Chapter 7: Epiphany (reclimacticus!)

Whereby the reader is provided with a verbatim transcript of the author's dialogue with God—whose momentous outcome was: That after trying to do so for 5 long and frustrating years, said author finally found that most singularly seminal of sentences with which to begin his writing of the Bestselling Novel, Literary Masterpiece & Revolutionary Cultural Manifesto that would forever alter the heretofore declining course of human history.

THE CHARACTERS:

MORDECAI GOLDBERG (aka Arthur Long): A man in his mid70s but one who looks, thinks and acts at least 30 years younger. While a Harley Street plastic surgeon has given him with the face of a Nordic ski instructor, traces of his Jewish Intellectualism still manifest themselves in the loftiness of his brow, the penetrating gaze of his icy blue eyes, the sensual flare of his nostrils and the sphinxlike smile appearing on his lips after yet another of those "paradoxical remarks" he is so fond of uttering has emerged from them. Imbued with such an extraordinary combination of animal magnetism and mental mystique he is a man to whom most women (once they overcome their preBornAgainKlutzian prejudices against male superiority) usually find themselves fatally attracted. On the other hand, members of his own sex tend, quite naturally, to regard such "a paragon of masculine virtues" with suspicion, fear and jealousy. Accordingly he has learned over time to calibrate his conversational style to accommodate the sexual orientation (and its psychological baggage) of those whose friendship he seeks to cultivate— or over whom he seeks to exert his charismatic influence. While he has been more or less successful in applying these skills to social intercourse of even the most challenging variety (as, for instance, his diplomatic dealings with a certain perverted Secret Police Chief) their efficacy is about to undergo a test that couldn't be more acidic as Goldberg must now employ them on a being of God's supremely androgynous—and allknowing—nature.

GOD (aka Jehovah, The Supreme Being, Allah, King of Kings etc.): A man who also looks to be in his mid70s but thinks and acts as if He were many—if not thousands—of years older. His facial features are "typically" Semitic and would bear a striking resemblance to those one might deconstruct from Goldberg/Arthur Long's "Nordic ski instructor" mien, given the knowledge of its Harley Street genesis. While not reaching the august extremes of a Kamakura Buddha, His illconcealed corpulence impressively demonstrates His larger than life pretensions in a manner not unlike that employed by Sydney Greenstreet, Marlon Brando or Orson Welles. Although hoarsened by all the shouting He has recently done, His voice still retains a thunderous sonority—reminiscent of Paul Robeson singing "Ole Man River," or using his vocal majesty to credibilize himself as Emperor Jones.

THE TIME

Exactly 47 minutes after sunrise, Saturday, 24 November 1993.

THE SCENE

GOLDBERG and GOD are facing each other across the folddown table of the dinette in Goldberg's RV—where, having mutually decided they were in need of "refueling" after what had been "one helluva night," they have just finished a breakfast of freshlybrewed coffee, bagels, creamcheese and lox. As GOLDBERG deliberately fills his favorite Dunhill briar from a tin of Rattray's Hal O'The Wynd GOD clips the end of a Macanudo Double Rothschild He has taken from a solid gold & diamondstudded cigar case. After a brief period of smalltalk, during which they discuss the declining standards of lox & bagelry, the latest puritanical jihad against the "evils" of nicotine, alcohol and caffeine, and the recent natural disasters afflicting Southern California (for which God categorically disclaims all responsibility); and when the room was suitably smokefilled— Goldberg began the historymaking dialogue which ensues by saying:

GOLDBERG: Well—I suppose this is it.

GOD: What is?

GOLDBERG: The time for laying all our literary cards on the table.

GOD: Ah! I couldn't agree with you more.

GOLDBERG: As for mine You already know what I have to show after 5 years of trying to write the first sentence of my—or should I say our—Great American/Moronic Manifesto.

GOD: Which isn't a hell of a lot.

GOLDBERG: What's the point of hitting a man who's already down below the belt like that?

GOD: I'm only calling a spade a spade.

GOLDBERG: Those 537 megabytes of ideas I've accumulated on my hard drive are nothing to sneeze at! They're just waiting to unleash themselves in an ejaculatory torrent of novelistic fury once I manage to write that first seminal sentence!

GOD: Who's sneezing?

GOLDBERG: Then why are we beating around this burning bush of Yours?

GOD: That's a question I'm waiting for you to answer.

GOLDBERG: After all these years of playing with a deck which, for whatever reason, has been stacked against me, isn't it high time I was dealt the card that would turn this lousy hand I've been left holding into a winning one?

GOD: Of course it is!

GOLDBERG: Well—what are we waiting for?

GOD: As far as I'm concerned—nothing.

GOLDBERG: I don't follow You—

GOD: What's to follow? Your prayers for the first sentence of Morons Awake! have just been answered, Goldberg! All you have to do now is open those "bedroom" eyes of yours! The winning "card" you've been waiting for Me to deal you is lying there right under that cute little "Nordic" nose of yours!

GOLDBERG: My eyes couldn't be opened wider than they already are!

GOD: And?

GOLDBERG: All I see is that same blank wall against whose bricks I have been banging my head—

GOD: Burning bushes, card games—and now brick walls!

GOLDBERG: The mixing of my metaphors is an indication of just how thoroughly confused I am by the way my prayers are being answered.

GOD: Getting back to that brickwall of yours—I suppose you want Me to spell out the first sentence of Morons Awake! for you letter by letter and word by word?

GOLDBERG: After the way You led me to believe its writing was a fait accompli is that so unreasonable?

GOD: I never said it was a done deal.

GOLDBERG: Well You certainly left me with that impression.

GOD: As always, Goldberg, I chose My words very carefully. If you will remember, I prefaced the prophecy in question by saying—"assuming we can complete this transaction."

GOLDBERG: What is that supposed to mean?

GOD: What do you think?

GOLDBERG: God only helps those who help themselves?

GOD: Bingo!

GOLDBERG: So; what You're telling me is: The only way I'm ever going to find that elusive sentence is via one of those Biblical charades by which the mystery of Your divine masterplan is finally solved by the guesswork of a mere mortal like Moses, Abraham or Job?

GOD: Good heavens, man; if there wasn't some mystery involved with the authoring of a literary masterpiece any Tom, Dick or Harry could write one!

GOLDBERG: Maybe. But after 5 years of peeling this problematical onion You dropped in my lap what I don't need now is to be told there is still one last layer surrounding its enigmatic core!

GOD: Believe Me, Goldberg, in your case I've reduced the mysterious ways by which I usually work My divine will to the barest possible minimum! You really didn't think I came here simply to dictate that sentence to you on a verbatim basis, did you?

GOLDBERG: Frankly, any other reason for Your "miraculous" appearance on the scene at this crucial juncture would seem utterly illogical.

GOD: Don't lecture Me on what is and what is not logical!

GOLDBERG: If I sounded disrespectful I apologize, but—

GOD: There can be no ifs, ands or buts about it! I'm not one of those Morons you find it so easy to impress with your "intellectual superiority!" Had you stopped to think before blurting out that blasphemy you might have realized My reasons for not spelling out that sentence for you couldn't be more logical! When it comes to ghostwriting literary masterpieces I've learned from bitter experience to limit whatever assistance I render to that which is strictly inspirational in nature. No sooner has an author been given 1 word than he wants a whole sentence. Give him a sentence and he pleads for a paragraph—then a page—then a complete chapter!—and, having finished Your slide down that slippery slope—lo and behold!—You discover You've been suckered into writing his entire book for him! Needless to say; I have more important things to do with My  precious time than spend the next few months playing midwife to a geriatric wunderkind with literary labor pains!

GOLDBERG: What could possibly be more important than saving a civilization You've already invested some 5,000 years of Your "precious" time trying to perfect?

GOD: Oy vey! Haven't we got enough on this Morons Awake! plate of ours without opening up that can of antediluvian worms? Whatever role I may or may not have previously played in the ups and downs of Western Civilization is not on this morning's agenda.

GOLDBERG: I don't see how we can avoid discussing such a relevant subject.

GOD: Maybe not, but on that issue I'm pulling rank. Although on second thought, for whatever it's worth, I will state this for the theological record: Once the toothpaste is out of the tube even I can't push it back in. From My point of view it would have been better—and certainly much simpler—if Eve hadn't taken that bite of forbidden fruit. Nevertheless, I must admit to having had a certain intellectual curiosity and paternal concern over the fate of those sinful creatures who were, after all, made in My image. And, as I watched them struggle to overcome My curse, who couldn't help but admire their ingenuity and determination—no matter how hubristic? And, if now and then I might have given them a helping hand when they stumbled, I did so as much for My own sake as for theirs. As I say, once My curiosity had been aroused, like the readers of a novel or the audience watching a play, quite naturally I want to know how such an absurdly heroic story will end. And now, after 5,000 years of boiling, that plot has become so thick it threatens to congeal humanity in the very pudding of its civilizational folly. The moral of such an epic tragicomedy being that, in the final analysis, I was right: For mortals the only hope of finding true bliss lies in ignorance.

GOLDBERG: But if the Adam and Eve story has to end on such an downbeat note, why have You gone to all the trouble of putting me through this living hell?

GOD: Who said it had to end on a "downbeat" note?

GOLDBERG: Didn't You just get finished saying humanity was doomed to stew in the juice of its own hubris?

GOD: Please! Don't paraphrase Me or put words into My mouth! What I said was, "the plot has become so thick it threatens to congeal humanity in the very pudding of its folly."

GOLDBERG: Then there is some hope that by writing my Great American Wakeup Call Western Civilization can be saved?

GOD: Of course there is! It may be only the slimmest of hopes—but isn't slimness the stuff from which suspense is made? Think of what a field day those Madison Avenue copywriters will have advertising Morons Awake!—"Humanity is hanging by a slender thread waiting like some distressed damsel to be rescued by a messianic novelist!"—"Can a single literary masterpiece salvage America's manifest destiny as a cultural superpower?"—"Will the bestsellerdom of this fictionalized manifesto save mankind by the skin of its collective teeth?"

GOLDBERG: There You go again!

GOD: Doing what?

GOLDBERG: Tormenting me with visions of literary grandeur when You know damned well unless I find that first sentence my chances for attaining artistic immortality are next to nil!

GOD: Maybe you're right. Yes! The time has come, Goldberg, for us to fish or cut bait!

GOLDBERG: Are You serious?

GOD: You wanted a clue and I've decided to give you one. So listen carefully! Because of our time constraints, and according to the rules for such things, the words I am now about to speak can only be spoken once!¹⁴⁰

GOLDBERG: I'm all ears!

GOD: Speaking of which—you're not suffering from a hearing impairment, are you?

GOLDBERG: Certainly not!

GOD: Don't be so cocky! No matter how much iron you pump or how many vitamin pills you pop there is a point beyond which a man of your age can't "rejuvenate" all of his failing faculties. A little deafness might go a long way in explaining the troubles I've had trying to get through to you lately.

GOLDBERG: Believe me, I'm painfully aware of the toll time has taken on some of my faculties! But I can assure You my capacity to hear every word You are saying isn't one of them!

GOD: Keep your shirt on! I was only speculating on the state of your decrepitude. Before burning a bridge like the one we are now on the verge of crossing it pays to leave no stone unturned. From this point on it's Rubicon City—understood?

GOLDBERG: Understood.

GOD: Alright, Goldberg; this is it—the moment you've been waiting for! [After a brief dramatic pause the following lines were delivered with a solemnity befitting their oracular character.] The key for unlocking the mystery of our providential rendezvous is contained in the following statement, to wit: I arranged your arrival at this mountain top in such a way that both My purpose and My method in doing so could be stated in the very sentence for which you have been searching all these years.

All that can be heard for several heartbeats is a period of profoundly pregnant silence.

GOLDBERG: That's it?

GOD: Not necessarily. It depends on you. For someone priding himself on his "laserlike powers of analysis" what I've already told you should be more than enough to solve such a simple riddle. But, judging from that blank expression on your face, it looks as if I will have to spill more than just those few introductory frijoles before you finally get the message. Although, now that I think about it, in your case probably nothing less than the whole enchilada will be needed to get the job done. What I'm going to tell you now is the complete story of how this masterful "epiphany plot" of Mine came to be hatched—

GOLDBERG: That's a story I can't wait to hear!

GOD: It all started when—no, that's not right. [After a rather prolonged pause.] There I was sitting on My—no, no, no. [After a similar pause.] Once upon a time—oh for heaven's sake surely We can do better than that! [After yet another lengthy pause.] After having watched you struggle in vain to find the perfect sentence with which to begin your novel—what am I saying? This story began a long time before that! I mean we're talking 6—maybe 7—thousand years B.C.! That was after the flood when the earth, which had been repopulated by Noah's sons was of one language and of one speech. And it came to pass these fruits of Noah's loins came together for the purpose of building a tower whose top might reach unto heaven itself—

GOLDBERG: Wait a minute—

GOD: What for?

GOLDBERG: This sounds suspiciously like that point in Genesis where we cut from the Tower of Babel diaspora to the prologue of The Moronic Chronicles—

GOD: And so it should!

GOLDBERG: You're not seriously proposing to begin this story by telling me how You promised the Morons that by virtue of their congenital meekness they were destined to one day inherit the earth, are you?

GOD: That's exactly what I propose doing! What better way could I begin the story at whose ending you should find the first sentence of your Klutz Affair exposé than with My Meekness Dictum to the Morons?

GOLDBERG: Maybe; but haven't You overlooked the fact that, as the author of the definitive History of the Morons, it was I who quite literally wrote The Book concerning Your scheme for turning Moronia into a second Garden of Eden?

GOD: You're absolutely right, Goldberg! For some reason I completely forgot you were the one who so brilliantly translated The Moronic Chronicles from its original Gibberish¹⁴¹—a fact that will permit Me to fast forward through at least—40 or 50 centuries! And that brings us to—ah yes!—the early part of October—1962—A.D.!

GOLDBERG: October of '62—isn't that when the Cuban Missile Crisis threatened to turn the cold war into a global melt down?

GOD: Of course it did! "There humanity stood—poised on the very brink of committing thermonuclear suicide!" Now that's My idea of how a blockbusting bestseller should begin!

GOLDBERG: Hmmm. I don't know—

GOD: What's there to know?

GOLDBERG: It sounds just a trifle overwrought to me. But, after having drifted all these years on the stormtossed wreckage of my own literary pretensions, who am I to quibble over the stylistic particulars of this port to which You have chosen to blow me? Nevertheless, in all candor, I must confess that sentence of Yours has yet to produce the emotional catharsis I've been expecting from that most magical of sentences—upon whose discovery Morons Awake! would start writing itself.

GOD: And for good reason! That sentence of Mine isn't the "miraculous" one you are looking for! It was only meant to illustrate how—after only a few false starts—I accomplished in a matter of minutes what you have failed so miserably to do in 5 whole years!

GOLDBERG: You can't blame me for being—

GOD: I'm warning you! For a man who has mastered the Art of Superprotracted Foreplay I would think you might respect My own expertise in the field of Divine Revelation! Believe Me, when the time comes for the "emotional catharsis" you've been expecting to climax your quest for that "sentence of sentences" I'll let you know! Until then just sit there with your ears open and your mouth shut!

A slight pause ensues to test GOLDBERG's compliance; after which GOD descends from His disciplinarian soapbox to resume the telling of His story in a somewhat more amiable tone of voice.

Now, as I was saying: There humanity stood—poised on the very brink of committing thermonuclear suicide! While the precise circumstances surrounding the socalled "Cuban Missile Crisis" might have taken Me somewhat by surprise My mind had been made up for quite some time. After repeatedly trying to salvage what was a dubious project to begin with, the moment had finally come to admit defeat by fulfilling the dire prediction I made to Adam and Eve concerning the inevitable consequences of eating the fruit from that one tree whose fruit I had forbidden them to eat. And so should that most drastic of all My Dire Prophecies have indeed come to pass—had it not been for the decision I made to convene a Special Session of the General Celestial Assembly to announce My apocalyptic decision. Thinking—not unreasonably—that such a momentous event deserved to be witnessed by the largest audience My Throne Room could accommodate ,invitations were sent to a long list of Heaven's Most Notable Luminaries.

     And so it came to pass that on the appointed day and at the appointed hour that Most Regal of Royal Chambers was filled to overflowing with the best and brightest subjects of My Starspangled Domain who had gathered themselves for what would be the solemnest of all those previously solemn occasions when I had expressed My reservations about the continued viability of the human species. But no sooner did I make what should have been My Majestic Entrance than all hell broke loose! Rather than the reverential hush My Public Appearances customarily evoke I was greeted instead by an outburst of catcalls, screams, shouts, epithets, invective and rude remarks whose blasphemy surpassed anything ever heard in Milton's Pandæmonium! Despite having taken the most extravagant security precautions, the text of My Supersecret Doomsday Address had somehow seeped its way through those conspiratorial cracks and crevasses permeating the supposedly leak proof Walls of that Sanctum Sanctorum within which the most Momentous of My Masterplans are made. So it was that I, The Infallible And Allknowing King Of Kings, had unwittingly walked Myself into an ambush—a hornet's nest of heresy—an impious buzzsaw of abuse—a tangled web of theological treachery! In short: My appearance on the scene had triggered a potential mutiny of cosmic proportions!

     Not that all the verbal brickbats were being aimed in My direction. The audience seemed more or less equally divided between those who loyally supported Me and those who took a dimmer view of My Doomsday Decision. After unleashing a few lightningbolts & thunderclaps; and using every ounce of My Vocal Authority, I eventually succeeded in restoring at least a semblance of decorum in which to make Myself heard above what remained of the riotous din. As you can imagine, My thoughts were in a considerable state of flux—

GOLDBERG: I know the feeling!

GOD: But one thing was perfectly clear: Any ideas I might have had for simply proclaiming My plugpulling plans for humanity had themselves gone completely down the drain. The fact had to be faced: Whether accidentally or otherwise, the white flag of My capitulation to mankind's intractably Faustian nature had been prematurely raised—and a disturbing number of those who should have saluted it were refusing to do so! Confronted by such an unexpected turn of events what was I to do?

GOLDBERG: I assume You're asking me that rhetorically.

GOD: Of course I am! But when telling a long story it pays to keep the listener on his toes with an occasional wakeup call.

GOLDBERG: I'll try to remember that.

GOD: We will discuss your literary shortcomings in good time! But getting back to My predicament. Even Machiavelli— who, by the way, was among the most vociferous of My naysayers—recognized the limits beyond which the most powerful prince could work his political will once the chain reaction of negative popular opinion had reached a critical mass. And, while My Unique Status had always exempted Me from the rules applying to My mortal counterparts, in this case it seemed wiser not to ignore the fall of such oncemighty monarchs as Julius Caesar, Charles I, Louis XVI and Nicholas II. Not to mention those more recent victims of excessive authoritarian conceit: Winston Churchill, Charles De Gaulle and Richard Nixon! Accordingly I put My more wrathful impulses on hold for the time being, bit My tongue, swallowed My injured pride and, after a suitably dramatic pause—during which I completed My throneward journey with a pettiness of pace appropriate to My Exalted Station—I indicated My willingness to hear the Doomsday controversy argued by whomsoever the 2 factions might elect as their single spokesmen. And so it was that I framed the issue to be debated as follows—"WHEREAS time after time it has proven itself to be morally (if not congenitally) unworthy of salvation, and; WHEREAS it has managed to develop the means for its own destruction; Be it RESOLVED that: No miraculous measures should be utilized to alter the catastrophic consequences of the crisis presently unfolding in and around the island of Cuba."

     Not surprisingly the Pro faction chose that arch apostle of misanthropy, José Ortega y Gasset as its advocate. While the AntiDoomsdayers did manage to surprise Me (but certainly not unpleasantly) by selecting Walt Whitman—a poet and an American—to argue its cause! Being all too familiar with Whitman's softheadedbleedingheartism I relaxed and sat back on My Throne to referee a fight between an intellectual heavyweight and a mental pantywaist that could only end with a first round knockout victory for the Spaniard. And, true to form, Ortega y Gasset came out swinging with a withering barrage of head punches.

     "If," he began, "human history has any meaning at all it must surely be the absolute meaninglessness of human history. After 5,000 years of going practically nowhere (except backwards) is there any point in continuing mankind's stationary march toward oblivion on the treadmill of its moral, cultural and intellectual bankruptcy? The time has come to end the farce! To ring down the curtain on what was a fascinating but, in the final analysis, a fatally flawed, creative fling. Not that I'm faulting the One who masterminded such a monumental fiasco. No! My hat is off to Him for even daring to dream of an experiment so fraught with peril as the one which is now about to explode in His face."

     At which point—whose pregnancy was made palpable by the audacity of his critique—he turned in My direction, bowed from the waist, dramatically removed his hat and used it to make a sweeping gesture of adulation.  After returning his compliment with a nod of My head—an act that evoked some nervous laughter and a smattering of applause from the audience—Ortega y Gasset resumed his scathing attack.

     "The measure of an artist's manhood is not indicated by the size of his triumphs but by the magnitude of his failures. And could any failure be more heroic than the attempt to devise a world whose stage would eventually be filled with billions of characters—each of whom was writing his or her own script? And, while no one can deny there were occasions when all that extemporaneous 'strutting and fretting' did produce some entertaining moments, to paraphrase that that noblest of all actors: What did it prove but the absolute futility of being human?  For those to whom this critique might seem overly pessimistic—who among them can scan that vast wasteland into which the massmedia have turned the legacy of Western Civilization and see a single sign of cultural redemption on the human horizon?  Could any picture be bleaker than the one wherein half of the earth's couchbound population opiates itself on a nightly banquet of visual junk food? What art form or treasure has been spared by these endless hordes of gatecrashing Vandals who rape, pillage and plunder their mindless way along the corridors of contemporary history? Could the beating of their drums and the strumming of their electric guitars be more barbarous—or more ominous? But I didn't come here to litanize the calamities currently afflicting humanity. Suffice it to say the apocalyptic crescendo that has been building since the onset of time itself is about to climax with a bang not unlike the one by which the universe was created."

     Glancing at his watch the cocky Iberian gathered himself for a final flurry of blows that would put the American down for the count before Round One had ended.

     "Remember: What we are debating here isn't a death sentence—but simply the question of whether, at long last, the human race should be entitled to terminate its own misery. So, let me end my opening argument by asking this question—a question that, with his bardish expertise, my opponent should have no trouble answering: Could any justice be more poetic than that by which humanity destroys itself with a doomsday device of its own making?"

     As if this last lethal combination hadn't been sufficiently punishing, poor Whitman had to stand there waiting for the spontaneous applause it caused to subside before he could get off the canvass and launch a counterattack—if indeed the antiDoomsday faction didn't toss his towel into the ring. But get up he did and began throwing some leather of his own.

     "Is there any need for me to respond, my Spanish friend," he said, "when you have answered your own question by simply asking it?"

     Being known to answer a question with one of My own on occasion I was duly impressed with Whitman's tableturning tactic. But it still remained to be seen whether this epigrammatic suckerpunch of his would draw real blood.

     "Is it possible," Whitman went on, "that such an astute question could have been framed by one of those humble human beings whose extinction you are advocating? Or, according to your elitist scheme of things, is the 'superior intellect' of the illustrious José Ortega y Gasset an exception to the rule that all men are created equal?"

GOLDBERG: Bravo Walt!

GOD: Which is exactly how most of the audience expressed their admiration for Whitman's winning way with words. And once an underdog gains that kind of upper hand you can usually count the champion out. So relentlessly was the aristocratic Andalusian being pummeled by that street brawler from Brooklyn it soon became all too clear the fight was no longer between just the 2 of them. I Myself was now the target of Whitman's antiDoomsday case. A case that, to shorten a long story, can be summarized as follows:

1. Since the Celestial Council was itself comprised predominantly of former mortals who had shaped their "greatness" from the common clay of the human condition, how could that entity now conclude all men have always been incapable of rising above their congenital mediocrity?
2. As for his lamentations over the lack of intellectual progress made by the masses throughout civilization's 5,000year history, hasn't Ortega y Gasset conceded it is only now, in the 20thcentury, that the average man has acquired the materialistic wherewithal for appreciating the "finer things" in his life?¹⁴²
3. Consequently, it isn't simply premature—but a monumental injustice—for we who have left them holding the bag of our cultural degeneracy to blame the masses for their historical shortcomings.
4. Concerning the nuclear weapons mankind has refined to such a globallydestructive state. Is their Doomsday potential any less dangerous—or praiseworthy!—than the "heroic risks" taken by the "artist" who created the race which ultimately developed them? Moreover, have any of us ever embarked on a magnum opus more fraught with the terrors of failure than that confronting the ordinary citizen when he arises each morning hoping to just make it through yet one more nerveracking day in the Nuclear Age?
5. Finally, we must consider what effect humanity's extinction will have on the future of our own "angelic" lifestyles. The affection most—if not all—of us still keenly feel for that dusty stage upon which we burned out our brief candles is rooted in more than just the nostalgia of being the world's most illustrious hasbeens. When we look about this paradise of ours what do we see but an architectural pastiche of GoldenAge Greek, NeoRoman Gothic, Florentine Renaissance and prerevolutionary Paris—with a sprinkling of those more modern metropolitan innovations, such as the cinema, the cocktail party, and the power lunch; whose contemporary "crassness" we are so fond of scorning as we wallow in it! But beneath these superficial similarities there has always been a profoundly symbiotic relationship between heaven and earth. Ask yourself whose works are routinely performed in our Celestial Theaters, Concert Halls and Opera Houses; whose paintings hang on the walls of our museums and galleries; whose books fill the shelves of our public and private libraries? Is it not we mere mortals who have always dominated the cultural scene of this ethereal realm with our "mundane" artistry? And if that's the case, by fiddling away up here while the world goes up in flames, wouldn't we forever deprive ourselves of being dazzled by the genius of a future Shakespeare, Mozart or van Gogh? On the other hand, if humanity is spared, who among us (with 1 exception) is so allknowing he can say for a certainty it won't some day produce that Prince of Princes who will single handedly rouse the masses from their intellectual stupor with a revolutionary wakeupcall disguised as that most charming of all fictional kisses—the trashy gothic romance?

GOLDBERG: Ah! At last this story of Yours is starting to ring some relevant bells!

GOD: That's nice to hear—but if you don't mind, I haven't finished telling it!

GOLDBERG: Sorry. Please. Continue.

GOD: Naturally I couldn't let such an egregious impertinence pass unchallenged. Besides which, Whitman had provided Me with the perfect cue to end his beating of what had become a very dead horse. "You know perfectly well," I told him, "that only I can answer such a question! But enough of this exercise in cakefrosting, Whitman! You've made your bed and now you must lie in it! Accordingly I hereby declare these proceedings to be in recess whilst we confer on the masterminding of My next mysterious move in this matter." Which I did forthwith by inviting the cocky little American into My Private Study to discuss the devilish details of actually implementing his scatterbrained salvational scheme. No sooner were we alone than I quickly cut him down to size by stating, in no uncertain terms, the conditions by which My Doomsday Decision was being put on hold.  "Moratoriumwise," I told him, "the time frame in which the human race can redeem itself before another of these 'Missile Crises' looms on the thermonuclear horizon is minimal. In My opinion this rescue operation of yours will turn out to be nothing more than a temporary stay of execution. So—exactly how long must we wait for this new Shakespeare, Mozart or van Gogh of yours to make his appearance?" Now that his bluff had been called, Whitman began hedging the bet he made so brashly in the heat of battle. "Who knows," he shrugged, "it could take 5—or 5 hundred—years for a genius of that magnitude to come along. But that's not the point, is it?"

     "What isn't the point?" I responded incredulously.

     "Making the salvation of the entire human race contingent on it providing another exception to the general rule that all men are born to be mediocrities. If Shakespeare Mk1 didn't conclusively demonstrate mankind's collective claim to racial fame, what more could Shakespeare Mk2 possibly be expected to accomplish?"

     "Absolutely nothing!—" I thundered, and without hesitating completed My sentence by adding, "which explains in a nutshell why, from its very genesis, the human race was a hopelessly lost cause, does it not?"

GOLDBERG: No man could be asked a question trickier than that one!

GOD: So I thought; but, as you will soon discover from his answer, I made what turned out to be a major rhetorical mistake by ending what should have been a simple declamatory statement with that fatally quizzical clause—"does it not?" As if he had been waiting for the opening I gave him, Whitman immediately jumped in with both feet.

     "What You say is true—but only if one accepts Your dubious premise concerning the logical consequences of having created a race of beings in an image of You that was somewhat less than perfect. Accordingly, since Adam and Eve were predictably tempted to eat the fruit they had been forbidden to taste, hasn't the real issue of mankind's 'redeemability' always been this: Given a reasonable chance of success, how closely can the average human being come to approximating the divine likeness in which he was made?"

     "Isn't that like asking a sow's ear to turn itself into a silk purse?" I responded halfheartedly, feeling I was only digging Myself deeper into what was becoming a very grave hole.

     "Maybe so," he answered eagerly, "but what else could You have had in mind when You populated the earth with so many ordinary people?"

     "Who knows?" I replied lamely. "Perhaps some of My thinking at the time was in fact of the wishful variety. It wouldn't be the first time I had gotten completely carried away with what seemed like a good idea."

     "Believe me, I can understand where You're coming from! Haven't I sired my own share of poetic 'masterpieces' who miscarried in the womb of my imagination—or sprang from this (You should pardon the expression) godlike forehead of mine as the most hideously deformed artistic monstrosities?" Whitman spoke with a heartfelt humility I couldn't help but find consoling, and to which I responded with an equally humble admission of My own.

     "Looking back on it with 20/20 hindsight I can see now that, like any other father, I may have expected more from My offspring than they were capable of delivering. But does that excuse them for failing so miserably to attain even the most paltry of My paternalistic expectations? Moreover, as you yourself just conceded, there comes a point at which even the noblest of creative causes must be aborted because of some genetic flaw in its misconception."  While Whitman agreed in principle with what I said he remained steadfastly convinced the Cuban Missile Crisis was an intellectual impasse that could be overcome by putting our heads together for one final effort at solving what he called, "The crux of the human problem, namely: That slipperyslope of rampant egalitarianism down which the masses have been steadily sliding since the premature advent of onemanonevote democracy."

GOLDBERG: Wow! Coming from the mouth of the People's Poet that's an incredibly revisionistic statement!

GOD: Nevertheless he did make it.

GOLDBERG: Don't misunderstand me. I wasn't challenging Your veracity—

GOD: I didn't think you were! My response was merely intended to emphasize the fact Whitman had definitely changed the tune he sang so winningly throughout the Doomsday Debate. According to him what humanity needed now, was not some Avonesque bard, Austrian wunderkind or sunstruck Dutchman but a Messiah for the Masses. I reminded him, of course, My experiments along the lines he was suggesting had not been entirely successful—

GOLDBERG: [Sotto voce.] To put it mildly!

GOD: Whitman claimed to be fully acquainted with My previous failures—failures he attributed to the HolierThanThouness of those messianic mouthpieces via whom My Salvational Messages and Prophecies of Doom & Gloom were customarily delivered. According to him the last thing the masses needed now was some selfrighteous snob sermonizing them on the sinfulness of their cultural sloth. "No!" he pleaded passionately, "What the world so desperately requires in this crisis isn't another sanctimonious savior preaching the gospel of pietyintheskyism but a downtoearth role model with an IQ of 100 whose lifestyle the average man or woman has a least some realistic hope of emulating. In short: a messiah of, for and by the masses; or, to coin a new word—a massiah!"

GOLDBERG: A Massiah! That's good! I like it! Talk about nutshells! With that one inspired word of his Whitman just about sums up all the reasons for my writing of Morons Awake!!

GOD: Please!

GOLDBERG: I'll try not to get so carried away; but can I really be blamed me for listening so avidly to every word of this story You are telling me?

The initial portion of GOD's following response to this interruption is garbled.

GOD: ...again or else! Now, where was I? Ah! "Aren't you putting the cart before the horse?" I asked him. "As things presently stand there is certainly no shortage of cultural "role models" at whose clay feet these masses of yours so slavishly worship. You're not seriously suggesting I hitch the wagon of mankind's salvation to the rising star of some new ghetto blastingNoiseNazi, ActionAdventureMatineeIdol or BestsellingGothicNovelist, are you?"

GOLDBERG: Considering the life or death nature of such an enterprise that would seem like a prudent question to ask. In fact—

GOD: Didn't I just warn you not to inter—

GOLDBERG: Yes, but since this tale is being told for my benefit doesn't that give me the right—indeed the obligation—to react now and then when You just happen to raise a point that actually seems relevant to my problems in the writing of Morons Awake!?

GOD: Because of our time constraints¹⁴³ I won't argue that issue; or deal with your impious innuendoes. All I will say is this: If you want to hear the end of My story you should confine your kibitzing to one of those footnotes you seem so fond of using in telling your story!¹⁴⁴ Now, if we can return to Whitman's bright idea for saving his precious human race?

GOLDBERG: Be my guest.

GOD: To hear him tell it this new age "massiah" would be nothing remotely like the socalled "superstars" presently playing the leading roles on the world's socalled "cultural" stage. According to his salvational scheme humanity's collective fate would rest in the hands of a complete nonentity; a 20thcentury Everyman who, with the help of just the most minor of My miracles, might prove a life intelligently lived—with all of its vagaries, injustices, disappointments and frustrations—is infinitely (or at the very least, marginally) preferable to the purest bliss of perfect ignorance. Unlike the previous instruments I had chosen to deliver My messianic messages there could be no trace of anything even remotely supernatural in the aura of this "quintessential nobody." His conception was to be manifestly nonimmaculate. No astronomical phenomena would signify his providential birth. No wisemen would wend their holy way to his humble creche. Nothing that might be even remotely construed as an "epiphany" should surround the mundane circumstances of his nativity. "Are you really prepared," I asked him "to have the issue of mankind's future viability decided by a single toss of dice that haven't been at least slightly loaded for a favorable outcome?"

     "Of course I am!" he responded haughtily. "Isn't such a genuinely unpredictable crapshoot the stuff from which the most dramatic of Doomsday scenarios should be made?"

     "But," I pointed out with a haughtiness of My own, "didn't you just indicate this 'scenario' of yours would require Me to perform at least one miracle?"

     "That's true," Whitman conceded, "but a miracle so negligible it barely qualifies as one—and even then it won't be needed until our young massiah has fully completed his childhood; at which time—with just the slightest nudge from You—a door of opportunity will open briefly through which he might enter that promised land where the journey toward fulfilling his human potential can begin. From then on—"

     "This 'slight nudge' of Mine—" I started to ask. But before I could complete my interruption Whitman interrupted Me by stating that since we had at least 13 years to work out the precise details of this "little bar mitzvah present" I would be giving our birthday boy, "there wasn't any need to discuss them now."

     "Assuming I'm willing to participate in such a harebrained scheme," I countered, "where exactly are we supposed to find this prototypical human guineapig of yours?"  Without hesitating, Whitman answered boldly: "Where else but in the Second Eden where You made Your Earthinheriting Covenant with that meekest of all the races who have ever inhabited the planet whose fate is now at issue?"

     "You can't mean Moronia?" I responded incredulously.

     "Could any birthplace be more appropriate for a massiah than that Mecca of mediocrity—that breeding ground of blissful ignorance—that vastest of cultural wastelands—that absolute armpit of humanity?"

     For a moment I was quite speechless.

 GOLDBERG: Who can blame you?

GOD: Whitman's breathtaking proposal to cast a Moron in the role of the massiah who would singlehandedly save the world had in fact taken My breath away. But, after mulling over his radical idea for several minutes, I had to admit: If a duckling so ugly could indeed turn himself into a swan, there was hope for redeeming the entire human race. The "if" involved in that proposition couldn't have been more speculative of course. For starters Moronia was no longer in that nearly pristine state of blissful ignorance it enjoyed when I stumbled on it some 5or 6,000 years earlier. Like the rest of the world it had become thoroughly Americanized.  Whitman claimed America's cultural influence on Moronia was only superficial. "After 5,000 years of human history," he argued, "deep down the Morons were as backward as any race could possibly be in the 20thcentury. While they may have taken a few nibbles from the forbidden fruit they never developed a taste for knowledge. Moreover, by virtue of their cultural affinity, if our massiah experiment actually does succeed, it will be all that much easier to reverse America's cultural dominance over Moronia. As the 21stcentury dawns America might very well find itself on the receiving end of a worldwide trend toward Moronianization!"

     "Leaving aside that monumental 'if' for the moment," I inquired of Whitman, "just how do you plan to select this ugly Moronic duckling of yours?"

     "According to the Celestial Bureau of Vital Statistics that problem has been solved. Thanks to its having the world's lowest birth rate, in all of Moronia there is only one woman who is pregnant—"

GOLDBERG: And that woman was none other than Maria Bimbeaux-Klutz!

GOD: Yes. However, since she was the only candidate available to play the Madonna to Whitman's infant massiah her name didn't seem particularly consequential at the time. Although I do remember thinking "Klutz" didn't strike Me as being the most auspicious handle for someone who was destined for worldsaving greatness.

GOLDBERG: True. But genealogicallyspeaking You couldn't have asked for a massiah with a more typically Moronic pedigree than that represented by the ancient Bimbeaux and Klutz gene pools.

GOD: That "fortuitous fact" was also called to My attention by Whitman. It might interest you to know, by the way, that in doing his homework for what he called "Project Prometheus" he made considerable use of your 16 volume History of the Morons.

GOLDBERG: Interest me? How could I not be positively thrilled to know those years I spent researching and writing what is generally regarded as the supreme example of futile scholarship were not wasted after all!

GOD: Yes, well—getting back our story. In the end, but not without some considerable reluctance, I finally gave Whitman's uglyduckling/massiah scenario My Official Blessing. And the rest is history—or should have been! What both he and I had failed to foresee were the problematical circumstances that would come to surround Klutz's tragically premature exit from the world's stage. Having lived his short life in monastic seclusion; and because of the airtight security measures taken by the authorities after his death to conceal what they perceived as a threat to Moronia's domestic tranquillity—what should have been the simple matter of spreading the inspirational gospel of Jack F. Klutz's swanlike metamorphosis became the thorniest of problems. I could now clearly see how, from its very inception, the Prometheus Project had been fatally flawed by Whitman's erroneous assumption the story of Klutz's massiahood would be of such a sensational nature it would all but tell itself.

GOLDBERG: No one knows better than I just how erroneous that assumption really was!

GOD: What Whitman overlooked, of course, was that even if he hadn't been prematurely martyred the facts surrounding Klutz's clandestine intellectuality would have been extremely hard for even the most fanatical hagiographer to come by—not that in this Tartuffian Age the once noble field of hagiography can be said to abound with practitioners capable of such self sacrificial piety.

GOLDBERG: While I hadn't exactly thought of my efforts to publicize the Klutz Affair in hagiographic terms until just now, surely they establish me as a shining exception to the sad state of affairs You are describing.

GOD: If it makes you happy, so be it. Now, the point I was trying to make is this: The complete absence of archival material from which a writer could reconstruct the factual framework of Klutz's AutoApotheosis meant that I Myself would have to communicate all of that data to some ghost writer in the form of a Divine Revelation which would necessarily assume book length proportions. And such a procedure would violate several of the principles comprising My Noninterventionalist policy— not the least of which, as you have discovered, is the vicarious nature of My terrestrial stringpulling machinations. One simply can't hope to manage the entire universe without delegating a considerable degree of One's authority. Hence even the holiest of My Holy Scriptures have always been transmitted to their human authors in a kind of inspirational shorthand.

GOLDBERG: Which isn't always easy to decipher!

GOD: Yes, well—maybe that's more a matter of the reader's IQ than it is of My handwriting! But, that being the case, no ordinary hagiographer or religious scholar could be expected to fill in the vital details missing from My condensed revelation of the facts. If the world was to learn the lesson of Klutz's redemptive rise from the rags of a Moronic mindset to the riches of a renaissance mentality that tale would have to be told by the most skillful of storytellers—

GOLDBERG: A novelist!

GOD: Yes; but not just any novelist. The Klutzian Gospel demanded an author with a track record for writing novels that were in what has come to be known as the "nonfiction" category—

GOLDBERG:—So as to avoid the credibility problem associated with novels whose fictitious nature is fullyfrontalized—

GOD:—Exactly. And so it came to pass that I disseminated some of My "inspirational feelers" to a roster of the most celebrated practitioners of that peculiarly American art form; one which included such bestselling names as Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote. But alas, none of the seeds I subliminally sowed in the minds of those literary lions proved fruitful. For one reason or another they all rejected the idea. Their principal objection, of course, had to do with the setting—

GOLDBERG: Tell me about it!

GOD: Spending even the week or 2 in Moronia needed for acquainting themselves with the social and geographic pond in which Klutz swam was a prospect none of them exactly relished, and most found positively unendurable.

GOLDBERG: Which should give You a pretty good idea of what it must have been like for me to spend the best years of my life stagnating in the brackish backwaters of that sociocultural boondock!

GOD: [After a pause.] Are you finished wallowing in that swamp of selfpity?

GOLDBERG: For the time being—yes.

GOD: Good. And there was also the very real threat to their physical safety posed by that swinish supercop, Ballbraker, and his ruthless determination to keep a lid on the Klutz Affair. Although, curiously enough, it was just that element of cloak & daggerism which very nearly tempted Tom Clancy into making the Klutz Affair the subject of his next blockbusting thriller. Unfortunately our longdistance negotiations broke down when he insisted on "supercharging" the basic "vehicle" of the Klutz "scenario" by adding some "high octane" sex, intrigue and suspense to what he felt was the "horseandbuggy" styling of its "Biblical" design. To hear Clancy tell it, the only way for turning a drab character like Klutz into a truly redemptive late20th century role model was to imbue him with the attributes of a twofisted, toughminded, harddrinking womanizer who, if he did manage to martyr himself for the sake of saving Western Civilization, wouldn't have the foggiest notion why he was doing so!

GOLDBERG: What else did you expect from a cheap thrillmeister like Clancy?

GOD: Don't be so hasty to judge a man whose books sell in the millions by the luridness of their contents! As you will soon discover—I hope—some of Clancy's "high octane" ideas are about to play a significant role in the writing of that "seminal" sentence you have so far been incapable of "ejaculating!"

GOLDBERG: [Aside.] I'll believe that when I see it!

GOD: Anyway, despite what should have been My irresistible inducements of Pulitzer- and Nobelprizehood, Great American Noveldom and Everlasting Artistic Glory, when push came to shove I was outmuscled in all My wheeling and dealing efforts to find an authentic publishing heavyweight who could, or would, write the Klutz Affair story as a block busting nonfiction novel without overlyprofaning the divine purpose of its message in the process. Things were looking bleak indeed for Whitman's Prometheus Project, not to mention the future of humanity. And then, when all hope seemed lost, I just happened to remember you—

GOLDBERG: It's about time! I was beginning to think my part in this Wagnerian fable had been relegated to that of a mere spearcarrier!

GOD: Keep that hair shirt of yours on, Goldberg. I can't be blamed for not immediately recognizing your latent literary talent when it was concealed beneath that mountain of bureaucratic paperwork you churned out during your Moronic exile. And, if the truth be told, were it not for the entirely accidental fact Ballbraker spilled the Klutz Affair beans to you during one of his bacchanalian orgies, it would never have occurred to Me in a zillion years that, of all My subjects, the American Ambassador to Moronia might become the instrumentality through which mankind was redeemed.

GOLDBERG: Wow! Talk about a calling a spade a spade!

GOD: In My experience, when dealing with a blocked writer, being brutally frank about his shortcomings is the best policy. But, having said that; when Whitman and I began examining your qualifications for the job we were pleasantly surprised to discover some not altogether unimpressive factors in your favor.

GOLDBERG: Well, coming from You I suppose that's a compliment—for which I am not altogether ungrateful!

GOD: In addition to your knowledge of the Klutz Affair, by virtue of your halfcentury tenure as its American Ambassador and the authoring of a 16 volume history on the subject, you knew more about the soil that produced My Moronic Massiah than any other wouldbe novelist on the face of the earth. There was also the doggedness of your determination to believe, despite the most persuasive evidence to the contrary, that you had been born for greatness.

GOLDBERG: And, despite spending 50 years in the wilderness of Moronia the faith I always had in the grandiose design of my destiny has been vindicated, has it not? After all, here I am having this historic conversation with You!

GOD: I suppose that's true; but frankly, if there was some sublime reason for sending you to Moronia in 1938 it escaped Me shortly thereafter. No doubt I became understandably preoccupied with WWII. In retrospect, of course, there must have been something in My mind along these Morons Awake! lines when I arranged your ambassadorship to that most forsaken of all My worldly corners. Although there have been times when the mysteries in which I cloak my machinations are so impenetrable even I get lost in the damned things!

GOLDBERG: [Aside.] How reassuring to hear such an admission at this late date!

GOD: Nevertheless, as Whitman and I dug deeper into your background we unearthed some disturbing personality traits; among which was the progressive shrinkage of your mental horizons; a phenomenon doubtlessly attributable in part to the normal aging processes, but also—and more importantly—caused by the severely circumscribed intellectual milieu in which you had been living for such a long time. This bigfishinasmallpond syndrome explained the exaggerated opinion you had concerning your foreplay prowess. But, just as a man with the most modest amatory credentials can become a king in the land of the chronically lovelorn, so too: It doesn't take an astrophysicist to outsmart a whole nation of Morons.

GOLDBERG: Apparently You don't put much stock in the adage about looking a gift horse in the mouth!

GOD: Not when it comes to buying evangelical pigs in a poke. Oh, no! Before putting all of Klutz's worldsaving eggs in what could have been an artistic basketcase this threshold question had to be answered: At the ripe old age of 3 score and 10 years could someone with your parochial outlook—and equally esoteric writing style—rise to what was the most colossal of all literary occasions?

GOLDBERG: A question You obviously answered in the affirmative—

GOD: Eventually, yes; but not before Whitman and I pondered the matter with every ounce of collective assiduity we could muster. The result of which was: As in "selecting" the Madonna for our Moronic Massiah, we had no choice but to cast you as Boswell to Klutz's Dr. Johnson. And, having done so, I must admit we were pleasantly surprised by your performance—at least during the early stages of Project Prometheus. The alacrity with which someone of your procrastinational ways accepted such a daunting challenge was truly impressive. As were your efforts at turning yourself into a lean, mean—and reasonably cleanliving—fighting machine for waging what would be a one man war to save a reluctant (if not hostile) world from drowning itself in the deluge of postmodern mediocrity. Your general sense of mission couldn't have been more praiseworthy. Nor could your particular grasp of the complexities involved with telling the Klutz story as it needed to be told. Even your struggle against the everimploding parameters of a burnedout brain was nothing less than heartrending in its geriatric futility.

GOLDBERG: It's nice to know my Herculean exertions didn't go entirely unnoticed!

GOD: As I said, that was the case initially. But as time passed it became increasingly evident no amount of courage or conviction alone would be sufficient. Results were all that mattered. And in that crucial regard your artistic shortcomings gave rise to our doubts about whether Morons Awake! would ever amount to more than just another gleam in My omnipotent eye—

GOLDBERG: Maybe; but in my humble opinion that first sentence had to be—

GOD: Yes, yes, yes—we've been all through that. And, up to a certain point, I empathized with your concerns for starting a cultural crusade on what could prove to be a fatally false syntactical step. Certainly the last thing a metaphysical manifesto masquerading as a bestselling novel needs is to begin by asking its readers to take a pill whose bitterness makes it all but unswallowable. And, while your protracted hangup over firing the literary shot that would resonate around the world did drive Me up the wall I will say this for you: At least you resisted the temptation of violating My Cardinal Commandment on the subject of writer's block; which states: Thou shalt not become so enthralled with thine delusions of literary grandeur that thou failest to recognize a bad idea when thou hast written one!

GOLDBERG: And, believe me, that was a temptation Job himself wouldn't have had the patience to withstand!

GOD: Possibly. But after 5 years of failure the time had come for Me to lend you a hand in ending what was becoming a constipational crisis of Biblical proportions. Thus it came to pass that I gathered unto Myself the most celebrated bestselling novelists in heaven for an Emergency Story Conference whose purpose was to write the sentence you were so obviously incapable of writing on your own. In addition to Whitman and Myself, the list of luminaries attending that conference couldn't have been more impressive. It included Franz Kafka, Francois Rabelais, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.

GOLDBERG: What impresses me more than that list of celebrities is the tacit concession You made by compiling it to the insurmountability of my Morons Awake! problem!

GOD: If you find some consolation in that rationale, so be it. But the fact is that in a matter of just a few hours we actually managed to hammer out the sentence you had spent so many years agonizing over! Which left us with the relatively routine matter of devising a plan by which that "singularly seminal sentence" could be communicated to you in such a way it would seem to spring spontaneously from that "Zeuslike" brow of yours. Now, listen up as I let you in on the details of that plan, Goldberg! By paying the closest attention to what I am about to say you should be able to decipher the notso mysterious meaning of this story I've been telling you!¹⁴⁵ This, then, was the scenario by which I proposed to inspire your ghostwriting of that elusive first sentence in a blaze of epiphanal glory:

(1) I would stagemanage a rendezvous with you in a setting associated with inspirational epiphanies, to wit: the top of a mountain just as the sun begins to rise;

(2) Based on the fact of your presence in Southern California and the astronomical circumstances pertaining thereto, the aforementioned epiphany was scheduled to unfold on the summit of Mt. Olympus—popularly (and appropriately) known as "Inspiration Point"—at exactly 6:47 a.m. on the 22nd of November, 1993 A.D.;

(3) To make your presence at Inspiration Point unmistakably providential a chain of foolproof predawn events¹⁴⁶ was choreographed to place you at the corner of Hollywood & Vine at exactly E (for Epiphany) minus 17 minutes, where your northwardbound path would be "crossed" by an Eldoradodrivingstarknaked platinumblondesexgoddess played by the late Jayne Mansfield—a poor man's Marilyn Monroe who, for some obscure reason,¹⁴⁷ epitomized your geriatric fantasies of what a frustrated novelist's "muselike angel of mercy" should look like.

(4) Thereafter, this muselike creature was to lead you on a brief chase toward the summit of Mt. Olympus, where your joint arrival at Inspiration Point was scheduled for E minus 30 seconds. At which time she would vanish into thin air, leaving you suspended in a state of "stupefaction" until the "mystery" surrounding your "wild goosechase" was obliterated by a "deus ex machina" effect whereby I would miraculously deposit Myself in the seat next to yours just as the sun was also making its auspicious appearance.

And that, in a nutshell, was how I intended My Morons Awake! Epiphany Plot to unfold. But, as we both now know, things didn't quite work out as I had scripted them.

GOLDBERG: I should say they didn't!

GOD: Even before the curtains opened a major glitch developed when I received the news you had suddenly modified your own plans in such a way that you would be arriving at the corner of Hollywood & Vine an hour before sunrise! As you can imagine, a monkeywrench of that magnitude brought the gears of My miraclemaking machinery to a complete halt.

GOLDBERG: Believe me, if I had known—

GOD: I'm not blaming you! But the prematurity of your arrival at Hollywood & Vine required a complete rewrite of My Epiphany Scenario. And, before I could begin to deal with the problem of killing that extra 43 minutes there were several even more urgent matters that demanded My immediate attention. For one thing My leading lady was refusing to make her emergency entrance on such short notice. As she explained it in her typically screwball way: If she was going to be seen by some dirty old man au naturel, every square inch of her glamorous anatomy needed to be scrutinized under a cosmetician's magnifying glass in order to erase the most microscopic blemish, imperfection, flaw or stray hair that might spoil her hard earned reputation as Hollywood's most perfect sexsymbol. Moreover, she was having "serious second thoughts" about repeating the history she had so notoriously made in a picture called Promises, Promises when she became the first bonafide Hollywood star to play a nude scene. Added to her hysterical temper tantrum another can of worms was dumped on My plate when the props department informed Me the '59 Caddy wouldn't be ready to roll before Epiphany minus 25 minutes! And while all of this was going on, you were already beginning your northward journey up Vine Street! Well, to shorten what seemed to Me like a neverending nightmare of mishaps, snafus and outright calamities, I finally managed to get the Epiphany Show on the road by improvising a few minor miracles. One of which was to short circuit that Hollywood & Vine traffic light to keep you stranded there until the Eldorado was hitting on all 8 cylinders and a standin starknaked actress had been manhandled into its driver's seat. And the rest—including that protracted "wild goosechase" through the hills and dales overlooking Hollywood—is, of course, a fait accompli with which you are thoroughly familiar.

GOLDBERG: I think that can be safely said.

GOD: Although I should add; that in leading you on the way she so successfully did your "brainless blonde muse" exhibited an intellectual grace under pressure I found more than admirable for an actress with a reputation as an onlyfromtheneck down talent. All things considered she gave what turned out to be the performance of her afterlife. Nevertheless, her longdelayed arrival at Inspiration Point was still several minutes early—the effect of which was to make My own dramatic appearance on the scene exceedingly awkward. Not that I was aware of it at the time. No. During the procedure by which I incarnate Myself there are a few nanoseconds when My omniscient faculties become temporarily inoperative. And it was during that briefest of blackouts when you inexplicably exited from your vehicle—

GOLDBERG: That must have been when I went off searching for her in the women's restroom.

GOD: Ah, the cunning little wench! I see what she was trying to do! Having realized there was still some time to kill, she improvised that "restroom ploy" to keep you occupied before her vanishing act and until I could make My coincidental appearance with the rising sun! Unfortunately her adlibbing left Me in a very large lurch! Do you see what I'm driving at?

GOLDBERG: Strangely enough I think I do!

GOD: Good! So, having completed My incarnation and transported Myself miraculously into the passenger's seat of your Winnebago what do I find?

GOLDBERG: That You are sitting there all alone?

GOD: Of course I am! And not just sitting, but trapped like a rat inside that motorized sardinecan of yours by a security system I was unable to deactivate no matter how hard I tried! Not only were the electronic doorlatches inoperative, I couldn't even open a window to let you know of My whereabouts! All I could do was sit there watching you totter on the edge of that cliff while calling Myself a fool for ever having gotten involved with Morons Awake!!

GOLDBERG: So, when You—

GOD: I know what you're thinking, Goldberg! Why didn't I simply use My omnipotence to extricate Myself and come to your rescue? But explaining My reasons for not doing so at this pregnant point in our story would be counterproductive. Suffice it to say there is a certain "fatigue factor" linked to the incarnation process that temporarily renders One somewhat less than allpowerful.

GOLDBERG: That's nice to know; but it doesn't answer the question I was about to ask, which is: So, when You kept on repeating the epithet "Fool!" You weren't chastising me for the absurdity of my cliffhanging predicament, but rather castigating Yourself for having blundered into such an idiotic bind?

GOD: Since everything seems to have ended so happily what difference does it make which of us I was actually calling a fool?¹⁴⁸  And, speaking of happy endings, the time has come for Me to finish telling you this parable of Mine! Are you ready, able and willing to hear it?

GOLDBERG: As ready, able and willing as I could possibly be!

GOD: Good! Well, here we go! [Slight pause for dramatic effect.] And so it came to pass that, after a series of snafus, hitches, miscues and outright fiascoes, The Morons Awake! Epiphany Show did in fact go on! And, having just heard Me explain the hows, the whys, and especially the wherefores of its having done so, you should now be ready, willing and above all else able to state that—

GOLDBERG: [After another even more dramatic pause.] If it hadn't been for the beautiful blonde sitting starknaked in that vintage '59 Eldorado convertible at the corner of Hollywood & Vine Morons Awake! would probably never have been written?

GOD: Eureka! That's it!

GOLDBERG: That's what?

GOD: The first sentence of Morons Awake! you fool!

And so, dear reader—with a triple eruption of symphonic, theological and literary pyrotechnics—we have at long last come the end of The Mt. Olympus Tape, The Inspiration Point Epiphany Fable and Book One of Morons Awake!¹⁴⁹

Book Two Chapter 1 Part 1     Return to Index

Footnotes

140 Since our conversation was being taped ,this injunction constitutes another glitch in the doctrine of divine infallibility.

141 Actually, as you will learn later, from the Latin translation previously done by Archbishop Bimbeaux.

142 See Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt Of The Masses, 1932, p.55.

143 As a matter of fact there were only 5 or 6 minutes of tape left on what was my only blank cassette.

144 Obviously this petulant response indicates I had put my finger on a very raw theological nerve. Nevertheless I decided not to press my advantage any further but, as you can plainly see, discreetly take His advice instead. Along with the time factor it seemed unprofitable to dwell on the mistake God made in having created His heaven and earth without giving such an enormous project the serious meditation it deserved.  Still, this crucial issue cannot be ignored: No matter how "impertinent" or "iconoclastic" its discussion might seem. The plain truth is I was determined not to repeat His blunder by postponing the actual writing of my masterpiece until I had found that perfect sentence with which to begin it.  Like a painting's initial brush stroke or the opening notes of a symphony, once the seminal sentence of a novel has been finalized it unleashes a conceptual chain reaction that takes on a literary life of its own. Consequently anyone who would author a book of Biblical pretensions—especially a novice in his mid70s!—must at all costs avoid launching it with a grammatical fling that turns out to be congenitally defective. While, with the possible exception of Dickens' "It was the best of times and the worst of times," the starting of Genesis with "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" might seem to be the most auspicious beginning any book could possibly have, upon closer scrutiny it can be seen that God was sacrificing what should have been the most assiduously analyzed premise on the altar of cheap literary sensationalism. Rather than think twice about His creational motives and their inevitable ramifications He impulsively sowed the seeds of a dialectic whirlwind whose turbulent consequences He would devote the next 50 (or 50,000,000) centuries trying vainly to pacify. Hence it was that I clung so tenaciously to my conviction not to begin the writing of Morons Awake! unless and until I could construct a first sentence which would ring with the resonance of a truth that was nothing less than cosmic. And, since the alarmbells set off by this fictionalized manifesto of mine have indeed alerted hundreds of Morons and millions of Americans to the dangers of sleep walking their way toward the precipice of "blissful" ignorance, hasn't my "pedantic" approach to solving the initial sentence problem of Morons Awake! been richly vindicated? Which, let me hasten to add, doesn't mean I am unmindful of the helping hand I was miraculously given in the unfolding of these events being described to you as Book One now draws to its dramatic close.

145 As we approach the dramatic conclusion of Book One the reader is also urged to heed this sternest of admonitions.

146 The actual reasons for my presence at Hollywood & Vine on the date in question are so complex I've decided not to burden you with them here.

147 Until He mentioned it I was wholly unaware of having had any fantasies (geriatric or otherwise) involving Jayne Mansfield—dead or alive. But in my subsequent efforts at sorting out the factual and theological discrepancies contained in the Mt. Olympus Tape I came to realize His allegation concerning my subconscious fixation on this "poor man's Marilyn Monroe" as a "muselike" figure was true! And as I delved deeper and deeper into her life and times the reasons for what I came to realize had been my obsession with her intoxicating persona became less and less obscure. Even in its most fullyfrontalized state, for me Jayne Mansfield's sexuality transcended the cheap thrill a man normally derives from seeing a Hollywood glamourgirl (or any lesser woman) displaying her charms so shamelessly. Yes. There was something special—maybe divinely so—about the way Mansfield so perfectly symbolized her sex! What frustrated novelist could ask for a more ravishing muse to motivate him? Or one who could identify herself with those whose artistic talent was scorned, ridiculed and persecuted! Wasn't she crucified on the cross of her own anatomical blessings by critics and gossip columnists who were less generously endowed? But what I found far more fascinating about this definitely most unplain of all Jaynes than her measurements (42-18-36) and her Barbiedoll blondeness was the way in which her brief career climaxed coincidentally with the zenith of America's manifest destiny. From her debut as Miss Photoflash in 1952 to her 1963 swan song in Promises, Promises (as the first legitimate Hollywood star to appear in a nude scene) those 11 glorious years comprised the Golden Age of an American cultural exuberance whose flamboyant glitter had all but vanished (until, of course, Morons Awake! appeared on the horizon). As discussed earlier, the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz also epitomized the crest of America's farflung flamboyance. And, when taken together, it's no wonder these stirring symbols of rampant Americanism exercised an overwhelming influence on my own will to become a legendary emblem for the rebirth of America's greatness. [Those unacquainted with the "poorman's Marilyn Monroe" can find some images (none of which do justice to the role she played as my Muse) in Appendix P.]

148 Theologically- and metaphysicallyspeaking, of course, the difference couldn't be more significant. Among the many other issues raised by the question of to whom God was addressing the epithet "Fool!" is the very Doctrine of Divine Infallibility. While under that doctrine the Supreme Being might be entitled to call Himself a fool, the unintended consequences of His having done so on the prevention of my accidental suicide and the role I would subsequently play in saving Western Civilization constitute a serious challenge to that most fundamental of all JudeoChristian precepts, to wit: That God is always in total control of everything that happens in the universe.

149 Well, not quite. The truth is that while the cassette did in fact run out of tape just as I uttered what turned out to be (in a slightly altered form) the nowfamous first sentence of Morons Awake! God was in no hurry to terminate our conversation. The dam of my writer's block having been breached, however, I was so eager to turn my computer on and see The Great Moronic Manifesto begin to write itself I couldn't conceal my impatience from Him. "I can see," He said, "how badly you're itching to plunge right into the writing of your magnum opus, Goldberg. But before you do so there are some preliminary matters that need discussing." Whereupon He proceeded to "educate" me on the dos and don'ts of authoring a bestselling literary masterpiece and revolutionary manifesto.
     His "suggestions" included the following: (1) The shorter your sentences the better; (2) Avoid using words of more than 3 syllables; (3) If you insist on employing footnotes keep them to a bare minimum—like all literary devices they lose their value when overutilized [not to mention the tsuris you are bound to get from your editoress because she considers them "the height of amateurish affectation"]; (4) Above all, remember who this book is supposed to be all about. Jack F. Klutz is My massiah, not you. The fate of Western Civilization has been placed by Me in his Moronic hands, not yours. So don't exaggerate your importance as so many authors have a habit of doing! In all things— and especially when it comes to writing a novel—humility is next to Godliness!
     Needless to say I found this advice quite impossible to follow. When I was at long last (our postEpiphany conversation went on until noon!) left alone with my Macintosh, as I predicted it would, Morons Awake! actually did begin writing itself (Book One was completed in just under 77 hours!)—so any disobedience for which I might be criticized should be directed instead to the true author (whoever that might be) of this revolutionary wakeupcall whose "pen" I merely held in my hand.