Chapter 2: "Iam a Moron!" (cont.)

Wherein the sensational developments surrounding the auspicious visit of President & Mrs. John F. Kennedy to Moronia are continued.

I MUST ADMIT TO BEING COMPLETELY—and not unpleasantly—surprised over the way Ballbraker rose to the occasion by marshaling his Moronic resources for what was to be the most gala event in his country's history. Working throughout the night on just a few hours' notice the Morons had transformed the center of their ordinarily drab capital city into a dazzling display of pomp and circumstance which would rival that of any American metropolis hosting a Presidential visit on such short notice. While it was obvious to me most of these overnight preparations had been lifted from the blue print by which Moronia staged its Annual Turnip Tournament I couldn't help admiring the Morons for so shrewdly (and "simplisticly") solving a problem that would have caused a major protocol panic in New York, London or Paris.³⁰  Motorcading³¹ our way along the 3 blocks from the American embassy to Moronville's City Hall the Kennedys were duly impressed by the way Main Street's lamp posts had been festooned with streamers, bunting, ceremonial turnip clusters and the symbolically crossed flags of America's rectangular red, white and blue "stars & stripes" and Moronia's square, white on white, "tabla rasa."³² The sidewalks were lined with jubilant throngs of Moronvillians and their country cousins—hundreds of whom had been arriving since dawn from Moronia's 4 (equidistant) corners in turniptrucks and -wagons. By Ballbraker's estimate 98% of the populace —some 3,750 souls—would be in attendance by the time Kennedy delivered his speech.

     Arriving at City Hall we found it draped with banners proclaiming Moronia's solidarity with America in such stirring phrases as, "TWO NATIONS BUT ONE COMMON CULTURE!" "MORONIA & AMERICA FOREVER UNITED IN MIND & SPIRIT!" "AMERICANS & MORONS—ALL BORN EQUAL!" Looking down on the crowd from the reviewing stand one saw that eccentric display of Moronic headwear and haberdashery about which I and other cultural anthropologists³³ have written so extensively. What fascinated Mrs. Kennedy most about this panorama of ethnic attire were what she quite naturally called "the duncecaps" so many of the Morons seemed to be wearing. And, while these coneshaped chapeaux can be easily mistaken for those once used with such regularity (and effect) in American schools to shame a sub standard student, nothing could be further from the truth—at least in Moronic terms. As a matter of fact these "duncecaps" are actually made from highschool diplomas; and their wearing is considered to be a mark of academic achievement not unlike that conveyed in America by the donning of a mortarboard at a commencement ceremony.³⁴  Whatever contradiction this represents in a society frowning on even the slightest display of intellectual elitism can be attributed to the same paradoxical attitude American universities exhibit by their veneration of brawn over brains vis-a-vis the salary differential between an English professor and a football coach.

     While most of the crowd was composed of Moronvillians whose urban garb was (with the exception of their ubiquitous hats, caps and bonnets) nearly indistinguishable from that typically worn by a mob of modern Europeans or Americans, their "country cousins" were attired in a more traditionally Moronic array of sartorial eccentricities. Thus the male "Bumpkins" could be readily identified by their familiar locomotive engineer's cloth caps, the red bandannas tied around their shirtless necks,³⁵ their bibbed overalls, "boondocker" shoes and, of course, the turnipdigging pitchforks they carried—all of which gave them what has been described as the "Grant Wood" or "American Gothic" look.³⁶ On the other hand, the wives and daughters of these agrarian Morons—or "Bumpkinettes"—presented one with anything but a stereotypical picture of demure rusticity! On their heads they wore an assortment of homespun turnipstraw creations evoking memories of the millinery heydays of Paris and Hollywood—and (by no means inadvertently) their corresponding images of unabashed glamorgirldom. Nothing even approximating this ostentatious display of feminine headwear is seen beyond the borders of Moronia except, perhaps, at Ascot on the day of the Royal Race. And, from the neck down, the costumes (or lack thereof) worn by these Moronic Bumpkinettes is no less flamboyant—or sexually provocative. Their peasant blouses are cut so extremely low nothing about their ample³⁷ snow white bosoms is left to the imagination, save for what prevents them from completely overspilling the twin cups of the "wench's bodice" into which they have been poured. These tightlylaced bodices also produce the "hourglass effect" by which the already Juno- or Rubensesque dimensions of the average Bumpkinette's hips, belly and buttocks assume an even more seductive degree of ampleness—or "plumplitude" in the vernacular of male Morons. Skirtwise the situation can become truly scandalous for the uninitiated. Scarcely descending to the level of their loins, these tutulike garments are calculated to show off what are, almost without exception, a pair of garterbelted&black silkstockinged "gams" no man (Moronic or otherwise) can resist salivating (at least to himself) over. And to complete this headtotoe inventory of the fashion statement made by these rusticated femmes fatales their feet are shod with the kind of patentleather spiked pumps one expects to see on a runway of the sleaziest Yokohama striptease joint or stage of a Las Vegas Hotelcasino—as if, despite the depth of their ignorance, they had intuitively taken a page from Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class by so conspicuously demonstrating their aloofness from the daily drudgery of turnipculture.

     All things considered, then, no couple could be odder than that represented by the average Moronic Bumpkin and his Bumpkinette. Ornithologicallyspeaking these strangest of birds not only reverse the sexual roles ordinarily played by their male and female plumage, in the process they manage to upset the entire applecart of those preconceptions most intellectuals have about being immune to the seductive charms of brainless women. My own legendary failings³⁸ in this regard were shared, at least momentarily, by President Kennedy; who admitted to me in a whispered aside he was beginning to understand the reasons for my "psychotic" pursuit of perfecting the Art of Superprotracted Foreplay—about which, based on the CIA's dossier of my "sexual proclivities," some reservations had been raised in his own mind about the mental capacity of a man who would "fornicate his way (more than once!) through an entire population of female Morons."

     Mrs. Kennedy was so impressed by the Bumpkinettes she passed me a note behind her husband's back, in which I found written:

While the thought of keeping her note as a souvenir³⁹ of our meeting did cross my mind it was derailed by my tender feelings for the rather pathetic way in which she expressed her yearning for an "elixir" that might magically transform her girlish bosom into "a prize pair of Moronic hooters." Turning the note over I hastily scribbled the following reply and returned it to her in the furtive manner by which I had received it:

Fortunately the President was so preoccupied with the crowd he failed to take any notice of this little epistolary intrigue between his wife and me.

     "It's truly incredible," he mused, more to himself than to me, "to think we are seeing the population of an entire nation gathered in this not very large square."

     "Yes, Mr. President," I volunteered to avoid any suspicion he might have that my attention had been temporarily divided between him and The First Lady, "by paying you this honor the Morons are expressing their affection for all Americans. However, I should point out to you that, strictly speaking, the entire population of Moronia is not represented by the crowd we now see standing before us."

     "Oh?"

     "No, sir. If you will look very carefully—and with a circumspection whose reason will presently become clear—you might just be able to see some Morons peering at us from behind the shutters, drapes and curtains of the windows in those tallish buildings to your right."

     "Yes," Kennedy stated, after carefully following my instructions, "I can only just make them out; but there does indeed seem to be a face—or at least a pair of eyes—in every one of those windows! They must be that small group of potential 'troublemakers' Ballbraker warned us about. Although," he added rather ruefully, "letting them remain in what seems like an ideal vantage point from which to make me the target of an assassination doesn't make a helluva lot of sense securitywise, does it?"

     "In my professional opinion, Mr. President," I assured him, "you have absolutely nothing to fear from those particular Morons. Most, if not all of them, are the closest and dearest friends I've made during my 25 years as our ambassador to Moronia. And they also happen to be among your most enthusiastic admirers—"

     "Then why the hell are they behaving like fugitives?" he asked logically.

     "Because that's exactly what they are!"

     "I don't follow you, Goldberg."

     "Known as "highbrows" they comprise the most elite elements of Moronia's otherwise egalitarian society; and for that very reason they are held in contempt by all common—or "lowbrowed" Morons. After centuries of persecution they represent what little remains of a Moronic intelligentsia that, while its numbers never reached more than a hundred, was, in relative terms, vastly superior to the highbrow/lowbrow ratio presently found in our own country. But," I added humbly, "this isn't the time to bore you with my knowledge on a subject about which I seem to be the only one in the world who has the slightest curiosity! Even the Morons couldn't care less about my theories on what makes them tick"

     Glancing at his wristwatch the President said, "Since it seems we still have a few minutes to kill⁴⁰ before the big parade starts why don't you fill me in on some of the details surrounding this peculiar state of affairs. As I made plain to you last night: I'm not completely sold on your theory Moronia is some kind of 'microcosmic paradigm for all modern nationstates.' But that doesn't mean I've completely closed my mind to what would be a very useful idea—if it turned out to be true."

AT THE TIME, COMPLYING WITH THE President's superficially casual request presented me with what I soon realized was a dilemma of some considerable complexity—and one which is no less vexing now, as I sit here writing this account of our conversation. The question then was: Whether I should try to tell this future American king a story that filled an entire volume of my History of the Morons in a mere 15 minutes⁴¹ or, by not doing so, leave him with the false impression my hypothesis concerning the relevance of Moronia's microcosmicity to the practice of superpower statecraft was just so much more JewishIntellectual hot air? Similarly, dear reader, the issue I now face so squarely is this: Should I interrupt the flow of this most "novelesque" of my chapters by taking you on yet another nonnovelistic excursion into the realm of metaphysics or, in keeping with my policy of separating the chaff of fiction from the wheat of pure art, relegate a discussion of the dire consequences flowing from Moronia's antiIntellectualism to an(other!) appendix—or one of my "bloated" footnotes?

     "Why," you must be asking yourself, "do I agonize over what seems like such a trivial matter—a minor literary fine point with which the author of a bestselling novel should not bother his readers?" The answer to that, dear reader, is simply this: Whether you and I wanted it to happen this way or not, because President Kennedy has raised what would later become the leitmotif of the Klutz Affair we have (prematurely) reached that most pregnant of moments in this Manifesto on the Perils of Mindlessness when the providential reason for my writing (and your reading) of it cannot be avoided, to wit: As the history of the Morons demonstrates: The "bliss" of ignorance isn't only the cruelest hoax for those individuals who seek it but the most counterproductive kind of societal selfdeception. This is, of course, a theme of cosmic significance—and one rarely addressed in even the most popular of literary masterpieces.⁴² As you learned from reading my transcript of the Mt. Olympus Tape, the blissofignoranceversuserudition debate is one that perplexed God Himself—until I enlightened him on the error of having created a race in His Allknowing image while drastically curtailing its future intellectual options. Educating God is one thing—in spite of his paternalistic proclivities He is not an altogether unreasonable fellow with whom to deal—but persuading the reader of a novel she is capable of comprehending such a tricky paradox (let alone collaborate with me in its solution) is a daunting proposition few, if any, authors have ever attempted.⁴³

     Added to which is the emotional trauma most American (and Moronic) housewives will suffer when it dawns on them (if it hasn't already done so) they have been seduced by my "reptilian guile" to make the same fatal mistake Eve made when she sank her teeth into the Forbidden Fruit—with consequences that are equally catastrophic to the "innocent" state of their pristine mentalities. The "literary rapist" is seldom forgiven by his "victim"—especially when her coerced copulation results in a conception. No matter how (physically) immaculate such a pregnancy might be, few modern women can be expected to relish the prospect of playing a Madonna to even the most messianic of bastards. Hence it is that while you and I have reached this advanced stage in our "literary" loveaffair I sense a certain reluctance on your part to fully embrace the more outrageous of my philosophical propositions.

     Being an expert in the art of Superprotracted Foreplay, of course, I am no stranger to the enigmatic proclivities of the female psyche. As Sigmund Freud⁴⁴ observed: "When a common housewife (der Kleenex hausfrau) is on the verge of having her most ardent desires consummated she frequently has 'second thoughts' about her eagerness to actually climax the orgasmic expectations she has spent her entire married life cultivating. Whether this cowardice is caused by the simple fear of failure, or the more subtle anxieties over the 'postpartumlike depression syndrome' women intuitively associate with the fruition of their fondest fantasies—to the foreplay practitioner (or novelist) the result is identical: A fullblown crisis state in which all his seductive momentum suddenly hangs suspended in that thinnest of intellectual air known as 'a woman's right' to change her mind."⁴⁵  Ideally, dear reader, I would have preferred postponing this crisis of ours until you had read another 7 or 8 chapters. By so doing you would have completed the educational prerequisites needed before a woman can be properly asked to fling herself headlong into an affair that couldn't be more "postgraduate" in the degree of its difficulty— or the sublime nature of its rewards in the event of a satisfactory outcome. Perhaps I'm underestimating the level to which your literary IQ has already been raised by our having made it this far in my novelized "tutorial" on the superiority of mind over matter in that most clandestine of loveaffairs; the one between an author and his reader. But regardless of how ready or not you are to be carried across the expectational threshold, when all's said and done, the fate of even the slickest foreplayist—or rapeminded painter, playwright, composer,⁴⁶  novelist and/or political pamphleteer—lies cradled in the lady like⁴⁷ hands of his intended "victim."  Hence my own apprehensions as we are about to enter the "do or die" phase of our "platonic honeymoon." Nevertheless you and I have indeed arrived (actually, we were pushed) at that preclimactic point where we find ourselves facetoface with the very essence of the Klutz Affair—displaying itself in a state of starknakedness which couldn't be more fullyfrontalized! Yes, dear reader, the time has come when we must try to answer the burning question of whether 'tis more blissful to be ignorant than to be erudite?

     As I'm sure you must be aware by now, this is an issue over which the most learned metaphysicians, philosophers and theologians have been arguing since the very dawn of human consciousness.⁴⁸  But, fortunately for you, in coming to grips with this hitherto insoluble dilemma you have the benefit of the wisdom I acquired so painfully during my 50 years of exile in Moronia. If my 16 volume History of the Morons has any value at all it is the insight it offers to the civilized world concerning a society which, for at least 5,000 years, has remained petrified in a state of (near) Edenesque ignorance. As I point out in my preface to that monumental work: "What was (until this opus of mine arrived on the anthropological scene) a purely speculative controversy raging over the dubious benefits of mindlessness compared to the mixed blessings of sagacity⁴⁹ can now be examined under a clinical microscope as accurate as any previously used to scrutinize the human condition."

     So it happened that, in those 15 minutes before the Turnip Tournament Parade began, I told President Kennedy the abbreviated cautionary tale it had taken me 25 years to write—that saddest of all sad stories explaining how, to spite a culture lacking in luster to begin with, the Morons have been lobotomizing themselves for 50 centuries in the pursuit of a perfectly brainless life style.⁵⁰ It is a story, dear reader, I will now make even shorter than the nutshell version I told the President in order to minimize any further loss of the orgasmic momentum we have both been working so diligently to gather.⁵¹

Bok Two Chapter 2 Part 2   Return to Index

Footnotes

30 According to Willy Brandt, in his Memoirs of a German Joshua (p.224), with more than a week's notice the West Berliners were still struggling to finalize their preparations for JFK's 1963 visit only minutes before his arrival!

31 I was riding in the front of the Presidential Eldorado Biarritz, occupying the seat in which Governor Connally would sit on that fatal day in 1963. As it turned out, more than JFK's Ich bin ein Berliner speech was being dress rehearsed on that June day in Moronville. As in Dallas, against the Secret Service's strenuous objections, Kennedy ordered the Cadillac's bulletproof bubble to be removed; and Jackie was wearing her favorite pink suit with its "lucky" matching hat—the one which first caught the corner of Senator Kennedy's eye when she was working the halls of congress as a photojournalist.

32 The "clean slate" or "blank page" symbolizing the Morons' veneration of that Godgiven ignorance they celebrate as "a sublime state of absolute openmindedness." As for the "whiteonwhite" design of the Moronic flag, the Morons insist they can detect the "somewhat paler" outline of their national emblem—a triad of turnips signifying Past, Present and Future—clearly traced against the "plainer white" background.  And while I have serious reservations about this claim (the Morons are notorious for their sly sense of "humor") it is, I suppose, no less credible than that advanced by the citizens of Turin about their famous shroud—or the fuss made by some American art critics over the monochromatic (blackonblack, redonred, greenongreen, etc.) paintings of Mark Rothko. Personally I find the Moronic flag refreshing not only for its stark simplicity (it never fails to stand out when displayed along with those garish banners of the world's supposedly more important nations) but for the profound message it sends (no matter how unintentionally) about the Morons' commonsense survival strategy of capitulating instantly to a superior enemy—which in their case includes just about everyone except, perhaps, the Cretins. I say profound because this policy of abject surrender is not unlike the cheekturning behavior advocated by Christ; and because the Morons are living proof of the practical wisdom contained in such religious advice. Had it not taken a "Sermon on the Mount approach" to the realpolitik of its microstatic status the Moronic race would surely have become extinct many centuries ago.

33 Rhinehold Kleinschmidt, The Iconography Of Moronic Headwear (1824), Jean-Paul Duffet, The Truth About What The Morons Keep Hidden Under Their Hats (1906), Margaret Meade, Sartorial Similarities Between Morons and Micronesians (1937).

34 Before we ridicule this practice out of hand let us admit that at least the Morons have found a practical use for a document which in America remains absolutely worthless.

35 Hence the Moronic meaning of the term "redneck"—a term which, paradoxically, arises from the Morons' use of the bandanna to prevent their necks from being reddened (and wrinkled) by the sun.

36 See History of the Morons, vol. IV, Chapter 9, in which I discuss the major influence Wood's prototypically American painting has had on promoting the selfesteem of Moronia's peasantry. Not a single hovel, hut or shack in rural Moronia is without its reproduction of this classic portrait of rustic Americana—just as the otherwise artistically illiterate citizens of Thornton Wilder's Our Town were all at least somewhat familiar with "Whistler's Mother." While this doesn't disprove the ironic assertion made by George Grosz (among others) that artists cannot influence the course of history, it does, I think, indicate the common man (or woman) is not congenitally incapable of appreciating the "finer things" in life when it becomes socially acceptable (or personally advantageous) to do so. Hence the popularity of "secondrate" artists like Norman Rockwell, Andrew Lloyd Weber and Ian Flemming is regarded by me as a hopeful sign someday the masses might find themselves captivated by the works of such bonafide artistic "super stars" as Pablo Picasso, Gustav Mahler and James Joyce. This is one of the reasons why (with God's divine guidance) I have chosen to disguise what might otherwise be just another offputting manifesto on the blissfulness of intelligence as a bestselling novel.

37 For more on this fascinating subject see my Memorandum Re The Effects Of Turnipeating On The Size, Shape, Function & Durability Of Moronic Mammilature—a work that is still available only in its original mimeograph form despite the role this scientific information could play in helping millions of women achieve the busts of their dreams by including more turnips in their diet.

38 A flaw in my character which, nevertheless, gave rise to my even more legendary exploits in the field of foreplay!

39 As it turned out, of course, that note was the only tangible evidence of the Kennedys' visit to Moronia—all other traces of which have been erased by the conspiracy to prevent my lidblowing of the Klutz Affair. Nevertheless I don't regret my act of chivalry in offering to help a lady solve a problem (no pun intended) so close to her heart.

40 We had been officially notified by the Turnip Tournament Committee that, owing to some lastminute glitches in organizing such a massive undertaking on so little notice there would be a halfhour delay in the start of their shortened version of Moronia's annual worldfamous Turnip Tournament parade. In particular they were having trouble squeezing the 1961 Turnip Tournament Queen into the swimsuit she wore for last year's parade; and would either have to find her a larger one or go through the unprecedented (and painstaking) procedure of crowning this year's Turnip Tournament Queen 2 months prematurely. Unless we were prepared to risk having the present holder of that title publicly burst her swimsuit at the seams with the resulting international scandal such an accident would cause. While privately JFK told me he was more than willing to put his Presidential prestige on the line for the chance of seeing something like that transpire, he politely deferred to the wishes and "expertise in these delicate matters" of the TTC.

41 As the Morons are so fond of saying: "Nothing is more dangerous than a little knowledge." And while they deliberately misconstrue the real meaning of this axiom to support their bogus claim that knowledge itself is the root of all evil I could only ignore such a truth at the peril of putting all my political eggs in a basket so small (timewise) it couldn't possibly hold them.

42 Some of the most notable exceptions to this rule being Woyzeck, Ship of Fools, The Death & Transfiguration of the New Frontier Kid, How Mao and, of course, Franz Kafka's entire oeuvre.^G

43 I except here authoresses such as Anaïs Nin, the Baroness Dudevant and, of course, Katya Kahkov; whose efforts at liberating the minds of female readers from the shackles of what is now known as their "mental enslavement by Dead White European Males," while no less heroic than mine, lack the heterosexual dynamics arising from the masculine point of view with which Morons Awake! is being written.

44 See his lecture on "Those Wrecked by Success" in Character and Culture: Psychoanalysis Applied to Anthropology, Mythology, Folklore, Literature, and Culture in General, published by Collier Books, 1963

45 Which Freud goes so far as to call a vakuum in his notoriously misogynistic Ruminations on the Difficulties of Crosssexual Conversation. See Kate Millet's excoriating essay on "Sigmund Freud as the Most Fatherly Figure of All Dead White European Males" in the May 1966 issue of Vagina Militatus.

46 See the comments ("mashnotes") scribbled by Strauss in the margins of his scores for Don Juan and Ein Heldenleben regarding Wagner's Theory of the Great Composer "as a sexual deity whose omnipotent phallus becomes an irresistible object of idolatry to his female audience." Strauss makes no secret of his doubts about Wagner's overlysimplistic (and symbolically cockeyed) opinion that women are enthralled by the sheer grandeur of his operas just as a cobra is hypnotized into submission by the playing of a snakecharmer's flute. As Strauss correctly saw it, while Wagner's notion that his musical machismo could be directly translated into nonallegorical terms—ie., that women would become literally infatuated not with the pen he used to compose his masterworks but with his superman's penis (überSchmuck)—might have been true; it was both "phallocentricly naive and musically shortsighted."
     According to Strauss, despite his legendary reputation as an egomaniacal Casanova who did indeed fornicate his way through nearly the entire female population of Bavaria, Wagner completely missed the point about the erotogenic essence of grand opera. Thus the' dedication of his tone poem Don Juan to "R W" was actually a sly reproach in which those initials stood not for Richard Wagner but Recke Wachen ("hero awaken thyself"). As his marginal mash notes clearly indicate, Strauss intended Don Juan and Ein Heldenleben to be "orchestral manifestos" for his own hypothesis concerning the "sexual attributes of musical genius." To him these attributes had very little, if anything, to do with Wagner's phallocentric notions about the gargantuan proportions of a composer's genitalia. "The true measure of a composer's masculinity," he wrote, "was not the size of his manhood but the purpose to which he puts it." And what better use for a man's artistic talent than to make love not as Wagner did (on a retail one-piece-at-a-time basis) but in wholesale quantities—-and throughout all eternity! To do that the heroic composer must perceive of himself as a werkszeuggeschlecht (sex tool) by means of which the art of liebegetrommelfellmacht (eardrum lovemaking) could be practiced to perfection. Only by "sticking to his kunstkanonen (artistic guns) would a man achieve the truly godlike power over all women for all time Wagner sought so mistakenly—-and vainly—-in his quest for a sexual apotheosis."
     And who can deny that Strauss was right? One has only to attend a performance of even the most obtuse of his operas (Die Frau ohne Schatten for example) to appreciate the devastating effect he has on women How many times have I seen them sitting with their hands folded demurely in the laps of their one-and-only evening gowns pretending to be perfectly cool, calm and collected while their enflamed crotches are screaming to be quenched! And when Salome, Elektra or Capriccio is being performed, the opera house auditorium positively reeks with the aroma of smoldering desire arising from the loins of its female listeners. The best kept secret in show business is this: The hottest tickets in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Moronville are those for a Strauss opera or concert. Why, it might be asked, is this the case? Why should a boxoffice fact of such boffoistic proportions be so completely shrouded in the conspiratorial cloak of silence? The answer, dear reader, can be found in a man's worst nightmare, which is: That his wife's dream of committing adultery with a deceased artist will come true if he takes her to see—-and hear—-an authentic "cultural" event. If you doubt the truth of this just ask yourself when (if ever) was the last time you were invited by your husband or lover to attend the performance of a Strauss opera, a Mahler symphony, a Brecht play—-or an exhibition of art defined by the Third Reich as degenerate?
     Oh, yes—-Strauss put his finger on a sensitive masculine nerve when he identified the most alluring of a woman's orifices as the ones found in her ears; those twin communication channels leading directly to her brain; and which she is almost powerless to defend against his auditory advances —-especially when he scores them fff. And, while he remained puritanically faithful to his wife throughout their long marriage, can anyone doubt that, when it comes to which of them led the real heldenleben (hero's life) of a musical Don Juan (psycopathic womanizer), Richard Strauss was a better man than Richard Wagner?

47 The time has come for me to briefly address the delicate question concerning the nonfemale readers of this novel—of which there are bound to be at least a few whose curiosity has been aroused by, if nothing else, the consuming passion their wives and/or mistresses have shown toward their reading of it. One of the reasons I've ignored this issue until now is the not unsurprising fact most American men don't associate great literature with porn—or admit (even to themselves) they feel "sexually threatened" by another man's mental superiority. Curiously the average male Moron is far more aware of the "hidden dangers" to his masculinity of being "outsmarted" by another Moron than his supposedly suave American counterpart. This is due in part to the Morons' frankness regarding their congenital handicaps. They "make no bones" about their dimwittedness; whereas the overwhelming majority of American men (despite their secret eggheadenvy) have yet to face this disturbing fact about their own underendowed IQs.
     Maybe I'm deceiving myself, but it seems perfectly clear to me (as it does to most women) that in a modern, civilized world it's no longer the size or efficacy of one's antlers, horns, tusks or fangs that define one's Darwinian fitness in the struggle to survive. For we Homo sapiens the decisive factor in what makes a male of our species more attractive to the females of our species for mating purposes was established long ago. And, contrary to what most Moronic and American men would like to believe, that factor isn't situated below their belts—-or anywhere, in fact, south of their eye brows! Whether she realizes it or not: It is the content of a man's skull—not his jeans (or the codpieces worn to this day by the turnipfarmers of rural Moronia)—that has always mattered most to a woman in estrus.^G
     Which brings us back to my original point about the refusal of American men to accept the idea that being outsmarted by another man is a fact of modern life resonating with the most primitive sexual overtones. Because of this refusal to accept the castrational consequences of their intellectual delinquency the average American man is actually more oblivious than his Moronic counterpart to the predatory designs of a literary mastermind on the make. So it is that in writing the Great American Novel one can treat his male readers with the contempt they deserve without appreciably alienating their affection for what they regard as "another bestselling author whose artistic triumph proves once again the conventional male wisdom about the superiority of all men over all women, brainwise."

48 To some of you it might seem there are at least 2 contradictions in this sentence, to wit:

(1) If the world's most "learned" scholars have yet to solve the ignorance/erudition=bliss problem how can the readers (or indeed the author) of this novel be expected to do so?

(2) Since, despite their "learnedness," the abovementioned scholars have indeed been unable to solve the aforementioned problem, what does this say about the difference between ignorance and erudition—assuming there is any?

As for (1) I refuse to concede ordinary people are somehow congenitally incapable of grappling with—and occasionally even solving—the prickliest philosophical, metaphysical and theological problems. When it comes to the common (wo)man's potential for rising to the loftiest academic occasion I am, as the writing of this manifesto should make plain, an evangelical egalitarian!  Concerning (2) let's not make the "mistake" made by so many Morons when they (deliberately) confuse erudition with omniscience to prove their case that: "Since none of life's problems can be solved to a certainty it doesn't pay to waste one's time thinking about any of them." Remember, dear reader, the "bliss" we are dealing with in Morons Awake! is that which (like the benefits of Superprotracted Foreplay) comes more from participating in the game than from actually winning it.

49 A proposition the Morons express in their typical cartbeforethehorse manner by describing what little knowledge they might have inadvertently acquired as making them "wiser but sadder."

50 As we shall soon see, this Moronic paradigm of paradoxical behavior is no less idiotic than America's strategy of destroying Vietnamese villages for the purpose of saving them (or its educational policy of teaching all Americans to read while ridiculing those who show the slightest sign of taking serious literature seriously).

51 I can do so because of the obvious advantage you enjoy over President Kennedy in his never having had, as you have, the golden opportunity of raising his cultural consciousness by simply reading this thoroughly enjoyable literary masterpiece I was, of course, yet to write.

Glossary
oeuvre noun plural oeuvres 1.) A work of art. 2.) The sum of the lifework of an artist, a writer, or a composer. [French, from Old French uevre, work, from Latin opera, from pl. of opus, work. See OPUS.]  return to text
estrus also oestrus noun The periodic state of sexual excitement in the female of most mammals, excluding human beings (According to whom, I wonder?—M. G.),  that immediately precedes ovulation and during which the female is most receptive to mating; heat. [New Latin, from Latin oestrus, frenzy, gadfly, from Greek oistros.]

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