Malice & the Unknown: Chapter 21 Summary and Key Themes

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens with a party anecdote about William Burroughs. Drunk, he proposed a game of William Tell. His wife, Joan Vollmer, placed a highball glass on her head, possibly containing gin. From six feet away, Burroughs shot her in the face, killing her. The author notes that Burroughs was a skilled shot but heavily intoxicated, and witnesses described him as shocked by what he had done. Crucially, the couple had never played this game before, which means his intent can never be established. The author repeats that we can never know whether he meant to kill her.

This unknowability becomes a springboard for thinking about infinity. The author explains that she increasingly uses distractions to help her think—the distraction complicates her thoughts and adds a mood, like background music, making her interesting to herself. She then offers a catalog of preferences: she likes drinking to remember, unexpected bad events rather than anticipated ones, things that feel like placeholders never replaced, the sensation of beginning to like something she once hated (which she compares to cheating on herself), and the way hotel room numbers are remembered for the duration of a stay and then vanish. She likes thinking about infinity and the curve approaching an asymptote. She reflects on the difference between hearing someone lie and watching someone lie—a difference of point of view, specifically the liar's point of view rather than her own. She notes that there are orders of infinity, infinite sets infinitely larger than the first order, though she assumes the reader already knows this. She likes thoughts before they coalesce into thoughts—before-thoughts—and she likes when people lie a little and then admit it. She likes buildings on mountainsides and holes in roofs through which clouds can be watched.

The chapter then turns to Norman Mailer, also drunk at a party, who stabbed his wife twice, nearly in the heart, though she survived. The author notes this is something the reader already knows.

The chapter closes with a meditation on infinity and the past: if there are infinite points between zero and one, then there is an infinite past—infinite points that must remain in the past, where they can be protected. The past, she concludes, is very still.

Key Events

The Burroughs shooting: At a party, a drunk William Burroughs proposes a game of William Tell. His wife Joan places a glass on her head, and he shoots her in the face from six feet away, killing her. The author emphasizes that the couple had never played the game before, making his intent permanently unknowable.
The author's catalog of preferences: A list of things the author likes—drinking to remember, unexpected bad events, placeholders, self-betrayal through changing tastes, hotel room numbers, asymptotes, the difference between hearing and watching lies, orders of infinity, before-thoughts, partial lies admitted, buildings on mountainsides, and holes in roofs.
The Mailer stabbing: A drunk Norman Mailer stabs his wife twice, nearly in the heart, but she survives. The author presents this as another instance of drunken violence with ambiguous intent.
Closing meditation on infinity and the past: The author connects infinite points between zero and one to an infinite past, describing the past as still and protected.

Character Development

This is an essay chapter, so the development here is in the author's voice and self-understanding rather than in fictional characters. The author reveals herself as someone who deliberately uses distraction as a cognitive tool, complicating her thoughts to make them more interesting to herself. She positions herself as someone who values the unfinished, the placeholder, the before-thought—states that resist closure. Her preference for unexpected bad events over anticipated ones suggests a temperament that finds surprise more valuable than control. The comparison of changing tastes to cheating on herself reveals a playful, self-aware relationship to her own identity. The chapter also shows her moving from a specific, horrifying instance of unknowability (the Burroughs shooting) to a general philosophical stance about the limits of knowledge, particularly regarding the past.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Unknowability: The central theme. The Burroughs shooting is unknowable in its intent—the author repeats that we can never know. This unknowability extends to the past generally, which is presented as permanently inaccessible.
Infinity: The chapter repeatedly returns to infinity—orders of infinity, infinite points between zero and one, an infinite past. Infinity serves as a figure for the ungraspable, the unbounded, the unknowable.
The asymptote: The curve that approaches but never reaches its limit becomes a figure for thinking itself—thoughts that approach understanding without arriving.
Distraction as method: The author's use of distraction to aid thinking inverts the usual assumption that focus is the path to clarity.
Violence and malice: Both anecdotes involve drunken violence. The chapter's title pairs malice with the unknown, suggesting that the question of intent—whether malice was present—is precisely what can never be settled.
The past as still and protected: The closing image of the past as still, where infinite points can be protected, reframes the past not as something lost but as something preserved.
Point of view: The difference between hearing and watching a lie is a difference of point of view—the liar's point of view versus the observer's. This connects to the unknowability theme: we can never fully occupy another's point of view.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter crystallizes the book's central concern with the limits of knowledge and the texture of attention. By opening with a real, documented act of violence whose intent can never be established, the author grounds her philosophical meditations in a concrete case. The chapter shows how thinking about the unknowable can lead to thinking about infinity—both are ways of confronting what exceeds our grasp. The catalog of preferences gives the reader a direct, intimate view of the author's mental habits, making the essay feel personal even as it ranges over abstract topics. The pairing of Burroughs and Mailer—two famous literary men who committed drunken violence against their wives—suggests a pattern the author is circling without stating outright. The chapter's closing image of the still, protected past offers a kind of consolation: even if we cannot know what happened or why, the past remains, preserved in its stillness.

Study Questions

1. Why does the Burroughs shooting lead the author to think about infinity?

The shooting is an event whose meaning can never be settled—whether Burroughs intended to kill his wife is permanently unknowable. Infinity is likewise something that exceeds our capacity to fully grasp. Both confront the mind with a limit: we cannot know the intent, and we cannot comprehend the infinite. The author's move from one to the other suggests that unknowability and infinity are structurally similar—both are horizons that thought approaches but never crosses.

2. How does the author's list of preferences relate to the opening anecdote?

The list of preferences—drinking to remember, unexpected bad events, placeholders, before-thoughts—all involve states of incompletion or ambiguity. A placeholder that never gets replaced is a thing that never resolves. A before-thought is a thought that hasn't yet become a thought. These preferences mirror the opening anecdote's central ambiguity: the Burroughs shooting is an event that never resolves into a clear meaning. The author seems drawn to the unresolved, the ambiguous, the not-yet-determined.

3. What does the closing image of the still past suggest about the chapter's concerns?

The past, the author suggests, contains infinite points that must remain in the past, where they can be protected. This reframes the past not as something lost or inaccessible but as something preserved—still, fixed, safe from change. This offers a counterpoint to the chapter's earlier emphasis on unknowability: while we can never know the intent behind past events, the past itself is stable and unchanging. The stillness of the past is a form of protection, even if the meaning of what happened remains forever out of reach.