Post #4004180

The framing device comprises a few minutes at the beginning and the end, bookending scenes featuring Wallace Shawn talking in voiceover about dreading his meeting with André Gregory at the start, and expressing his consternation to his girlfriend Debbie (q.v. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Eisenberg) about the meeting afterwards, in short passages of indirect discourse. Nothing more is needed. All that matters is that Wally Shawn went way out of his way to eat at a very expensive restaurant (they don't serve club soda, only Source de Pavillon, water from a special spring in France) on André Gregory's tab, endured a bizarre mishmash of personal recollections interspersed with pointless asides and sudden lapses into dark dark places, like the time some chums of Gregory's put him and some others through an apparently quite long and elaborate ritual of being sent to one's appointed death, including being stripped and placed into a coffin. (cont'd)