One of the possible weak spots in Gately's AA recovery-program of rigorous personal honesty is that once he's jammed himself into a black-as-water Aventura and watched the spoiler throb as he turns over the carnivorous engine, etc., he often finds himself taking a little bit less of a direct route to a given Ennet-errand-site than he probably could. If he had to come right down to the heart of the issue he likes to cruise around town in Pat's car. He's able to minimize the suspicious time any particular bit of extra cruising adds to his errands by basically driving like a lunatic: ignoring lights, cutting people off, scoffing at One-Ways, veering wildly in and out, making pedestrians drop things and lunge curbward, leaning on a horn that sounds more like an air-raid siren. ...He likes to make a stately left onto Commonwealth and wait to get out of view of the House's bay window and then produce what he imagines is a Rebel Yell and open her up down the serpentine tree-lined boulevard of the Ave. as it slithers through bleak parts of Brighton and Allston and past Boston U. and toward the big triangular CITGO neon sign and the Back Bay. ... The giant distant CITGO sign's like a triangular star to steer by. ...
Below the split on Comm. it's Boston U., Kenmore and Fenway, Berklee School of Music. The CITGO sign's still off in the distance ahead. You have to go a shocking long way to actually get to the big sign, which everybody says is hollow and you can get up inside there and stick your head out in a pulsing neon sea but nobody's ever personally been up in there.
Infinite Jest, 475-477
3 comments:
Yes, dammit! Com Ave, the Citgo, Kenmore, Fenway the way, Fenway the greenbelt, and Fenway the Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox. Tonight!
Much as I like that photo, it's a dawn scene in early spring, I think, not a view of the Citgo the average fan is likely to see unless they arrive really early for the Patriots' Day game....
And the scene in the book is in November ... but I liked it.
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