David Wallace - Infinite jest

FREAK STATUE OF LIBERTY ACCIDENT KILLS FED ENGINEER — Header; BRAVE MAN ON CRANE CRUSHED BY 5 TON CAST IRON BURGER— 12-point Subheader;

GENTLE PROMISES SKEPTICAL CUB SCOUT CONVENTION ‘YOU’LL BE ABLE TO EAT RIGHT OFF’ TERRITORIAL U.S. BY END OF TERM’S FIRST YEAR — Header;

ANOTHER LOVE CANAL? — 24-point Superheader; TOXIC HORROR ACCIDENTALLY UNCOVERED IN UPSTATE NEW HAMPSHIRE— 16-point Header-sized Subheader;

‘New Hampshire environmental officials yesterday flatly denied that vast collections of drums leaking industrial solvents, chlorides, benzenes and oxins had been quote “stumbled on” by 18 federal EPA staffers playing a casual game of softball east of Berlin, NH, claiming instead that the corroded receptacles had been placed there against statute by large men with white body suits and short haircuts in long shiny trailer trucks with O.N.A.N.’s official crest, a sombreroed eagle with a maple leaf in its mouth, stencilled on the sides. In the nation’s capital, a quote “full and energetic investigation” has been promised by the Gentle administration into claims by residents of Berlin, NH and Rumford, ME that the incidence of soft-skulled and extra-eyed newborns in the toxicly affected area far exceeds the national average.’ — $3.75 U.S. Nightly-Rental News Cartridge Anchor Lead;

SUB ROSA FUSION-IN-POISONOUS-ENVIRONMENT TEST SITE ALLEGED AT MONTPELIER, VT — Scientific North American Header;

MY BABY HAS SIX EYES AND BASICALLY NO SKULL–Lurid Color 32-point Tabloid Header, Dateline Lancaster NH;

FED EPA SOFTBALLERS ALLEGE TWO MORE ‘POISONOUS WASTE HORRORFEST’ ILLEGAL DUMP SITES ‘STUMBLED OVER’ NEAR NORTH SYRACUSE, HISTORIC TICONDEROGA — NYC Daily Header;

THE FINE ART OF FEDERAL STUMBLING: A WHOLE LOT OF SOFTBALL GOING ON — Editorial Header in Syracuse NY’s Post-Standard;

CANADIAN P.M. DENIES SECRET MINIATURE GOLF OUTING WITH OUTRAGED NEW ENGLAND GOVS — Surprisingly Small 3rd-Page 10-poínt Header;

GENTLE SHOCKER — Pearl-Harbor-Sized 32-point Super-superheader Almost Too Big to Read Clearly; MAYFLOWER, RED BALL, ALLIED, U-HAUL STOCKS SOAR— 16-point Financial Daily Subheader; TWO NORTHEAST GOVS HOSPITALIZED FOR INFARCTION, ANEURISM— 10-point Subheader;

GENTLE DECLARES ALL U.S. TERRITORY NORTH OF LINE FROM SYRACUSE TO TICONDEROGA, NY, TICONDEROGA, NY TO SALEM, MA FEDERAL DISASTERS, OFFERS FEDERAL AID FOR

UPSTATE AND NEW ENGLAND RESIDENTS WISHING TO RELOCATE, CLAIMS FUNDS FOR EPA CLEAN-UP ‘ARE NOT WITHIN THE MAP OF WHAT’S POSSIBLE’ [SIC]— Header from Chemically Over-Garrulous Headliner Eventually Fired Even from Subheader Dept. for Exceeding Verbal Parameters and Now Starting to Get in the Same Hot Water All Over Again at a Much Less Prestigious Daily Paper;

and so on and so forth. Himself’s old optical editing lab has imposing Com-pugraphic typesetting and matteing facilities: it’s hard to tell which of the headlines and other stuff are for real and which have been dickied with, usually, if you’re too young to recall the actual chronology. At least some of the headlines are phony, the kids know; miniature golf indeed. But the accuracy of Mario’s puppeteered account of the seminal meeting of what’s come to be known as ‘The Concavity Cabinet’ gets to stand uncontested by fact. Nobody who wasn’t actually there at the 16 January meeting knows just what was said when or by whom, the Gentle administration being of the position that extant Oval Office recording equipment was a veritable petri dish of organisms. Gentle’s claque of doo-wopping Motown cabinet-puppets have purple dresses and matching lipstick and nail polish, and bouffants so blindingly Afrosheened that there had been special lighting and film-speed problems in the custodial closet:

SEC. TREAS.: You’re looking vigorous and hale today, sir.

GENTLE: Hhhaaahh Hhhuuuhh Hhhaaahh Hhhuuuhh.

PRES. MEX./SEC. MEX./V–C O.N.A.N.: May I ask, Señor, why my distinguished co-Vice Chair of O.N.A.N. is not with us in attendance today.

GENTLE: Hhhaaahh Hhhuuuhh.

MR. RODNEY TINE, CHIEF, U.S. OFFICE OF UNSPECIFIED SERVICES: The president’s taking a little pure oxygen today, boys, and has authorized me as his oral proxy on this may I say historically opportune day. The Canadian P.M.’s in a bit of a snit. He prefers to whinge in the media surrounded by Mounted Reserves and is off somewhere far from Quebec in a Kevlar vest doing whatever the Canadian word is for pouting, doubtless poring over opinion polls prepared by chinless guys in Canadian hornrims.

MEX. AND SOME OTHER SECS.: [Various puzzled apprehensive noises.]

TiNE: I’m sure you’ve all been briefed on the unprecedented but not unop-portune crisis that obtains north of the almost perfectly horizontal line between Buffalo and Northeast Mass.

TINE arranges photos on seal-crested easels: a New Hampshire runoff-ditch running off stuff a color nobody’s quite ever seen before; a wide-angle horizon-stretching vista of skull-embossed drums, with short-haired guys in white body-suits walking around adjusting knobs and reading dials on shiny hand-held devices; a very weird chemical sunrise, close in hue to the Cabinet members’ lipstick, over some forests in southern Maine that look way taller and generally lusher than January forests ought properly to be; a couple indoor-lit snapshots of a multi-eyed infant crawling backwards, its ear to the carpet, dragging its shapeless head like a sack of spuds. The last display’s a real heartstring-plucker.

ALL SECS.: [Various concerned and sympathetic noises.]

GENTLE: Hhhaaahh Hhhuuuhh.

TlNE: Gentlemen, let the president just say that no one’s prepared to say they’re quite sure what’s happened, or just which quote unquote loyal part of the Union or Organization might reasonably be said to be culpable, but it’s not the administration’s immediate concern to point the levelling finger of blame or aspersion just yet or right now. Our concern is to act, to respond, and act and respond decisively. Swiftly. And decisively.

SEC. INT.: We’ve come up with some extremely preliminary projections on the costs of detoxifying and/or deradiating the better part of four U.S. states, sir, and I have to tell you gentlemen that even with the atmosphere of uncertainty at this point in time of not yet having a definitive handle on just what kinds and combinations of compounds were — umm — found there and how wide your — not ‘your’ personally, sir, J.G., ‘your’ just being a shorthand way for — to say something like I suppose simply ‘the’ — how wide the dispersal- and toxicity-parameters are shaping up to look — umm — I have to relate that the figures we’re looking at are almost staggeringly multi-zeroed, sir, gentlemen.

TINE: Tighten in and expand on staggering if you will, Blaine.

SEC. INT.: We’re talking at bare minimum a staggering amount of Prívate-Sector-caliber guys in white suits and helmets, not unlike your own helmet, sir, with a commensurately massive tab for the suits and helmets, plus gloves and throwaway booties, and a lot of really shiny equipment with a great many knobs and dials. Sir.

GENTLE: Hhhaaahh Hhhuuuhh.

TINE: Gentlemen, let’s pay the president the due tribute of proceeding right to the bone of the matter. I think the president’s position is rendered patently clear by the pure oxygen he’s been forced to take here with us today. No way we can possibly permit territory publicly exposed as this befouled and waste-impacted to continue to besmirch the already tight and tidier territory of a new era’s U.S. of A. The president shudders at the mere thought. Just the mere thought of it forces him to resort to oxygen.

PRES. MEX./SEC. MEX./V–C O.N.A.N.: I do not anticipate what options your federal and our continental government might consider options to this permitting, señors.