BUT ENOUGH OF OUR AMBULATORY ruminations! The time has come, dear reader, for us to end them as Bloom himself did upon arriving at his destination when he put them into this (pseudo)Shakespearean nutshell:
'Twas a respect for perfection too scrupulous
That made a calamity of his long life.
By trying to write a flawless book (or even the first sentence of one) Bloom had only "succeeded" in perfecting his complete failure to do so! "In the final last analysis," Bloom asked himself—as he stood facing the mailroom door in a Learlike state of geriatric resignation—"what did my 7 decades of strutting and fretting (underathinkingcapwhileseatedinanarmchairwise) signify—except, perhaps, that: None of America's greatest authors had come any closer to altering the AntiIntellectual status quo by flailing away at it with their illustrious pens than he had without ever lifting his?"
And even if he were right89 about the (changingthecourseofhumanhistorywise) impotency90 of literary hemen like Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, John Dos Passos, Henry Miller and Norman Mailer, wouldn't that be the coldest kind of comfort for an old fool who had learned just enough from his long (and loveless) life to know that his name would never be sung for pursuing so heroically what was from its inception the most hopelessly lost of all causes? But before we rush to judge poor Bloom as harshly as he judged himself, dear reader, let us ask ourselves if we are not also guilty of entertaining the occasional hope, dream, fantasy or delusion there might be some shred of meaning in our misbegotten lives? And if that is the case, how can any woman fail to be at least somewhat impressed (if not thrilled to death) by the sheer virility of his phallocentric aspirations? Moreover—if the whole truth be told—in many respects Bloom's seemingly "lackluster" life was considerably (maybe profoundly) richer for the poverty of its praise; saner for its pathological methodology; happier for its tragic ending—and even more socioeconomically beneficial—than the majority of American "success stories."91
In order to fully explain what must seem to you like an absurd (and certainly a subversive) statement it will be necessary to spend a few pages delving into those 70odd years Bloom spent as a "humble mailboy" at R***** H**** especially the first 30 of them (between 1920 and 1950) which, according to his occupationocentric92 mythology, comprised "The Golden Age of Epistolary Intercourse." Now at first glance no subject of a bestselling novel (or the introduction to one) would seem less worthy of your (already overtaxed) attention than that one of its character's "career" as a deliverer of mail; especially when that novel purports to do nothing less than reverse the decline of Western Civilization! But, my dear reader, like the cover of a bestselling book;93 appearances can be deceptive. And, as I trust you will come to agree (if you need any further persuading): More often than not the juiciest of life's secrets are revealed to us in a footnote's fine print; or when the seductive smile of a handsome stranger is slyly seen from the corner of our eye; or—if we just happen to be eavesdropping at a crowded cocktail party—by those erotic buzzwords (like "intelligentsia," "orgiastic," "psychosexual," "revolutionary" and "manifesto") of a sotto voce conversation just audible enough for us to know that what we are overhearing could be the stuff from which the prurient plot of a "trainofthought novel" might be in the making!
For those of you whose patience has been stretched to its breaking point—or simply don't give a good goddam about "The Golden Age of Epistolary Intercourse"—I've chosen to emulate (yet again!) the author whose novel I am introducing by relegating my brief account of Bloom's vocational history to an appendix (A).94 But, dear reader, by solving this problem in what seems like such a painless fashion you are now faced with an even more vexatious dilemma whose solution is, I'm afraid, quite unavoidable.95 As, I believe, is the following array of factors you should consider before making what will be such a crucial decision:
(a) By choosing not to read Appendix A of my introduction to Morons Awake! at what is about to become its most pivotal turningpoint your appreciation of everything that follows will suffer accordingly—as will the "orgasmic effect" of its conclusion;(b) Similarly, the exercising of such a negative option implies that (despite all my "educational" efforts to the contrary) you have yet to fully comprehend why "having it off" in the middle of the afternoon with the author of another trashy romance novel is inferior to the enduring psychosexual satisfaction a housewife can find between the covers of a (the thicker the better) literary masterpiece written by someone who knows that: Before he can have his predatory way with a woman's body (and/or soul) he must first entice her into a state of intellectual promiscuity.96
(c) On the other hand, while the reading of a book—unlike the witnessing of a play, film or opera97 empowers a woman to manipulate time according to the tempo of her own lovemaking predilections by suspending the author's "narrative flow" to dally at some bend (or kink) in it she finds particularly rapturous (or by disobeying his footnote- and appendixreading diktats) there is a price to be paid for such "insubordination." Namely: Unless she heeds an author's every word98 a reader can't complain if, at the "Grand Finale" of their "literary loveaffair," her "orgasmic expectations haven't been fully consummated"—as he so repeatedly and solemnly promised her they would when she was browsing her (promiscuous) way through his (predatory) wares.
(d) Nevertheless there is an undeniable grain of truth in the Moronic admonition that: "Those who keep their noses buried in a book whilst crossing Main Street99 will end up with their smart arses100 in a sling."101
(e) And, an author's godlike claims of "psychosexual (omni)potency" notwithstanding, there are some obvious physiological limits to the sexual satisfaction a woman can derive from simply reading a book. Hence it is common practice for the readers of even the most riveting romance novel to keep their ears, their mind and at least one eye open for the (albeit miraculous) appearance of a flesh and blood Prince Charming on her doorstep (selling brushes); at her window (checking a meter); up her tree (rescuing a "pussy" cat), in her kitchen (delivering ice); in her cellar (delivering coal); beside her pool (performing "routine" maintenance); in her attic (retrofitting insulation); on her front lawn (mowing it); in her back garden (cultivating it); on her telephone (making obscene suggestions); on her television screen (using his pelvis and guitar to transmit "musical" messages which—according to the FCC—are, strictly speaking "more prurient than pornographic"); on her radio (talking the kind of dusktodawnforadultsonlysmut our Founding Fathers had in the back of their minds when they wrote the First Amendment.102
(f) Hence it's been asserted by some experts103 on Mastering (or Mistressing) The Fine Art Of Having A (Reasonably) Safe & Sane Intellectual Fling With A Literary Sexfiend that: "Even at the risk of spiting104 her curiosity a woman should exert her moral spunk (if not her human dignity) by arbitrarily ignoring the odd footnote and/or occasional appendix when reading any novel whose author employs such sadoMachiavellian devices.
(g) And lastly, dear reader, before deciding105 whether to: (1) Read Appendix A before we enter the climactic phase of this introduction; (2) Read it at your leisure in the "postcoital" calm following said climax, or; (3) Forego its reading altogether you're entitled to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about why I've maneuvered you into such a diabolical predicament.
AS YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY SURMISED: My ulterior motive in writing this introduction was to expose you gradually to the daunting encounter if—by difficulties you might otherwise blindly following its depths of a author's advice106 —you "plunged yourself headlong" into the literary masterpiece we were so like Morons Awake!. Whether or not you realized it at the time, dear reader, while "witlessly" wending our way to this preclimactic point in my "editorial conducting a preamble" I was actually tutorial on such "esoteric" subjects as:
(1) The general, and a quintessential psychosexuality of fine art in "trainofthought" novel in cultural IQ particular;(2) The correlation between the level of a nation's collective and the degree to which its average citizens succeed in shaping their daily lives into that—while works of art they may not pass the test of timelessness—manage at least common clay (or to momentarily transcend the dirt) from which they are made;
(3) writing a The structural/stylistic eccentricities107 associated with "revolutionary demonstrated manifesto disguised as a bestselling gothic novel" examples of which have been by me with such increasing frequency that by now they should be no water is to a more irksome to you than duck's backfosters 108
(4) The (not necessarily quasi-) fornicational intimacy a TrainOfThought novelist between himself and (or his reader by revealing the details of his "nefarious plot" to subvert her Moronic American) antiIntellectualism while he is in the very act of doing so;
(5) The evils of are egalitarianism as they manifested in an American (or Moronic) sociocultural ethos that has become so slipperysloped even the crassest kind of mediocrity isn't what it once was.109
(6) The virtues of art as the most efficacious (and relatively painless) means to reverse the decline of Western Civilization by demonstrating that All Women (and some men) Are Born Equally Capable Of Appreciating The Finer Things In Life.110
Intro Part 7 Return to Index
Footnotes
89 Given the complexity of factors involved it is probably impossible to prove the fine arts have had no influence whatsoever in shaping the American ethos. But there seems to be precious little, if any, evidence indicating that as a nation we are any wiser now than we were before Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman wrote The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, and Leaves of Grass; or O'Neill, Wilder and Miller wrote The Iceman Cometh, Our Town and Death of a Salesman—to name but a few of the MadeInAmerica masterworks one would reasonably expect to have raised the level of our mainstream mentality a modest millimeter or two above that of a Third World mobocracy, a fourthrate banana republic, or an anthropological cul-de-sac (like Moronia). Instead the effect of these "Promethean contributions" to the elevation of America's cultural IQ may in fact have been retrogressive—to the extent that: By virtue of the genius which created them, for most Mainstream Americans they raise the profoundly disturbing question of whether some of their fellow citizens might have been created more equal than they were. Worse yet is the even more terrifying specter (and one you might be wise to avoid at this still preliminary juncture by refusing to read the remainder of this footnote!) raised by the Klutz Affair, to wit: Given the appropriate circumstances and opportunity to do so, ordinary people (even Morons!) can create extraordinary works of art.
The trouble with this apparently benign (if not rampantly humanistic) proposition being, of course, that it deprives those "ordinary" people of the excuse they have been making since time immemorial for not rising above their (Godgiven) mediocrity, namely: "That by definition—since we are common people we are congenitally incapable of painting uncommon pictures, writing uncommon books or composing uncommon music." The corollary of this postulate being, of course, that: The teeming masses of humanity are similarly incapable of appreciating the (socalled) "finer things in life." But there's a fly in this exculpatory ointment. If the average American (or Moron) has the mental wherewithall to appreciate the anti democratic nuances surrounding the Klutz Affair shouldn't he (or she) be equally capable of appreciating the aesthetic subtleties of Manet's Dejeuner sur 'l'herbe, Joyce's Ulysses or Mahler's 5th Symphony? Certainly the Protectors of Domestic Tranquillity in Moronville and their conspiratorial cohorts in Paris, Berlin, Moscow, London, Beijing and Washington think so; which explains their ruthless (but, thank God so far futile) campaign to prevent you from reading Morons Awake!.90 If, of course, Bloom had somehow succeeded in becoming America's greatest novelist he would have been faced with the (posthumous) problem of having his name eternally confused with that of his famous namesake (and to some extent precursor), the antihero of Joyce's Great Irish Novel, Ulysses. And yet, by an even more ironic twist of fate: As a result of the role he is about to play in the "miraculous" publication of the Great American Novel he couldn't write himself, Leopold Bloom's name will be forever linked (if not in bold type at least by way of a footnote) with those of its Crusading Author and Visionary Editoress.
91 The vast majority of which are, as Thorstein Veblen points out in his Theory of the Leisure Class, comprised of those whose fame (and fortunes) are inversely proportionate to their social utility (i.e., a professional golfer, junkbond dealer or plastic surgeon will "earn" exponentially more than a ditchdigger, farmhand or paramedic). Indeed, so rampant has this topsyturvy trend become in late20thcentury America that, on a scale of socioeconomic utility, 99.9% of our million- and billionaire celebrities would register a reading of absolute zero.
92 In the sense that such a seemingly absurd claim can only be taken seriously by those whose entire lives were devoted to what is now considered (by even those who work in the post office) to be a quintessentially menial occupation.
93 As its complete title makes perfectly plain, the purchasers of Morons Awake! were warned they would be reading more than just another trashy romance novel.
94 According to him: His unorthodox use of appendices is designed to give the reader an opportunity for delving deeply into subject matter that would otherwise be expunged by the editor(ess) of a conventional bestselling novel on the pretext that such "literary" devices only frustrate a woman's cravings for the quickest (and most simpleminded) kind of psychosexual fix. As with his extravagant use of footnotes, until the breakthrough publication of Morons Awake!, these "scholarly" devices were never employed in books of a fictional "nature." While not evoking all the furtive connotations of a footnote the appendix can still be utilized by an author to establish a certain "extracurricular intimacy" between himself and his (more adventuresome) readers.
95 Or, as the Morons say: "What's the point of escaping from an auto-da-fé only to find yourself being slowly fried to death in a skillet."
96 "Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language...If you approach [some strange woman] at a bus stop and murmur [into her ear] 'Thou still unravished bride of quietness,' [she becomes] instantly aware [she is] in the presence of [no ordinary masher.]" Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, "What Is Literature?" (1983). And, according to Alan Bloom, "Nietzsche...thought [the act of writing or reading a poem] was [just as] erotic as sexual intercourse."
97 Where the audience members are entirely at the mercy of the pace by which a dramatist (Bertolt Brecht), writer/director (Ingmar Bergman) or composer (Richard Strauss) chooses to impose his "artistic will" on them.
98 Including those in fine print.
99 The Main Street of Moronia's capital (and only) city, Moronville, is notorious for both its dangerous state of disrepair (some of its pot holes are said to date from Roman Empire times) and the reckless abandon with which those few Morons who (just barely) learn how to drive a car do so —especially when under the influence of turnipschnaps, as most Moronic motorists (and pedestrians for that matter) generally are.
100 Although for the most part Morons have no difficulty expressing themselves in terms that are (alltoo) typically American they cling (rather quaintly) to a version of "the King's English" they've been speaking since 1627. Accordingly one hears such (refreshingly) archaic words like ASSUBJUGATE [poke fun], ATTEMPTABLE [unseduceable!], AVAUNT [begone], BALLOCKS [gonads], BEEF-WITTED [brainless], BLAZON [manifesto], BODKIN [dagger], BOGGLER [rogue], BURGONET [hardhat], COISTREL [knave], CONCUPY [lust], COYNTE [vagina], COZENAGE [deceit], DUTEOUS [servile], EMULOUS [role model], EXSUFFLICATE [windbag], FARDEL [burden], GARBOILS [troubles], GLOZE [smoothtalk], JACKANAPES [knave], LUSTIHOOD [manliness], MALKIN [female knave], OPPUGNANCY [quarrelsomeness], ORGILLOUS [proud], PATCHERY [knavery], PHEEZE [scare], POTCH [stab], PROBAL [worthy of thought], PROLOGUERY [foreplay], PUDENCY [modesty], ROPERY [knavery], RUNAGATE [fugitive], SCAFFOLDAGE [stage], SCOFFLAW [knave], SLUBBER [defile], SMULKIN [friend], SOILURE [character flaw], STINKARD [knave], STOMACHER [brassiere], UNBONNETED [hatless], VARLET [knave], WENCHLESS [celibate] and WHORESON [best buddy].
101 Not unlike our own folklore, there are hundreds of Moronic homilies, aphorisms, adages and proverbs validating the ethnocentric propositions that "Ignorance is bliss," "What you don't know will never hurt you," "Too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing," "Those societies who forget their past are better off than the ones who learn there is nothing they can do to prevent its repetition," "Wisdom is no laughing matter," "No amount of thinking can make a turnip grow," "It's only through the blood, toil, tears and sweat—not the brains—of its people that Moronia got to be the kind of microstate it is today," "The best part of living is done from the eyebrows down," "The best part of living is done from the neck down," "The best part of living is done from the belt down," etc.
102 See recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions in: FCC v. Loudmouth Broadcasting Co., inc.; People v. Vox Populi Productions; N.Y. v. Howard "There's-no-filth-like-pure-filth" Stern (aka Howard "Loverlips" Stern; Howard "Lascivious Lips" Stern, &; Howard "Deep Throat" Stern)
103 See May 1992 cover story of Journal of the Institute for Advanced Research into Female Mental Disorders Caused by the Reading of Extramarital Fairytaleporn, entitled: "Some Case Studies Of Average American Housewives Suffering From Literary Letdown Syndrome (LLS), Post Psychocoital Stress (PPS) and Armchair Nymphomania Complex (ACM or 'Novelitis'). "
104 Although they deal with a more parochial matter these pearls of Moronic ignorance aren't altogether without some relevance unworthy of our attention in this regard: "Is a humble war widow any less heroic for crossing her legs at the cost of (what was to begin with) her allbutbankrupt sexlife than her husband was for sacriflcing his life to defend a socalled 'nation' nobody but a Moron would want to live in?"—graffiti inscribed on a monument containing the names of the (9) Moronic militiamen who died in the Battle of Knucklehead Ridge.
105 As you will shortly be compelled to do!
106 Not that I'm criticizing you (or the author) for adhering to the conventional protocol for entering into a "literary relationship" whose objectives are, for the most part, purely platonic. But, as you will discover, a woman should approach the reading of a book like Morons Awake!—if there be any such—as she would the predatory blandishments of some strange man reputed to be a "conversational makeout artist."
107 Such as the extravagant (if not obsessive) utilization of parentheses, footnotes, appendices, baroqued (or even Byzantine!G) sentence structure and recondited vocabulary—to name but a few.
108 Or the techniques of an expert foreplayist are to a woman by the time she finally reaches what he promised her would be "The Big Bang" that can only come as a result of his having postponed the climax of her orgasmic expectations until they had been stretched well beyond their breaking point.
109 In Moronia, of course, this steady slide toward the abyss of blissful ignorance is that much less precipitous than the American version for the exceedingly low level of its starting point. Nevertheless elderly Morons ("fogies") can be frequently heard to lament that: "While even in the best of Moronia's Good Old Days you could get more blood from a turnip than abstract ideas from a Moron, at least those of us who couldn't conceptualize our way out of a paper bag had the moral fiber to admit our intellectual shortcomings!"
110 In the author's opinion (expressed during one of our discussions on the feasibility of his messianic aspirations to evangelize the entire female population of America): "I have no doubts the dormant mentality of any average American housewife who manages to even skim her way completely through Morons Awake! will be so profoundly stirred by such a novel experience she is more likely than not to seek its repetition between the covers of Finnegan's Wake, The Story of O, La Maison du Rendezvous, and/or Death on the Installment Plan—or at a performance of Capriccio, Parsifal, Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale, Das Lied von der Erde, Woyzeck and/or The Persecution And Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed By The Inmates of The Asylum of Charenton Under The Direction of The Marquis de Sade—or while strolling through an exhibition of objects d'art officially declared by the Third Reich to be "the product of Jewish and pseudoJewish degenerates!"
"—or," he went on, "by rereading Morons Awake! as a: (1) Compendiumd of impractical but vitally essential information; (2) Fountain of amatory knowledge; (3) Linguistic cornucopia; (4) Garden of intellectual delights; (5) Handbook on the theory and practice of foreplay; (6) Treasure chest of advice to the lovelorn; (7) Road map to Utopia, Nirvana, Shangri-la, El Dorado and all those other earthly, allegorical, metaphysical and fictitious states of sociocultural bliss; (8) Marathon conversation with an artistic mastermind the likes of which few women have ever been privileged to enjoy; (9) Manifesto for liberating the female sex from the chains of their (to some extent selfimposed) bondage to the trashier kinds of reading material; (10) Long overdue Apologia for all the JudeoChristian stones cast at Eve as the Mother of All Sinners when her memory should be sainted as the first female whose fear of God was exceeded by her hunger for knowledge; (11) Bible of prurient existentialism; (12) Kama Sutra of mental sex; (13) Mein Kampf resulting from the persecution of a JewishAmericanIntellectual; (14) Monumental mash note; (15) Novelized version of Beethoven's 5th Symphony; (16) Document of more significance to America's future history (if indeed it is to have one) than the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and/or Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and; (17) Bona fide alternative to watching television."Glossary
Byzantine noun\adj (1794) 1 : of, relating to, or characteristic of the ancient city of Byzantium 2 : of, relating to, or having the characteristics of a style of architecture developed in the Byzantine Empire esp. in the 5th and 6th centuries featuring the dome carried on pendentives over a square and incrustation with marble veneering and with colored mosaics on grounds of gold 3 : of or relating to the churches using a traditional Greek rite and subject to Eastern canon law 4 often not cap a : of, relating to, or characterized by a devious and usu. surreptitious manner of operation b : intricately involved : LABYRINTHINE
2Byzantinen(1836) : a native or inhabitant of Byzantium