THE END
--I don’t hear too good out of one nostril. I don’t. That’s why I try to avoid staying too long in any one nostril. I like hearing what’s going on. Well, I don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’m nowhere near anyone’s nostrils now. I’m in Greenland. There’s nothing in Greenland. It’s cold up here, but not so cold that you have to have a National Geographic crew following you around, showing how brave you are. It’s more Alaska cold. People could live up here if they wanted to. But unlike Alaska, there is no reason to live up here. No mountains to climb, no wolves to scare you, no natural wonders to awe you, no cities to warm up in, no gold lure you (and pay for your plane ticket home). There is nothing up here. Just white as far as the eye can see. It’s kind of like Kansas - with snow. It’s an unbroken landscape. Just like a blank piece of paper. Save for one small thing off in the distance . . . the McDonald’s. No matter where mankind may travel, Ronald McDonald has been there first. Inside the McDonald’s is an angry, pimple-faced, brainwashed, underpaid teenager frying up hamburgers. There is another angry, pimple-faced, brainwashed, underpaid teenager spending his last $2.50 eating one of these hamburgers. Maybe they are both the same person. Outside the drive-thru is a station wagon. There is always a station wagon going thru the drive-thru. Sometimes the colors change. One day it’s Harvest Gold, the next day it’s Forest Green. Today it’s Maroon. The interior of the station wagon is always a mess. A casualty of the last fast food meal consumed within. Don’t worry about the family, though. They’re not getting hungry. They’re not getting impatient. They’re dead. Starved to death in the drive-thru lane at McDonald’s. Not that this is ironic or anything. Nobody’s answering the clown head. Nobody’s answering the phone. Nobody’s returning your messages. Nobody’s here. Hello? Hello?!? Is anybody home? Earth to Doris. Earth to Doris! Come in Doris!!
--We’re all alone again. That’s the way it is in Greenland. There’s nobody here. Not really. At least nobody I know. So why am I in Greenland? I am a writer. And like all writers, I want to write “The Great American Novel.” Secretly, down in their heart-of-hearts, all writers want to write “The Great American Novel” even the French writers. So I started to write. How could I somehow comment on and still eclipse people like Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Earnest Hemmingway, Arthur Miller, J.D. Salinger, Mark Twain, and Danielle Steele. If none of these people could write “The Great American Novel” how could I? The answer was simple: I couldn’t. I shouldn’t even bother trying. I’m not that good of a writer. I don’t get offended when people use the word ain’t. I use it quite frequently myself. My grammar is atrocious. (I once started a book off using the phrase “I don’t hear too good . . .” I knew it was incorrect grammatically, yet I couldn’t figure out why, so I left it.) I have no sense of character or plot. I start all my books off with six or seven sentences that I’ve always wanted to write, yet end up having nothing to do with the finished product. I could not even write a whole paragraph in second person future tense without getting lost. (“You will finish this book and put it down. Then you will go to the grocery store to drop of the film from your granddaughter’s wedding. There you will meet a man named Charles. Charles is a tall, Mexican bandito with long red hair . . .”). I nearly failed every English course I took. I was kicked off my high school newspaper for gross incompetence and misspelling the name of our principal. And I wanted to be a writer?!? Was I crazy?!? Did I really think that I could write “The Great American Novel?” How could I have anything to contribute to American literature. I couldn’t even finish reading The Yearling much less Finnegan’s Wake. Now what should I do? A writer who doesn’t write makes even less money than a writer who does. I thought about it. I could, instead, write one of the hundreds of “The Stupid American Novels.” Thousands of stupid American people would read them (hey, at least they were the ones who could read). I would make millions of stupid American dollars. I liked it. I really wanted to do it. After all, Steven King seems pretty happy. Why shouldn’t I? Then I said to myself, “This isn’t why you became a writer. This isn’t what all this hard work is for. Money, fame and power. You will have none of it.” Of course, I couldn’t tell myself what all this hard work was for. Maybe nothing. But I knew I had to do something. Maybe there was some way to eliminate all the other competition for “The Great American Novel.” Ah, but it was too late. Most of them were dead anyway. There was only one other alternative. I could write “The Great Greenlandic Novel.” I could single-handedly become Greenlandic literature. Hundreds of college students taking “World Lit 101” would have to read my book when they came to section about Greenlandic authors. Because, there are no other Greenlandic Authors!!!
--My plan was fool-proof. No one could stop me now. Of course I didn’t know anything about Greenland at the time. What language do they speak? (I still don’t know) Do they have a Motel 6? (no) What is the capital? (There are only two cities - I think it is one of them) Are they still a communist country? (yes). For the sake of realism, (my encyclopedia didn’t have enough information) I moved to Greenland. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a flight to Greenland? My flight had about 47 stops on the way. I took United Airlines to Chicago. From there I transferred to Air Ontario. Once in Canada I got on Chuck’s Really Good Flight Service. By the time I ended up in the driveway Greenland uses for airport, I was flying a large paper airplane with a gum wrapper for the landing gear, suffering from a sever over-exposure to airline food. The whole trip only took three days.
--Once in Greenland I felt an amazing sense of relief. This book could be as short as I wanted it to be. It could only be ten pages long, and it would still be hailed as the greatest novel (possibly the only novel) Greenland has ever known. I could steal from anybody. They wouldn’t know. Then I looked around. There was nobody there. I was writing the greatest piece of Greenlandic literature and there was no one in Greenland to read it. No bookstores to sell it. No nasty, cynical, newspaper reviewers to praise it. No preachers to burn it. Nothing. I turned around to leave when I saw my paper airplane blow off in the distance. There was no route for my escape. I couldn’t leave. I was trapped. Undeterred, I decided to stay there and write “The Great Greenlandic (or is it Greenlandish? I ought to check) Novel.”
--The first day was a bust. I was stuck. With only one person on the whole island, not much was happening. I was originally planning this to be a story about a torrid romantic relationship, but with only character, I was finding that increasingly difficult to do. There was essentially no conflict. How could there be any good or bad guys when there’s only one guy. I briefly toyed with the idea of having a Jack London type of man versus nature story, “Lone man is nearly bored to death by his environment.” I decided against it. I did make one advancement however. All good timeless classics have at least one obscure reference to the current political situation, that no one who reads it understands. After working all day I came up with this. “POLITICAL STATEMENT: Free Greenland from Danish oppression.” It was not quite subtle as I would’ve liked it to be, but I decided that it would do. Did you know that technically Greenland is an incorporated part of Denmark? Most people in Denmark don’t even know that. Those arrogant, bourgeois, slave-masters!! The taxes over here are so . . . I don’t know. No one makes any money here. There is nothing to buy here. I don’t even think there is a system here. Good thing I brought lots of extra ramen noodles.
--Tried to think of a good title today. Maybe that will help me come up with a plot. “Bob Buys A Box Of Popsicles” “People Will Love Me Someday” “Damn! It’s Really Cold Out Here” “Snow - a novel” “Somebody Get Me Off Of This Stupid Island” “Purple Kangaroos Are Chewing My Eyeballs Out” and “Flotsam & Jepson” None of them seem to really work for me. Need to give this some more thought. I worry whether hundreds of years from now, only smelly old English teachers will find this humor funny. Is it timeless like Oscar Wilde? Or will people have to explain everything that was going on in this period of time, in order to get the joke? And then will they laugh? Or will they just go “Oh.” For those of you in the future, this book was supposed to be funny. I apologize profusely if it isn’t.
--I was the result of a hysterical pregnancy. My mother only thought she was pregnant. She did such a good job faking it that when she went into labor, I came out. My mother was still a virgin at the time. I’m not saying that I’m Jesus or anything. I’m not even Charlie, the garbage man from New Jersey who killed all those people. I’m just another lonely Greenlander. All Greenlanders are lonely. My mother worked answering the phone for that 1-900 number that gave out answers to the New York Times crossword puzzle. Only one clue a day, please. She had to try and recognize people’s voices who were calling up and asking for more than one answer a say. She never let me play with crossword puzzles. “They are the Devil’s footstool”, she used to say. I never understood what my mother was talking about. We lived in relative poverty on the Lower Eastern Right-hand corner of Upper Left New Manhattan. My mother and my two and a half sisters seemed satisfied to live the rest of their live in the 17 room penthouse suite that they found abandoned at the Waldorf Asotria, but me I yearned for more. I wanted to see it all. Own the empire state building. Eat as many Twinkies as I could. Star in a critically detested Woody Allen drama. That’s why, in 1988, at the age of 36 I left my mother’s house and moved to Greenland. I’m not quite sure what I was looking for in Greenland, but I’ll tell you I certainly didn’t find it. There is nothing here. Nothing. Nothing!! Greenland has changed me from a happy-go-lucky, carefree young man into a twisted, psychotic, sadistic, bitter, angry old man in a matter of minutes. I now kill small children for a living, when I
--Threw away last week’s work. I liked the way it started out, but it got too angry, too fast. Who thought that writing a classic of world literature would be this hard? I should’ve brought some more paper up with me. I’m running out of things to write on. God, I miss T.V. I even wrote a letter to my parents (with whom I have not spoken since I left for college) asking them to send me a T.V. Of course, Greenland probably doesn’t have any T.V. stations. I should’ve asked them to tape a couple of hours of American T.V. for me. Game shows, Infomercials, Televangelists, anything. I’m desperate. But if they do that they will send me a VCR, too. Maybe they could also send me some cookies or something. I’m getting sick of ramen noodles. Of course I don’t have a stamp. And Greenland doesn’t have a post office. But still it feels good to know that I’ve reconciled with my parents. Sometimes, when I’m blue, I re-read the letter I wrote them and it makes me feel happy. Maybe I’ll write them another one. Wait I hear my mommy calling now. Got to go. Bye. Mom? What are you doing out of bed at this hour? It’s cold out.
--John stared grimly out into the harsh landscape. I stared harshly out into the grim landscape. Grim John . . . Grimly, John stared out at the landscape. I stared blankly at the grimly harshly . . . The landscape stared grimly at John with harsh, unfeeling eyes. The landscape which stares at me - or is it John- is grim and harsh and cold and unmerciful and stupid. “The landscape”, John thought, “stares grim and harsh.” The landscape is grim. The landscape is harsh. Why the hell do I keep staring at it. John? I’m going to kill . . . Cold and stubborn the landscape - the wind - fell on John’s back . . . on my back . . . on John’s back . . . Ted’s back? Fred’s? Walter’s? Chedwick’s?
--Walter stared grimly at the harsh landscape. His unshaved face glowered hard at the biting cold. He pulled his Stetson hat on tighter. “Looks like it’s going to be another Greenland morning”, he said, spitting out his tobacco. Trudging up the hill, Walter came upon a small band of elves . . . tearing up this piece of paper before mankind ever has the misfortune of reading it.
--Thought up a new title for the novel today, “Lazy Hack Of A Writer Slowly Starves To Death In Some Frozen God-Forsaken . . .
--Somebody just shoot me. I can’t take this anymore. Here, my life depends on my finishing the book soon and I have writer’s block. I haven’t even got one decent paragraph’s worth of material down. If I eat another cold packet of raw ramen noodles, I will die. This is not an idle threat. My death looks not only inevitable, but also likely within the next two or three days. Somebody just shoot me. Somebody? Hello? Next time I have a stupid idea, somebody talk me out of it.
--I used to love hearing my old grandfather’s stories about Greenland. I used to walk over to his barn nearly every day and sit on his knee while he told about the many wild and strange adventures he had in Greenland as a little boy before he and his family immigrated to the United States. I used to escape into my grandfather’s tales every time my mother and father started fighting. And they used to fight a lot. You see, my mother was a Black Muslim and my father was an Aryan Rabbi. I was a Catholic. There were gunshots nearly every night over dinner. The atmosphere at my house was always tense. My father yelled at us constantly but I think the truth was that he hated himself. Leading the congregation in the Synagogue on Saturday, and burning crosses at the KKK rally on Sunday. My mother would relax by taking a haj to Mecca every two or three days. Me, I would pretend to be a young explorer in Greenland.
--Then one day, my grandfather died. I was there at his deathbed. He gave me his special gold pocket watch and he asked me to return it to Greenland someday. I promised him that I would, but then my mother started hitting my father with a black crowbar. I slipped the watch into my vest pocket and forgot the whole incident entirely. That is until today. My boss, Mr. Lampke told me that I had to attend a sales conference in Greenland. Then, with stabbing clarity, I remembered the promise I made my grandfather. I reached into my vest pocket (I don’t change my clothes very often) and there felt the special gold pocket watch that my . . .
--Alright, let’s face reality. I’m making this all up. I don’t know if there are really no cities or people in Greenland. I’ve never been there. I’m feeling to lazy to go and look it up. I’m not really a college graduate hack trying to con his way into world literature. I’m a semi-talented college student trying to be clever writing this silly little short story. I don’t think I’m a hack. I don’t read enough to know who I’m stealing from or where. I don’t like reading. I’m much too slow. I get bored. I really prefer writing. I like to think I’m coming up with something new, creative, and original here, but for all I know, hundreds and thousands of other writers have been doing something exactly like this for years now.
--Hallelujah!!! I have finally met someone else on this stinking island. He name is Ching Pao Dow. She is the illegitimate daughter of a Korean housecleaner and Tony Dow, who played Ward Cleaver on “Leave it to Beaver.” She came to Greenland in the hopes of finding the legendary Sasquatch. I hated to tell her that I had not seen him in a couple of days. She decided to spend some time with me, anyway. She says she was starting to get lonely although she claims that there are six or seven others in Greenland that she knows about. Maybe she is hallucinating. Glad for the company anyway. She brought some Beef Jerky with her. I’m really looking forward to dinner tonight. Ching Pao says that anytime I want to go home, all I have to do is click my heels three times and chant “There’s no place like home” I thought I was going to be stuck here forever.
--Why didn’t I decided to write “The Great Greenlandic Short Story” instead? Or “The Great Greenlandic Poem” or “The Great Greenlandic Leaflet”? Maybe “The Great Greenlandic Sentence.” I’m freezing to death here. This is stupid. I want to go home. There are no publishers in Greenland so whatever I write will end up being primarily American anyway. I let Ching Pao read my notes and what I’ve written so far. She said I ought to print it as it is. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let anyone else read this drivel. There is not one sentence here worth saving. Actually it is a cold day in hell, and I’m still not going to let anyone read this.
--How do I get to Greenland from here? Practice, practice, practice.
--Large purple hippopotami ranged across the fields. Rex Gunnerson, Greenland’s foremost hunter, slowly stalked them in between the young watermelon trees. He raised his infa-red super-scoper hi-powered squirt gun at the pack’s leader. He met him at the candy store . . . Three shots later, Rex had his catch. He flew out to where his prey lay and with a swooping dive scooped him up to be taken to the taxidermist. Hours later arriving, Rex smiled wanly at his old friend.
--“What is it this time?” he asked.
--“I shot this. Could you do his taxes for me?”
--“That’s a tax accountant, I’m a taxidermist.”
--“So you’ll drive him around in a yellow car and charge me for it.”
--“No. No. I’ll stuff him and hang him up on your wall.” (See! That was all humor. This book is funny. Laugh now future generations!!)
--“O.K.”
--“No, wait, not that beast. Greatest of all beasts. Don’t you know the legend? This is the blessed Rfgdsuaigfdsair. Now that you have killed him you will be cursed. Alone and unable to leave the island. This land, once green and lush will become cold and empty. Then your left eyebrow will puff up . . .
--I think there is something wrong with the jerky Ching Pao gave me. Or maybe its the weather. I think I’m going crazy. I can’t make heads or tales out of what I have just written. I think it’s time call it quits. Of course, I’ve sunk all my money in this crazy idea. What am I going to do? I’ll have to move in with my parents again. I haven’t spoken with them since I went off to college. I’ll have to call my agent and tell him not to expect anything yet. I hope my wife hasn’t left me. It would be terrible for the kids to be all alone like that. Maybe I should have told her where I was going. Oh well. My plane is almost here. I’m going to miss Ching Pao. Maybe I’ll take her with me. She won’t notice. I’ve got to go now. “There is no place like home, there is no place like . . .
--Everyday I spend back home, the less I remember about Greenland. It somehow doesn’t seem as cold and lonely as I once thought. My parents were very understanding, and let me have my old room back (for only $200 a month). My children starved to death, so I don’t have to worry about them. Ching Pao finally caught her Sasquatch and is now moving in with someone else. She wrote me a postcard, but since there was no way for her to mail it, I haven’t read it yet. I burned all my notes that I wrote in Greenland. They were very shoddy, and I’m highly embarrassed to have been a part of them. What can I say about Greenland except It’s a terrible place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to write there. I am now writing an article for Rolling Stone about drug use in Panama. I making up about 75% of the facts, but they’ve got people who will fix them for me. Anyway . . .
THE END
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