly healthy exterior concealing an interior sickness." Eventually, Hal tries to smile and all of the Deans become intensely worried, seeing it as some kind of painful grimace.
During the interview, we get hints at Hal's Johnny-Truant-level knowledge of the Oxford English Dictionary. While Hal has specific reason for knowing loads and loads of big words, being able to memorize the dictionary and beginning at a young age to impress his mother, other characters, most notably Don Gately at the end of the book during his encounter with the ghost of Hal's father, manage to use words seemingly out of their vocabulary range. Could this be a clue that James Incandenza, even in death, continues to direct and write script for various people living out Found Dramas finally produced by James Incandenza within the scope of the novel? Evidence to this being a possibility resides in the encounter between James's ghost and Don near the end of the novel. So I'll be discussing that in, um, probably ten years or something.
After all the praise for Hal is exchanged between the parties, the Deans get down to the actual business of Hal's being called in: his academic record has tanked in the last year of his schooling. Whatever has happened to Hal has been affecting him for quite some time now. So much so that he couldn't write an essay for admission into the University of Arizona and a bunch of his old essays from his earlier years at Enfield Tennis Academy were used instead, at least one of which we'll get to read later! Ultimately, the deans want to hear from Hal himself. They send Tavis and DeLint from the office so they will stop interrupting and speaking for Hal.
During the debate about Hal's possibly problematic academic work, Hal thinks, "The familiar panic at feeling misperceived is rising, and my chest bumps and thuds." Miscommunication being a theme birthed in this insane first chapter where we discover Hal literally cannot communicate verbally, we find, via that line, that this is something that happens to Hal frequently. And while it's easy to believe it's just part of his recent loss of verbal ability, we must understand that this is a lifelong issue of not just Hal's but probably David Foster Wallace and all of us as well, just another turd heaped in the works of the human condition.
Alone in the office, the deans attempt to encourage Hal to speak up and defend his academic career and give them a good reason to accept him into the university. Hal thinks, "I'd tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear." Prior to that, he thinks about bolting from the room but decides against it because he's not sure that what the deans would see was him bolting for the room. Hal has slipped into some kind of dissociative relationship with reality. He cannot know that the people around him will hear the words he believes he's speaking or see the actions he tries to take. He has lost all control of any task he tries to perform except for the reflexive, reactionary, and rote mechanics of a professional game of tennis. And that's the mystery. How, at the end of the story which is the beginning of the novel, did Hal wind up like this? What has taken place in the undescribed time from the end of the novel to this opening scene? Is it even in the book? Can I find it?
The scene ends with Hal beginning to try to communicate how he has come to this place. He explains, or thinks he does, "I cannot make myself understood, now." And then, in explanation of how this came to be, he says, "Call it something I ate." And that's the end of the scene as the next scene is a flashback to something he ate. It's fucking gross.
Piecing Together the November, DAU, to November, Glad, Timeline
This section mentions that in the February after the end of the novel, Coach White, via correspondence, recruited Hal to the University of Phoenix tennis program after Hal's graduation from Enfield later that same year (a December graduation, it seems).
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