Infinite Summer

John Wayne:
A.F.R. developed as an offshoot of "The Cult of the Next Train" which was comprised of "...the male offspring of asbestos, nickel and zinc miners in the desolate Papineau region of what was then extreme southwest Quebec" (1058). John Wayne is described on page 259 as coming from "...Montcerf, Quebec - an asbestos-mining town..." and "Wayne's father is an asbestos miner" (262). He is so focused on his game it is hard to tell what his feelings for the U.S. are but "He's sometimes seen with two or three expatriate E.T.A. Nucks" (263) and one can read his reaction to Mario's version of The ONANtiad as passively angry.
- What struck me as strange is of course the fact that John Wayne stands watch over Hal and Gately as they dig up Himself's head. What is he doing there? When the A.F.R. raids E.T.A. at the "end" of the novel,they presumably send Hal to uncover his father's body in hopes of recovering the master Entertainment. For John Wayne, to be there would suggest that he is supervising the digging, something an agent of the Quebecois liberation movement would be doing. With these seemingly close ties to the A.F.R. and Quebec, is he perhaps undercover the whole time monitoring the Incanedezas and searching for a copy of the Entertainment that is presumably on the E.T.A. grounds?

Avril:
Avril also is Quebecois and is both sexually and personally involved with John Wayne. Furthermore, Himself, while in dsguise as the Conversation Therapist in The Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad, says the following about Avril: "Do you for one moment think that a professional plier of the trade of conversation would fail to probe beak-deep into your family's sorid liaison with the pan-Canadian Resistance's notorious M. DuPlessis and his malevolent but allegedly irresistible amanuensiscum-operative, Luria P - ?" (30, emphasis mine). Both M.DuPlessis and Luria P- are known anti-O.N.A.N. operatives and extremely high up in the organizations. The only family member that would have known connections with them would be the Quebecois' Avril. Does this then make her an operative as well? It is extremely possible that Avril is the one who alerted the A.F.R. to begin monitoring Orin (as it seems to me that Orin is the most likely canidate for sending the medical attache the Entertainment as 1) it was sent from Phoniex, Arizona where Orin both lives and works and 2) as Himself states it seems to be well known in the family that "...your own dear grammatical mother's covortings with not one not two but over thirty Near Eastern medical attaches..." [30] and Orin seems to be the one most upset with his mother about this). If Avril was in fact involved in all of this then she also had a hand in scheduling E.T.A.'s meet with the tennis team from Quebec and the A.F.R.'s subsequent invasion of the Academy.

Many questions still remain (of course), but what I would like to know if other connections between Wayne and Avril's involvement can be made or what arguements against these theories are.

I forget exactly the pages (somewhere in the 700's) but Fortier lays out that

A big spoiler here.

When Orin gets snatched by the wheelchair assassins, he finds himself inside a big glass jar alongwith a huge swarm of cockroaches. It's his worst nightmare. And Luria P-- is watching. Orin screams, "Do it to her."

I've always wondered if Avril could be Luria P--. As people have pointed out, there certainly seems to be a connection between her and the A.F.R. On the one hand, watching her son being tortured seems unlike Avril, but on the other hand, Orin's "Do it to her" response is certainly in character.

And the l, r, i, and a in Avirl's name are an near-anagram of Luria. The v in the French word avril becomes a p in the English word April

I think the problem with Luria and Avril being the same person is that Luria has been employed as Rod the God's secretary for the last several years, and they've been lovers for a lot of that time.

Though I do think Luria and Avril are from the same home town.

_________________
"Because so that was let's see."

Neat catch on the name thing! At some point Luria is referred to as a hand model, and Marathe and Steeply talk about her as an independent entity, mentioning Avril separately. And also, the hand model is one of Orin's 'Subjects' at one point. But also, Avril is said to never leave the grounds of ETA; but also, it doesn't seem Avril would need to go through Orin for info on JOI; if she were looking for info on IJ masters, she might even go through Mario.

My vague recollection is that I thought perhaps the 'her' Orin refers to is Helen Steeply, who has been probing along the same lines, or even Joelle, whom he would probably figure is most knowledgeable about IJ and its fate--which sets up one of those horrific things to contemplate about whether Orin's fear of the roaches won out over his love for Joelle. (But then also, the early flashback about digging up JOI includes Wayne, who I think is related to the wheelchair assassins, and also Gately, whose link to the whole situation would be through Joelle).

We know at some point that Avril and Luria come from the same place (L'Islet County, also where JOI is supposedly buried); maybe they are related in some other way. I'll certainly keep my ears open about it from this point on. (Though of course, every time I hear a new connection made here, I want to start the novel over again!)

Wow, great thread here. Jaw-dropping bells and flashing light bells when I read above Orin as origin of medical attache's copy. Had never considered. Surely makes more sense than anything else?

Also had wondered if Orin survived ordeal with AFR. Reference in opening Year of Glad admissions interview to "brother in the NFL" suggests he's still around despite potentially mind-shattering torture and career-threatening broken kicking foot.

Luria as Avril anagram speculation is fun stuff too. Thanks all!

I don't believe that Orin could possibly be the sender of the samizdat to the medical attache. Take as evidence, page 109, where Remy Marathe descibes "Les Assassins des Fauteuils Roulents' remote embryonic disseminatory Ops base down here in Southwest U.S.A." as seeming like the moon's surface, etc. I think that pretty much clears it up for the time being, seeing as how the AFR has a disseminatory outpost in the desert Southwest. And as for the "civilian attache", there's another Marathe/Steeply exchange on page 91, where they get into his "below-the-surface-connections that make the individual not such a civilian, unconnected" and speak of him (the attache) as a "major buyer of trans-grid entertainment" (which supports the idea that the attache was an AFR target), not to mention his, "the victim's prior possible involvement with the widow of the auteur . . ." (Avril), who is not Mlle. Luria Pemec; however, Luria P___ may well indeed be Orin's 'Death Mother'. Furthermore, on the next page (92) Steeply addresses Avril's time spent on "Ottawa's 'Personnes Qui On Doit' list," how she screws anything with a Canadian pulse and opines: "There's such a thing as political sex." Now whether Avril I. is having "political sex" with John N.R. Wayne is up for debate, but I will offer you this: might John Wayne be a mole? (sounds crazy, I know, but hold on . . . ) Page 16, Hal is supine on the gurney after his weird blackout with the three deans: "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." We know that the cartridge is implanted in Himself's noggin from pages 31-32, where James O. informs his eleven year old son, Hal, that the composition of his "complimentary" Dunlop widebodies are "organochemically identical I say again identical to the gyroscopic balance sensor and mise-en-scene appropriation card and priapistic**-entertainment cartridge implanted in your very own towering father's anaplastic cerebrum after his cruel series of . . . " Get the picture? And this right after he tells Hal that his own mother is introducing "esoteric mnemonic steroids" into his morning cereal? (Which steroids probably account for Hal's photographic memory, which mirrors Stonecipheco's baby food products with pineal gland extract for optimal speech development in infants from 'Broom of the System'.) And we wonder why the Halster's gone a little bonkers? It's certainly not b/c he took the DMZ. But back to Wayne, whose masked image overseeing the excavation of Himself is no doubt some kind of hint that John N.R. Wayne is most certainly not what he seems. Besides the fact that Hal says (once again supine on the gurney) that Wayne "would have won this year's Whataburger." What happens to Wayne? Did he accomplish his mission? So yo then man what's your story?

**Priapsistic doesn't seem to be a word that you can look up. But it may derive from 'priapic'-->'phallus', and/or the Greek god Priapus--> of gardens (Avril) and male generative power (???)

Under Priapus, Chambers gives: priaprism n consistent erection of the penis (pathol); licentiousness; lewdness