On behalf of Zorn

So far the story has been portrayed in an unconventional manner, and
it skips around a lot. The interesting thing about the book is that it
seems very disconnected and yet forms a cohesive novel. It is not
obvious now that the novel would not be effective if each story were
to be read separately as its own isolated short story. However there
are elements of each section that connect to parts of other sections
and help develop cohesive ideas that begin to tie the novel and its
storylines together.

Clearly there are recurring themes throughout the novel, most notably
at this moment are tennis and drugs. The ETA and people involved with
it (Hal, James and Mario Incandenza, Charles Tavis, Gerhardt Schtitt)
are all central characters involved with tennis that appear in more
than once section. In addition there are smaller references to tennis,
such as the Medical Attaché's wife going out to play tennis on
Wednesdays.

As for drugs, it is revealed that Hal is (although covert) a fairly
regular user and other characters such as the unnamed man who
anxiously awaits marijuana in his house, the teenagers Mildred Bonk
and Bruce Green, a powerful drug is lectured about by Michael Pemulis,
and Kate Gompert was in a psyche ward because of her addiction.

There are also recurring characters but in different scenarios that
help piece together what is happening, for example in the Year of the
Depend Adult Undergarment on November 1, Michael Pemulis is lecturing
about a particularly effective hallucinatory drug and on the 3rd of
the same month somebody with the surname Pemulis is lying next t Jim
Troeltsch in a dorm in the tennis academy. Orin Incandenza appears
once in his apartment and then later doing a stunt for his football
team. A later chapter is centered around the burglar Donald Gately but
earlier Hal makes a reference to him and Donald digging up his
father's head. It is things like these that help tie together stories
and try to make sense of this whole deal.

While the story is still loosely tied together as of now, the
occurrence of familiar names and ideas and even storylines (one
specific event involving the Attaché seems to be stretched out over
several non adjacent parts) hints at a plot that will draw the
separate short stories together, and it makes this book kind of like a
cool puzzle, which I am enjoying.