HENCE IT HAPPENED THAT, when her hourlong rollercoaster ride through the emotional ups and downs of the title page was at long last about to end, Jayne found herself in a state of "next page expectancy" that seemed surprisingly serene. Whatever her fate might turn out to be when she took that first furtive peek at the inaugural sentence she was quite resigned to accepting it.31 And then, suddenly, there it was!32 Jayne was so astonished by what she saw a gasp escaped from her lips.33 What surprised her wasn't the earthshaking profundity of that first sentence but rather its stark normalness! Her preliminary impression about what appeared to be "the disappointing banality" of its outset was that: Morons Awake! might have a fighting chance of actually passing the First Sentence Test. To her trained eye the manuscript's beginning contained most of the ingredients needed for inducing an average housewife to prolong her browsing for at least another sentence or 2—or maybe an entire paragraph. Her suspicions in this regard were, for the most part, confirmed when, after lighting another coffin nail, she gave the first sentence a second, third and fourth reading.
She was particularly impressed by how
the author raised the obligatory subject of sex in a way that (quite literally)
couldn't have been more explicit in the fullness of its frontalization. After
all, what normally exhibitionistic woman could fail to identify herself with
a voluptuous blonde sex goddess sitting starknaked behind the wheel of a
convertible she had brazenly brought to a (screeching?) halt at a public
street corner? And the public street corner where she chose to display herself
in such a shocking state of total srevelation was certainly no ordinary
intersection; but rather that most mythic of all possible cross
roads—the corner of Hollywood & Vine! Moreover, the topless
vehicle in which she performed her "Lady Godiva Act" wasn't just any old
flamingopinkrunofthemill madeintheUSofAmusclemachine. Even a woman of Jayne's
typically feminine indifference to such masculine matters knew the vintage
'59 Eldorado Biarritz represented Cadillac's crowning achievement in Detroit's
(oncesuccessful) bid to become the world's automotive capital. The flamboyance
of its highflying tailfins, solid chrome grillework & front bumper assembly
(a freestanding work of metallurgical artistry!), supersleek aerodynamic
styling and massive hood—under which no less than 345 horses were
harnessed!—made a nonverbal statement about America's manifest industrial
destiny that couldn't have been more eloquent.
Nor was 1959 just any year. For many historians
the tail end of the "Eisenhower era" marked the highest point of America's
threeandahalfcenturyclimb toward geopolitical (and to some extent "cultural")
greatness. It was a time when the vast majority of Americans not only knew
what they wanted but actually believed they knew how to go about getting
it! Words like "introspective," "malaise" and "decadence" had yet to dominate
the vocabulary of a breed who were too busy pursuing that stillattainable
state of perfect happiness known as the American
Dream.34
Although in 1959 Jayne was only a distant gleam in her father's eye she
subsequently acquired a fondness for those good old
"preVietnamWarWatergateScandal Trade&Budgetdeficit" days if not from
her mother's milk then as a result of the "nostalgic" bedroom conversations
between her parents she would overhear as a girl and even a (notso) young
woman.35
But the first sentence of Morons
Awake! did more than just evoke the pleasant memories of bygone times
to a browser marooned in a sea of modern troubles. By introducing himself
as the book's "artist/hero" and the starknaked sexgoddess as its "muselike
heroine" without whom, as he tells us later, his novel couldn't have been
written, the author transcends the "steamy rapport" a woman normally expects
to develop between herself and the writer of a conventional gothic novel
and turns it into that most passionate of all whitehot relationships: The
one whereby a casual (or even accidental) act of female exhibitionism
becomes an "inspirational epiphany" to some voyeuristic mastermind like Pablo
Picasso,36 Richard
Wagner.37 or Franz
Kafka38 Jayne
found the mere suggestion that this artistic partnership between the author
and his reader might conceivably result in a pornographic novel of masterpiece
proportions not just "socially redemptive" for legal purposes, but earthshaking
in its cultural implications! The more she analyzed the pregnancy of that
first sentence the more she came to appreciate—and
admire—the cunning of the man who had written it. Despite the
(almost overly) obvious way it pandered to a browser's prurient instincts,
beneath its trashy surface even the dumbest of blondes could fail to detect
the dark waters of that "really deep intellectual experience" every American
woman yearns furtively to find between the covers of her next book; but few
attain because of their "feminine" reluctance to plunge themselves headlong
into the "metaphysical abyss of a profoundly platonic loveaffair"—unless
they are pushed. Or seduced over the edge by the blandishments of some
smoothtalking "literary makeout artist."
ANY LINGERING DOUBTS Jayne might have had about the author's premeditation in writing the first sentence of what could be construed as both a bestselling novel and a book that might change the course of human history were put to rest by the way he chose to conclude it with—of all things—the reference mark for a footnote! "Since," she reasoned, "even the most amateurish of authors must know the last thing in the world an average bookstore browser wants to find at the end of a novel's initial sentence is her attention being directed to some fine print at the bottom of its very first page; this risky departure from the bestselling norms must have been one that was carefully calculated. And while it's true footnotes can occasionally be found in novels of the socalled 'nonfiction' variety, such a 'dubious device' is never employed at the outset of what should be orchestrated by the 'scholarly' writer as a 'sub plot' by which he establishes his 'credibility' with the reader so insidiously she is quite unaware her brain has been taken to the cleaners."
What makes the humble footnote so "dubious" in the writing of a book for the mass market is, of course, its "elitist" connotations. No statement about an author's antiegalitarianism could be plainer than that which forces a reader to engage in what amounts to an act of unAmericanism. In a society where the overwhelming majority of its citizens are horrified by the merest whiff of anything remotely "highbrow," "artistic," "intellectual" or "culturally uplifting" it's not surprising the tiniest novelistic footnote looms as a threat to nothing less than our national security.39 And, when a footnote does appear buried in the bowels of a non fiction novel, its brevity causes only the most minimal disturbance to the reader's desire to have her "climactic expectations consummated without the addition of a single literary delaying tactic that isn't absolutely essential to that orgiastic end." But like everything else about the first sentence of Morons Awake! its heroine introduced while she is in the starkest possible state of nakedness, its author proclaiming the providential nature of his own novel, its mythic setting at the crossing of the world's two most famous roads, its heartbreaking evocation of America's bygone glories and its hints of the "literary loveaffair" that will follow—the footnote to which it referred its reader was unlike any Jayne had ever previously encountered.40 You can well imagine what went through her mind41 when that "frustrating detour" turned out to be of such an exceptional length no less than a full 7 inches—it completely consumed the remainder of Chapter 1's first page!
And that was only the prelude for
what followed! When she turned to the next page—which, having started
sliding down such a slippery slope she had no other option but to do—her
astonishment was made that much more wide eyed by the paragraph upon paragraph
of fine print she saw filling it from top to bottom! A state of affairs that
kept repeating itself with every new page she turned until the very end of
Chapter 1! To abbreviate what in fact became a very long story,
Jayne didn't stop until she had read every last one of those 1275
singlespaced pages comprising that most massively monumentalized
manuscript. And, while in the course of her career Jayne had gained a
considerable faculty for scanning an entire page of the average unsolicited
manuscript in a matter of 5 or 6 seconds, this virtuoso feat of nonstop
speedreading wasn't completed until some 19 hours had elapsed from the time
her rapturous gaze first fell on the title
page.42
In her state of enthralment Jayne
was oblivious to the passage of so much time. And, buried in the bowels of
a Manhattan skyscraper, the symbolic significance of the sun's rising at
the precise moment she finished reading Morons Awake! couldn't and
didn't dawn on her. It was only when Leo Bloom, the nonagenarian mail "boy,"
entered her salt mine pulling his train of canvas trolleys laden with Thursday's
harvest of "newmown novelistic hay" did Jayne realize she had spent the entire
night under the "magic spell" cast over her by Morons Awake!'s mysterious
author. Throughout her reading of his manuscript Jayne felt as if she had
entered a magical realm where the fondest of her Discovering The Great American
Novelist dreams was in fact coming true with each new page she turned.
Nevertheless she was also aware that: While basically his book was the stuff
from which the "bestselling novel, cultural manifesto and literary masterpiece"
he claimed it to already be might be made, Morons Awake! was by no
means without some serious, and potentially fatal, flaws. Accordingly, from
the start of her reading, Jayne began to compile a mental list of the problems
that would have to be solved before "Mordecai Goldberg" could hope to add
his real name to even the bottom of a bestselling author's list. Not the
least of her concerns in this regard had to do with what she designated as
"the Moronia Matter." As the author himself stated repeatedly: "It
is absolutely essential for the reader to believe that Moronia is not a figment
of my novelistic imagination but a sovereign microstate (not unlike Monaco,
San Marino, Lichtenstein and Cretiny) which, for at least the past 5,000
years, has been a geographic and anthropological fact of European history.
Lacking the reader's unshakable faith in my credibility on such a crucial
issue this monumental literary edifice I have labored so long (and valiantly)
to construct for the salvation of Western Civilization will, I fear, collapse
like a house of cards."
Jayne couldn't have agreed with him more emphatically.
If the reader of Morons Awake! didn't believe there really was a country
called "Moronia" how could she be expected to believe that "Mordecai Goldberg,
PhD." had spent the "best years of his life" there as our American ambassador?
Or that a worldwide manhunt orchestrated by Moronia's secret police chief
(and including the CIA, KGB, Interpol, MI-5, and Mossad was operating to
prevent him from "blowing the lid off the Klutz Affair with his expose of
what was, for every civilized nation on the face of the earth, that most
potentially apocalyptic of Moronia's state secrets? Or that a Moron named
Jack F. Klutz actually did die a martyr's death for the sake of demonstrating
that all men and/or women are created equally capable of appreciating the
finer things in life? The answer to all of these questions was, of
course, a resounding "No!" Unless the reader could somehow be convinced that
Moronia wasn't just another story book kingdom like Jonathan Swift's Lilliputia,
Frank Baum's Oz or James Hilton's Shangri-la any hopes "Mordecai Goldberg"
had for becoming a second Paul Revere (or John the Baptist) by awakening
America from its cultural stupor would disappear down the proverbial drain.
And, while Jayne took much of what was written in Morons Awake! with
more than just a pinch of sodium chloride—when it came to the author's
most preposterous assertion that "Moronia was an authentic (albeit micro
miniature) nationstate" she needed no persuading.
As a result of Jayne's infantile habit of eavesdropping
on her parent's nocturnal conversations from the nursery adjoining their
bedroom she learned at the precocious age of three there were a few "Moronic
skeletons" in the Playne family's genealogical closet. Her subsequent
investigations43
into the scandalous state of her
ancestral affairs revealed a rather sordid story of indentured (female)
servitude, adultery and outright
miscegenationG that would have curled Nathaniel Hawthorne's hair [But, alas,
since an Editorial Introduction isn't the proper place to explore such a
torrid tale of sexual perversity among her puritan forefathers (and
-mothers),44
suffice it to say: Like many other
dyedinthewoolDaughtersoftheAmericanRevolution, Jayne had to accept as a sad
genetic fact that the purity of her AngloSaxon DNA was tainted by at least
a few wayward Moronic chromosomes.] In Jayne's case most of the classic symptoms
exhibited by those Americans whose redbloodedness is polluted by a stray
Moronic corpuscle or two rarely manifested themselves in such a flagrant
way they required immediate medical or psychiatric treatment. There
were times when she did experience the uncontrollable urge to squat on her
haunches and twiddle her thumbs—especially when dealing with one of
life's more intractable
problems.45 But what average American housewife doesn't now and
then find herself resorting to such an
atavisticG answer to her intellectual frustrations? Similarly, Jayne's sudden
craving now and then to sink her teeth into a raw turnip could be explained
as a normal working girl's response to the daily strains and stresses of
"slaving her life away in some late20thcentury equivalent of a feudal salt
mine."
As for what some might consider her "Moronic fetish for
hats" Jayne's lavish millinary collection can just as easily be construed
as only another harmless ramification of her "loveaffair with the more ladylike
fashions of
yesteryear."46 Nor were the proverbs, cliches and cartbeforethehorseisms
that kept finding their folksy way into her Ivyleague vocabulary any more
"Moronianesque" than those articulated by cocktail party or afterdinner
conversationalists whose unhyphenated Americanism is above reproach? On the
other hand, her lifelong obsession with her forehead was a behavioral quirk
which could be (and was by more than one shrink) clinically diagnosed as
resulting from that inferiority complex known as "high browitis"—a neurosis
rare among Americans but one afflicting no less than 98 of every 100
Morons. Yet even her compulsive preoccupation with the distance between
her eyebrows and her hairline was well within the tolerances treatable by
a semiannual visit to a psychiatrist's office—coupled with a coiffure
(bangs) that would effectively conceal from public scrutiny what people might
otherwise think was her "egghead
look."47
GIVEN THE EXTENT to which Jayne's objectivity was compromised by her Moronic heritage, dealing with the "Moronia Matter" wouldn't be a piece of editorial cake. Nevertheless, she thought, the expertise she had gained as a publisher's reader in reducing the level of her "elitist" taste down to that of the lowest common denominator could also be used to simulate the prejudices of an average American housewife—for whom the word "Moronia" would (unless she were indoctrinated to the contrary) raise the dreaded specter of allegory.48 She also saw no good reason why, in what would become her intimate collaboration with its brilliantbutwetbehindtheears author, the same professional expertise couldn't help to overcome what her detailed critique of his manuscript might make him think were the "insurmountable obstacles" it faced in becoming "the bestselling novel, artistic masterpiece and historymaking manifesto" he claimed it already was in its present form. As previously mentioned (or implied) this critique included:
(1) Drastically reducing the number of footnotes. Or better yet, eliminating them completely. Whatever positive effect they might have in creating a "clandestine rapport" with the reader in which she shares the author's thoughts "while he is in the very process of thinking them" was probably more than offset by all the negatives involved. Not the least of which was the annoyance of having constantly to relocate one's place in the main text;49
(2) Simplifying the structure of sentences which, no matter how many "nuggets of philosophical and prurient gold" they might contain, one couldn't expect an average American high school graduate who had just barely made sense out of Silas Marner and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to cope with ideas which consume several paragraphs—or an entire page—in the process of their being elucidated;G
(3) Paying more attention to the actual telling of the "Klutz Affair" story and (much, much, much) less to the "extended foreplayd technique" of stretching some poor gothicnoveljunky's suspense beyond the previous frontiers of her fulfillment fantasies before finally (God knows how many pages later) consummating them;
(4) Making it crystal clear Morons Awake! is not meant to be an attack on the populist principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the films of Frank Capra, the paintings of Norman Rockwell and/or the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Weber. Ridiculing a few hundred Morons for sanctifying their mediocrity in the trappings of a "theological birthright" is one thing, but accusing 250 million Americans of deluding themselves into a similarly selfrighteous state of sociocultural egalitarianism is strictly taboo if one hopes to have any chance of winning a Pulitzer—or even a Nobel—prize.
(5) Eliminating all words of more than five syllables; or whose meaning can't be parsed without consulting a 24 volume edition of The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language;
(6) Minimizing the author's (often gratuitous) exposure to charges of religious blasphemy. One need only recall the "Salman Rushdie Affair" to understand the limits beyond which a book can safely go when ridiculing the fanatical faith Morons or Americans have concerning "the divine image" in which they have all been equally made. No matter how "simpleminded" the argument might be that: "God revered the common man because he made so many of them" it's one no philosopher (and certainly no novelist!) has yet to convincingly refute. In particular the author's "epiphany" claims associated with the "providential nature" of his "divinely inspired" evangelism—as evidenced by the alleged "Mt. Olympus conversation" he has with God at the conclusion of Book One—should be seriously reconsidered with the sensibilities of an average American churchgoer (or Iranian mullah) in mind.
(7) While the proposition that: By simply reading his book from cover to cover (if not from the top to the bottom of every page) the average American housewife will have taken her first step on the road toward "appreciating the finer things in life" might be a noble one (and even true!)—does the author seriously believe millions of them will trade their nylon negligees for his hair shirt to play their part in reversing the decline of Western Civilization? No. All references to this kind of "altruistic masochism" must be deleted—or expressed in a way which makes it plainer than dirt that: Any torment a woman suffers while making her way through his "literary gauntlet" will enhance the psychosexual payoff she receives as a result of her having done so. On this point the comparison the author constantly makes between "the principles of extended foreplay and those of art appreciation" is, of course, not without its temptation for even those females addicted to the trashiest kind of reading material. But, like proving the existence of what most readers will stubbornly believe is an allegorical country, convincing the average woman her cravings for sexual fulfillment can be put on hold for 5, 6 or even 7 hours—as the author claims he routinely did while "foreplaying his way through the entire female population of Moronia"—demands a leap of faith exceeding any she has ever been asked to take between the covers of her randiest romance novel. Although the nineteen hours she herself had spent reading Morons Awake! did constitute what could be described as "a nonstop exercise in escalating a woman's cravings for intellectual fulfillment to ecstatic heights she had hitherto thought were unthinkable"—for someone whose life had been attuned from girlhood to "the raptures of reading good books" her case was certainly not typical. In her professional opinion, the author of Morons Awake! had enough credibility problems on his plate without adding what most women would perceive as his totally unconvincing claim of being "The Answer to every American housewife's literary loveaffair prayers."
BUT, JAYNE SUDDENLY REALIZED to her dismay, in critiquing Morons Awake! she had overlooked the most serious of all its problems. And the one which, as things presently stood, it would be impossible for her to solve! Having at long last discovered her Great American Novel needleinahaystack she also found her dreams of doing so had been fatally flawed from their inception! As a lowly publishinghouse reader Jayne's sole function in the corporate scheme of things was to forward any potential bestseller up the administrative chain of command for the kind of editorial and marketing judgments she was unqualified to make by the terms of her job description. Consequently, any ideas she had about an "intimate collaboration" with its author in their joint rewriting of his Great American Novel were nothing more than the wishful thoughts of those very housewives whose "pathetic delusions of romantic grandeur" Jayne had trained herself to entertain when opening the cover of each new manuscript before she tested the "bestselling mettle" of its first sentence.
Ironically, this ruinous state of affairs
confronting Jayne wasn't unlike that in which the heroine of a trashy gothic
novel finds herself just before what seems like its hopelessly tragic plot
takes a miraculous turn toward the happiest of happy endings. And stranger
yet; just as Jayne remarked to herself that: "It's a damned shame such miracles
don't happen in real life"—Leo Bloom, the geriatric mail boy, arrived
on the scene to play his knightinshiningarmortotherescueofadamselindistress
role!
"So, my little sleepless beauty," said Bloom with a saintly
twinkle in his usually lecherous eyes, "I see you've spent the whole night
in this salt mine of yours reading Morons Awake!"
"Yes," Jayne replied absentmindedly. She was much more
concerned with swiveling the skimpy state of her working attire out of the
dirty old man's field of vision than about how he came to know the title
of the manuscript she had been reading.
"Aren't you curious?" asked Bloom, ignoring the fact
she had turned her (bare but for a single halterstrap) back to him—a
move whose unmistakable rudeness Jayne thought would clearly signify her
annoyance; but one Bloom craftily chose to construe as ambiguous because
of the bareness of the back she had unwittingly (or otherwise?) revealed
to him by her having made it.
"Curious about what?" she responded with an irritable
tone of voice calculated to discourage him from trying to engage her in one
of his notoriously lewd "casual" conversations. During the last two decades
of the 70plus years he had been working at Jayne's publishing firm Bloom
acquired a reputation among its female employees for being a VODOM (Very
Old Dirty Old Man) because of his habitual insertion of the most prurient
subject matter into the customary exchange of meaningless pleasantries connected
with his routine mail deliveries. When complaints were made to him about
the advantage he took of "a girl's perfectly innocent efforts at making small
talk," Bloom only exploited them to speculate on such philosophical topics
as "the quintessentially pornographic nature of even the most innocuous
tête à tête between members of the opposite sex,"
"the declining art of conversation in a society where most women no longer
appreciate the erotogenic effect of the spoken word" and/or "the direct linkage
between a housewife's literary IQ and her capacity to experience the pure
bliss of a linguistically induced orgasm." In order to understand why top
management tolerated1 the smutty peccadilloes of its geriatric mailboy it
is necessary at this suspensefilled juncture in Jayne's story to briefly
explore the (almost equally intruiging) tale of Mr. Leopold
Bloom's50 bizarre life and times.
Intro Part 3 Return to Index
Footnotes
31 Nevertheless, while she stood on the very precipice of taking her "fatal plunge" a montage of imaginary visions flashed before her mind's eye in which she saw herself as: (1) Sancho Panza tilting at institutional windmills with a late20thcentury version of Don Quixote; (2) Following Daniel into the lion's den; (3) A female stowaway on the Santa Maria; (4) Joan of Arc; (5) Molly Pitcher; (6) Standing beside Julius Caesar on a bank of the Rubicon; (7) Standing beside George Washington on a bank of the Delaware; (8) Mary Magdalene following Jesus along the Via Dolorosa on his way to Calvary; (9) Marilyn Monroe being swept off her feet and carried across the threshold of their honeymoon suite by Arthur Miller; (10) Leni Riefenstahl placing her cinematic expertise at the complete disposal of Adolf Hitler; (11) Sylvia Beach—that plainest of all Janes—risking financial ruin (and eternal damnation) by publishing James Joyce's "pornographic" masterpiece, Ulysses; (12) Bonnie Parker making the most of her poorwhitetrashiness in a criminal partnership with Clyde Barrow that would become mythologized as The Great American Love Story.
32 In actual fact she was momentarily (and quite understandably) disconcerted by Chapter 1's rather extravagant heading.
33 For most of you who couldn't resist your curiosity and turned to Chapter 1 for a furtive peek at the sentence in question, Jayne's subsequent critique of it will hold no surprises. Those with the fortitude and blind faith to put their novel reading fate entirely in the hands of its author will, I think it can be safely said, not regret having done so.
34 Incredible as it
might now seem, as late as 1959 Norman Rockwell was still painting those
utopianized covers of his for magazines in which no mention was ever made
about the decline of everything from Western Civilization to the number of
snail darters still swimming in Tennessee's Loosahatchie River. The
Hit Parade consisted of ballads whose lyrics still rhymed June with moon.
The only hyphen most redblooded Americans considered appropriate when
describing themselves was the one between "pro" and "American." And, while
Madison Avenue might have made millions of housewives dream about appearing
in the most public places wearing only their Maidenform bras, few of them
had to the courage to actually do so. In those bygone days the idea of burning
one's lingerie publicly—or even privately— was, of course, utterly
unthinkable. As was the notion of filing a Federal sexual harassment lawsuit
against a boss who showed more than a fatherly concern for the sad state
of his female employees' sexlife.
Needless to say, by 1959 most of the chickens that would
return to their American roost in the '60s, '70's and '80's had been hatched
long ago and were winging their way home with a vengeance—and in numbers
so vast their arrival would prove to be catastrophic. But, like the passengers
on the Titanic just before it collided with that iceberg, to the average
man and woman on Main Street USA the American ship of state seemed unsinkable
as it plowed its way bravely toward a new decade of worldbeating superpowerdom.
35 Like many others of their circa WWII generation Jayne's parents believed America's declining cultural, moral and social standards were caused by a communist conspiracy including such dupes and fellow travelers as the Pope, Ingrid Bergman, John L. Lewis, Walt Disney, Hyman Rickover, General De Gaulle, Charlie Chaplin, Robert Oppenheimer, Elvis Presley—and every U. S. president since "Ike." Having been made "old before our time by having to fight the Cold War with our hands tied behind our backs" the Playnes spent most of their time wallowing in the WASPish glories of an allAmerican past that could be "categorically dated" from the English landing at Jamestown (1607) until that "jumpedupmackerelsnappingBostonIrishsonofabitch" stole the oval office (1961). Having been educated at Vassar, Yale and Harvard Jayne took a more enlightened (and considerably less dim) view of an America in which her gender (and a host of other previously downtrodden minorities) had—at long last—attained the equality they were promised on July 4, 1776. Still, now and then she found herself feeling wistful for a nation whose citizens weren't constantly asking what more their country could do for them rather than the other way around.
36 Doesn't Le Demoiselles d' Avignon owe its "divine" genesis to the stark nudity of the Spanish harlots who shamelessly parade themselves before their prospective clients in the brothels of Barcelona?
37 It was Wagner's "providential" sighting one afternoon of an anonymous farm girl bathing in the Rhine near Baden Baden which gave rise to that most grandiose of all Operatic extravaganzas, Der Ring des Nibelungen.
38 Had it not been for the "incurable exhibitionistic proclivities" of the woman living in the apartment adjoining his, it's more than likely Franz Kafka would never have written that masterpiece of psychopathic symbiosis—Die Dame in das Schlusselloch (The Lady In The Keyhole).
39 Notwithstanding the undeniable fact of American social life that the most successful intellectual predators bait their "bimbo traps" by allowing their victims to (just barely) eavesdrop on such presumptively incomprehensible fragments of conversational esoterica as: "Any woman...who is willing... master the art of foreplay," "All lovelorn housewifes...cravings...intellectual adultery," "...Mahler's 5th Symphony," "The consummation ...innermost... fulfillment." "...whether ignorance is indeed...or the average American...sexual Shangrila...his or her literary IQ?"
40 This includes the scores of scholarly works she was forced to read while matriculating through Vassar, Yale and Harvard on the way to receiving her Dlitt.
41 This mental exercise can, of course, be disregarded by those of you who skipped ahead to Chapter 1 and saw for yourself the sight that caused Jayne's turbulent mental state.
42 Due in no small measure to the thousands of footnotes whose fine print (and occasionally stimulating content) at times slowed her progress to a crawl.
43 Which involved ransacking her way through the large attic and basement of the Playne's Victorian mansion and, when her parents were out of the house, conducting more discreet forays into the secret places (such as her mother's locked jewel box and the safe in her father's study) where she knew they hid their most private personal effects.
44 Not unlike so many of the young women who slave away in the salt mines of the publishing industry, Jayne entertained the prospects of someday writing a roman a clef (after the demise of her parents) based on the sensational circumstances giving rise to the colonial branch of the Olde Worlde Playnes family tree.
45 Such as deciding which primetime network program was the least likely to make her curse the day television had been invented.
46 Which included the closets and dresser drawers she compulsively filled with (for the most part unworn) lingerie and other items of intimate apparel that might have come from a turnofthe19thcentury French bordello.
47 Still, there were those times when she suffered acute attacks of paranoia brought on by the fear of being persecuted for the "I'M A MEMBER OF MENSA" written on her "toobrainylookingforehead" in a society where having an IQ over 100 was a stigma equal to the wearing of a yellow star on one's coat inscribed with that most obscene of 4letter words—"Jude"—in Germany's Third Reich.
48 Despite the "lack of sophistication" claimed by most readers of trashy fiction, in Jayne's experience such females can detect with a just a casual glance even the most furtive of a novelist's "literary pretensions." The rule for authors hoping their names will become household words among America's domestic proletariatd is simple: The very idea of sitting down to write a book that contains a scintillad of anything that might be remotely construed (or misconstrued) as "artistic" is, bestsellerwise, the kiss of death. And while using Moronia as the diversionary target for what was actually a flank attack on the MaginotLineMindset of America's own ignoranceisblissism was a brilliant strategy, like any military campaign (or social satire) it could only succeed if its very brilliance remained hidden from those who were intended to be its victims
49 See the final footnote to this Introduction for my way of solving the "finding your way back to the footnote reference mark" problem.
50 While Bloom became the defendant in several civil and criminal suits brought under various local, state and federal laws prohibiting sexual harassment in the work place the result was always the same—a statutory standoff when his attorney countersued on the grounds that: Under the Americans With a Disability Act and the equal protection doctrine of the 14th Amendment, it was Bloom who was being persecuted because of his congenital mental defects and his senior citizen status.
Glossary
miscegenation noun [irreg. fr. L misc-re to mix + genus race ¦ more at MIX, KIN](1864) : a mixture of races; esp : marriage or cohabitation between a white person and a member of another race
atavism noun [F atavisme, fr. L atavus ancestor, fr. at- (prob. akin to atta daddy) + avus grandfather ¦ more at UNCLE](1833) 1 a : recurrence in an organism of a trait or character typical of an ancestral form and usu. due to genetic recombination b : recurrence of or reversion to a past style, manner, outlook, or approach 2 : one that manifests atavism : THROWBACK ¦ atavistic adj
elucidate -dated; -dating[LL elucidatus, pp. of elucidare, fr. Le- + lucidus lucid]vt (ca. 1568) : to make lucid esp. by explanation or analysis...vi : to give a clarifying explanation syn see EXPLAIN