PRY & PEBBLE PRIVATE DETECTIVE
AGENCY
"SINCE 1879 WE HAVE LEFT NO FORENSIC STONE
UNTURNED"
ABE RATTNER, BS, MCRIM, PID, IRS, ATF, FBI, CIA: SUCCESSOR/SOLEPROP.
63 E. 18TH ST., NEW YORK, N.Y.
TEL. 212 344-6002
FOR PRESIDENTIAL/CEO EYES ONLY
DATE: *********** ** ****,
TO: PRESIDENT/CEO ****** ***** Publishing, Inc.
SUBJ: Investigation of suspicious circumstances surrounding Leo Bloom's "providential" discovery of letter bomb addressed to Editor-in-Chief of aforementioned ****** ***** Publishing, Inc.
ENCL: Transcript of "Interview"1 with Mr. Leopold Bloom.
Based on my recently completed investigation of--to put it mildly--the "somewhat" suspicious circumstances surrounding Leo Bloom's (in his words) "providential discovery" of the letter bomb addressed to your Editor-in-Chief I hereby submit the following Facts, Conclusions and Recommendations per our retainer agreement:
I THE FACTS
A. Bloom's socalled "hunch" regarding the "explosive nature" of the letter in question was (as the enclosed "interview" clearly indicates) part and parcel of an elaborate tissue of lies cunningly crafted to conceal those alleged "extrasensory powers" by which he was able--"more or less"--to "divine" the contents of virtually all the correspondence he handled throughout his lifelong employment as a "mail boy" with your firm.
B. Bloom's claims of "scientific and technological incompetence"2 notwithstanding, the facts are that any idiot with a highschool diploma can assemble a state of the art letter bomb (or multimegaton nuclear device for that matter) from plans readily available on the Internet--and with raw materials purchased from the nearest Wal--or K-Mart!3 Moreover, by using certain surreptitious techniques I was able to establish that: Like so many other failed "artists"4 just beneath Bloom's seemingly harmless surface lurked a homicidal megalomaniac capable of committing the most horrendous atrocities in the name of leading humanity into some Promised Land of "SocioCultural Bliss." Accordingly, we shouldn't be misled by the "happy ending" of what Bloom wants us to believe would have been a tragedy had it not been for the "accident" of his "fortuitous" intervention. No! Wrapped around the bomb he put into that envelope he later "discovered" on a "hunch" was an extortion note Bloom had written with invisible ink he knew someone with my knowledge of the criminal mind would have no trouble reading. Which, of course, I didn't. In essence what Bloom's note says is this: Having added a few more feathers to the nest he's occupied for 70 years by virtue of his employment with a firm famous for its benevolent personnel policies5 Bloom was actually killing two birds with the same unexploded letter bomb the second bird being that if and when he was asked to go gently into the night of his vocational oblivion he would do so with a bang bigger than the one that nearly flattened the World Trade Center!
C. As for the motives of this otherwise "most mildmannered of dirty old men" in perpetrating such an act of criminal6 desperation, it doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that Bloom masterminded his nefarious letter bomb plot from beginning to end in a last desperate attempt to perpetuate an obsolete career whose doomsday he had been struggling to postpone for at least the past 40 years because he suddenly realized that:
(1) Regardless of the "essential" role he still played as the "pivotal postal link" in the creative chain which continues to make midtown Manhattan the publishing capital of the world--if not the cultural colossus it once was--as a 90-yearold mail "boy" his prospects for winning an age discrimination suit in the event he was fired were between slim and none, with the odds heavily tilted in favor of the latter outcome;(2) His economic reason for being had been so ravaged by the relentless assault from such "modern" antipostal innovations as the telegram, telephone and, of course, fax machine that, for all practical--and philosophic--purposes it had reached the vanishing point.7 And last (but by no means the least apocalyptic of all the calamities confronting this seemingly most solid of senior citizens8);
(3) The sheer bulk of VDOM9 complaints lodged against him by his female coworkers (some of which date from 1923!) could no longer be swept under the corporate carpet by a management team that now found itself precluded from enjoying what were once the routine sexual favors even the most respectable working woman felt obligated to provide for her male supervisors.
II CONCLUSIONS
A. Although Bloom is without any doubt another of those Jews who lack the cranial wherewithal to consummate their delusions10 of intellectual grandeur, in the final analysis he is probably just smart enough to pose a clear and very present danger to the employees whose safekeeping is entrusted to you as the CEO of a corporation whose motto is "Putting People First and Profits Second."
B. As such it is my duty to advise you in the strongest possible terms that unless you take the bull by its horns and (to mix a metaphor) defuse this human timebomb in your midst ASAP the consequences could (and in my opinion probably will) be nothing less than catastrophic.11
C. Putting aside (as we must) all those manly fellow feelings we might justifiably have for the "Promethean" nature of his psychosis the only permanent "cure" for what ails our "old friend" Bloom is the kind presently being prescribed by a certain Dr. Kevorkian.
D. Any hopes you have for finding some "humane" solution to the Bloom Problem by offering him a gold watch--or parachute12--should be abandoned forthwith. The slightest hint on your part of putting him out to pasture on even the most generous terms would only precipitate the very disaster we are seeking to avoid.13
E. Moreover, as you yourself said at a board meeting of the National Endowment for the Humanities: "When all our civilized options are exhausted we shouldn't shrink from invoking the law of the jungle to justify those occasional acts of barbarism needed when advancing the cause of America's cultural supremacy."14
F. Since the foregoing critique demonstrates conclusively that:
1. Bloom's employment should be terminated with the kind of "extreme prejudice" used by certain national security15 agencies to solve their most "intractable personnel problems," and;2. Having devoted far more time and intellectual energy16 agonizing over the fate of a quintessentially expendable nonagenarian with one foot already in the grave and another on a bananapeel of his own invention--the only remaining issue to be decided is the best method by which to snuff out the flame of Mr. Leopold Bloom's (anything but) brief candle; to wit:
III RECOMMENDATIONS
A. Do it yourself and run the risk of botching what can be a very messy job indeed (as the MacBeths found out to their sorrow) or;
B. Rely on the expert services of an organization like Pry & Pebble for professional results that are "guaranteed to please or your money will be cheerfully refunded."
*****
Now that this phase of our contractual relationship is complete--and at the risk of offending your intelligenc--I must implore you in the most urgent terms to DESTROY THIS DOCUMENT WITHOUT A MOMENT'S DELAY OR HESITATION and to do so preferably by incinerating it since, like most conventional wisdom, the efficacy of shredding is more fictitious than factual.
[NOTE: The attentive reader will be curious to know why this "supersecret" document wasn't destroyed and how it managed to find its compromising way into my hands. The answer is: For all his "cloak & dagger expertise" and "deductive powers," Abe Rattner made the rather elementary blunder of transmitting his report on Bloom's "postal ESP" via the U. S. mail (albeit it in a socalled "security" envelope) whereupon it was intercepted by Bloom and eventually bequeathed to me as the custodianess of his personal papers.-J. P.]
INTERVIEW WITH LEOPOLD BLOOM
(conducted by A. Rattner)
Q. Before getting down to brass tacks, Leo--you don't object to proceeding on a first name basis do you--?
A. Since you brought the matter up; I would prefer it if you called me Mister Bloom--or better yet just plain Bloom--until our relationship develops into one that would justify using terms of genuine endearment. If, of course, it ever does.
Q. Anything you say, Bloom! I understand where you're coming from. After all; it isn't every day a solid citizen like you finds himself being "grilled" by someone with my credentials as a former cold warrior whose interrogation techniques drew rave reviews from such jaded critics of that ancient artform as the KGB, MI-5, Mossad, STASI--and even North Korea's infamous Ito-ki'tai("blood-from-a-turnip") torture squad.
A. So, you're admitting this "friendly little chat" of ours is in reality a third degree!
Q. Relax, Bloom. I was merely making--or trying to make--one of my "bedside manner" jokes in the hope of establishing some personal rapport between us as we delve into this heroic escapade of yours for purposes that are strictly on the upandup, Or, as one kike to another, 100% kosher. Now--as I was saying: before we deal with the formalities of what promises to be a perfectly routine debriefing, from a professional point of view I'm curious about this "talent" you claim to have for knowing what the contents of an envelope are before it's actually opened.
A. If that was supposed to be another of your "jokes" it went over like the proverbial lead balloon!
Q. Believe me Bloom, Abe Rattner is not known in this business for his sense of humor. Consequently I can't imagine why you construed what I just said as being even remotely comical.
A. Then I'll spell it out for you, shamus; Any sleuth worth his salt would know that: While being a "mail boy" is one of the most menial occupations any fully grown man could possibly pursue, in doing so he assumes a moral obligation of the utmost solemnity never to reveal the secrets of the correspondence whose confidentiality is the sole reason for his occupational being! Hence your "professional curiosity" concerning my "clairvoyance" is nothing more than a clever ploy designed to trick me.
Q. Trick you into doing what?
A. Ascribing criminal connotations to what is a perfectly natural--and completely innocent--aspect of the life I've spent blindly (but not altogether mindlessly!) delivering other people's manuscripts, fan mail, editorial critiques, aromatic love letters, interoffice mash notes, plainly-wrapped pornographic periodicals, clandestine communiques, urgent dispatches and classified documents (including those marked "CEO EYES ONLY." Not to mention post cards which may or may not always be models of discretion,
Q. All I can tell you, Bloom, is that like most normal people I never dreamed what seems like the simplest of all vocational acts--delivering mail--could be fraught with so many temptations!
A. In some respects I may not be the man I was 60 or 70 years ago, Rattner; but from the neck up I'm still hitting on all eight cylinders! In other words; you're wasting your time if you think you can pull any of that I'm-just-a-poor-dumb-dick-doing-my-job wool over my eyes.
Q. Touche! My metaphorical fedora is off to you, Bloom! Smartswise you certainly have nothing to be ashamed of. As a matter of fact I'm sure there are plenty of hairy chested Hemen half your age--or even younger--who would gladly trade their surplus spunk (if not one of the glands producing it!) for the secret of your seminal mentality,
A. There's nothing very mysterious about how I've managed to maintain my intellectual manhood for more than three quarters of a century. Certainly nothing worth the exorbitant price you describe.
Q. Oh?
A. No. Unlike your average "hairychested Heman' who heedlessly flings himself phallus first over the steepest precipice in his lemminglike pursuit of a quick fornicational fix I always check for a safety net before leaping to what could be any fatal conclusions. Accordingly, prior to spilling my letterbomb beans I carefully pondered the flip side of a proposition that, at first glance, seemed singularly devoid of the slightest danger.
Q. But?
A. Upon closer scrutiny I saw that, sooner or later, some sleazy shyster like you would come along and read the most sinister motives into an act which couldn't be more devoid of ulteriorality.
Q. Who the hell are you calling a--
A. Not that I blame you personally for doing a dirty job which, given the dogeatdogism dominating the modern American workplace, had to be done by someone.
Q. That sounds like the faintest possible kind of praise; but coming from you I'm not about to look such a gift horse in the mouth!
A. A prudent decision. And, now that the stage has been set, if you're still interested in hearing my answer to your original question I will begin doing so by asking you one of my own?
Q. Do I have any choice!
A. Not really.
Q. In that case, ask away!
A. It's a somewhat lengthy one, so listen carefully.
Q. I'm all ears!
A. Are you acquainted with all--or any--of the following books: The Development of the Imperial Persian Postal Service under Cyrus the Great by Sir Thomas Blanchard, Royal Mail: the story of the Posts in England from Edward IV to the Present Day by F. G. Kay, The Transatlantic Mail by Arthur E. Summerfield, A Brief History of the Pony Express by Abner K. Wilcox, Histoire General des Postes Francaises (6 vol) and Histoire des Postes Francaises (2 vol) by Eugene Valle, Handworterbuch des Postwesens edited by Hans Rackow, An Outline of Postal History and Practice with a History of the Post Office of India by Ivie Hamilton, A Short History of the Mail Service by Carl Scheele, The History of the Post Office in British North America by William Smith, Memorandum on the Role of the Post as a Factor in Economic and Social Development (issued by the Union Postale Universelle), or the writings of Antoine Saint Exupery in which he describes his exploits as a pilot with Aeropostale?
Q. I can't say for certain, but since my reading habits are pretty much confined to the fields of criminology and private detection, I seriously doubt it.
A. Then you are no doubt also ignorant of this fundamental fact about the rise of Western Civilization, namely: Had it not been for unsung heroes like me who--from roughly 3000 B.C. to 1850 A.D.--dedicated (and frequently lost) their lives to pioneering what we so arrogantly think of nowadays as "modern" telecommunications the world wouldn't be much better off today than it was 50 centuries ago when word of mouth was the only means by which information could be transmitted over any considerable distance?
Q. I think that's a safe assumption. And, while no one would quibble over the debt humanity owes to those valiant nonentities Tacitus celebrated by saying "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"--
A. Those are Herodatus' words; but I won't "quibble" with you over who spoke them.
Q. --I must take exception to the credit you're claiming for their swashbuckling exploits as a man whose "appointed rounds" have been confined to the womblike (and weatherproofed) walls of a midtown Manhattan publishing house. After all, being a "mail boy" isn't the sort of stuff from which the legends surrounding the cursus publicus, the pony express and Aeropostale are made, is it?
A. Maybe not, but anyone who has ever endured the tedium, ridicule and quiet desperation which are part and parcel (no pun intended) of the present status quo postalwise is, I think, entitled to assert his (or her) spiritual kinship with those stalwart messengers of yesteryear. Moreover, because of the special factors peculiar to my situation, the generally decadent state of affairs into which the modern system of mail delivery has fallen doesn't apply to me.
Q. Excuse me for what might appear to be my impertinence, Bloom; but other than setting what must be the world's record for doing the same crummy job over a period of some 70odd years what makes your situation so special?
A. For starters the first 20 or 30 of those 70odd years just happened to coincide with the twilight of a Golden Epistolary Age when, for fifty centuries, simply receiving a handwritten letter was by definition a significant event--when one considered the premeditation, effort and expense required on the sender's part. Remember, Rattner: we are talking about a time when not only had the term "junk mail" yet to be coined, such an idea would have seemed quintessentially oxymoronic if indeed anyone dared to think and/ or express it.
Q. It's hard to believe there ever was a time like that!
A. I may seem to you like a senile old man whose mind is filled with grandiose delusions of his vocational glory but the truth is that I have known a grandeur far greater than any I could dream of! Not a day went by, as I walked my way to work in that bygone era, when I didn't ponder the same thoughts Saint Exupery would later express so eloquently in Wind, Sand and Stars when he wrote about the eve of his maiden flight as a pilot for Aeropostale, to wit:
"When I left Guillaumet on that freezing winter night, I felt the need of a brisk walk. I turned up my coat collar, and as I strode among the indifferent passersby I was harboring a secret fervor as tender as if I had just fallen in love. To be brushing past these strangers with that marvelous secret in my heart filled me with pride. I seemed to myself as a sentinel standing guard over a sleeping camp. These passersby knew nothing about me, yet it was to me...they were about to [entrust] the [weighty]...cares [contained] in their mail pouches...And I, muffled up in my cloak, walked among them like a shepherd, though they were [oblivious to] my solicitude. Nor were they receiving any of those [weather reports] now being despatched to my by the night. For this snow storm that was gathering, and that was to burden my first flight, concerned my frail flesh, not theirs. What could they know of those stars that one by one were going out? I alone was in the confidence of the stars. To me alone news was being sent of the enemy's position before the hour of battle. My footfall rang in a universe that was not theirs."
And the next morning as he rode the bus taking him to the aerodrome:
"I looked about me. Luminous points glowed in the darkness. Cigarettes punctuated the humble meditations of worn old clerks. How many of us had they escorted through the rain on a journey from which there was no coming back? I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, shabby domestic cares. Their [conversation decorated] the walls of the dismal prison in which these [mediocrities] had locked themselves up. And suddenly I had [an epiphany]. Old bureaucrat, my comrade--it isn't you who are to blame. No one ever [encouraged] you to escape. [So], like a termite, you [insulated yourself] by [cementing] every chink and cranny...the light [of reality] might [penetrate]. You rolled yourself up into a [neat little] ball [with]in your..security [blanket], in routine, in the...conventions of provincial life, [erecting] a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your [wretched] fate as man. You... do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder [or kicked you in the pants] while there was still time. [And] now that the clay [from] which you were shaped has dried and hardened, [there is nothing left] in you [to] ever awaken the...musician, the poet [or] the astronomer [sleeping inside you since your birth]."
And still later, ruminating in a windblown cockpit on the heroic character of his aviational role model:
"Guillaumet's courage [emanates from] his honesty. But even this is not his fundamental quality. His moral greatness [resides] in his [abiding] sense of [duty]. He knew...he was responsible for himself, for the mails, for the fulfillment of...his comrades' [hopes]. In his hands he was holding their sorrow and their joy. He [alone] was responsible for [the magnificent enterprises they were planning] and in which he was [their silent partner]."17
Q. It's perfectly natural to romanticize the trivial roles most of us are cast to play in the grand socioeconomic scheme of things as they are in these waning years of the twentieth century, Bloom. But aren't you carrying things a trifle too far by comparing yourself to a pair of authentic Aeropostale daredevils like Saint Exupery and Guillaumet?
A. No. The moral imperatives of delivering mail are neither enhanced nor diminished by the physical dangers or lack thereof in discharging one's duties. In the last analysis all that really matters is: Treating what might seem to be the most inconsequential of messages as if it were a matter of life and death. And, in that regard, the argument can be made that the publishing ventures I helped to expedite were manifestly more "magnificent" than any of those bourgeois enterprises for which Saint Exupery and Guillaumet gave their lives18--since without them America would never have fully risen to what was its greatest literary occasion during that 30 year period we are talking about.
Q. Jesus Christ, are you telling me with a straight face that if it hadn't been for Leopold Bloom The Sun Also Rises, Farewell To Arms, The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, You Can't Go Home Again, Look Homeward, Angel, The Rock And The Web, Light in August, The Sound and the Fury, An American Tragedy, A Death in the Family, The Day of the Locust, The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, Gone With the Wind, East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath would never have become the Great American Novels they are now universally hailed as being?
A. It's a definite possibility. But that isn't the issue you were addressing with your original question to me, is it?
Q. Of course it isn't! Or is it? For some strange reason the damned thing has completely slipped my mind!
A. I believe you expressed some curiosity about my "talent" for ascertaining the contents of an envelope without opening it.
Q. My God! How could I have forgotten such an tantalizing topic?
A. Who knows; perhaps in establishing my ground rules for answering what is, after all, an extremely delicate question I may have lost you along the way?
Q. May have lost me? Jesus, Bloom; I hate like hell to admit this, but: Of all the customers I've dealt with in my cold war career as the ballbustingest browbeater this side of the iron curtain, without a doubt you're the toughest when it comes to turning the art of doubletalk into a bloody science!
A. If so it's purely coincidental. I'm afraid the esoteric nature of this subject matter we are discussing makes a certain amount of obfuscation unavoidable.
Q. You can say that again!
A. But, now that we are back on the same track, let me resume by dilating briefly on the stillglorious state of epistolary affairs as they were during those two or three "twilight" decades before handwritten correspondence joined the dodo bird, the horse & buggy, the fireside chat, the mom & pop grocery store, the oneroom schoolhouse, the "until death do us part" marriage, the nickel cigar, an honest day's pay for an honest day's work, "literary" fiction, manifest destiny, motherhood, (homemade) apple pie and the flag (whose burning is now sanctified by our Supreme Court)--as another victim of America's mindless stampede toward the cliff's edge of socio-cultural damnation in its Faustian pursuit of cybernetic happiness.
Q. After hearing all that it's no wonder I momentarily lost my intellectual bearings. For Christ's sake, Bloom, can't you curtail all this "esoteric" crap and cut directly to the goddammed chase?
A. All right, Rattner, if that's the way you want it; let me call your attention to the following facts:
I. Through these humble hands of mine passed the manuscripts which subsequently won no less than nine Pulitzer and five Nobel prizes for literature--not to mention the scores of "minor" masterpieces that made their way to the top of a bestseller list when paperback titles like "Dodsworth," "Miss Lonelyhearts," "Saratoga Trunk," "Day of the Locust," "Manhattan Transfer," "The Fountainhead," "Death Comes for the Archbishop," etc. were literally ten cents a dozen;
II. And into these same hands were entrusted the messages exchanged between such legendary authors as Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dreiser, Dos Passos, Sinclair, Steinbeck, Wolfe, Faulkner, et al and their (lesser known but) equally brilliant editorial mentors;
III. Although strictly speaking the role I played in helping forge America's finest literary hour was--like that of all my postal predecessors (excepting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern perhaps--more or less accidental and, for the most part, not all that praiseworthy in broader terms by simply having walked onto a stage where such an extravaganza was unfolding some of its magic was bound to rub off on me, to wit:
A. While ethically forbidden to read the contents of the mail I delivered, nothing prevented me technically from gleaning every scrap of information I could from its wrappings;B. Consequently, as time passed, I acquired a considerable expertise in the field of envelopology19--an obscure science, but one I presume you are acquainted with as a private detective;
C. The result of which being that, by methodically analyzing the smallest details of an envelope, including:
(1) The chemical properties, quality (or lack thereof), texture, color and watermarking (if any) of the materials from which it was manufactured;
(2) Each and every blotch, smudge, fingerprint or other blemish that sheds light on the state of the sender's emotional and/or mental state at the time the letter was written (the plain brown wrappers of Wolfe's manuscripts, for example, were particularly notorious for their blood, sweat, tear and coffee stains--not to mention the odd burn hole or two caused by the cigarettes he chainsmoked like a chimney);
(3) Aromatic indicators, such as the reek of aviation engine fumes (which, although usually more tangential than evidentiary, in the early open cockpit days of air mail did add an adventurous aura to even the most lackluster letters) and the more probative odors of:(a) Expensive French perfume;
(b) A telltale trace of the special smell a man comes to associate with the lingerie worn by his mistress even when she is fully clothed and/or far beyond the normal range of his tactile, visual and auditory reach, or, best of all;
(c) That faint whiff of some mysterious femme fatale's parfum au naturel asit wends its wanton way into the nostrils of a perfectly strange but not necessarily innocent postal bystander;
(4) The stamp, post mark, return address, special handling instructions (registered, certified, postage due, special delivery, etc.) and other official markings helpful in unraveling the mystery surrounding an envelope's contents and, lastly, what is usually the most fruitful of all indicia;
(5) The sender's handwriting--along with the type of pen and ink used in that activity--one can (as we complete Point C. above) make certain reasonably accurate deductions about the general nature of the contents in question without actually reading them;
D. This is especially true in a midtown Manhattan publishing house mileau when one also takes into account such circumstantial factors as:(1) The latest office "dirt" oconcerning the current state of political, social, cultural and/or amatory affairs (if any) between the sender and the addressee;
(2) Journalistic, scholarly, critical and/or publishing trade speculation involving those same parties vis-a-vis their roles in the (quasi-) copulational circumstances arising when editorial yin meets literary yang in the procreating of a bestseller--especially one with "Great American Novel" and/or "Artistic Masterpiece" aspirations;
(3) The potpourri of seeminglyinsignificantbutpotentiallyprofitable odds and ends one picks up along the way by simply working in a mail room; which, before it turned into an epistolary junk- and graveyard, was the subterranean nerve center of all those midtown Manhattan skyscrapers where every book publisher with any claim to international fame had its headquarters;
IV. WHEREFORE, when all of the above factors are considered IT IS REASONABLE TO CONCLUDE THAT: Having spent 70 years earning his credentials as a Board Certified Postal Clairvoyant (not that such a title exists, but it should) THERE IS NOTHING MYSTERIOUS AND/OR SINISTER ABOUT LEOPOLD BLOOM'S "EDUCATED GUESS" CONCERNING THE LETHAL AND/OR EXPLOSIVE NATURE OF THE LETTER BOMB UNDER DISCUSSION.
Q. After listening to that lecture of yours on the subject, Bloom, all I can say is--
A. Not that my expertise as an envelopologist is worth much nowadays when one rarely comes across a letter worth the stationary it's written on!
Q. Or that the stationary itself is worthy of being called sta--
A. And God knows how long it's been since one of those unsolicited manuscripts--which, for some strange reason continue to arrive in the same quantities they did during the Glory Days of book publishing--produced that tingling sensation in my fingertips indicating the debut of another Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner or Steinbeck; let alone an Edna Ferber, a Margaret Mitchell or a Grace Metalious.
Q. The bestselling novelists of today certainly don't measure up to their illus--
A. I wonder why that is?
Q. Hell's bells, Bloom; isn't it obvious that nothing in this decadent society of ours comes close to being what it once was?
A. No, no, no. What I meant was this: Why in the world would a nononsense organization like R***** H**** persist in accepting manuscripts from the rankest kind of amateur authors when the chances for discovering even a minor new writing talent by doing so are about the same as finding a needle in the proverbial haystack?
Q. Who knows? Maybe it's an act of corporate kindness meant to give one of its oldest employees a reason for getting out of bed every morning long after his services ceased making economic sense. In which case you wouldn't be the only American (past his prime or otherwise) who "earned" a paycheck performing tasks society could just as well do without.
A. I don't need you to tell me that, raison d'etrewise, I've been a corporate charity case for the past 30 years. What I fail to understand is why this obsolete policy of trafficking in less than mediocre manuscripts is perpetuated on such a lavish scale? After all, on an average day I wheel several hundred of those fat manila envelopes J.P. refers to as "my daily dose of artistic hemlock" (or "latest load of literary landfill") into the broomclosetsized basement office she calls her "private hellhole" (or "personal salt mine").
Q. J.P.?
A. Miss Jayne Playne--spelled with 2 'y's.
Q. Being saddled with a handle like that it's no wonder she would try to maximize every last one of its phonetic possibilities!
A. Officially known as a "Publisher's Reader," Jayne is one of those dedicated females whose purpose--in what she describes as "the Diogenesian (to coin a phrase) scheme of things"--is to spend her working life vainly searching for a needle among the endless stacks of hackwritten hay she finds dumped on her desk every morning by--in her surprisingly purplish prose--"an antiquated lecher whose unceasing stream of pornographic ruminations put those of his notorious namesake to shame."
Q. That's very interesting; but I fail to see what this blearyeyed-damsel-in-distress has to do with the sad story you were telling me about the lack of literary luster in that daily deluge of misbegotten manuscripts whose futile delivery has now become the principal purpose of your pointless life?
A. In the first place; Jayne Playne's longsuffering-needle-in-a-haystack plight proves I am not the sole beneficiary of a corporate makework scheme for some superannuated fart who refuses to pull the plug on his long defunct viability as a lowly but productive member of the once noble publishing profession. Despite her complaints about "the eternity" she spends "slaving away from dawn to dusk for a hopelessly lost cause" in point of chronological fact Miss Playne is a good dozen lustra20 from being over my kind of geriatric hill. And secondly; What about those countless thousands of downtrodden bastards whose delusions of literary grandeur provide the paper grist for her Publishing House Reader's "hell hole" and my mail room (tread)mills?
Q. What about them?
A. Don't their vast numbers tend to confirm the conviction Jayne and I share that our Herculean efforts to find the next Great American Novelist--if not that author who, by writing a single book, will save the entire world from the deluge of mediocrity in which it is drowning--aren't a monumental exercise in futility?
Q. My God, Bloom; are you seriously suggesting you and this "Plain Jane" dame have been cast by divine providence to play "Joseph and Mary" for the immaculate procreating of a latterday "literary messiah?"
A. Yes! That's exactly what I'm "suggesting!"
Q. Well if that case, Bloom, there's no point in continuing this little chat of ours since any additional questions I might have had concerning the mysterious ways in which your mind works have all been answered by that last statement. Although there is one small matter about which I am still somewhat curious.
A. Shoot.
Q. Are you really the complete lunatic I take you for--or am I confusing your madness with the method by which you seek to create that mistaken impression?
A. Who knows? Wasn't it Freud who once said: "Not all madmen are crazy. Unfortunately there are no hard and fast rules for making that crucial distinction."
END OF INTERVIEW
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Footnotes
1 The reasons for putting this in quotation marks will become crystal clear when you read what is, in private investigative parlance, a classic example of "verbal diarrhea." It will, I think, also be obvious that the apparent "madness" of my methodology in allowing Bloom to bend my ear without interruption was in fact a brilliant example of adapting standard interrogation techniques to hoist this queerest of letterbombing windbags on his own petard. I should also add here that, while footnotes seldom appear in a "gumshoe's" work product, there is something about this case which seems to demand their use.
2 In this regard the procedures by which agencies like the IRS, ATF, FBI, and CIA ordinarily handle their internal VIP/DOM and/or VIP/VDOM cases are, unfortunately, not applicable here. During the course of attaining his VIP status the IRS, ATF, FBI, and CIA DOM/VDOM invariably accumulates political and personal IOUs he can use for leveraging an "amicable parting of the ways" that won't tarnish his--or anyone else's--image as a pillar of the insidethebeltway community. Such "sweetheart" deals are usually "signed, sealed and delivered" only after the female complainant herself has been cajoled (or blackmailed) into performing on a fee-for-service basis the very sexual acts her refusal to so do on a pro bono basis gave rise to such a circular turning of events.
3 As evidenced by those alltoofrequentbutunreported cases where disgruntled writers try (with increasing success) to avenge the rejection slips they receive from some poor publisher's First Reader by boobytrapping the next manuscript they send her with a lethal quantity of homemade Centex. Not that book publishing is the only entity menaced by the post Cold War specter of mass media terrorism practiced by a growing number of home-grown Marxist diehards and/or the more militant.ly antiWestern Muslim fundamentalists. Lately the cloak & dagger grapevine has been buzzing with stories about sensational acts of sabotage carried out against such icons of the American entertainment industry as Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, MCA, Paramount, Warner Brothers and Walt Disney for the role they (allegedly) play in "defiling the human mainstream with their endless outpouring of untreated cultural sewage."
4 Most notably: Attila the Hun (actor) Henry VIII (composer), Adolf Hitler (painter), Josef Goebbels (playwright) Benito Mussolini (novelist), Mao Tse-tung (poet). Comparing Bloom to such monumental madmen might seem absurd until you learn, as I did during the course of my investigation, that for more than half a century he's been seriously planning to write not only the Great American Novel but "a single bestselling book whose reading by the masses would free them forever from the shackles of an anti-intellectual mindset forged on the Old Testament anvil of Eve's original sin."
5 It's my understanding that, like other cultural enterprises--such as symphony orchestras, art galleries, theatrical repertory companies, opera houses, etc.--the book publishing business has traditionally been more concerned with the morale of its work force than with the bottomline concerns of its shareholders. No doubt this explains why the histories of even the most successful artistic ventures--Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, The Comedie Francaise, La Scala, MOMA, BBC, etc.--are always written in red ink. It's probably beyond my expertise, but as a general rule it would seem sensible that when dealing with a cantankerous character like Bloom the most enlightened personnel policy is that found in the Talmud, which can be translated as: "When one is stuck in a career rut being kicked in the pants can become a step forward."
6 See NY Penal Code sec.3345.23 which, among other things, makes the commission of arson by pyromaniacal and/or publicityseeking firemen a capital crime whether or not it is extinguished by the culprit before causing any personal injury or property damage.
7 In this connection it's worth pointing out that, despite what is probably his record-breaking performance, Bloom is by no means the only successful practitioner in the art of extending one's vocational raison d'etre long after it has ceased to exist. So pervasive is this postmodern instinct for neoindustrial survival among those who find themselves living from 4figure paycheck to 4figure paycheck it's not surprising there are so many variations on Bloom's nefarious nonexploding letterbomb scheme, among which are the: artfully-written-description-of-a-nonjob-job- description dodge; half-baked-or-completely-cooked-P&L-statement scam; makebelieve-proactive-antibureaucratic-status-quo-reengineering- government shellgame--and the myriad of other socially acceptable (if not mandatory) forms of falsely advertising one's true market value that fall under the more general headings of Autohype, Fudgery, Spindoctoring, Snakeoilism and that oldfashioned Starspangled Banner Brand of 100% Pure Red, White & Blue Bulls**t. which turned America into a nation of usedcarsalesmen and bunkoartists.
8 I refer here to that landmark PBS/Bill Moyers series "Hard Work: The Only 4letter Words Absent From The Modern American Vocabulary"--in which Bloom was featured as one of the lean and mean "Gray Panthers" who bagged groceries, fried burgers, pumped gas, dug ditches, and delivered mail not only to supplement their social security checks but to demonstrate their role as (sometimes the only) productive members of a post-industrial culture where all forms of sweat are considered taboo except those conspicuously unrelated to the need for making an honest living.
9 Very Dirty Old Man.
10 In the unlikely event Bloom's death from natural causes were ever eulogized he would probably be described in it as a "failed Freud," a "misbegotten Marx," an "ersatz Einstein," a "metaphorless Mailer," a "tin eared Gershwin," etc., according to the standard rabbinical tongueincheek lipservice paid to a deceased nonentity whose only real claim to Everlasting Semitic Fame was the monumental futility of his lifelong efforts at immortalizing himself.
11 Unless, perchance, the carnage resulting from Bloom's Wagnerian SchwanliedmitGotterdaemmerung is outweighed by some consideration about which I have been kept in the dark? For instance; there is a curious rumor circulating in certain show business quarters that: Based on the truly terrifying fact the average American workplace has become a virtual killing ground your firm is planning to publish a blockbuster entitled Massacre on Madison Avenue. Would I be too cynical in surmising the publicity flowing from the kind of bloodbath Bloom is capable of perpetrating might be so priceless in nature the human sacrifices made in obtaining it could be construed as a bargain?
12 In this regard the procedures by which agencies like the IRS, ATF, FBI, and CIA ordinarily handle their internal VIP/DOM and/or VIP/VDOM cases are, unfortunately, not applicable here. During the course of attaining his VIP status the IRS, ATF, FBI, and CIA DOM/VDOM invariably accumulates political and personal IOUs he can use for leveraging an "amicable parting of the ways" that won't tarnish his--or anyone else's--image as a pillar of the insidethebeltway community. Such "sweetheart" deals are usually "signed, sealed and delivered" only after the female complainant herself has been cajoled (or blackmailed) into performing on a fee-for-service basis the very sexual acts her refusal to so do on a pro bono basis gave rise to such a circular turning of events.
13 Assuming my speculations in footnote #4 are completely off the mark.
14 QED our need to destroy so many South Vitnamese villages (and their inhabitants) in order to save them from communism.
15 A persuasive argument can be made that unless we play our postcoldwar geoeconomic cards properly tomorrow's bestselling novels, blockbusting movies, smash Broadway musicals and Top Ten TV shows might (like the non-Detroit cars we see so many Americans driving) originate from such unlikely places as Beijing, New Delhi, Prague and Timbuktu. Hence the invocation of national security grounds to exempt one of America's major book publishing houses from criminal prosecution for liquidating "an enemy of the people" isn't nearly as bizarre as it might seem at first blush.
16 God knows I've signed shorter death warrants for men with longer lives to live and better reasons for living them than this 90plusyearold mail boy has. But, as with these damned footnotes, there seems to be something about this strange affair that compels me to depart from what has always been my totally nonliterary style of client communications.
17 Antoine Saint Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars, Bantam Books edition, 1946. Pages 7, 11, 12 & 41. The bracketed portions result from my editoress' compunction to rewrite what, despite my ignorance of French, I know from the undergraduate "fling" I had with "old St. Ex" has to be a lousy translation (but what can you expect from a paperback with a cover price of twenty-five cents?). It should also be noted that the genesis of Morons Awake! might be traced to the following (unedited-but-emphasis-added) passage: "Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning." --J.P.
18 St. Ex actually perished while flying a reconnaissance mission over the Adriatic for the Allies during WWII--J. P.
19 Among Bloom's papers were several draft monograms on this obscure subject. Also see Agatha Christie's The Health Hazards of Chain Letters, or A Case of Poison Penmanship, in which a serial epistolary killer is undone when Hercule Poirot recalls a lecture he happened to hear during his student days at the University of Ghent on "The Fertile Forensic Ground of Envelope Analysis" delivered by a visiting Professor of criminology from London's Metropolitan Police Academy named George Edward MacTavish. For those refuse to take Agatha Christie seriously, Professor MacTavish is also mentioned briefly by that most believable of all British barristers, Horace Rumpole, Esq. for "the crucial contribution" he made in helping to solve the "Penge Bungalow murders"-a celebrated case which turned on a partially incinerated envelope that eventually proved Rumpole's client. innocent of what was reported at the time to be, "England's most heinous sex crime since those committed by Jack the Ripper." --J. P.
20 One lustrum is a period of 5 years. Hence a dozen lustra equals 60 years. And, while Bloom was no doubt trying to be gallant the actual difference between our ages, lustrawise, is closer to a baker's dozen. --J.P.