Latest revision as of 10:04, 29 March 2020

Editors: Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel. And please pay attention to formatting and grammar. Preview your changes before saving them. Thanks!

Joelle Cleans Her Room

Page 736

B.Y.P.
Brookline Young People's (a previously mentioned AA group)

YYY tapes
apparently recordings of radio-station WYYY broadcasts

Page 737

Pokie
apparently a childhood nickname for Joelle

fifth wall
The "fourth wall" is a term used in theater to describe the imaginary wall that separates the stage from the audience. The "fifth wall" could be an extrapolation of this concept, meaning a wall separating an actor from a critic, or separating two people sharing the same experience notably when viewing projected or broadcasted media. Or possibly simply a reference to the fact that rooms tend not to have fifth walls, meaning that his face was never there.

Page 738

futon
a Japanese-style pallet or mattress that can be folded into a sofa or open like a bed; many futons have adjustable frames, but some simply fold up along a wall for seating until unfolded when needed for sleeping

amniotic
taking place in utero

greebles
Here, Joelle means little wads of paper resulting from worrying the wet tissue. There is another use of greeble, but she is not referring here to background treatments for films. The "little bits of sleepy goo you got in your eyes' corners" (two paragraphs following) are the thin mucous discharges ('eye boogers') known as rheum.

basso
having a very low voice

Page 739

Carefree
a brand of sanitary pads

Chore-type supplies
e.g., stainless-steel or copper scouring pads now branded as Chore Boy, after some years as Chore Girl; ironically, the pads are often used in homemade crack-cocaine pipes (see note for page 222)

talking batons and low-pH chemistry
batons presumably in encouragement of Joelle's amateur career as a twirler and low-pH chemistry (the chemistry of acids) because of his work for the Dyne-Riney Proton Donor Reagent Corporation

disdain
dislike or hatred

Page 740

Adult female brown marmorated stink bug

rancid-cinnamon smell
possibly the odor of the stink bug (see right); ironically, cinnamon itself can be used to dispel rancid odors; or, more likely, at least a way of covering up the odor of drugs, see, e.g., footnote 324, page 1067, where Permulis uses cayenne pepper to a similar purpose.

oeuvre
body of work

Job-like protagonist
referring to the title character in the Old Testament book

dunk-tank
a carnival attraction (see right) in which the participant pays to hurl one or more balls at a target that, if hit, will trigger a mechanism that unseats a victim into a receptacle of water

inbent
directed inward

Page 741

s-boarded
story-boarded

anality
anal-retentiveness

Everclear
a brand of pure grain alcohol

Shoats
young pigs

Boosters
members of a booster club

H.S.
high school

YardGuard
a brand name of insect repellent

Page 742

Vittorio's Bernini Room
possibly a meeting room in the NH Vittorio Veneto hotel in Rome; or it may refer to the Cornaro Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria [note the different spelling] in Rome, where Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa resides. Given the book's repeated allusions to the Bernini sculpture, probably the latter.

herring
i.e., a red herring—a distraction

Page 743

Legal Seafood up in Brookline
Legal Sea Foods, a chain that got its start in Inman Square, has a restaurant at 43 Boylston St., at the border of Brookline and within five miles of ETA.

Endnote 309

boniface
an innkeeper

Page 743 (cont'd)

grouper
a family of fish including sea basses

Page 744

obtruding
pushing something forward without invitation

tri-faceted
three-faced or three-walled

diphthong
A sound formed by the combination of two vowels in a single syllable, in which the sound begins as one vowel and moves toward another

Albertan champagne
an oxymoron — champagne comes only from the Champagne region of France

Page 745

Clift
Edward Montgomery Clift (1920-1966) was an American actor.

two meters
about 6.6 feet

heliotropes
flowering plants of the genus heliotropium (sample at right), so-named because their blossoms turn toward the sun

candela
From the International System of Units (SI): The candela is the luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540×10¹² hertz and that has a radiant intensity in that direction of 1/683 watt per steradian (watt is a unit of energy; steradian a measure of solid angle, the 3 dimensional equivalent of a planar angle).

freezing point of platinum
If the melting point of platinum is 3214.9 ° F, then at any temperature below this, it will be solid, i.e., frozen.

Bazin
André Bazin (1918– 1958) was an influential French film critic and film theorist.

Thomist
ascribing to the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas

personalistes
One of the main currents of the non-conformist movement in France in the 1930s, the personalistes school's main organ was Emmanuel Mounier's jouranl Esprit, in which Bazin published film criticism. The aesthetic theory of the personalistes was formulated by Jacques Maritain. For a discussion of Bazin's relation to Mounier see this article.

Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (1934-1996) was an American astronomer and host of a television show called Cosmos.

Haplology
in speech, the elision of one of two consecutive, identical syllables, e.g., "probly" for "probably" (see the Wikipedia entry for further examples, including "haplogy," the kind of in-joke that philologists enjoy)

Page 746

'the vapors'
a euphemism for hysteria

Spielberg's old computer-enhanced celluloid dinosaur things
Steven Spielberg directed "Jurassic Park" (1993) and its sequel "The Lost World" (1997); it's unclear, of course, whether Wallace could have anticipated "Jurassic Park III" (2001), for which Spielberg was executive producer. (He is taking the same role on "Jurassic Park IV," announced for 2014.)

Page 747

Kahlua
a coffee-flavored liqueur

blancmange
a thick milk pudding

chickory
usually spelled chicory, is used as a coffee substitute or additive in some places

thymus
a bodily organ that plays a role in immune function

Marathe at Ennet House, cont.

Page 747

subaltern
a subordinate

"He had the great fatigue..."
A less literal translation would be: "He was very tired..."

"Thinner by far of her other leg"
Probably from having a good understanding of French and English, I find one of the very many "funniest" things about this book to be DFW's deadpan literal renderings of the Québecois French of Marathe (and others) into English. He is more deadpan than Google Translate, much more. Note the "room of storage" at the premises of Antitoi.

Page 748

"...to smack, to scag, and to H, seeking desperately the residential treatment"
all the same thing, being street names for heroin, and, following, even more intense deadpan literal translation

Page 749

bolt of death
deadpan translation: a deadbolt lock

Chit Chat Farms
This is a real detox in Wernersville, Pa., about 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Page 750

chez
reductively, a French preposition meaning "at the home of;" more complexly, "in the system of," e.g., if discussing fetal rats and how they receive nutrients, one would start with, "chez le rat." I promise, having done rat research in Paris, that this is true and not a joke.

[Marathe] had the ability of splitting his mind’s thinking along parallel tracks
A railroad motif.

Page 751

infirmière
Should be infirmerie (infirmary). Marathe was certainly not put inside a nurse (infirmière).

comment-on-dit?
French: How do you say?

45 kph
almost 28 miles per hour

Caisse de Dépôt et Placement
French: Fund for Registration and Placement

Joelle Continues to Clean

Page 751

katexia
Just like when Joelle referred to CA newcomers as "catexic" on pg 707, there's no word "katexia" in any American dictionary, although Freud used "katexis" to refer to the process by means of which libido energy is tied or placed into the mental representation of a personality, idea, or thing." What would make more sense in context is cachexia, the weight loss and muscle atrophy caused by some chronic diseases.

Page 752

Feeling Good
One of the key books on cognitive therapy for depression by David D. Burns, M.D., an American psychiatrist.

Marathe's Intake, cont.

Page 752

volubly
in a voluble manner, to speak readily, fluidly, incessantly

M./Mlle.
French: Monsieur/Mademoiselle, i.e., Mr./Ms., used because of Steeply's disguise

restenotic
refers to restenosis, or the re-narrowing of blood vessels after initial stenosis

Page 753

spire
steeple

manche à balai
French: broom handle

chanteur-fou
French: crazy singer

calculus
here meaning simply "calculation"

Lopate
The name is perhaps taken from Philip Lopate (born 1943), an American film critic.

transpercé
pierced through

Page 754

etier
or étier: neither is a French, Swiss, or Québecois word. Perhaps a malentendu in French on the part of DFW – Marathe should have heard itier for ETA.

Endnote 315

malentendu
mishearing

Page 755