Oblivion Stories Part 6

In what everyone at the next day's working lunch would agree was a masterstroke, the special limousine that arrived at 5:00 AM Wednesday to convey the artist and his wife to Chicago was like something out of a Style Style reader's dream. Half a city block long, white the way cruise ships and bridal gowns are white, it had a television and wet bar, opposing seats of cordovan leather, noiseless AC, and a thick gla.s.s shield between pa.s.senger compartment and driver that could be raised and lowered at the touch of a b.u.t.ton on the woodgrain panel, for privacy. To Skip At.w.a.ter, it looked like the hea.r.s.e of the kind of star for whom the whole world stops dead in its tracks to mourn. Inside, the Moltkes faced each other, their knees almost touching, the artist's hands obscured from view by the panels of his new beige sportcoat. reader's dream. Half a city block long, white the way cruise ships and bridal gowns are white, it had a television and wet bar, opposing seats of cordovan leather, noiseless AC, and a thick gla.s.s shield between pa.s.senger compartment and driver that could be raised and lowered at the touch of a b.u.t.ton on the woodgrain panel, for privacy. To Skip At.w.a.ter, it looked like the hea.r.s.e of the kind of star for whom the whole world stops dead in its tracks to mourn. Inside, the Moltkes faced each other, their knees almost touching, the artist's hands obscured from view by the panels of his new beige sportcoat.

The salaryman's Kia trailing at a respectful distance, the limousine proceeded at dawn through the stolid caucasian poverty of Mount Carmel. There were only faint suggestions of faces behind its windows' darkened gla.s.s, but whoever was awake to see the limousine glide by could tell that whoever was in there looking out saw everything afresh, like coming out of a long coma.

O Verily was, understandably, a madhouse. The time from initial pitch to live broadcast was 31 hours. The Suffering Channel would enter stage three at 8:00 PM CDT on 4 July, ten weeks ahead of schedule, with three tableaux vivant. There were five different line producers, and all of them were very busy indeed.

It was not Sweeps Week; but as the saying goes in cable, every week is Sweeps Week.

A 52 year old grandmother from Round Lake Beach IL had a growth in her pancreas. The needle biopsy w/ CAT a.s.sist at Rush Presbyterian would be captured live by a remote crew; so would the activities of the radiology MD and pathologist whose job was to stain the sample and determine whether the growth was malignant. The segment entailed two separate freelance crews, all of whom were IA union and on holiday double time. The second part of the feed would be split screen. In something of a permissions coup, they'd have the woman's face for the whole ten minutes it took for the stain to set and the pathologist to scope it. She and her husband would be looking at a monitor on which the pathology crew's real time feed would be displayed-viewers would get to see the verdict and her reaction to it at the same time.

Finding just the right host for the segments' intros and voiceovers was an immense headache, given that nearly every plausible candidate's agent was off for the Fourth, and that whomever The Suffering Channel cast they were then all but bound to stick with for at least one stage three cycle. Finalists were still being auditioned as late as 3:00 PM-and Style Style magazine's Skip At.w.a.ter, in a move whose judgment was later questioned all up and down the editorial line, ended up devoting a good part of his time, attention, and shorthand notes to these auditions, as well as to a lengthy and somewhat meandering Q&A with an a.s.sistant to the Reudenthal and Voss a.s.sociate tasked to the day's multiform permissions and releases. magazine's Skip At.w.a.ter, in a move whose judgment was later questioned all up and down the editorial line, ended up devoting a good part of his time, attention, and shorthand notes to these auditions, as well as to a lengthy and somewhat meandering Q&A with an a.s.sistant to the Reudenthal and Voss a.s.sociate tasked to the day's multiform permissions and releases.

In 1996, an unemployed arc welder was convicted of abducting and torturing to death a Penn State coed named Carole Ann Deutsch. Over four hours of high quality audiotape had been recovered from the suspect's apartment and entered into evidence at trial. Voiceprint a.n.a.lysis confirmed that the screams and pleadings on the tapes-which were played for the jury, though not in open court-belonged to the victim. This tableau's venue was a hastily converted OVP conference room. For the first time, Carole Ann Deutsch's widowed father, of Gla.s.sport PA, would listen to selections from those tapes. There with him for support are the a.s.sociate pastor from Mr. Deutsch's church and an APA certified trauma counselor whose sunburn, only hours old, presents some ticklish problems for the segment's makeup coordinator.

Longtime People's Court People's Court moderator Doug Llewellyn hosts. After lengthy and sometimes heated negotiations-during which at one point Mrs. Anger herself had to be contacted at home and enjoined to speak directly by cell to R. Vaughn Corliss, which Ellen Bactrian later said made her just about want to curl up and die-representatives of both the ACLU and the League of Decency are on hand for brief interviews by Skip At.w.a.ter of moderator Doug Llewellyn hosts. After lengthy and sometimes heated negotiations-during which at one point Mrs. Anger herself had to be contacted at home and enjoined to speak directly by cell to R. Vaughn Corliss, which Ellen Bactrian later said made her just about want to curl up and die-representatives of both the ACLU and the League of Decency are on hand for brief interviews by Skip At.w.a.ter of Style. Style.

It is a clear Lucite commode unit atop a ten foot platform of tempered gla.s.s beneath which a video crew will record the real time emergence of either an iconically billowing and ecstatic Monroe or a five to seven inch Winged Victory of Samothrace, Winged Victory of Samothrace, depending on dramatic last minute instructions. Suspended from the studio's lighting grid to a position directly before the commode unit, a special monitor taking feed from below will give the artist visual access to his own production for the first time ever in his career. He believes what he sees will be public. depending on dramatic last minute instructions. Suspended from the studio's lighting grid to a position directly before the commode unit, a special monitor taking feed from below will give the artist visual access to his own production for the first time ever in his career. He believes what he sees will be public.

In point of fact, the piece's physical emergence will not really be broadcast. The combined arguments of Style' Style's Ellen Bactrian and the Development heads of O Verily Productions finally persuaded Mr. Corliss it would be beyond the pale. Instead, the artist's wife has been interviewed on tape respecting Brint Moltke's abusive childhood and the terrific shame, ambivalence, and sheer human suffering involved in his unchosen art. Edited portions of this interview will compose the voiceover as TSC viewers watch the artist's face in the act of creation, its every wince and grimace captured by the special camera hidden within the cha.s.sis of the commode's monitor.

A consciencia e o pesadelo da natureza.

It is, of course, malignant. Subsequently, though, Carole Ann Deutsch's father discomfits everyone by seeming less interested in the tapes than in justifying his appearance on the broadcast itself. His purpose for being here is to inform the public of what victims' loved ones go through, to humanize the process and raise awareness. He repeats this several times, but at no point does he share how he feels or what he feels he's gone through just now, listening. In the context of what he and the viewers have just heard, Mr. Deutsch's reaction comes off as almost obscenely abstract and disengaged. On the other hand, Doug Llewellyn's own evident humanity and ad lib skill in getting everyone through the segment testify to the soundness of his casting.

A slow chain pulls the commode a.s.sembly up an angled plane until the unit locks into place atop its Lucite pipe. Mrs. Moltke's been allowed in the control room. Virgil 'Skip' At.w.a.ter and the Reudenthal and Voss paralegal are back against one wall, out of the arc lights' wash, the journalist's whole face flushed with ibuprofen and hands folded monkishly over his abdomen. At the base of the plane, Style Style's freelance photographer is down on one knee, going handheld, still in the same Hawaiian shirt. The famously reclusive R. Vaughn Corliss is nowhere in view. Doug Llewellyn's wardrobe furnished by Hugo Boss. The Malina blanket for the artist's lap and thighs, however, is the last minute fix of a production oversight, retrieved from the car of an apprentice gaffer whose child is still nursing, and is not what anyone would call an appropriate color or design, and appears unbilled. There's also some eleventh hour complication involving the ground level camera and the problem of keeping the commode's special monitor out of its upward shot, since video capture of a camera's own monitor causes what is known in the industry as feedback glare-the artist in such a case would see, not his own emergent Victory, Victory, but a searing and amorphous light. but a searing and amorphous light.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

David Foster Wallace is the author of the novels Infinite Jest Infinite Jest and and The Broom of the System, The Broom of the System, the story collections the story collections Brief Interviews with Hideous Men Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and and Girl with Curious Hair, Girl with Curious Hair, the book of essays the book of essays A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and, most recently, and, most recently, Everything and More. Everything and More. His writings have appeared in His writings have appeared in Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, the the Paris Review, Paris Review, and other magazines. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Lannan Award for Fiction, the and other magazines. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Lannan Award for Fiction, the Paris Review' Paris Review's Aga Khan Prize and John Train Prize for Humor, and the O. Henry Award. He evidently lives in California.

Also by David Foster Wallace

The Broom of the System

Girl with Curious Hair

Infinite Jest

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Everything and More