CHAPTER 3: Epiphany (suspendus)
Applying the principles of foreplay to the art of writing a novel, the author pauses yet again to gather still more of the climactic energy that will be released when he finally completes his chronicle of the roles played by a naked woman and a traffic light in reversing the decline of Western Civilization.
NOT KNOWING AT THE TIME what a providential role the red light on Hollywood Blvd was about to play in my epiphany, I was understandably disturbed by having my progress up Vine St. put on hold for what seemed like an eternity. Hopefully, my concerns about overstretching your patience will turn out to be similarly misguided. But my need33 to prolong your curiosity even further at this already somewhat overlyprolonged point will, I assure you, turn out to be worth your while in the end.34 By delaying yet again the arrival of the topdown Cadillac convertible and its birthdaysuited driver on the scene you will be more likely to appreciate the hellish torment I suffered while waiting for that obstinate traffic signal to change from red to green. Not that mere words—or any other literary devices—can simulate the actual anguish I endured. Moreover, dear reader, you have the advantage of knowing my epiphany must have transpired or Morons Awake! would never have been written, and the decline of Western Civilization arrested (if not yet fully reversed). Nevertheless, those of you who can't contain their curiosity any longer—or simply don't give a damn about the agonies a novelist goes through for their benefit—should turn to Chapter 4, where, I think it can be safely stated, your frustrations over the snail's pace of my storytelling will be (almost) fully alleviated.
For the more stalwart reader, before resuming the escalation of your cravings to even greater heights, I can reward you right now with this encouraging news: Had I begun Chapter 3 by looking in my rear view mirror, in all probability35 I would have seen destiny itself approaching me in the guise of a nude woman driving a flamingopink Eldorado Biarritz for what was about to become our historic rendezvous at the crossing of 2 roads whose mythical aura couldn't have been more perfectly chosen as the setting for such a miraculous event. At the time, of course, I had more downtoearth matters on my mind—not the least of which was my vexation over being halted for what felt like forever in the middle of the night at a perfectly trafficless street corner! The question demanding my immediate attention was: How long would I languish there before either: (1) Ignoring the red light and proceeding across Hollywood Blvd, or; (2) Detouring my way around what was obviously a defective traffic signal?
On the other hand, could I afford to ignore what were the equally obvious metaphorical implications of that unchanging red light—not to mention its location at a crossroad made infamous by all the shattered dreams and expectations it has come to symbolize?36 Could that stubborn traffic signal be God's notso mysterious way of telling me my aspirations for writing a bestselling novel, a literary masterpiece and a manifesto that would reverse the decline of Western Civilization had come to a permanent halt? If so, it wouldn't have surprised me. After wracking my brain for 5 solid years I had nothing to show for my Great American Novel but a title—and a computer filled with notes, ideas, outlines, raw material, miscellaneous facts and hundreds of false starts. To give you an idea of how justifiable my depression was, I had spent the last 6 months trying to write the first page of Morons Awake!—or, more accurately (and even more depressingly), its first sentence! If there has ever been a case of writer's block more serious than mine it must still be in progress because neither I, nor anyone else I've asked about what would be such a noteworthy phenomenon, is familiar with it.37 Alternatively, I reasoned, God is notorious for the harshness by which He tests the mettle of those through whom He works His Mysterious Will. When I measured my own travails against those of Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill the result was sufficiently humbling to make me think twice before aborting a task on which nothing less than the fate of all humanity itself hinges. Besides, at the age of 75 what other chance was I likely to be offered for ending my life with a bang so big? Even if I did fail to write The Book That Saved The World it would be a flop whose epic proportions few bestselling authors ever come close to enjoying. In the final analysis I decided to remain where I was for another 5 minutes.
And, being a JewishIntellectual, while waiting for that traffic signal to turn green, what else could I do but cogitate?
That's when the idea dawned on me of turning that red light into (what we novelists call) an expository device.38 Assuming for the moment I would eventually find the perfect sentence with which to begin Morons Awake!, the "eternity" of waiting for that red light to turn green could be used to educate my readers on the preliminary matters about which you have already learned so much39 while waiting with me for my epiphany to transpire at the corner of Hollywood & Vine. Thus would I be able to (as, to some extent, I already have):
(1) Introduce you to me and my supporting cast of "characters;"
(2) Set the scene in a country whose existence was hitherto unimagined by the vast majority of Americans, and;
(3) Announce most of those "symphonic" motifs upon which I planned to elaborate when Morons Awake!'s "plot" actually began to unfold and thicken.
It was a radical ploy and, like all novelistic innovations,40 not without its hazards. But, having gotten this far without overly (I hope) antagonizing you, it seems as if my "gamble" is paying off. Nevertheless there are still a few additional matters with which you should become acquainted during the (brief) period remaining before that gorgeous nude drives her vintage Detroit Musclemachine into our field of view. The first of these has to do with the reason I was proceeding north on Vine Street when I was prevented from crossing Hollywood Blvd. But before you can fully understand all the hows, whys and wherefores of my arrival at that providential impasse I must fill you in on at least the highlights of the 5year odyssey that took me from Moronia to Southern California.
FOLLOWING WHAT PROVED TO BE my uneventful passage through Moronic customs41 I flew directly from Country B42 to London for the surgical procedures43 that would complete my metamorphosis. After a fortnight's recuperation I departed from Heathrow without a single hitch as Arthur Long and, when my forged passport failed to raise any eyebrows at JFK, I made my way to Jersey City where I took possession of the custombuilt44 Winnebago in which I would travel throughout the fortyeight states as a "newly retired average American auto worker"— while secretly writing the book that (hopefully) would alter the course of human history. My plans for touring the length and breadth of America might seem like the worst possible way of eluding the manhunt designed to prevent me from spilling the Klutz Affair beans, but it was one I made after only the most careful analysis. Surmising that my former employers would take the lead in tracking me down, and predicated on the personal knowledge I had about the inner workings of their bureaucratic mentality, I was reasonably certain the last place the State Department, CIA and FBI would look for me was in their own backyard. And there were other factors that influenced my choice of the USA as the best possible terrain for doing what I had been fated to do. Even if Morons Awake! was principally concerned with matters having more to do with Moronia than with America, in order to attain the kind of stature such a book needed (and deserved) it would have to be written with American market in mind. And to do that I would need to refamiliarize myself with a country from which, for all practical purposes, I been exiled since 1938.45 I will also confess to being not entirely uninfluenced by a certain degree of nostalgia—and even homesickness—for the land of my birth. While Moronia shares many of America's socio cultural "charms," when you get right down to it there is no substitute for the Grand Canyon, the Mighty Mississippi, the Sierra Nevada—and, of course, a good Jewish delicatessen.46 While my 5year exploration of its length and breadth didn't substantially alter the opinions about late 20thcentury America I had formed in Moronia, there were several discoveries that did surprise me. The most pleasant of these was just how right I had been about the State Department, CIA and FBI failing to pursue me in their own bailiwick! At least I was unaware of any effort they were making in that regard. There were no Most Wanted circulars bearing my name and former likeness displayed in any of the post offices I inspected upon arriving in the hundreds of cities, towns, hamlets and villages I passed through on my crosscountry junket. Nor was any mention made of me or the Klutz Affair on the nightly news or in the print media. For all the American masses knew both Mordecai J. Goldberg and Jack F. Klutz were perfect nonentities whose existence (if they existed at all) had no impact on their daily lives, and couldn't conceivably influence the future course of human history.47
Such a total blackout was, of course, in keeping with the "conspiracy of silence" I predicted would be used against me by those seeking to keep a lid on the Klutz Affair. Nevertheless I couldn't help but be somewhat disconcerted by the lack of publicity surrounding the momentous crusade upon which I had embarked to singlehandedly restore Western Civilization to its former glory. Was this part of a nefarious plot to undermine my resolve (and my very martyrdom!) by denying me the limelight normally focused on someone who is sacrificing himself for such a Noble Cause? If so, I had to concede that my enemies were more proficient in the art of psychological warfare than I had given them credit for. My survival instincts48 notwithstanding, the writing of Morons Awake! would have been much easier had I been spurred on by the infamy to which I was entitled. Of all the slings&arrows an evangelical novelist is obliged to endure, being ignored is the unkindest cut of all to bear. Still, the sheer singularity of the way in which I was being so totally snubbed confirmed the fact I was indeed the target of an allout international conspiracy.49
As for my impersonation of a retired Detroit auto worker, it too was accomplished with considerably more ease than I had expected. Whether that was attributable to my acting talent or because, as I discovered: Despite their reputation for being "tough customers," whether average Americans are any less gullible than average Morons is open to debate.50 And, while I didn't meet many housewives with Mrs "Smith's" perspicacity—or her irresistible attraction to intellectuals of the opposite sex—the years of monastic solitude I spent as a writer and a fugitive were punctuated now and then by social acts that went beyond the norms of casual contact when I took pity on some "distressed damsel" whose need for my foreplay services seemed particularly desperate.51 These occasional liaisons were not without their risks. No matter how transitory52 I intended them to be, the profound effect of my lovemaking artistry on the women involved was more than likely to create the kind of emotional entanglement a man in my outlaw circumstances could ill afford to risk.53
On the other hand, having already thrown so much of my customary caution to the wind by embarking on such a Quixotic escapade in the first place, why shrink from an additional danger that wasn't entirely lacking in ramifications that could be (and were) construed as beneficial—or even indispensable—to my noble objective of liberating America's female population from its pre-, post- and/or extramarital marital chains? And, apart from the therapeutic value of recreational sex which even the most serious writer54 requires from time to time, there were even more compelling reasons why, as both a foreplay connoisseur and an evangelical novelist, I was ethically—if not morally—obliged to probe as deeply as I could into what Casanova called the "infinite mysteries of femininity." To begin with there was the fact that women comprise 93% of those who buy and read the average bestselling American novel. Granted that, because of its "literary" pretensions, the initial readership of Morons Awake! was likely to be skewed heavily toward the male end of the cultural spectrum. But once the females of America eventually got wise to the titillational motherlode their menfolk were discovering between the covers (and virtually every line) of what seemed at first glance to be a philosophical tract they would flock to their book sellers in unprecedented numbers. And to insure that such a hypothetical "buying stampede" would become a reality it was essential in writing my Revolutionary Manifesto disguised as a runaway bestseller to learn as much as I possibly could about the prurient proclivities of those who would help me make artistic history. Was it conceivable, for instance, that a housewife addicted to the reading of trashy gothic romances might be capable of appreciating the nuances of "pornography" that was more ideological than emotional in the way it addressed the hunger such women have for a sexual fulfillment the men they choose to date and marry always seem incapable of providing them with?55
Book One Chapter 3 Part 2 Return to Index
Footnotes
33 Since, as the following sentence implies, telling this story in any other way would be less than totally truthful, I felt compelled to break that novelwriting rule exhorting all authors to pay more heed to their reader's limited attention span than to their own "artistic integrity" when dealing with the kind of "miraculous" event I witnessed on that late September night in Southern California.
34 If there is a Cardinal Rule for those who would practice the Art of Foreplay it is this: The longer a woman can be made to endure the agony of having her climactic expectations repeatedly deferred, the greater her rapture will be when those expectations are eventually consummated. While the application of such a rule might appear to be rudimentary to the uninitiated, in my experience it is a skill easier to articulate than to acquire. After she has undergone 3 or 4 hours of foreplay, persuading a woman she can—and must—contain herself for another hour or 2 requires nothing less than the patience of a saint.
35 Despite their otherwise miraculous properties, I am assuming the vehicle in question and its driver were not generated spontaneously on the spot. If indeed they were proceeding north on Vine Street toward Hollywood Blvd at a normal rate of speed this would place them near the intersection of Sunset & Vine at exactly the time to which I alluded in the sentence referring you to this footnote.
36 Not that Hollywood & Vine was ever much more than the fantasy of some anonymous picturepostcard huckster. Still, architectural considerations notwithstanding, like Broadway & 42nd Street, Hollywood & Vine did, and probably still does, evoke a powerful mythology by the mere crossing of its 2 roads.
37 There is, of course, the celebrated case of J. D. Salinger who, it is rumored, has been trying for over 30 years to compose the single sentence with which to begin his epic sequel to Catcher In The Rye. Personally, I have my doubts about this. And I'm not alone in believing that no novelist could be so punctilious about perfecting one sentence as to devote what amounts to the lifetime of a Mozart or a Schubert composing it. The consensus among the literati is that Salinger gave up his writing ghost a very long time ago and occupies himself with pastimes which are far less heroic, and may even include his deliberate efforts to encourage the spreading of the aforementioned rumor. If so, by fostering the mystery in which he has enveloped himself, like Garbo and Dietrich, Salinger is seeking to achieve immortality by making himself into a living legend. But until the truth is revealed about his literary hiatus my claim for having spent more time than any other human being attempting to write the first sentence of a novel should be viewed with the gravity it deserves.
[There is William Gass' The Tunnel, a work in progress that has been going on (and on) for more than 20 years (his first novel, Omsetter's Luck, took him a mere 15 years to write). Pynchon spent 16 years producing Vineland; Gaddis spent 20 years on J R; and Brodkey has been writing his first novel, A Party of Animals, since 1958!!!!! As for agonizing over a first sentence, see Appendix Q for a recent discussion on this fascinating subject—J. P.]
38 An expository device is one a novelist uses when introducing his readers to the perfunctory information they will need to fully appreciate the plot that follows—while concealing the perfunctorial nature of what he is doing from his readers as he does it.
39 By now you should be able to earn at least a passing grade if quizzed on such subjects as: The Klutz Affair's role in reversing the decline of Western Civilization; Moronia's chief agricultural product; the reasons for, and principal participants in, the global conspiracy to prevent the writing of Morons Awake!; the similarities between Moronic and American sociocultural mores; those basic skills needed to successfully practice the Art of Foreplay, etc.
40 While there are some notable examples of artistic derringdo which ended successfully (Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Joyce's Ulysses, Shakespeare's King Lear, Rodin's The Kiss) there are many more cases where the "reward" for taking such risks was scorn, ridicule and oblivion (Berlioz's Les Troyans, Menotti's Goya, Sternheim's Underpants, Goldberg's Great American Hitler Play). Because, by their very definition, most of these "heroic disasters" remain totally obscure we tend to underestimate what are really the almost insuperable odds against doing what I have been trying to do in the first 3 chapters of this novel.
41 Having relinquished my diplomatic immunity upon retiring while still in Moronia this was not only an indignity to which I was unaccustomed, it prevented me from taking what little hard evidence I had relating to the Klutz Affair with me—a circumstance I compensated for by having memorized all the material pertaining to Klutz's life and death to which I had, in one way or another, gained access. Nevertheless, while my memory acquitted itself admirably in the writing of Morons Awake!, my lack of documents and artifacts that would prove beyond any reasonable doubt Jack F. Klutz actually lived and died as I'm claiming he did has turned out to be a not inconsequential impediment to the establishment of my credibility.
42 Since Moronia's borders weren't spacious enough to accommodate the runways needed by jumbojets, passengers flying to and from Moronville did so via the international airport of a nearby country (which, for reasons we need not go into, prefers to remain anonymous when it comes to any official dealings it might have with Moronia).
43 As described in a previous footnote these consisted of transforming my facial features into those that were less likely to arouse any suspicion concerning my Semitic (and hence, intellectual) origins among the rednecked, bluecollared and hardhatted types I would be encountering throughout my transAmerican travels. For reasons I have also previously admitted had more to do with my vanity than with saving mankind from its own mediocrity, I emerged from Harley Street with a full head of hair, a wrinklefree neck and a penis that was several inches longer and thicker than the one Mother Nature had seen fit to endow me with originally.
44 With Vicky Truelove's help I had placed an order (under Arthur Long's name) for an RV outfitted with a replica of the study in which most of my extracurricular thinking had been done during my ambassadorship in Moronia. Located in the Winnebago's tail end, my design for the study included a sliding partition by which I could conceal its existence from the prying eyes of any guests (invited or otherwise) whose questions about its overtly "cerebral ambiance" would not be easy for an American of Long's ostensible averageness to answer. Even so, I took the additional precaution of altering the literary modus operandi I had used since college by replacing my 1937 Smith Corona with a stateoftheart computer. My reason for doing this was to eliminate every trace of a paper trail that could lead someone to suspect me of engaging in an activity whose nature, if not actually subversive, was nevertheless decidedly unAmerican. While getting rid of that old typewriter left me with a sense of security it did so at a considerable cost. Much of the time it has taken me to write Morons Awake! was spent simply getting used to the clatterless (and paperless) style of writing electronically.
45 Naturally I had kept myself reasonably wellinformed about what had happened in America during my "exile." And as a State Department official (regardless of my persona non grata status) I was privy to information about which ordinary Americans were, for reasons of "protecting democracy," kept completely in the dark. It's also the case that life as it is lived in Moronia is practically indiscernible from that which is lived in the United States. Nevertheless there probably were differential nuances between Morons and Americans which, I reasoned, could only be detected by immersing myself in the mainstream of contemporary American society.
46 Like virtually all Europeans, the Morons seem incapable of putting together (or appreciating) a decent pastrami or corned beef on rye. This fact is difficult to explain since these gastronomical bonanzas originated not that far from Moronia. While I'm reluctant to speculate on the possible anti Semitic causes for such a paradox, it wouldn't be the first time Morons and Europeans had missed a good meal by refusing to eat "kosher."
47 If indeed the masses ever do think about the course of human history except when it jumps up and bites them—as it did to the ordinary German in WWII (and to some 56,000 average American families in the Vietnam war).
48 And, yes, my vanity too.
49 A confirmation I sorely needed to ward off the nagging doubt that, like so many other wouldbe prophets, my persecution fears were delusionary.
50 This isn't necessarily a criticism. If the Morons have any charm, it must surely be their unmitigated gullibility in a world where blind faith in the righteousness of one's fellow man—or anything else—has become deader than the proverbial doornail. Unfortunately this quaint feature of the Moronic character is attributable more to ignorance than to any firmly held conviction about the reciprocal benefits of social relationships based on mutual trust.
51 With the publication of Morons Awake! and the celebrity I am bound to "enjoy" not only as its author and one of its principal protagonists, but because of the revelations concerning my foreplay exploits, God knows how many frustrated housewives will emerge from the woodwork of their domestic fantasies to proclaim themselves as one of my "satisfied customers." No doubt the supermarket tabloids will herald me as a "Johnny Appleseed of Extramarital Sex" spreading his gospel of "Nonstop Foreplay" from one coast of America's "Fastfood Fornicational Landscape" to the other. Accordingly I have taken the precaution of providing my publisher with a sealed envelope containing the precise itinerary I followed in my crosscountry travels. Consequently: Any females who might be thinking about making the aforementioned claim are hereby warned they will be required to substantiate it with a time and place coinciding with the dates and geographic particulars contained in said sealed envelope.
52 I made it a point of honor to state in the most unambiguous terms for every woman who propositioned me that I would play my Prince Charming to her Sleeping Beauty on a "one night stand only" basis.
53 Witness John Dillinger's disastrous dalliance with the Lady in Red, Adolf Eichmann's illfated love affair with a Mossad femme fatale, Gary Hart's weekendlong oceanic fling with a doubledealing bimbo on the payroll of the RNC—not to mention old Paris' ruinous infatuation with Helen.
54 Throughout the writing of Morons Awake! my normal sexual desires were supercharged by several factors. One of them being, no doubt, the urge all fugitives (and condemned men) have to fornicate as frequently as they can in the brief time remaining for them to procreate their way to immortality. There were probably also the added copulational pressures resulting from the celibate nature of all artistic creativity—and especially that which seeks the reelevation of human consciousness to its former state of civilizational chauvinism It is also not altogether impossible that my lecherous impulses emanated from the loins of a character whose "average American randiness" I had unwittingly acquired in the process of perfecting my impersonation of him.
55 Whether such women should be blamed or pitied for selecting a mate on the basis of his brawn rather than his brains is a problem that has been debated in a variety of forums, ranging from the stage plays of Karl Sternheim and Henrik Ibsen to the clinical context of America's scientific quest for the Holy Grail of conjugal bliss. It should go without saying that one of this book's principal purposes is to inform its female readers about the hidden, but much more rewarding, longterm benefits of being more keenly aware of a prospective spouse's cranial capacity than the contents of his crotch. As the authors of The Bell Curve point out on page 92: "When [the] propensity to mate by IQ is combined with increasingly efficient educational and occupational stratification, assortative mating by IQ has a more powerful effect on the next generation than it had on the previous one. This process... seems to be...part of the brew creating an American [caste] system." And according to Robert Wright's article—"Our Cheating Hearts: Devotion and betrayal, marriage and divorce: how evolution shaped human love"—in Time Magazine (15 Aug 1994): "Many studies confirm the more discriminating nature of women. One evolutionary psychologist surveyed men and women about the minimal level of intelligence they would accept in a person they were 'dating.' The average response for both male and female: average intelligence. And how smart would the potential date have to be before they would consent to sex? Said the women: Oh, in that case, markedly above average. Said the men: Oh, in that case, markedly below average."