James opens the Enfield Tennis Academy when Orin is a preadolescent child still competing in regional tennis. Incandenza is a physicist and Avril is a grammarian and English professor at Brandeis. This memory returns as an important moment for Hal and his brother Orin, because at this moment Avril's usually extremely collected and curated facade of self is exposed both brothers look to this moment as a "true" depiction of the crippling anxiety that simmers just beneath the surface of Avril's public persona. His mother, Avril Incandenza, freaks out and parades Hal around their backyard screaming for help from the neighbors. Hal's personal arc begins when he's a toddler and he swallows a clump of strange mold from his family's basement. The interview devolves into chaos as Hal seems to have a panic attack and is promptly rushed to the hospital. The novel opens with a scene of Hal Incandenza, unable to verbally communicate for reasons as yet undetermined, undergoing an admissions interview with faculty and coaching staff at the University of Arizona. A novel that almost defies summary, Infinite Jestbegins with a scene at the latest chronological point in the purview of the novel: in the "Year of Glad," the final year of nine-year-long Subsidized Time calendar in O.N.A.N., a nation made up of parts of the former United States and Canada.
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