Empress Theresa: Chapter Two Analysis · 7:24am Apr 3rd, 2023
Normally where a new chapter begins, there is a page break. For those unfamiliar with the term, it means that the text stops wherever an idea ends on a page, and then everything starts from the top of the next page. Not so here, as ‘Chapter 2’ is smack dab in the middle of page twenty. This is consistent throughout the entire book as far as I’ve read.
It seems that Boutin was not so merciful, as we are given more torturously boring information about Theresa’s school years. It seems that her super strength and accuracy paid off and got her a spot on the boy’s baseball team where she became the star pitcher. She makes special mention that she could easily throw over a hundred miles an hour, but had to hold back. All during her freshman year.
Something I should mention is that Norman Boutin appears to like numbers very, very much. Very regularly he will make specific mentions of incremental measurements of time, age, height, distance, length, weight, temperature, and anything else a number can be applied to. And he will make sure that you know this very emphatically. This makes reading his paragraphs like reading a word problem from a math class. I almost expected a few of them to end with the sentence, ‘Solve for X.’
One more thing that irks me personally is Boutin’s complete misunderstanding of how weight classes apply to boxing ability. He’s under the impression that a middleweight fighter would be much faster than a heavyweight. In real life, heavyweight fighters have more fast twitch muscle developed, and hit faster than their less burly opponents. But that’s just me being bothered as someone who’s been a hobbyist boxer for years. Back to the program.
For some reason, Theresa is now on TV all the time. The reason isn’t exactly made clear, but being a girl pitcher on a boy’s team seems like a big enough deal to be treated like visiting royalty. If only they knew she was doping on some super-powered fox spooj. Not exactly the empowering image that Mr. Boutin clearly thinks he’s creating, especially when you see how Theresa reacts when she learns that not everyone automatically loves her just for existing. She discovers internet trolls, and needs a counselor to guide her through the tribulations and crucibles they present.
Fortunately, Theresa has a teacher to spoonfeed her consolatory platitudes about how she is an unrealistically high achiever and is a model student, a model daughter and a model everything else. This is not the way that mental health professionals help even the most basic anxiety patients. Theresa rationalizes that her trolls are all just jealous, same as any misfit from an 80’s to 90’s TV show who turned the kids from those decades into emotionally fragile adult infants. She also rationalizes that she’s too much of a celebrity at her school, so she doesn’t join the cheer squad. What a good person she is.
Theresa meets up with Jan Struthers again at a Burger King. Jan espouses a bunch of numbers about how HAL first came to Earth. It’s almost Lovecraftian in its origin, and seems almost interesting. Operant word here being ‘almost.’ It’s too boring to hold our interest for long, and the most amusing thing is that the office Jan works for is the Office of Orbital Phenomenon Surveillance, or OOPS. We also learn that Theresa has a column of disturbed air around her, whatever that means. Maybe it was something she ate? Those fast food joints aren’t exactly known for their hygiene.
At her home, Theresa finds a letter addressed to her asking about Jan from a man named Jeremy Benton. For some reason, this is the first time she expresses fear about talking to a stranger and consults Father Donoughty about it. He accompanies Theresa to meet with Benton at the library, and Benton reveals he is a personal aide to Prime Minister of England, Peter Blair, a parallel to Tony Blair.
A quick aside to note that the author of this book has claimed to deeply admire Tony Blair. It doesn’t seem to be for anything that he’s done for his country, or for any other past accomplishments. Just for being George W. Bush’s buddy.
Anyway, apparently something happened to Jan, which is evidenced by a ‘package of four volumes’ being mailed to Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Turgeon, who mailed them to PM Blair. No other information is given to explain how this pertains to Jan’s disappearance. Nor do we learn how the characters conclude that Theresa is basically a living telephone to alien life all of a sudden.
We do learn that the packages contained full documentations about Theresa and HAL both, but not what that actually means. It’s time to take some action! Time to rally the troops, search for clues, rescue their friend and solve this mystery once and for all!...Naw. Theresa decides to sit back and see what happens next.
You’d think with an ending like that, any author would use that as an inciting incident to get the story moving. But Mr. Boutin is not just any author. He honestly believes he is the world’s greatest author and has crafted the perfect novel. But even by chapter three, nothing still happens!
I almost feel bad for Boutin because of how much of a joke he is.
5752886
I don't. People like him do it to themselves, and keep themselves that way. It's just like another thing from Dante's Inferno. Anyone who is in Hell is perfectly free to ascend to Heaven if they just learn from their own mistakes and start to better themselves. But they don't, because they believe they haven't done anything wrong in the first place, thus keeping themselves in Hell. Boutin deserves to be a lolcow, because he won't try to be anything else.
5752927
Its like Boutin is the epitome of the self-serving bias, which is why the things he spouts out are funny and sad
5752965
I think that's the best definition of Norman Boutin I've ever heard