Conclusion of Footnote 222
Last but by no means least, after a separate portfolio containing the plane tickets and hotel reservations for my proposed return to Moronia, I found this letter (its envelope already opened) from the Moron I introduced you to (anonymously) some pages ago as one of the male acquaintances with whom it was possible for me to have an intelligent conversation—such as that in which he (sardonically) predicted: "We will know the decline of Western Civilization has at least a chance of being reversed when the sound of Mahler's Fifth Symphony is heard coming from the car next to ours on Moronville's Main Street, or that of any other egalitarianized metropolis."
[This copy of page 1 proves its authenticity. For legibility purposes the remainder of this letter (beginning with the continuation of its Footnote #2 ) is set forth in conventional typography—J. P.]
Nevertheless, from what your editoress222s46 has told me about her plans for advertising Morons Awake! in no uncertain terms as "the elitist work of literary art it is" and thereby shame a few hundred thousand middle- and lowbrow women (and perhaps even a handful of men) into buying and reading what amounts to a test of their intelligence," this fundamental defect might be curable. It has always been my opinion that, like most Morons, while America's unwashed masses publicly pride themselves on their antiIntellectualism, privately they rankle to even the slightest suggestion they—and/or especially their offspring—aren't well above the norm IQwise! Concerning the (un)ethical aspects of such a Negative Psychology Sales Campaign; as with so many other "American words of wisdom" we Morons have always believed that: The end does justify the means. Especially in a matter of this magnitude—saving (what's left of) Western Civilization, launching a SocioCultural Revolution, preaching the gospel of Born Again Klutzianity etc., etc.!
First the good news. You will be happy to hear the rumors (most of which I began!) that Morons Awake! will be the biggest publishing event since Gone With The Wind have resulted in an outpouring of patriotic pride222s47 not seen in these parts since a what were then the Moronville Marauders crushed the Cretin City Hammerheads by a score of 72-3 in the Big Game of 1954. This despite the dubiousness of distinction whereby their cherished belief in the Bliss Of Ignorance is ridiculed by you as the absurdity it has always been, most of my fellow Morons who were willing to express their opinions on the subject did so in terms typified by the following samples:
Moron A (LowerMiddleBrow) "After being verbally abused for some 7,500 years it will be a refreshing change to see ourselves portrayed as the perfect idiots we are on the pages of a bestselling novel."
Moronette B (UpperLowBrow) "Since the only real choice we have is between exposing ourselves to universal scorn or hiding like fugitives in a (micro) state of what amounts to selfimposed solitary confinement I say—why not make the most of what is, in the final analysis and whether we like it or not, Moronia's exclusive claim to ethnic fame?"
Moroness C (MiddleHighBrow) "Those who can't afford to butter their turnips must learn to eat them unbuttered." (i.e, Beggars can't be choosers)
Urchin D (LowLowBrow222s48) "If the goddammed Americans can survive novels like The goddammed Day Of The Locust, The goddammed Bonfire Of The Vanities and The Catcher In The goddammed Rye I fail to see why we should lose any of our goddammed 'sociocultural' sleep over this goddammed Morons Awake! literary Goddamm masterpiece crap."
Better yet; joint efforts are underway between the Ministry for Cultural Affairs and the Moronville Chamber of Commerce to convert Klutz's childhood hovel and his bachelor pad into the kind of Library/Museum by which you Americans honor exPesidential nonentities like Arthur, Harrison, Coolidge & Nixon and we Europeans venerate such artistic supermen as Shakespeare, Wagner, Tolstoi, Picasso, etc. Naturally, as the Chancellor of Old M. U. and with your active support, I expect my name will be at the top of any short list of curators for these "Living Memorials" to one Moron's (albeit autodidactic) pursuit of higher education. Such a prestigious appointment would represent not only a symbolic feather in my pedagogical cap but produce certain material benefits—such as a new typewriter to replace this wornout relic I've been using since it was "reliberated" from the Gestapo when they evacuated Moronia in 1944!222s49 In addition to these ambitious projects, plans are also underway for:
a) Holding an annual Performing Arts Festival like those which put Spoleto, Edinburgh, Salzburg, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Bayreuth and even Charleston, South Carolina on the world's cultural map;222s50
b) Renaming Main Street as Jack F. Klutz Blvd. and, after widening it (no pun intended), 1st Ave. as The Mordecai J. Goldberg, PhD Parkway;
c) Erecting equestrian statues of you & Klutz (as Sancho Panza & Don Quixote?) in the CivicCenter Plaza;
d) Issuing a series of postage stamps to recognize the political ("One Moron One Vote"), economic (builtin obsolescence) & technological (polyester, poptarts, athletic footwear) contributions made by all those unsung expatriated Morons to the advancement of every postindustrial nation on the face of the planet;
e) Establishing an Advanced Institute For Answering The Question Of Whether (And If So How) The Average Homo-sapiens Can Attain An IQ of 100 (On The Klutzian Scale), and;
f) Declaring the 2nd Friday of every March (the anniversary of your 1939 arrival in Moronville!) as a Long Holiday Weekend, during which relay teams comprised of students from Old M U & CHS will read aloud every one of Morons Awake!'s halfmillionplus words from the steps of City Hall where President Kennedy ran his Berlin Wall Speech up our flag pole before you and he entered the crowd for what turned out to be that most historic of moments when the 2 JFKs met & the New Frontier torch passed from one generation of Americans to another which sprang from the soil of Moronia in the form of The One & Only True Massiah.
And last, but not least, I couldn't be more thrilled to report what can only be construed as the most auspicious of omens ReversingThe DeclineOf WesternCivilizationwise. Shortly before noon on the 15th of last month—several weeks before I read that First (Epiphanal) Chapter of yours—while ambling to the Main Street CoffeeShop for my usual Blueplate Special I actually heard the (semi)classical strains of Rhapsody In Blue coming from the open cab of a turniptruck stopped for the traffic light at Main & 1st before continuing on its way to the Central Produce Market!!!!! And, while George G isn't Gustav M or Ludwig von B, given the abysmal nature of the average turniptruck driver's "musical taste," in relative terms this event was even more miraculous than when Pablo Casals played 3 of Bach's Cello Suites in the White House or CBS televised Wagner's complete Ring Cycle on 4 successive nights during primetime.222s51
Now for the bad news. Maria has been diagnosed with a halfdozen ailments, all of them—at her advanced age222s52—terminal. According to the team of experts your publisher sent here so thoughtfully222s53 Maria should have expired 2 or 3 years ago! In their opinion such a medical miracle can only be explained by what she stated was her "determination not to perish from this earth until the proof of my madonna hood is puddingized by seeing at least an advance copy of the book I've been told has a chance of becoming not only the Greatest of Great American novels & an international literary masterpiece but a bestselling Manifesto by whose cover-to-cover reading all humanity can learn how to enjoy that NeoEgalitarian bliss for which my saintly son sacrificed himself to demonstrate that: Even the humblest Moron can rise to the sociocultural challenges occasioned by his intellectual shortcomings."222s54
Throughout those (seemingly eternal) 2 months you & Jayne spent "icing your artistic cake" Maria was waiting in Moronville's Municipal Hospice222s55—as "patiently & comfortably" as she could in such deathbed circumstances for only one thing: Her first look at that precious advance copy of Morons Awake!. And, as fate would have it, when this most magical of moments actually did arrive the poor woman was so weak she couldn't lift—let alone read—what turned out to be the biggest book either of us had ever seen (or thought it possible to squeeze between the covers of a single volume)! However, considering the fineness of even its most legible print & the fact that, notwithstanding her CHS diploma, Maria's reading skills never reached the level required for parsing a supermarket tabloid, the sheer size of Morons Awake! was a blessing in disguise for both of us since: By offering to read it aloud for her, I could satisfy my own curiosity over whether you really had succeeded in writing a novel (nonfiction or not!) that might halt (and even reverse) the decline of Western Civilization.
And, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., that is precisely what I did every day for the two weeks it took me to read Maria your magnum opus from cover to cover and the top to the bottom of each and every one of its pages. A task that was by no means unenjoyable, but one made much more arduous because half the time my audience was asleep!222s56 Or so it seemed. During her (more or less) lucid periods Maria amazed me with the degree of knowledge she displayed in answering the questions I asked to test her comprehension—or what I was sure would be her total lack thereof—on such matters as:
a) The relatively complex nature of the socalled "neoBaroque" syntax used throughout Morons Awake! as compared to that found in a conventional bestselling novel;
b) The crafty way in which the author uses the "establishing credibility with his readers excuse" to make himself the book's most important character;
c) What appears to be an excessive number of pages dealing with the difficulties encountered by the author in writing (and rewriting) his first (and last) novel;
d) An overemphasis on subjects of a prurient nature—especially the author's preoccupation with his foreplay expertise—in a book that brags about its "Biblicality."
To which, believe it or not, Maria responded as follows:
a) The same criticism has, of course, been made about such other "unreadable" novelists as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Marcel Proust. And while curling up on a sofa or in bed with The Making Of Americans, Finnegan's Wake and/or A la recherche du temps perdu takes some getting used to, once the taste for "purple" prose is acquired it makes one's subsequent reading of the trashier bestsellers seem tame by comparison metasexuallywise. Besides which, how else can someone write a literary masterpiece without complicating his syntax? Not to mention the obvious fact this postmodern world of ours isn't exactly lacking in the kind of short, declaratory sentences used to tout one brand of beer, deodorant or breakfast cereal over another.222s57 Moreover: What is reversing the decline of Western Civilization about if not using the Queen's English in a manner reminiscent of that employed by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Spenser, Sidney, Donne and Nashe when they were writing their glorious chapter in the history of (what was until recent times) mankind's continuing struggle to free itself from the shackles of an IgnoranceIsBliss credo we Morons aren't the only people who wear so jingoistically? Furthermore: If, by trying to dislodge America's housewives from the linguistic doldrums in which they are now adrift, the author does blow a trifle too hard now and then, might there not be a merchandising method to such madness in the way it helps his neoBaroque novel stand out even further from the crowd of nonliterary bestsellers?222s58b) and c)222s59 While to some extent I share your concern over all that precious space the author devotes to the problems he confronted during the 5 years it took him to write his "novelized manifesto" rather than those faced by my heroic son when, for at least twice that length of time, he lived like a fugitive while laboring in the solitude of his internal exile to set the stage for a revolution that might one day turn Moronia's sociocultural wasteland into a NeoEgalitarian Utopia, we must remember: No matter how many of this book's pages are devoted to glorifying its author, if he hadn't written them neither Jack nor his visionary gospel would ever have gained the worldwide fame they will receive when Morons Awake! becomes the biggest blockbuster since Gutenberg turned what was the fine art of printing books into a mass media. But in the final analysis it doesn't matter what we think when, as his mother, I can tell you Jack himself couldn't care less about playing second fiddle to his hagiographer—or who gets the credit for waking the human race up before it plunges over the edge of that cliff toward which we Morons and nonMorons have been sleepwalking. No. I'm convinced any fairminded (or psychiatric) reading of those "tongueincheek" claims he makes for his "Greatest Of Great American Novels," "Timeless Artistic Treasure" &/or "DivinelyDictatedBookOfBooks" will produce but one conclusion, to wit: That, as with Milton's hubristic indiscretions,222s60 beneath that hairy chest he thumps like some atavistic Il Duce beats the bleeding heart of a dyedinthewool Fabian!222s61
d) As for the prurience of a book purporting to be divinelyinspired (and/or -dictated) doesn't the Old Testament itself deal rather freely with matters that could be (and have been)222s62 described as lewd, lascivious, risque and even downright obscene? If the Bible teaches us anything about how it got to be the world's #1 Alltime Bestseller it must be, as that song says: "A spoonful of smut makes the medicinal message go down." On the other hand: What you are calling the author's "egomaniacal obsession" with his amatory exploits is, in my opinion (and who knows better than me!) much more than one of those conventional softcore pornoploys a runofthemill novelist uses to foster his readers' Sleeping Beauty fantasies. It seems clear to me Morons Awake!'s Foreplay motif is intended as a paradigm for the way every serious author stretches a reader's suspense on the rack of his psychosexual imagination until—when at long last she turns to that final page—he consummates all of her climactic expectations with a sudden flurry of storyending strokes from what turns out not to be the sword of some villainous sexfiend but the most charming and princely of pens. Having said that, however, it's my hunch Jack would take a dimmer view toward "muddying" the deep waters of what was supposed to be first & foremost a Metaphysical Manifesto and, as a fringe benefit for those housewives who managed to read it from cover to cover, The Literary Answer To Their Prayers For Everlasting Orgasmic Happiness.222s63
Before I close this letter, the intellectual honesty upon which our relationship has always been based compels me to state that: While only you can fully appreciate all of the complexities involved with deciding whether or not a return to "the scene of your crimes" would be prudent from a pragmatic point of view; in the event you should feel some moral obligation to personally pay poor Maria those last respects she so richly deserves (for giving birth to the son without whose martyrdom for the sake of saving mankind from drowning in its own mediocrity your own aspirations for "massianic" grandeur would most likely remain stillborn) I urge you to do so without a moment's delay!
But whichever course you choose—doing what's right or simply playing it safe—I will remain, as always, "the most intimate of your Moronic acquaintances,"
Icky Vanderphd
—P.S.—
Needless to say, when reading Morons Awake!'s final (and most stunningly written!) suddenchangeofitssnail'spacewise chapters I was extremely gratified to learn about the epiphanal role played by my late uncle, Cyrus, in shaping (no matter how inadvertently) what later became Klutz's Revolutionary Message of NeoEgalitarian Salvation through his Autodidactic Pursuit of SocioCultural Happiness!
† † †
ACTUALLY, DEAR READER, MY MIND was made up to revisit Moronia long before I read Vanderphd's "intellectually honest" advice to me on the matter. And/or all the other evidence Jayne had assembled to allay my fears Ballbraker and Lord Y were hatching a postpublication plot to ambush me if and when I crossed the border of Country A, B or C. Added to the obvious moral responsibilities I had vis-a-vis Jack's mother (and the first of those countless Moronettes and/or -esses with and on whom, over the next 5 decades, I would practice the foreplay techniques culminating in my mastery of what is now generally recognized as an authentic art form) there were these equally compelling reasons to take the R&R medicine Jayne was prescribing as a cure for those "After Masterpiece Letdown" problems I was having:
a) My (whether you believe it or not) homesickness for the land where, no matter how reluctantly, I spent what was in fact the "better" part of the only life I would ever have. Not unlike Doris Darlinge's disenchantment with the superficiality of her Hollywood stardom my brief exposure to the "glamorous" world of a Big Apple publishinghouse left me longing for the more "downtoearth" milieu one can only find in a hicktown like Moronville;222s64b) Even if I did survive my AML attack there could never be a cure for the sense of procreative emptiness I was—not surprisingly!—left with after spending more than 5 years in a (virtual) state of nonstop ejaculation, steadystreamofGreat American Novelwritingconsciousnesswise, which meant that;
c) Remaining where I was might create more problems for Jayne's multimedia massmarketing "Blitzkrieg" plan to make Morons Awake! an overnight runaway bestseller than would be solved by not exposing myself to the possible ambush awaiting me in Moronia. Why? Because, dear reader: Even in the prime of my mental virility it would have been difficult—if not impossible—for me (or any other "living literary legend") not to lose at least some of my reputation for being America's First (Jewish)Intellectual Superman while undergoing all those inquisitionlike tortures (TV/radiotalkshows, newspaper/ magazine/tabloid interviews, bookshopsignings, upscale cocktailparties and downmarket coffee klatches, etc.) an unknown author must endure in the name of promoting his first novel (especially one advertising itself to be that most abominable of all democratic heresies—a Manifesto for SocioCultural Elitism!) before it is certified by the High Priesthood of egalitarian orthodoxy as a book every redblooded American housewife must read if only to prove she is capable of doing so. Added to which current state of bestselling affairs literaryfictionwise are these timeless words of Ancient wisdom: "No man is a prophet in his own land,"222s65 although—
d) Given the fact (notwithstanding the "managerial" role I played in only setting the stage for what would be a blaze of Klutzian glory when Morons Awake! burst upon America's allbut comatose cultural scene) it had always been my personal preference to remain in the shadows of that (more or less) perfect obscurity I had gotten so used to during my diplomatic career. Jayne and I thought we might solve this seemingly insoluble paradox by taking a (part of the title) page from what was then (1996) #1 on the N. Y. Times Fiction and/or Nonfiction Bestseller List—Primary Colors—and turn Morons Awake! into an "Anonymouslywritten Exposé Of The Klutz Affair." Fortunately222s66 our scheme for doing so had to be scrapped when the feeding frenzy of media speculation over who actually authored Primary Colors imploded with the revelation it had been written by a political gossip columnist, whose unsavorysounding name—Joe Green—and stench of yellow(ish) journalism could no longer serve our lofty (if somewhat plagiaristic) purpose, and, lastly;
e) Both plotofabestsellingnonfictionnovel- and LiteraryMasterpiece/Manifestowise: If by returning to Moronia I was walking into what could be a trap (or as some overzealous copywriter would no doubt describe it—"The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death!") what better way could there be for adding an indisputably nonfictitious exclamation point at the Grand Finale of the Klutz Affair than by sacrificing myself on the same altar (give or take a few stonethrows) and for the same cause as those sanctified by the martyrdom of its Moronic namesake?
THUS DID JAYNE AND I END what had been our for the most part intimate, now and then stormy but always history making relationship with a (fatherfigurely) kiss and a heartfelt handshake. So the torch of Western Civilization passed from an ambassadorial nonentity to an editoress who once slaved her life away in the hellish bowels of a midtown Manhattan publishinghouse! As for what transpired during my (not unsuspensefilled nor entirely irrelevant Morons Awake!wise) return to Moronia—if Miss Playne keeps her "word of honor" to include what I solemnly swore would be "the briefest possible description" of whatever fate befell me (assuming I lived long enough to tell such a tale) as another appendix hereto—you will not, dear reader, find yourself left holding what, from a purely artistic point of view, should be an empty bag but which literary loveaffairwise deserves to be filled. And now, for those who've managed to remain afloat while navigating the treacherous twists, turns and rapids of this anythingbutmainstream footnote (not to mention its numerous tributaries, lagoons, bayous, swamps quagmires!) I couldn't be happier to announce that:
At long last, our epicmaking222s67 journey has ended!
And, as Mr.Alnutt said to Mrs. Alnutt when, after they sank the Louisa with their boobytrapped African Queen, she asked him: "I'm all turned around, Charlie; how in the world will we get back to wherever it was we started from?"
"Just follow me and keep on swimming, Old Girl!"222s68
Book Two Chapter 7 Return to Index
Subfootnotes
222s46 I make no apologies for having "gone behind his back" in trying to verify some of the more incredible assertions the author made in his manuscript—particularly those about having foreplayed his way through several generations of Moronia's entire (adult) female population. In the course of receiving secret "intelligence reports" from my "man in Moronia" we developed a relationship of mutual trust and respect in which, among other things, I confided to him the marketing plans he mentions in this letter.—J.P.
222s47 Unlike the negative reaction Thomas Wolfe got from all those rednecks in Asheville, N. C. to his Great American novel, Look Homeward, Angel.
222s48 Because brow-wise urchins aren't officially classified until they enter high school, this is just a guess. Although, based on what we now know about Jack F. Klutz's "hidden" mental talents and the manner in which this lad answered my question, such designations may have outlived whatever usefulness they had in the first place!
222s49 Since this distasteful subject (what is bound to be the financial bonanza resulting from Morons Awake!'s blockbusting bestsellerdom) has arisen; the trustees of Old M. U. have asked me to inquire whether you might consider devoting a small portion of your royalties for providing some of our neediest youngsters with a few scholarships—or, should you be more generously inclined, fully fund a major endowment (in the 6-7 figure range) which will not only enable us to aggressively pursue those noble NeoEgalitarian objectives set forth in your SocioCultural Manifesto but silence those critics who complain that literary fatcats seldom use their pens to write checks for the revolutionary causes they advocated so ardently before the establishment whose overthrow they sought lionized them.
222s50 Moronia has been wracking (what there is of) its collective "brain" for a decade of Sundays (approx. 70 years) to find some way of attracting tourists—other than the usual curiosityseekers who seldom stay for more than an hour or 2 and those few and far between types (mostly Americans) who (not that they ever admit it!) check into the Moronville Holiday Inn for the week it takes to trace their Moronic ancestry—that would fill the gap between one New Year's Day Turnip Tournament Parade/Big Game Extravaganza and the next.
222s51 In response to my query on this point CBS states: "During the 60 years of our distinguished history (CBS has won a grand total of 8,325 Emmies) we have never televised Richard Wagner's operas—or those of any other composer for that matter—during prime- or nonprime time. And while there are many good reasons for our policy not to program performances of socalled 'classical' and/or 'longhaired' music (all of which, frankly, are none of your damned business) the most obvious one is, of course, that only a handful of our viewers would watch them!" The replies I received from NBC and ABC were, excepting the number of Emmies they had won, practically identical. Vanderphd was probably confusing CBS with PBS, which did in fact air the Ring Cycle some years ago (probably by mistake). So the record of our 3 major commercial television networks does remain completely untarnished in never having never broadcast a single program of any artistic distinction or even pseudointellectual significance.—J. P.
222s52 The life expectancy for an average Bimbeaux is, and always has been, around 35; the age when that "goddesslike beauty" they are so famous for begins to show signs of mortifying with the appearance of some stray silver strands among their platinum blonde locks, the less than perfectly horizontal orientation of those twin Dagmars (projectileshaped breasts) and a few arid patches in that flawless "peaches & cream" complexion. Rather than wait until this handwriting on the wall finishes spelling out that cosmetic message every middleaged woman dreads to read it is customary for Bimbeauxs to enter a state of selfimposed purdah wherein, by some process that still remains shrouded in mystery—not unlike that surrounding the enigmatic demise of superannuated elephants, swans, Japanese mamasans, Indian Chiefs and old soldiers—they seem to simply "fade away."—M. G
222s53 But only after I insisted they do so. Since the author had more than enough (mostly mental) health problems of his own to cope with during this crucial period—when we were perfecting the final pages of what he was now willing to agree had only been "the roughest of first drafts"—the news of Maria's condition was kept from him and I took it upon myself to assume the responsibility for keeping his former mistress alive until the book whose publication they both saw as a "Belated Epiphany" (or as he put it more crudely: "The Second Coming of an extinct loveaffair that once shook the earth of Moronia with volcanic eruptions surpassing those of Vesuvius, Jorullo, Tamboro, Bandai, Soufriére, Consequina, Pelée and even Krakatoa, SuperprotractedForeplayclimaxwise") was indeed published. Moreover, as an editoress and a woman, how could I not feel a profound sense of gender reverence for this (in spite of what the author says about his lack of phallocentricity) "minor character" from whose "brainless" blonde sexgoddess' womb sprang the hero of this (nonfiction) novel who, hopefully, will add the Happiest Of All Endings to that Saddest Of Sad Stories which began 2,000 years ago when her Jewish namesake conceived—immaculately or otherwise it matters not—the semidivine wunderkind she would live to see martyred on a Roman cross for his revolutionary idea that: Average Israelites were capable of raising their SocioSpiritual IQs to 100 on a neoJudaic scale where such a score represented the consummation of what was only God's wishful thinking when he got the bright idea to create Adam in His own divine image? Added to these "abstract" considerations motivating my concern for her welfare there is, of course, this very real possibility: Had it not been for Maria Bimbeaux-Klutz Jayne Playne might still be slaving away as a lowly publishinghouse reader in that sweaty old "salt mine" of hers!—J. P.
222s54 This verbatim quotation—which she uttered ex post facto—illustrates how radically my reading of Morons Awake! to her altered a conversational style you once described to me as "one whose socalled 'sentences' (like those of the characters in a Pinter play) never exceeded 4—or at the very most 5—words; all of which were the 1 syllable variety!"
222s55 As I indicate in History of the Morons "With the opening of Moronville's Municipal Hospice in 1868 these 'simpleminded' people became the first Europeans to devise an institutional strategy that would meet the needs of their dying compatriots in a manner which was both humane and (far more significantly from a socialanthropologist's perspective) rational." [p.435, Chap. 7, Vol. VI] "But," as I also point out in one of the footnotes on that same page, "this seemingly enlightened practice resulted more from the complete absence of medical services in Moronia at that time than it did from any intelligent analysis of the kind we Americans have always applied to solving our health care problems."—M. G.
222s56 Thanks to my many years of having lectured university students who were just slightly less comatose I was able to persevere whereas someone unfamiliar with the psychological warfare waged in the classrooms of academia would, I'm confident, have become totally demoralized.
222s57 Nor, alas, is this triumph of brevity over precision limited to the advertising industry! On my tour of the American pavilion at a recent Venice Biennial (the world's oldest festival of new art, according to Time's Robert Hughes) I was stunned—as was he—to find it filled not with paintings and sculpture but the "truisms" of a "conceptual artist" by the name of Jenny Holzer. The following examples of which, I'm sure you will agree, read more like the words of wisdom one expects to find in a Chinese fortune cookie than written on the walls of what purports to be an exhibition of serious objects d'art: EATING TOO MUCH IS CRIMINAL, ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE, IDEALS ARE REPLACED BY CONVENTIONAL GOALS AT A CERTAIN AGE, LACK OF CHARISMA CAN BE FATAL, EXPIRING FOR LOVE IS BEAUTIFUL BUT STUPID, PRIVATE PROPERTY CREATED CRIME!
222s58 This "linguistic doldrums" metaphor reminds me of Thomas Nashe's [1567-1601] cogent reply to those who criticized his hyperinflated rhetoric—"No wind that blows strong but is boisterous." I wonder. Can it be purely coincidental or is Maria's entire argument somehow based on her familiarity with that iconoclastic Elizabethan's An Invective Against Enemies of Poetry? In which he also states "To them that demand what fruits the poets of our time bring forth, or wherein they are able to prove themselves necessary to the state, thus I answer: first and foremost, they have cleansed our language from barbarism and made the vulgar sort here in London (which is the fountain whose rivers flow around England) to aspire to a richer purity of speech than is communicated with the commonality of any nation under heaven."
222s59 Which she—quite rightly!—thought redundant.
222s60 A charge based principally on those less than modest "invocational" lines with which Paradise Lost begins:
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursuesThings unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime
In Milton's defense (and that of our author) John Spencer Hill writes on pages 60-61 of his A Study of Divine Vocation in Milton's Poetry, "For Milton, [his prophetic] inspiration is neither the antirational afflatus of the Corybantic priests in Plato's Ion nor...an empty rhetorical trope; it is rather, as it was for [the Biblical Prophet] Isaiah...a sanctifying grace that continuously nourishes and sustains those whom God has marked as His special servants." And on the reverse side of Milton's "divinelyinspired" creative coin Hill sees the same kind of profound humility expressed by Morons Awake!'s author over his (initial) lack of literary skills. Hence, as he states on pages 62-3: "From a vocational standpoint, the most striking feature of Milton's early poetry is its reiterated protestation of unpreparedness, coupled with its firm belief in a future of promise and achievement. In a very real sense the vocational emphasis of every serious poem Milton wrote from 1629 to 1637 may be said to have been summed up in the... conclusion of Il Penseroso:
But let my due feet never fail,
To walk the studious cloister's pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antique pillars' massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
Not that Milton (or our author) is so humble he doesn't relish the rhapsodic aspects of the evangelical role he has been chosen to play in writing the Greatest of Great English Epic Poems. As Hill further observes on page 112: "...in [the] succeeding invocations [of Paradise Lost] the emphasis shifts from requests for inspiration to acknowledgments of its receipt. This change is particularly evident in Book IX, where the course of the narrative constrains the poet to change his note from pastoral to tragic,
If answerable style I can obtain
Of my celestial patroness, who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplored,
And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse:
Since first this subject for heroic song
Pleased me long choosing, and beginning late
When we translate these archaic allusions into the more "easily accessible" symbolism needed for authoring a modern bestseller doesn't Milton's "celestial patroness" turn into our author's "starknakedblondesexgoddess at the intersection of Hollywood & Vine?" Or the "unpremeditated verse" of Paradise Lost become the miraculous process by which Morons Awake! began "writing itself?" And, since we're on the subject of Milton's gift for prophecy: What about those final 2 lines of his—
Since first this subject for heroic song
Pleased me long choosing, and beginning late?
Has any man ever begun the writing of his first (and last) literary masterpiece later than our author did?—J. P.
222s61 The Fabian Society was founded in 1883 by Sidney and Beatrice Webb for the propagation of Socialist ideas. Its most eminent spokesman was George Bernard Shaw—M. G.
222s62 See "Potipahr's Wife: The Story of Joseph Revisited" in Vol. I, The Complete Works of Brann The Iconoclast, for William Brann's wry elucidation on that titillating tale of Old Testamentstyle lechery between a married Egyptian aristocrat and her handsome Hebrew houseboy. Other examples of Biblical smut can be found in Exodus 18:9-21:2 (the Abraham/Sarah/God menage a trois), Exodus 19:29-36 (Lot's incestuous liaison with his daughters), Samuel 11:3-12:12 (David's shady dealings with Bathsheba & God's plans to punish him by "taking thy wives before thine eyes and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with them in the sunlight for all to see!") and Susanna 1:7-20 (the "Apocryphal" inspiration for Thomas Benton's vivid portrayal of every Dirty Old Voyeur's Dream Come True, StarknakedBeautifulYoung Damselwise).—J. P.
222s63 In this case Maria's not always infallible "maternal instincts" were right on the money. In formulating his aesthetic theories Klutz assumed a loftier (some might say prudishl) attitude regarding what I've come to believe are the unavoidable similarities between great sex and great art. Whether or not he would approve of the way I "majorized" my Superprotracted Foreplay Motif so even the most illiterate housewife might glimpse a truth normally left for the critics, scholars and connoisseurs to dredge up from below the surface of a novel that is both a blockbusting bestseller and an artistic masterpiece, only you, dear reader, can decide. But before doing so I would ask you to seriously consider the proposition I've been making in (one form or another) throughout this "literary loveaffair" of ours, to wit: The gradual unfolding of an Albert Camus novel, a Luigi Pirandello play, a Richard Strauss opera, a Gustav Mahler symphony—or even one's appreciation of a painting like Pablo Picasso's Guernica—is preferable to the momentary bliss a woman experiences (if she's lucky!) at the climax of those all too infrequent (and usually brief) acts of artless lovemaking practiced upon her by the man she made the mistake of marrying (or by any of the men with whom she seeks to find a little extramarital happiness).—M. G.
[As far as Maria's "intuitive" batting average is concerned, ladies, I only hope (and pray) a fraction of all those other house wives who read Morons Awake! will come close to equaling the level of analytical thinking demonstrated by this halfdead, semiconscious, barelyliterate and "100% brainless" Bimbeaux! And, if I can stick my "maidenly" nose even further into the author's (sub)footnoted rationale for majorizing the Superprotracted Foreplay Motif—which as an editoress (and a woman intimately acquainted with his expertise in the nonliterary practice of that art form) I'm fully qualified to do!—I would modify that $64 proposition (don't be deceived by the size of his print—in the author's "operatic" scheme of things his Foreplay Motif couldn't be more Wagnerian!) he just put to you as follows: Although having a metaphysical fling with Albert Camus, Luigi Pirandello, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and/or Pablo Picasso (to name but a few "artistic superstuds") isn't quite what the average American housewife has in mind when she complains about her "lusterless lovelife"—and (no matter how the author slices it) getting into bed with a book doesn't come close to filling the nonmetaphysical void in a woman's pre-, post- or extramarital affairs—as consolation prizes go even a dead White European Male Mastermind can do more for our psychosexual morale than a lover who's only "alive" from his neck (or, more likely, beltbuckle) down.—J. P.]
222s64 Or the kind of rural New Hampshire hideaway where that "dyedinthewool" Manhattanite, J. D. Salinger, has spent the past 40 years or so in a state of (more or less) "voluntary internal exile." Since the subject of solitude and its therapeutic benefits for thinking men has arisen in a New England context, you might find these remarks delivered by Ralph Waldo Emerson in an 1838 lecture he gave to the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College (reproduced hereafter in its entirety [as Appendix V] for the 19thcentury light it sheds so futuristically on the Gospel of Born Again Klutzianity) worth your while:
"[The intellectual] must embrace solitude as [if it were] a bride. He must [experience] his [joys] and his [sorrows] alone. His own estimate must be measure enough, his own praise reward enough for him. And why must the student be solitary and silent? [So that] he may become acquainted with his thoughts. If he pines in a lonely place hankering for the crowd, for [glory], he is not in the lonely place; his heart is in the market; he does not see; he does not hear; he does not think. But go cherish your soul; expel companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then will [your] faculties rise fair and full within, like forest trees and field flowers; you will have results which, when you meet your fellow men, you can communicate and they will gladly receive. Do not go into solitude only [because] you may [eventually become a celebrity]. Such solitude...is [hypocritical, vain] and [not very original]. The [masses know—or think they do—all about 'life in the raw.' What] they [want] the [artist] to [explain are] those private, [inspired and] divine experiences of which they have been [deprived by their ignorance.] It is the noble, man[ly] [and] just thought which is the superiority demanded of you, and not crowds but solitude confers this elevation. Not insulation of place but independence of spirit is essential, and it is only as the garden, the cottage, the forest and the rock are a sort of [stimulus] to this [end] that they are of value. Think alone and all places are friendly and sacred. The poets who have lived in cities have [nevertheless remained] hermits. Inspiration makes solitude anywhere. Pindar, Raphael, Angelo, Dryden [and] De Stael [may] dwell in crowds...but the instant thought comes [to them] the crowd grows dim to their eye; their eye fixes on the horizon—on vacant space; they forget the bystanders; they spurn personal relations; they deal with abstractions, with verities, with ideas. They are alone with the mind."[Not that] I['m naive] about solitude. Let [a young man] study the uses of solitude and of society. Let him use both [but never] serve either. The reason why [a thinking man] shuns society is to [find] society. It repudiates the false out of [its] love [for] the true. You can very soon learn all...society can teach you...Its foolish routine, an [infinite multiplicity] of balls, concerts, [amusements and] theatres, can teach you no more than [just] a few can. Then accept the hint of shame...spiritual emptiness and waste which true nature gives you and retire, and hide; lock the door; shut the shutters; then welcome falls the imprisoning rain—dear hermitage of nature. Re-collect the spirits. Have solitary prayer and praise. Digest and correct [your] past experience; and blend it with the new and divine life.
"You will pardon me, Gentlemen, if I say...we have need of a more rigorous scholastic rule; such an asceticism I mean, as only the [phlegm] of the scholar himself can enforce. We live in the sun and on the surface—a thin, plausible, superficial existence and talk of muse and prophet...art and creation. But out of our shallow and frivolous way of life, how can greatness ever grow? Come now, let us go and be dumb. Let us sit with our hands on our mouths, a long, austere, Pythagorean lustrum. Let us live in corners and do chores and suffer and weep and drudge, with eyes and hearts that love the Lord. Silence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce deep into the grandeur and secret of our being, and so diving,bring up out of secular darkness, the sublimities of the moral constitution. How [sordid it is] to go blazing [like] a...butterfly in fashionable or political [circles], the fool of society, the fool of notoriety, a topic for newspapers, a piece of the street, and forfeiting the real prerogative of the russet coat, [precious] privacy and the tru[ly] ...warm heart of the citizen[-scholar]!"Fatal to the man of letters[—]fatal to [any] man[!—] is the lust [for] display, the [phoniness which] unmakes our [manhood]. A mistake of the [principal] end to[ward] which they labor is [typical of] literary men, who, dealing with the organ of language—the subtlest, strongest, and longest-lived of man's creations and only [properly] used as the weapon of thought and...justice—learn to enjoy the pride of playing with this splendid [toy] but rob it of its [omnipotence] by failing to work with it. Extricating themselves from the tasks of the world, the world revenges itself by exposing at every turn the folly of these incomplete, pedantic, useless [and] ghostly creatures. The scholar will feel...the richest romance—the noblest fiction...ever woven—the heart and soul of beauty—lies enclosed in human life. Itself of surpassing value, it is also the richest material for his creations. How shall he know its secrets of tenderness, of terror, of will and of fate? How can he catch and keep the strain of [ethereal] music that peals from it? Its laws are concealed [in] the details of daily action. All action is an experiment upon them. He must bear his share of the common load. He must work with men in houses...not with...names in books. [Their] needs, appetites, talents, affections [and] accomplishments are keys that open to him the [wondrous] museum of human life. Why should he read it as an Arabian tale and not know in his own beating bosom, its [pleasures] and [pains]? Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and lendings and losses; out of sickness and [torment]; out of wooing and worshipping; out of travelling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws. Let him not slur his lesson; let him learn it by heart. Let him [struggle expertly], bravely and cheerfully to solve the problem of that life which is set before him. And [to do it with a proactive gameplan]...not by promises or [pipe]dreams..."
222s65 Or, as the Morons put it in one of their folksier nutshells: "The more a man says the less time he has for thinking." Which explains why at—or in some cases before—the customary dropping of a conversational hat the average Moron will start to tell his or her listener something he or she already knew or would have preferred not hearing in the first place.
222s66 Deleting my name from the title page of Morons Awake! would, of course, have been a simple matter. But removing me as not only the novel's narrator/interlocutor but its sole protagonist for establishing the reader's credibility re the nonfictitous nature of its otherwise manifestly incredible setting, plot and cast of characters was a different—and exceedingly problematical—kettle of editorial fish.
222s67 Never in the history of novelwriting has there been a web so entangled with fine print as this single chapter of Morons Awake!.
222s68 The actual African Queen dialogue goes:
ROSIE: I'm all turned around, Charlie. Which way is the East shore?
CHARLIE: The way we're swimming Old Girl!
As for that "word of honor" I gave the author about letting you know what happened to him on his "suspensefilled" return to Moronia, thanks to the truly heroic efforts of our bookbinders his "briefest possible" summary of them can be found in Appendix W—J. P.