Читать «Infinite jest» онлайн - страница 58

Professor James O. Incandenza, Jr.’s untimely suicide at fifty-four was held a great loss in at least three worlds. President J. Gentle (EC.), acting on behalf of the U.S.D.D.’s O.N.R. and O.N.A.N.’s post-annular A.E.C., conferred a posthumous citation and conveyed his condolences by classified ARPA-NET Electronic Mail. Incandenza’s burial in Quebec’s L’Islet County was twice delayed by annular hyperfloration cycles. Cornell University Press announced plans for a festschrift. Certain leading young quote ‘après-garde’ and ‘anticonfluential’ filmmakers employed, in their output for the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar, certain oblique visual gestures — most involving the chiaroscuro lamping and custom-lens effects for which Incandenza’s distinctive deep focus was known — that paid the sort of deep-insider’s elegaic tribute no audience could be expected to notice. An interview with Incan-denza was posthumously included in a book on the genesis of annulation. And those of E.T.A.’s junior players whose hypertrophied arms could fit inside them wore black bands on court for almost a year.

DENVER CO, 1 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT

‘I hate this!’ Orin yells out to whoever glides near. He doesn’t loop or spiral like the showboats; he sort of tacks, the gliding equivalent of snow-plowing, unspectacular and aiming to get it over ASAP and intact. The fake red wings’ nylon clatters in an updraft; ill-glued feathers keep peeling off and rising. The updraft is the oxides from Mile-High’s thousands of open mouths. Far and away the loudest stadium anyplace. He feels like a dick. The beak makes it hard to breathe and see. Two reserve ends do some kind of combined barrel-roll thing. The worst is the moment right before they make the jump off the stadium’s rim. Hands in the top rows reaching and clutching. People laughing. The Interlace cameras panning and tightening; Orin knows too well the light on the side that means Zoom. Once they’re out over the field the voices melt and merge into oxides and updraft. The left guard is soaring up instead of down. A couple beaks and a claw fall off somebody and go pinwheeling down toward the green. Orin tacks grimly back and forth. He’s among those who steadfastly refuse to whistle or squawk. Bonus or no. The stadium loudspeaker’s a steely gargle. You can never hear it clearly even on the ground.