Infinite Jest: Chapter 69 Summary & Analysis

14 November Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. Joelle suddenly starts worrying about her teeth and the terrible effect that years of freebasing cocaine has had on them. Some people in Ennet House have black teeth, and some no teeth at all. Joelle fantasizes about Gately as a dentist tending to her teeth. Back at the Antitois’ shop, Fortier and his team finally find the cartridge that had once belonged to DuPlessis. Unfortunately, in the process two of the team members (Desjardins and Joubet) are lost to the Entertainment. Even more unfortunately, the team soon discovers that the cartridge is read-only. They decide to remain positive and treat this as a sign that they are one step closer to obtaining the master copy.

The A.F.R. now have the entire Incandenza family under surveillance, and are close to tracking down Joelle, having discovered that she was Madame Psychosis. They have kidnapped and tortured the WYYY engineer, forcing him to tell them everything he knew about Joelle’s whereabouts. They have exposed their first “test Subject” to the Entertainment, telling the Subject that he could repeat the film if he agreed to saw off one of his own fingers for each repeat play. The A.F.R. are currently rolling the streets of Boston looking for more test Subjects.

Randy Lenz has successfully seized the bags of the Chinese women and escaped. Unbeknownst to him, he passes Poor Tony and Ruth in the alley. He also passes a group of young crack dealers, one of whom throws a rock at him and misses. He then passes a “sexless” figure lying on the ground wearing two different shoes, hair covering their face, smelling of “rot.” Lenz keeps walking.

Rémy Marathe is sitting in Ennet House wearing a veil. It is hot and crowded in the room, and he feels nauseous. Almost everyone is smoking. Two women are comparing their experiences of having been members of cults. Before “La Cult du Prochain Train,” Marathe had use of all his limbs. (An endnote here describes E.T.A. student James Struck Jr. conducting research on the A.F.R. for his History of Canadian Unpleasantness course. He reads about the A.F.R.’s various activities, which include placing “large reflective devices” on U.S. highways to confuse drivers and assassinating Canadian politicians.)

(In the same endnote, Struck reads that La Culte du Prochain Train means “The Cult of the Next Train” and refers to a game played in Quebec wherein miners’ sons would lie down on train tracks and compete over who would be the last to scramble away before the approach of an express train. Those who remain on the tracks have their legs severed off; several of these boys go on to found A.F.R. In the whole history of the game, only one person has not jumped: John Wayne’s father Bernard.)

Back in the main narrative, a man approaches Marathe and asks if he is “real.” Confused, Marathe insists that he is Swiss. The man warns Marathe that most of the other E.T.A. residents aren’t real—that they are made of metal—but that he can tell Marathe is real. He adds that you can tell other people are fake because if you get close to them you can hear a faint mechanical whirring. The man replies in an increasingly nonsensical, paranoid fashion, and eventually Marathe bids him goodnight.

Joelle has rediscovered a love for cleaning that has nothing to do with getting high. When she and Orin lived together as young lovers, she would put anxiety at bay by cleaning, which gave her a sense of independence and control. Before meeting Gately, Joelle had not been thinking much of the Incandenzas, who are the “second-saddest” family she’s ever met. Orin once told her that while James just stared at him blankly, Avril told him she loved him roughly one hundred times each day.

Orin had predicted that James would want to cast Joelle in his films because of her extraordinary beauty, and it was painfully clear that he hoped he would get closer to his father through her. Joelle found James’s work “amateurish,” yet also felt that there were barely-noticeable flickers of promise within it. Orin was only the second boy to ever approach her romantically, and Joelle remembers him confessing his crush on her. (An endnote explains that both Orin and Joelle recall that it was the other one who made the first approach.)

After they became close, James confessed to Joelle that he didn’t know how to talk to Orin or Hal. Orin used to cry about his nonfunctional relationship with James. Avril always creeped out Joelle, and Joelle was convinced that Avril “wished her ill.” She remembers a particularly traumatizing Thanksgiving dinner during which all the Incandenzas (and Avril herself) seemed to be wearing the same fake smile.

At Ennet House, Marathe has a meeting with Pat Montesian. He claims to be a Swiss “resident alien” heroin addict named Henri. Pat proudly states that Ennet House is one of the only houses in the region that is accessible to people with disabilities. Through A.F.R.-overseen research, Marathe has concluded that American drug and alcohol recovery is a “paramilitary” affair. He claims that he lost his legs due to an overdose in Bern. Pat seems totally convinced by his fake account of addiction. She permits Marathe to sleep on a sofa bed in the rear office.

Marathe is unsure if he should accept Pat’s offer and stay here, thereby preserving the illusion of his fake identity, or if he should leave immediately and inform the A.F.R. that the master copy of the Entertainment is likely in this very house. Or, perhaps, he should do neither and summon Steeply and the O.U.S. forces to Ennet House instead. He tries to envision which would create the best outcome for his comatose wife, Gertraude. At that moment, Marathe hears Pat ask Johnette to put on a cartridge for the residents, saying that Clenette brought some donated ones over from E.T.A. that afternoon.