Infinite Jest: Chapter 62 Summary & Analysis

11 November Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. Helen Steeply has arrived at E.T.A. and watches a match Hal plays against Stice. Both players are left-handed. Steeply has (ostensibly) come to speak to Hal about Orin, but Charles won’t let her have a conversation with him yet. No one knows where Avril is. Back in Arizona, Orin is once again having sex with the “Swiss” hand-model. Aubrey deLint sits with Helen and gives a constant stream of commentary on Hal’s performance. DeLint observes that as a player, Hal is “in essence a torturer.”

Steeply asks when she will be able to talk to Hal; deLint initially ignores her, and then says he doesn’t think she will be able to at all. He explains that it is Charles’s decision, but adds that they’ve never allowed a current E.T.A. student to be interviewed before. Steeply is panicked and irritated. DeLint advises her to speak with Charles, and then suggests that she profile Coach Schtitt instead of Orin, because Schtitt is a “genius.” He is confused why she is writing about Orin, considering that he only “appears four times a game, never gets hit, [and] doesn’t even wear pads.”

The next passage is a letter from Helen Steeply to Marlon K. Bain, who now appears to work for a greeting card company in Waltham, MA. Helen says she is writing a profile on the Incandenza family and asks if Bain would be willing to answer questions about them. Bain’s response reads simply: “Fire away.” Helen’s response is included, but all her questions have been omitted and replaced with the word “Q.” (An endnote contains Bain’s answers, which he sends back to Helen in another letter. Bain explains that he and Orin were childhood friends who met through competitive junior tennis. They were the top two under-10 boys in Boston.)

(In the same endnote, Bain continues that he was one of the first students at E.T.A. after it was founded when he was 15. At the academy, he and Orin experimented with substances; taking psychedelics left Bain with several disabilities that now make his life very difficult. As a result Bain left E.T.A. at 17. He adds that he doesn’t know much about James’ suicide. He knows that James cast Joelle in a “radical new type of filmed entertainment that supposedly was driving him to a breakdown.” Bain warns Helen that Orin has a tendency to misrepresent the truth, convincing himself of his own fabrications.)

(In the same endnote, Bain describes a horrifying story in which he and Orin drove Orin’s parents’ car without realizing that the family dog, S. Johnson, was attached to it, thereby killing S. Johnson in a gruesome manner. Orin lied to Avril, saying S. Johnson was killed by another driver while he and Bain were taking the dog for a walk. Bain then conducts a more abstract meditation on parental love and abuse, and how parenting so often goes so terribly wrong. He admits that there was always something “not right” and “creepy” about Avril, saying that she extended a “pathological generosity” to her sons. It is almost as if she wanted them to suffer so she could be sympathetic and loving to them.)

Back in the main narrative, younger players involved in the Eschaton fiasco—while not in as much trouble as their Big Buddies—are punished by being made to inspect the underground tunnels that workers will have to use in the construction of the Lung, a new inflatable covering for the E.T.A. courts. Some of the tunnels have been used for storage and are now strewn with random items and litter, including a microwave and TP cartridges. James’s old editing “facilities” are also located in the tunnels. The young Eschaton players spend much of their time hanging out in the tunnels anyway, even having a sort of informal “Tunnel Club.” The club has no clear purpose, but members are adamant that girls are not allowed to join.

The boys have filled several trash bags and are making Kent Blott, who was also denied membership to the Tunnel Club, drag them up to the tunnel’s entrance. In the distance they can hear the applause from Hal’s match. LaMont Chu takes an inventory of everything they find in the tunnel. The boys are all hoping to find an infestation of feral hamsters—the kind that originate in the Great Concavity—which would distract Charles from the Eschaton situation. Avril has a severe phobia of rodents.

The boys discover a fridge and at the same time smell something horrible. At first they accuse each other of farting, but then they realize the smell seems to be coming from the fridge. Inside, they discover a jar of mayonnaise with maggots crawling in it. Horrified, they flee the tunnel as fast as possible. Meanwhile, above ground there is a tie between Hal and Stice. DeLint has left, and Thierry Poutrincourt has come to sit next to Steeply instead. She explains that E.T.A. staff might seem unfriendly because they are protective of their students, who she calls their étoiles (stars).

Steeply reiterates that she is profiling Orin, not a current E.T.A. student. DeLint returns, and Steeply offers to switch to French; Poutrincourt shrugs, unimpressed, but continues in Quebecois. The two of them discuss competitive sport and the difficult transition from promising junior to adult player. Poutrincourt also talks about the challenges and pressures of professional tennis. DeLint interrupts to say that E.T.A.’s best player is John Wayne, and that Helen can see him play tomorrow. Helen casually mentions James’s filmmaking, but no one seems to notice.