Prologue
Pemulis never really should have been called Pemulis but we couldn't have known that at the time because no one could have guessed how his story would have taken off and developed into something so richly structured with interesting parallels to real-life, specific pre-existing fiction, and the persona that the new Pemulis has developed into (current, ongoing fiction). The True Eventual Adventures of Pemulis lay a lot of the foundation for what we now think of as the personality traits that make up this character. With that seminal work, the development of Pemulis as a person has now been ingrained in our consciousnesses and we can't exactly just go and change his name now. But the fact is that Pemulis never should have been called Pemulis. I mean, he could have been and everything would have been fine, but then the true connections to IJ with Joelle clearly being the PGOAT are further strengthened with the clear allusions to the deadly Jeu du Prochain Train, and now we, as readers, start to look for stronger connections between the true person that Pemulis may or may not be loosely based on, and the Michael Pemulis (who shares a first name with the true father of the character's inspiration in the latter incarnation of Pemulis who is the same as the author of the TEAP) of the late DFW. Interestingly, originally Michael Pemulis's name was allegedly based on the folk-rock singer Dr. Michael Pemulis (according to Wikipedia). Now, Pemulis is Hal's best friend, and so forming a tenuous connection to the better analogue (Hal) through his best friend Pemulis might make sense in a tangential decompositional post-modern approach to meta story telling, but really what should be clear by now is that though a priori there was no specific reason for or against naming Pemulis (v. 2) Pemulis, his complexities that have grown out of the rich body of literature that has sprung up around him and his exploits make it such that, a posteriori, Pemulis should have been called Hal. Sure, Michael Pemulis is a mathematical genius just as it seems that Pemulis is as well (c.f. solving the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture in TEAP). However, Hal was never a poor mathematician either and he clearly more closely fits many of the described idiosyncratic actions from TEAP such as counting backwards in French interspersing each number with the name of a French philosopher. This perfectly fits within the context of Hal's eidetic memory and is along the lines of his recounted memorization of the Oxford English Dictionary. Pemulis (v. 2) also seems to possess a quick mind and a strong wit. Hal learning how to fake despair without actually suffering from it fits well with the Pemulis that we have come to know.
Despite all this, there are problems that would have sprouted up if the proposed nomenclature had been adopted as well. First, Joelle could never be Hal's wife because she was once very happily involved with Orin (Hal's older brother) and we're led to believe that the relationship ended at least partly because of a potential affair between Joelle and Hal and Orin's father James O (though I think it remains ambiguous with respect to whether this actually happened or if it was simply related to Joelle being featured in all of Jim's later films including, of course, The Entertainment. This of course would then also suggest that Tom is a professional American football punter, Catherine is a severely deformed homodont (has just one tooth) named Mario, Dad was an alcoholic film maker who inadvertently (?) created a film that, if it falls into the hands of evil wheelchair-bound Quebec separatist terrorists, could be used to destroy the world, Mom is an agoraphobic 2m tall Québecois, and my friend LaMont is a 14-year-old tennis prodigy obsessed with success on the professional circuit which obsession leads him to not be able to perform as well as he should be able to perform and thus ultimately prevents him from attaining the success that he so desperately yearns for. So, I guess what I'm saying is, you shouldn't look too carefully into the connections / history / inspirations for fake names.
Chapter 1
Pemulis and Joelle had a nice weekend snowshoeing in the Vercors mountains last weekend and another nice weekend the weekend before last in sunny Marseille where it snowed for the first time in something like 15 years. This coming weekend they will have a birthday party for Pemulis and hopefully, if the weather is nice enough, go for the first bike ride of 2013.
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