Seeing as were finishing the novel, there is going to be plenty of stuff to chime in about. However, since we will be posting about that later, I figured I would comment on the section I found most interesting in this section of the book.
The appearance of Hal’s father to Don Gately ties up many questions that have been raised across the novel. However, the first thing it does is humanize this almost mythic character we have not seen yet. James O. Incandenza has taken on a mystical quality throughout his mentions in the novel. Since we never actually see here him talk (outside of in a disguise as a communicator), he has been very shadowy at best. Also, the fact that he is often referred to by nicknames adds an extra mystique. His suicide, his relationship with the family, and his art have all just given more questions than answers.
The fact that he appears to Don Gately is significant in itself. From the outset, we have wondered how these two characters are connected. On pg. 17 we get Hal recall a very strange memory: “I think of John N.R. Wayne, who would have won this year’s WhataBurger, standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my father’s head” (17). We have known all along that they were destined to meet, but until now, the connection has been hazy at best. Hal visits Ennet (786), but Gately isn’t there. Besides this interaction between Gately and Himself, we have gotten no clues about their relationship beside their mutual pleasure in recreational drugs.
Appearing to Gately seems like an odd choice. After the wraith discusses how hard it is even to manifest itself, Gately ruminates why the wraith doesn’t “have an interface with the fucking son” (840). However, it has become obvious that Himself is incapable of communicating with Hal. He even used to imagine that Hal wasn’t speaking when he was. This madness also become clarified from this encounter with Gately.
James wanted desperately to communicate with Hal but saw him slipping away. This echoes Hal’s own inkling that he is empty inside: “The boy, who did everything well and with a natural unslumped grace the wraith himself had been so terribly eager to see and hear and let him (the son) know he was seen and heard, the son had become a steadily more and more hidden boy” (838). In James’ ghostly mind, his strange relationship with Hal was for the boy’s benefit. Once again, James takes on an almost mythic role. He has knowledge none of the family has, and he actually understood the boy’s inner life more than anyone has given him credit for. To reach him, he created an entertainment that “the gifted boy couldn’t simply master and move on from to a new plateau. Something the boy would love enough to induce him to open his mouth and come out-even it was only to ask for more” (839).
This entertainment sounds quite similar to Samizdat.I assume it is (although assumptions aren’t your friend in this book). The tape must be his gift to Hal, but would Hal be able to survive the images unlike the others? If he is empty on the inside, maybe the tape would have an opening effect on him rather than a destructive one.
Thinking of Gately, I cannot quite figure out why he is the one Himself appears to. I have a theory related to something Gately said. Gately postulates that the Wraith can quantum over to his son and talk to him. Also, the ghost says that he has been waiting the “wraith equivalent of three weeks” to talk to him. I’m starting to think that in the novel, the ghost operates on a different concept of time. Perhaps, time of the future, past , and present exist almost simultaneously. Thus, he is the only one who knows how this thing is going to end. He knows about the quest for the tape, and where that quest is going to take Hal and Gately. In the context of the unwritten time from ETA team gala to Hal’s admission interview, James may be the deus ex machina. Perhaps what he tells him will be invaluable as the narrative progresses.
In regard to the beginning of the novel, did Hal watch the tape? I’m inclined to think so. James wanted to come out of himself, but Hal ends up having a full body spasm instead. Maybe that is one’s fate if it is too long. Hal has been slowly getting lonelier and lonelier throughout the novel, and his interior dialogue from the beginning is the most expressive we have seen him. The flood gates of Hal’s inner workings have opened, but he is simply unable to express them to the world.
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