Wallace has his slides destroyed (by someone else? by him on accident?) in the lab
Night at the lake; helping Miller with his eye
Going home with Miller after the lake; they have sex
Wallace leaves Miller in his apartment alone
Wallace returns to the lab; Brigit suggests Dana compromised his slides
Confrontation with Dana
Plays tennis with Cole; Cole says his boyfriend (Vincent) was on Grindr
Dinner party with friends
Roman makes racist comments towards Wallace
Wallace exposes Vincent’s potential infidelity in front of everyone
Emma and Wallace discuss the incident and Emma revealing Wallace’s fathers death the night before
Wallace throws up and Miller talks to him in the bathroom
Cole (and Wallace and Vincent)
Cole and Wallace have been friends and playing tennis together since first year of grad school
Cole and Wallace flirted a lot when they first met (p 111, p 115) but he was in a relationship w Vincent
Cole and Vincent have been together for almost 7 years, but now Vincent wants to open it up (p 114)
“We get to talking about relationships, monogamy, being queer, which is fucking ridiculous. We’re gay, not queer” (125)
“‘regular-gay” (125)
Wallace: “He swallows down what he wants to say: that a person doesn’t belong to you just because you’re in a relationship, just because you love them. That people are people and they belong only to themselves, or so they should” (126)
“Of course this is the peak, the pinnacle of Cole’s desires, not only for this relationship, but for the very configuration of things: a career, a loving partner, friends, lovely little parties, tennis on the weekend. What Cole wants from life is, above all else, that matters be settled before they are even raised, that everything fall into place…He has not planned for a loss, for any of the many ways that life can and will go wrong. Vincent is not just Vincent, but also a symbol, collecting with each passing day more and more significance. He is a ward, an inoculation against the uncertainty of the future” (135-136).
Roman and Klaus
A French and German in an open relationship
“Roman has always been closer to Cole and Vincent than he has ever been to Wallace, for reasons that are abundantly clear to Wallace but that Cole pretends not to understand” (119).
Wallace
“I don’t think I’ll leave…I don’t have any skills to live in the world…But sometimes I’d like to live in it–in the world, I mean. I’d like to be out there with a real job, a real life” (132)
pp 136-137 Wallace is “mostly fine” with his dad’s death; Cole doesn’t believe him
“This is why he keeps the truth to himself, because other people don’t know what to do with your shit, with the reality of other people’s feelings. They don’t know what to do when they’ve heard something that does not align with their own perception of things” (136).
pp 142-144 Wallace’s Mom/childhood
Wallace does not drink by choice (not an alcoholic)
has been dead for several years, died of a stroke
alcoholic, diabetic, abusive
Wallace remembers the good memories with his mom (watching cartoons, home sick)
Wallace grew up very poor
p 150 Attended Auburn University in Alabama (not Crimson Tide, Tigers)
p 160 Learning French in high school/college
there was another boy named Peter he’d almost slept with
p 170 Wallace talking to Miller about how he hates it here and everywhere
Dinner Party
pp 144-145 Vegan/vegetarian friends
“It’s in those moments that he experiences most acutely the feeling of his own estrangement from these people he calls his friends. Their shining eyes and wet mouths and their greasy fingers working at each other’s knees, a pantomime of intimacy, a cult of happiness, a cult of friendship” (146)
Zoe: girl the friends are trying to set Miller up with
attended Harvard, embarrassed by it
p 151-155 Miller is hiding from the party outside
p 160 – 162 Roman makes racist remarks towards Wallace
Roman responding to Wallace saying he thinks about leaving sometimes: “Why would you do that? I mean, the prospects for…black people, you know?” (160)
“Well…with a doctorate, you have better prospects, a better job, better outlook. Without it…the stats are what they are” (161)
“…they spent so much money on your training. It seems ungrateful to leave” (161)
“But they brought you in knowing what your deficiencies were…Ye. Your deficiencies. I won’t say what they are. You already know. You come from a challenging background. It is unfortunate, but it is how it is” (161)
“What Roman is referring to is instead a deficiency of whiteness, a lack of some requisite sameness. This deficiency cannot be overcome. The fact is, no matter how hard he tries or how much he learns or how many skills he masters, he will always be provisional in the eyes of these people, no matter how they might be fond of him or gentle with him” (161-162).
“Emma puts her head on Wallace’s shoulder, but she won’t say anything either, can’t bring herself to. No one does. No one ever does. Silence is their way of getting by, because if they are silent long enough, then this moment of minor discomfort will pass for them…Only Wallace will remember it…Wallace is the only one for whom this is a humiliation” (162).
p 164 Wallace exposes Vincent
“He asks in a voice lighter than he feels, because in truth, at the moment, he wants to die. But it feels good for once to see someone else caught out” 165)
Wallace hurts Cole/Vincent in this moment even though it feels wrong, because part of Wallace feels good about being able to have control over the situation (hurt people hurt people)
p 171 Miller and Wallace talk after the incident
“Kindness is a debt, Wallace thinks. Kindness is something owed and something repaid. Kindness is an obligation” (171)
p 172 Wallace and Emma talk
p 173 “Nobody said a thing to him when he was suddenly a demographics expert, did they?”
Emma is upset at Wallace, but Wallace points out that Emma exposed his secret (his father’s death) the day before
Emma: “You are so selfish…I told our friends about your loss to help you. You told everyone about Cole and Vincent’s mess to hurt them. It’s different” (173).
pp 176-177 “the difference” (176)
“But the difference…is that you have the option of not thinking about it. His misery is not novel, but it is distinct” (176)
“Is this what Dana was trying to say to him earlier? That he’s not the only one who has a hard time? That he doesn’t have some sort of monopoly on misery? But it’s different, he wanted to say then and wants to say now. It’s different. Can’t you see that? It’s different” (177)
“They do not understand that for them it will get better, while for him the misery will only change shape”
pp 182 – 192 Miller and Wallace talking in the bathroom
“They say, study science and you’ll always have a job. And it seems so easy. But they don’t tell you that there’s all this other stuff attached that will make you hate your life” (187)
Miller can’t believe Roman spoke that way to Wallace…
“No one said anything to him; no one did anything” (187)
Miller: “I wanted to, but then, I guess, I chickened out” (188)
“There will always be this moment…which is all it takes” (188)
