WHICH HELPS EXPLAIN WHY nowadys one can occasionally hear the words "civilization" and "decline" spoken by people to whom the idea their (or any other) civilization might decline (or ever had declined) was utterly unthinkable. Threatened by a tidalwave of crime, moral decay, fiscal bankruptcy and political corruption, however, many Americans and Morons have been forced to think—or try to think—about a multitude of problems that were also previously thought to be unthinkable. Having been "educated" by a school system preaching the patriotic virtues of stupidity, however, the average American and Moron finds himself incapable of dealing with any perplexity requiring even the most primitive analytical skills. Is it any wonder then, when trying to save a failing marriage—or civilization—he and/or she exhibits the intellectual proclivities of a trapped rat? Such is the price all nations, great and small, must pay for not knowing their history that, when it threatens to destroy them yet again, they are paralyzed by what they proclaim to be: "The unavoidable nature of a calamity no other country has previously confronted."79 This capitulation to "fate" is a trademark of all those primitive societies who cloak the brickwalls against which they bang their empty heads in the mantle of "inscrutability." But it's also a trait appearing in the early stages of civilizational decline when even PhDs invoke the doctrine of "retrospectivity" to explain the flawed analyses they made before embarking on a course of action that subsequently proved disastrous. Hence the mea culpas one now hears in which the misfeasor pleads "that given 20/20 hindsight he would have acted differently." And the correspondingly rare (if not altogether defunct) use of the word "foresight" to denote the aptitude (and responsibility) human beings have for pondering the outcome of what they do before actually doing it.80
Speaking of which: Don't think for a minute I didn't carefully consider all the risks involved with exposing you to ideas as complex and "irksome" as those in the preceding paragraphs. The common wisdom is that ideas of the type we've just been discussing aren't likely to be appreciated by the readers of a novel who, it must be reasonably assumed, are doing so to avoid just such a discussion. Thus that unbreakable rule for all wouldbe writers of bestselling novels against overlyinsulting the reader's (lack of?) intelligence. In normal times this is undeniably the most prudent course for an average novelist to take when writing a runofthemill bestseller. But, since for Moronia and America these are anything but normal times—and I am certainly not an ordinary novelist seeking to write a conventional bestseller—no rule can withstand the urgency of the catastrophe at hand. Moreover, the very problems from which you seek to escape by reading Morons Awake! can't be solved without revolutionizing your attitude toward the reading of escapist fiction. Although it doesn't appear in the litany of woes I enumerated heretofore, by failing to rouse its readers from the somnambulistic state into which they have been seduced by unscrupulous publishers (and authors) the modern American novel is itself partly to blame for the predicament what was once a fully civilized (excluding such minor social injustices as racial, religious and gender bigotry) world now finds itself in. If the picture I have so far painted of Western Civilization's future prospects seems a bleak one it is only because you remain unconvinced I wrote Morons Awake! with only one purpose in mind: To save millions of ordinary people like yourself from the deluge of mindlessness in which Moronia and America are now drowning. Not that I'm blaming you, dear reader, for being skeptical about my motives. The fault is all mine for failing to persuade you in terms you can understand. Which doesn't (necessarily) mean I'm insulting your (lack of) intelligence. Once again, you should ask yourself if it is logical for me to have written a manifesto I knew couldn't be understood by the very people for which I wrote it?
But, fortunately, I don't have to rely on syllogismsG alone to make my case. Surprising as it may seem, during my recent travels in America I discovered some hard evidence to support my optimism about the future of Western Civilization. Among the encouraging signs I found was the extent to which theater and opera companies have established themselves in the regional backwaters of Texas, Arizona, Wisconsin and even Arkansas. Driving through Kentucky one night I was actually able to tune in a performance of Schoenberg's Moses und Aaron! And, while the networks continue to be that "vast wasteland" they were accused of being way back in 1954, the occasional cultural oasis can be found in the semiarid reaches of satellite, cable and public television. More gratifying still (if one searches for them with enough diligence) there are public schools in this land where students actually receive an education! Added to this was the evidence I detected of certain intangibles, such as the resilience, basic decency and cando spirit of the American people—and their increasing willingness to entertain radical ideas for the solution of radical problems.81 But the most promising of the discoveries I made was the literacy of American women. Unlike their Moronic counterparts, whose experience with books is limited to those about new ways of cooking turnips, a significant number of our bored housewives pass their time turning the pages of a novel. This isn't to say the quality of what they read rarely rises above that of the trashiest gothic romance or some other form of softcore female fantasyporn. Nevertheless, as Karl Marx said to Friedrich Engels: "Even the smallest puff of literacy arising from the proletariat indicates there is a chance our manifesto might produce the revolutionary conflagration that will put an end to their intellectual enslavement."82 While The Communist Manifesto temporarily fanned the flames of a utopian revolution, in the final analysis Marx was dead wrong about the "catalytic role" his anticapitalist harangue would play in establishing a classless and stateless paradise on earth.83 As Katya Kahkov points out, Marx's mistake was his failure to understand a revolutionary manifesto had to be written in a literary form that was itself so revolutionary it would set fire to the imagination of all who read it. And what literary form could be more revolutionary84 than that by which I've chosen to publicize my manifesto for reversing the decline of Western Civilization? But where, you must be asking yourself, is this maze of Jesuitical esoterica leading us? How could Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and the failure of their manifesto to utopianize the world have anything to do with an apparently defective traffic light at the corner of Hollywood & Vine? What bearing does the price of turnips in Moronia have on America's future and the fate of Western Civilization? And, even more to the point of why we've traveled this far down the Morons Awake! garden path: When—if ever—is that gorgeous starknaked blonde in the Cadillac convertible finally going to make the "spectacular" appearance we've been led to believe she will be making since that first sentence of Chapter 1?
IF YOU STOPPED TO THINK BEFORE ASKING such questions—based on what you've learned by reading this far—I'm confident that sooner or later you would have answered them on your own. But since they reflect the (justifiably) frayed state of your composure, to save time I will combine their answers in the following (paragraphlong) sentence:
Arriving in California at the end of my transcontinental odyssey—during the course of which I had: (1) Eluded an international manhunt; (2) Thoroughly refamiliarized myself with grassroots America; (3) Computerized all the raw material for fully exposing the Klutz Affair (including the retrieval of documentary evidence I had "smuggled" from Moronia with the aid of my photographic memory), and; (4) Become (more or less) unshakably convinced that a revolutionary manifesto written in the form of a bestselling novel could indeed turn the deluge of American mediocrity into a rising tide of NeoEgalitarianism—only one minor problem remained for me to solve: After trying for 5 solid years, I had yet to write a single word85 of the book upon which the fate of humanity itself depended.
Describing such a problem as "minor" might (to say the least) seem curious. But I never had the slightest doubt that once I had written the first sentence of my historymaking opus, thereafter Morons Awake! would (practically) write itself. And, as a result of what is about to happen at the corner of Hollywood & Vine, that is exactly what transpired. At the time, of course, I didn't know that momentous sentence was about to be written for me through an act of divine intervention. To the contrary—as I've been taking great pains to explain: My state of mind was such it seemed as if I would never discover the secret grammatical combination that would unleash the ejaculatory fountain of inspired prose waiting to fling itself onto the pages of my Great Moronic/American Novel/Manifesto.
For those of you who have never tried to write a literary masterpiece of your own this obsession of mine over finding a perfect beginning for mine must seem like the handwringing of just another selfappointed "messiah" seeking sympathy from those whose "salvation" will result from his "martyrdom." If so you're wrong. I don't need your sympathy and wouldn't know what to do with it if you gave it to me. If I've sacrificed myself for your deliverance I did so knowing it would be a thankless undertaking. No. My only purpose for explaining in "excruciating" detail the process by which I created this particular work of art is to enhance your appreciation for all art—an appreciation that must include your awareness of how crucial the initial sentence of a novel—or the opening motif of a symphony—is in the shaping of all that follows. Consider, for instance, those first 4 notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Had any one of them been less than perfect in its pitch, its dynamic or its duration the entire history of 19th- and 20thcentury music would have to be rewritten! Conversely, if Lincoln had begun his Gettysburg Address with "87 years ago some of our predecessors devised a political scheme—" it would have faded long ago as just another dustbin example of the rhetorical bankruptcy found in the speeches delivered by most of our less poeticallyinclined Presidents.
Or, putting it in even more downtoearth terms: The first impression a novelist makes on his reader is no less decisive than that which an encyclopedia salesman must make on a housewife before she permits him to cross her threshold, display his merchandise and pitch "the priceless benefits of improving one's mind for only a few pennies per day!" Indeed, there are a whole range of everyday situations—as, for example, when some predatory intellectual engages an unattached female in a singles bar conversation whose loftiness he hopes will induce her participation in sexual acts undreamt of by the average housewife—where the crucial effect first impressions have on promoting sociocultural intercourse can't be overstated. Having gotten off on the wrong foot (or failing to lodge it firmly in the door) one is seldom given a second chance to correct an unfavorable debut no matter how unwittingly one may have created it. This is especially true of a writer seeking to get his maiden novel published. Contrary to the popular belief, publishers do judge an unsolicited manuscript by its cover—or, more accurately, by the title appearing on its cover. Those manuscripts whose titles alone fail to make a Publisher's Reader curious about what might be contained between its covers are rejected out of hand as being: (a) Most unlikely to stimulate the prurient interest of those browsers who constitute a significant segment of the novel buying public, and; (b) Written by someone who, because of his failure to appreciate the fundamental fact of book publishing life stated in (a), can't be expected to have authored anything but a flop.86 Having decided Morons Awake! wasn't only a satisfactory working title for the novel I was about to write but one that couldn't fail to stimulate the interest of she across whose desk it would one day come (or impress her with its unmistakable literary resonance) I wasn't unduly concerned about overcoming this most trifling of hurdles. Assuming my masterpiece survived the title muster it was the next test that concerned me; the acid one—when its cover was opened and those cold, calculating eyes of the Publisher's Reader scanned the sentence with which Morons Awake! would begin (when I had gotten around to writing it!).
For a variety of reasons the overwhelming majority of unsolicited manuscripts never make it past the "First Sentence Of A Novel Test." Some of them fail simply because they contain misspelled words, or their grammar is faulty, or the ribbon used in typing them was over- or underinked; all of which defects indicate a fatal lack of the minimal literary sophistication expected from some sandlot author hoping to become a majorleague novelist. More often it's the banality or imaginative shortcomings of the novel's initial sentence that dooms it and its author to perdition. Manuscripts starting off with sentences such as: "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed," or "I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man," are unlikely to have any of their following sentences read.87 Naturally no author likes to admit it, but this coldblooded procedure by which the occasional masterpiece falls through the floorboard cracks is a fact of modern book publishing life that isn't without some merit. From an abstract point of view a novel's first sentence does speak volumes about the thousands of sentences which follow it. As with the introductory announcement of a symphonic theme, contained within a novel's opening sentence are most of the motifs on which its author will elaborate as he gradually unfolds and thickens his plot. The way these linguistic pearls are chosen and strung together also sends a message to the reader about the kind of man she will be dealing with should their relationship proceed beyond the seductive overture he has just made to her. To use an even more pregnant metaphor: Nothing could be more seminal in nature than those ideas a novelist conveys to his reader at the very outset of what is the most intimate of all human relationships—the Literary Loveaffair that takes place between the covers of a great book.
For even the most successful author the problem of beginning his latest novel is filled with difficulty. But to an unpublished novelist whose entire future depends on it, writing that most significant of all sentences represents the ultimate challenge in creating a good first impression. And in my case the favorable impression I needed to make on a Publisher's Reader with the icewater of an editorial assassin flowing through her veins was quintessentially problematic. While the short title of my book was bound to stimulate her curiosity—and that of the masses whose taste for what makes a bestseller she was trained to predict—in its complete form it would also arouse her suspicions. Was Morons Awake! a potential bestselling book of fiction or, as the balance of its title alltoo plainly stated: A Manifesto To Reverse The Decline Of Western Civilization Written In The Form Of A Novel-length Answer To The Burning Question Of Whether Jack F. Klutz Lived & Died As A Martyr For The Cause Of Human Mediocrity Or Was Simply An Exception To The Rule That All Men Are Created Equal? If Morons Awake! did indeed turn out to emit even the faintest odor of moral sanctimony or ideological righteousness it meant a certain and swift death. Therefore, was it not essential for me to suppose her scrutiny of my first sentence for the subtle signs of any Trojan horseplay would be exceptionally meticulous?
THE ANSWERS TO THESE $64 QUESTIONS hinged, of course, on the kind of woman who would, literally, be holding my fate in her hands when she selected Morons Awake! from the hundreds of other unsolicited manuscripts piled on her desk. Obviously she would be young, intelligent, and welleducated. More likely than not a recent graduate from a liberal arts college like Smith or Wellesley who had majored in English Lit. Although she might be attracted more by the brilliance of a man's mind than by his animal magnetism, as a (presumably) doctrinaire feminist she would also harbor feelings of hostility toward someone of my "overtly phallocentric ilk" who symbolized the sexist role played throughout history by Dead White European Males (DWEMs) in defining the cultural foundations of Western Civilization as being more or less exclusively manmade This love/hate factor influencing her attitude toward my pretensions as the author of a timeless literary masterpiece was bound to be further complicated by her own aspirations for one day being hailed as "the woman who rose from the obscurity of a publishing house basement to write The Great (Female) American Novel." But in spite of these gender- and penenviousbased barriers there were, I felt, a pair of potentially decisive forces working in my favor. One of these was the irresistible instinct all women have to maternalize a man's genius.88 The other was that overwhelming sense of pride any Publisher's Reader can be expected to feel over her prospect of discovering an authentic literary lion.89
While they might appear to be implausible, my deductions about the Publisher's Reader for whom the first sentence of Morons Awake! had to be written were, I believe, based on the hardheaded assumption that: Only a very young and very idealistic woman would ever think of pursuing such a poorlypaid and otherwise thankless occupation.90 Accordingly I reached the conclusion she would in fact correctly perceive the complete title of Morons Awake! as one resonating more with the rakish wit of Swift or Smollet than it did with the puritanical solemnity of Marx or Milton. But even if my most optimistic assumptions about her proved to be true—even if she swooned over my virtuosity at having written the first sentence of Morons Awake! in such a way as to nullify the alarmbells I sounded with its ponderous title—even then I would still have to write that first sentence with a virtuosity which would prevent anyone else but her from appreciating its virtuosity. To do otherwise would leave her vulnerable to the charge from those higher in the corporate chain of command to whom she "recommended Morons Awake! for further consideration" that she was in fact advocating the publication of a political manifesto—or worse yet, a literary masterpiece!—posing as a bestselling novel. And beyond those special considerations vis-a-vis seducing the Publisher's Reader there was still the effect that first sentence had to produce on the average female which couldn't be ignored in my writing of it.
Having provided you with an inkling of them, however, I won't burden you any further with the difficulties I faced in doing what might seem like such a simple task: Write the novel that, except for its very first sentence, was waiting inside my head to fling itself to the top of the bestseller list.
Although perhaps I should add just another word or 2 concerning the issue you are no doubt about to raise—namely: The possibility my preoccupation with the First Sentence Problem was itself a major—if not the principal—reason why, after 5 years of trying, I had yet to begin putting Morons Awake! on paper? To which my reply is: With 20/20 hindsight I probably shouldn't have been so concerned about perfecting the first sentence of a book that was providentially destined for block busting bestsellerdom anyway.
On the other hand, it's precisely because I didn't know then what I now know about the ease with which a bestselling novel can be turned out that the first sentence of Morons Awake! came be to so perfectly written! Had I followed the standard procedure for unblocking a novelist's imagination by forcing myself to write whether inspired to do so or not, who knows if the miracle I am about to describe would have unfolded—or, if it had: Whether I would have recognized it as such? Looking back on the events of that "magical" night it's perfectly clear to me now the "eternity" I spent waiting at the corner of Hollywood & Vine for the traffic light to change couldn't have lasted for more than a minute or 2. Moreover, I have since discovered that a starknaked female cruising the streets and boulevards of Hollywood in a flamingopink convertible is a not uncommon nocturnal phenomenon when the moon is full and the Santa Anas are blowing. Does this mean I have spent the previous 85 pages setting the stage for an "epiphany" that was actually nothing more than the result of my wishful thinking—or a mirage arising from the arid dunes of that delirium wherein a blocked writer finds himself staggering in ever widening circles of futility? Or is it in the nature of all genuine miracles, transfigurations, apotheoses and epiphanies that they only appear to men who have been driven to the edge of madness by the escalating intellectual demands made upon them by their genius and/or messianic destiny?
In the final analysis, of course, only you can decide if the sensational events I am—at long last—about to chronicle in the following chapter were indeed divinely orchestrated or merely the product of my "deranged" mind.
Book One Chapter 4 Return to Index
Footnotes
79 There is no better example of this dimwittedness than that of Germany repeating its 1914 blunder only 23 years later when it launched WWII by marching into the Sudetenland. But America's duplication in Vietnam of the mistakes made by its British adversary 2 centuries earlier is also an unrivaled example of the price a nation pays for failing to do its history homework—if indeed such homework is even assigned.
80 When pondering the reasons for Rome's decline Gibbon deduced more might be learned about the state of a society's decay from what its citizens weren't saying and writing than from what they actually said and wrote. If this is indeed the case, it would explain the decreasing frequency with which both Americans and Morons use such words as: Honesty, Character, Responsibility, Truth, Beauty, Genius, Greatness, Morality, Excellence, Heroism, Culture and Intelligence.
81 Even to the extent of not ruling out the efficacy of a pamphlet or manifesto along the lines of Tom Paine's Common Sense, or the need for a latterday Paul Revere to sound some more novel literary alarm that might awaken a new generation of American Minute(wo)men.
82 This conversation, which took place over a lunch of pastrami sandwiches in an EastEnd of London kosher delicatessen, was preserved in a novel length manuscript written by Engels which he entitled My Lunch With Karl. Apart from the inspiration it provided for the cult film (My Dinner With Andre) that spoofed it so endearingly, Engels' literary rendering of a discussion about arcane matters no average person (or even communist) would find remotely interesting raises the intriguing question of what the world might be like today if the same stylistic approach had been used in writing The Communist Manifesto?
83 Marx was also gravely mistaken about socialism being the wave of the future. If the history of communism has proven anything it is that a classless society can exist only in a theoretical vacuum; and that it's not in the nature of states for them to "wither away." Unlike Marx, my (or Klutz's) "ideology" of Cultural Utopianism isn't predicated on a PieInTheSky view of human nature, but rather on the rock hard evidence of historical fact that previous civilizations attained levels of everyday life enjoyment demonstrably superior to those we are now "enjoying."
84 Actually the exploitation of a novel for propaganda purposes is not all that radically innovative when one considers how the Bible itself was written in a literary form that coated its metaphysical pills in the kind of storytelling candy the heathen masses would be much more willing to swallow.
85 I'm making a distinction here between the millions of more or less commonplace words that were processed through my mind and my computer as the "linguistic ore" from which all Great Books such as Morons Awake! must be refined—and the lapidary nature of each and every word of the final product as published herein. Not unlike an iceberg, it can be said of most artistic masterpieces that 90% of the work going into their creation lies beneath the surface. And, based on my experience, in the case of monumental novels like Ulysses, Moby Dick and this one, that percentage is closer to 99.99%. So, while failing to actually compose a single word after 5 years of "writing" a novel might seem like an exception proving the iceberg rule, if such an extended prelude eventually produces not only a bestselling book but one that alters the course of human history, its author would enjoy the additional celebrity of having expanded the parameters of intellectual perseverance to their absolute outer limit. In this regard there is little doubt that by having previously mastered the Art of Foreplay I had unwittingly acquired the skills, techniques and fortitude needed for just such a superhuman task. Indeed, the principles of extended lovemaking have generally proven themselves to be remarkably efficacious when applied to the writing of a bestselling novel.
86 Not unlike the procedure used at Auschwitz to separate those who would be gassed immediately upon their arrival and those permitted to continue what was their allbut hopeless struggle for survival.
87 In the preceding examples these are: "A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air," and " I am an unattractive man,"—neither of which would probably have changed the manuscript reader's pessimistic first impression about its author's literary skills, or chances of ever becoming a bestselling novelist.
88 Thus the brainchildren of intellectual giants like Christopher Columbus, James Joyce and Henry Miller were, whether immaculately conceived or not, gestated in the Madonnalike wombs of Queen Isabella, Sylvia Beach and Anaïs Nin.
89 What Publisher's Reader doesn't arrive at her desk every morning having dreamt the night before she was the first woman to open the covers of You Can't Go Home Again, Moby Dick or The Catcher In The Rye?
90 Despite the awesome power such women exercise over not just the fate of authors such as myself but that of an entire society's zeitgeist book publishers routinely relegate them to the lowest possible rung on the corporate ladder. Frequently confined to "offices" seldom larger (or more elegantly furnished) than the cubicles of a sleazy South American bordello, they nevertheless toil away with the selfless (if not fanatical) dedication of unsung heroines willing to sacrifice their minds, their eyesight and their bodies in order that a frustrated author might prove his literary manhood.
Glossary
syllogism noun 1.) Logic. A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion; for example, All human beings are mortal, the major premise, I am a human being, the minor premise, therefore, I am mortal, the conclusion. 2.) Reasoning from the general to the specific; deduction. 3.) A subtle or specious piece of reasoning. [Middle English silogisme, from Old French, from Latin syllogismus, from Greek sullogismos, from sullogizesthai, to infer : sun-, syn- + logizesthai, to count, reckon (from logos, reason).]