Chapter 21 Summary

Kilgore finally enters the cocktail lounge where the narrator, Dwayne, and others are congregated. Rabo stands at the piano surrounded by a group of adoring sycophants.Now that he has explained his art they find him irresistible. Wayne stops watching through the peephole and goes outside. Dwayne sinks deeper into confusion and Kilgore realizes the narrator is watching him. Kilgore has imagined, from time to time, that he actually is a character in someone else's novel and he seems to instinctively realize the narrator when he sees him. The narrator makes Kilgore nervous.

Chapter 21 Analysis

All of the principle characters are now in close proximity to each other. In fact, the narrator mentions that Kilgore, Dwayne, and the narrator occupy positions such that they form the points of an isosceles triangle. The situation Rabo finds himself in is, of course, sarcastically humorous. Initially...