Today’s notes!
TLDR: Hal takes us back, sort of, and talks for for a min before everyone freaked out as thought he turned into a monster or something
Loc 296 | Highlight
"funny what you don't recall."
Ideas:
When Hal think back to when he was maybe 5 years old, it prefixes the following setup. Sets up memory as unreliable - both in terms of what we forget and what we "remember" that might not be true. Later I call this as Anti Proustian, where Proust is clear, here it is a mess.
Meta-commentary on how we interpret past memories through present understanding. I had a hand written note: "example of our interpretations", how interpretations dictate existence.
First layer of narrative unreliability - opening scene reliability now questionable
Loc 299 | Highlight
"gas-driven thing that roared and snorted and bucked and he remembers seemed to propel the Moms rather than vice versa,"
Ideas:
1. Grammar shifts signal altered states/memory distortion (handwritten note: "diff grammer")
2. Machine description mirrors communication breakdown from opening scene
3. Power dynamics reversed (machine controlling mother) - hints at larger theme of control/lack of control
Loc 303 | Highlight
"He says I was around five and crying and was vividly red in the cold spring air."
Ideas:
1. Proustian memory inversion - triggered by decay rather than pleasure (handwritten: proustian inversion! )
2. Shift to third person suggests dissociation from memory, really primes the reader to be aware of when to change perspectives and even point of view.
3. "vividly red" works as both physical and emotional state descriptor
Loc 316 | Highlight
"I had stopped crying, he remembers, and simply stood there, the size and shape of a hydrant, in red PJ's with attached feet, holding out the mold, seriously, like the report of some kind of audit."
Ideas:
1. Anxiety's effect on memory formation/suppression
2. Child performing adult behavior ("audit") while in childish clothing (pjs with attached feets, Boss Baby)
3. Mold as symbol of decay/corruption juxtaposed with childhood innocence
Loc 319 | Highlight
"she yells in Orin's second and more fleshed-out recollection,"
Ideas:
1. Multiple versions of truth - "fleshed-out" suggests artificial construction
2. Memory as collaborative/competitive narrative between family members
3. "Second" recollection implies constructed rather than authentic memory
Loc 321 | Highlight
"while O. gaped at his first real sight of adult hysteria."
Ideas:
1. Loss of parental infallibility moment (handwritten note: what were some of your first hysteria or extreme memories. )
2. "Real" suggesting previous encounters with hysteria weren't authentic
3. Moment of childhood innocence breaking down
Loc 324 | Highlight
"her footprints Native-American-straight,"
Ideas:
1. Cultural stereotype used as precision marker (handwritten note: "weird flex")
2. Mother's controlled response vs. previous hysteria
3. Linear thinking vs. emotional chaos
Loc 340 | Highlight
""DeLint at the big man’s arm: ‘Stop it!’ ‘I am not what you see and hear.’ Distant sirens. A crude half nelson. Forms at the door. A young Hispanic woman holds her palm against her mouth, looking. ‘I’m not,’ I say."
Ideas:
1. I have no idea what is going on, is he having a panic attack? Is he a Lovecraftian monster?!
2. Once again another tone shift, and it reminds me of Halloween 1978, when they revealed that it was a kid in a mask that did that. I'm not saying Hal is a monster, I'm saying it has that same level of surprise.
3. So far, very fun.
Highlights
Loc 324 | Highlight
"her footprints Native-American-straight,"
Note: weird flex wallace
Loc 321 | Highlight
"while O. gaped at his first real sight of adult hysteria."
Note: what is your earliest memories of a hysteria
Loc 319 | Highlight
"she yells in Orin's second and more fleshed-out recollection,"
Note: same or diff recollsctions
Loc 316 | Highlight
"I had stopped crying, he remembers, and simply stood there, the size and shape of a hydrant, in red PJ's with attached feet, holding out the mold, seriously, like the report of some kind of audit. O. says his memory diverges at this point, probably as a result of anxiety."
Note: anxiety causes memory suropression. psychology ref
Loc 309 | Highlight
"and in that most maternal of reflexes she, who feared and loathed more than anything spoilage and filth, reached to take whatever her baby held out — as in how many used heavy Kleenex, spit-back candies, wads of chewed-out gum in how many theaters, airports, backseats, tournament lounges?"
Note: intense maternal instinct detail
Loc 303 | Highlight
"He says I was around five and crying and was vividly red in the cold spring air."
Note: inverted proustian recollesction thats why popsicle reference
Loc 303 | Highlight
"I was saying something over and over; he couldn't make it out until our mother saw me and shut down the tiller, ears ringing, and came over to see what I was holding out. This turned out to have been a large patch of mold"
Note: communication breakdown again
Loc 299 | Highlight
"gas-driven thing that roared and snorted and bucked and he remembers seemed to propel the Moms rather than vice versa,"
Note: diff grammer as an altered state description
Loc 298 | Highlight
"The garden's area was a rough rectangle laid out with Popsicle sticks and twine."
Note: childhood memory details
Loc 297 | Highlight
"eldest brother Orin"
Note: first brother mention
Loc 296 | Highlight
"Our first home, in the suburb of Weston, which I barely remember —"
Note: memory setup
Loc 296 | Highlight
"funny what you don't recall."
Note: this is why this paragraph is funky. its an example of our interpretations of our memories in the past
Loc 293 | Highlight Continued
what lmao .
disconnect between hal and narration
Loc 293 | Highlight
"I cannot make myself understood. 'I am not just a jock,' I say slowly. Distinctly. 'My transcript for the last year might have been dickied a bit, maybe, but that was to get me over a rough spot. The grades prior to that are de moi.' My eyes are closed; the room is silent. 'I cannot make myself understood, now.' I am speaking slowly and distinctly. 'Call it something I ate.'"
Note: first time hearing hal talk. hmm. the narration is very different.
Loc 290 | Highlight
"Mr. Incandenza, Hal, please just explain to me why we couldn't be accused of using you, son. Why nobody could come and say to us, why, look here, University of Arizona, here you are using a boy for just his body, a boy so shy and withdrawn he won't speak up for himself, a jock with doctored marks and a store-bought application."
Note: ironic.
Loc 288 | Highlight
"The yellow Dean has leaned so far forward that his tie is going to have a horizontal dent from the table-edge, his face sallow and kindly and no-shit-whatever:"
Note: physical description shows power dynamic
Loc 283 | Highlight
"The sort of all-defensive game Schtitt used to have me play: the best defense:"
Note: first mention of tennis coach/style
Loc 277 | Highlight
"... a bright,"
Note: cutoff dialogue technique
Loc 273 | Highlight
"Alpha of the pack here and way more effeminate than he'd seemed at first, standing hip-shot with a hand on his waist, walking with a roll to his shoulders, jingling change as he pulls up his pants as he slides into the chair still warm from C.T.'s bottom, crossing his legs in a way that inclines him well into my personal space, so that I can see multiple eyebrow-tics and capillary webs in the oysters below his eyes and smell fabric-softener and the remains of a breath-mint turned sour."
Note: salesmen
Loc 270 | Highlight
"but they are mine; de moi."
Note: french flex
Loc 270 | Highlight
"not quite on the application's instructed subject of Most Meaningful Educational Experience Ever."
Note: more academic bs
Loc 266 | Highlight
"— that we've known in processing several prior applications through Coach White's office that the Enfield School is operated, however impressively, by close relations of first your brother, who I can still remember the way White's predecessor Maury Klamkin wooed that kid, so that grades' objectivity can be all too easily called into question —"
Note: narration keeps interrupting the head with hals monologues. missing what the admin said . but nothing matters at the end