There's some reason that's given relatively early in Infinite Jest, for the Ennet House halfway house being on the same grounds as the Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA). What this reason is has been lost to the book's spiral stair like past - most of which I'm now through.
But I've got a theory.
Schtitt, one of the coaches at the ETA, has a very specific philosophy. At the core of this is the idea that you should take qualities of yourself that you don't want any more and jettison them from yourself so that they cannot come back. Such is the work of anyone looking to go pro.
It's also the work of the people at the Ennet House trying to get clean. Those who actually want to recover from their addictions are trying to separate themselves from it. But, weirdly, some of the people at the Ennet house have certain personal or physical deformities that arose out of their addictions. It'd be very easy for the book to just write these characters off as hopeless addicts, but I think there's something more at work.
Ennet House and ETA are somehow foils for each other, reciprocally highlighting each's strengths and weaknesses. In the next 400+ pages anything could happen.
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