FOR STARTERS GOD SPENT A GOOD 5 MINUTES berating poor Bloom over his vanity in thinking Morons Awake! was some kind of elaborate hoax He—God—had orchestrated for the sole purpose of "vindicating" his—Bloom's —Failure Philosophy. He reminded Bloom ("in no uncertain terms") the Sacred Cause for which they had both been "sweating blood" all these years was the Salvation of the Human Race! Consequently, any fame, kudos, acclaim, adulation, praise, celebrity, greatness and/or Artistic Immortality which might accrue to Bloom as a result of the role he played in Launching a Second (SocioCultural) American Revolution and/or Reversing the Decline of Western Civilization was strictly a side effect of His—God's—(inscrutable) need to work His Divine Will through human characters. And, while it was true that Bloom had been chosen to play a major role in Morons Awake!'s publication, he had certainly not been cast to play the starring role in its actual writing! Not surprisingly, Bloom received this news of the lessthanleadingman role he would be playing in the Morons Awake! Salvation Of Humanity Scenario about as badly as any nonagenarian could who had predicated the entire reason for his being on what turned out to be an erroneous assumption. No words can express the depressing sense of frustration, rage, futility, betrayal, impotence, horror, revulsion, nausea, bitterness, dejection, anger, calamity, disillusionment, fear, defeat, absurdity, hatred, disgust and envy (for what apparently was going to be this "Mordecai Goldberg's" Literary Lionization) he felt.
Given God's omnipotence, the disastrous state of Bloom's morale didn't escape His notice for more than a dozen or so heartbeats. After which He consoled His dispirited protegé by reciting some of His favorite clichés. Among them being: "Every cloud has a silver—if not a golden—lining;" "It isn't winning that matters, but how the game is played;" "Civilization is a team effort wherein even those players who never leave the bench must remain in a constant state of readiness to do so in the (unlikely )event their number is called;" "Just as the fields where history's most illustrious generals fought their famous battles are littered with the corpses of unknown soldiers, so too the stage on which life's most dramatic events unfold is stained with the greasespots left by the brieflyburnt candles of all those walkons, supernumeraries, spearcarriers, extras and second, third or fourth bananas whose brief acting careers never amounted to a hill of beans billingwise." And, having constructed this pulpit (or soapbox) of platitudes for what would be His sermon (or punchline) God proceeded to deliver it unto Bloom in capital letters:
"SO IT WAS, BLOOM, IN DEVISING MY MASTERPLAN FOR SAVING THE HUMAN RACE —YET AGAIN!!!—FROM THE CHRONIC CONSEQUENCES OF ITS ORIGINAL SIN, YOU WERE CHOSEN FROM BIRTH TO SPEND YOUR ENTIRE LIFE ACQUIRING THAT RAREST OF ALL TALENTS: THE ONE BY WHICH A FAILED NOVELIST RECOGNIZES ANOTHER WRITER'S LITERARY GENIUS WHEN HE SEES IT."
While Bloom expressed his gratitude for this official confirmation there had indeed always been a sublime purpose for his long (and seemingly) unproductive life, he also confessed to still feeling somewhat in the dark concerning the exact nature of the supporting part he was supposed to play in writing a book that was already written by someone else.
WHEREUPON, AFTER AN AUDIBLE SIGH of resignation, God proceeded to reveal what he called "the whole MoronsAwake!enchilada" in the following Chapter and Verse:
1 Not that I'm telling you what you don't already know, spake the Lord unto Bloom, but I've learned from bitter experience it doesn't pay to take anything for granted.2 So; let Me begin by stating: The way things currently stand, bestsellerdomwise, trying to get any novel proclaiming itself (even semiseriously) to be a CivilizationSaving Manifesto, SocioCultural WakeUp Call and/or The Launching Of A Second—AntiEgalitarian no less!—American Revolution would require more than a runofthemill miracle.
3 The prevailing attitude against all "art" remotely reeking of "intellectual elitism" is so monolithic that, despite My (deservedly) Renowned Persuasive Powers, I've only managed to barely chip away at it with such (qualified and not all that recent) "popular" success stories as Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Weiss' The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, Ionesco's Rhinoceros, Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George and Adams' Nixon in China.
4 As for the modern "book" publishing scene, He went on, frankly I might as well have been banging My head against a brickwall throughout most of the 20thcentury for all the good it's done in motivating a single American novelist to write a few hundred pages of prose that were at least worth the (cheap) paper they were (offset) printed on!
5 Taking these facts of "modern cultural" life into account, God continued, an exceptionally devious strategy had to be used for circumventing the pervasive prejudice against, what is described in publishinghouse parlance as "literary" fiction.
6 Which I did by taking a page from Manstein's Case Yellow Plan for an allout panzer attack through the Ardennes Forest that would neutralize the Maginot Line by simply outflanking it.
7 Which, the Most Jewish Of All Jews hastened to add, doesn't mean I intended to actually duplicate the German bliztkrieg of June, 1940—
8 Naturally, agreed Bloom; without fully knowing why he did so.
9 Of course it goes without saying My use of Nazi military nomenclature is meant to be strictly metaphorical—
10 Of course! Bloom replied emphatically—trying to conceal the fact he still hadn't the foggiest idea what God was talking about.
11 Good! exclaimed the Almighty One; in a tone of voice tinged with just enough professorial condescension to create the impression of collegiality while not doing any real harm to His Supreme Intellectual Sovereignty.
12 Although God wasn't entirely convinced Bloom was telling Him the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, He pressed on with His elucidation of the Morons Awake! Masterplan, hoping that: By virtue of His sheer Infallibility alone, sooner or later He was bound to make Himself understood.
13 And metaphoricallyspeaking, He resumed, the weakest link in a publishinghouse's Maginot Line mentality isn't its left or right flank but that soft subterranean underbelly where a downtrodden publisher's reader—such as Jayne Playne—sits in her personal "hell hole" vainly searching for the Great American Manuscript among those hay stacks of literary junkmail some other "unsung hero"—like the longsuffering Leopold Bloom—dumps on her desk every morning."
NO SOONER DID THESE WISEST OF WORDS escape from God's lips than the bulb inside the pitch blackness of Bloom's skull turned itself on. Wherefore he began to see THE LIGHT. And, as those capital letters indicate: What so bedazzled his mind's eye wasn't just another of the "bright ideas" he jotted down (to no effect) in those thousands of "Magnum Opus" notebooks he had filled during the past 70plus years. It's blazing brilliance illuminated every corner of the cavernous void left behind by his mental faculties when they went AWOL after receiving the news their services would no longer be required in launching that Second American Revolution which was supposed to reverse the decline of Western Civilization. Although God persisted in divulging the details of His Masterplan, Bloom no longer felt the need—or the duty—to listen "all that attentively." The mysterious plot by which Morons Awake! would be published had suddenly become so crystal clear he could guess (more or less) exactly what the Supreme Being would say before He actually said it. [A fact, by the way, which also renders our own "eavesdropping" on His Revelations unnecessary from this point on.]
The spark igniting this display of "epiphanal pyrotechnics" inside Bloom's skull was—as you should have deduced from those underlined passages of Verse 13—set off when God joined Jayne Playne's name with that of his in calling them both "unsung heroes." Hitherto he had always thought of himself as being "a Solitary Voice In The Wilderness" who carried the weight of the world's woes on his Herculean shoulders alone. Now, to what must have been his profound relief, Bloom suddenly realized that—like Adam, David, Columbus, Washington, Napoleon and Wagner—he was to receive help from his Eve, Bathsheba, Isabella, Martha, Josephine and/or Cosima in changing (for the better) the course of human history! And if this mental picture of what would be his intimate working relationship with the delectable Miss Playne weren't enough to make Bloom salivate there was the even more appetizing prospect of their future threeway collaboration with the author of Morons Awake! in a kind of musketeerial menage á trois as they swashbuckled their evangelical way through America's heartland bringing the Bliss of Born Again Klutzianity to millions of culturallystarved housewives!
"On the other hand," Bloom asked himself, "by spending virtually my entire life preparing to recognize someone else's magnum opus when I read it, haven't I already performed the lion's share of the role fate is casting me to play in Morons Awake!'s historymaking publication?"
As incredible as it must seem, Bloom was actually underestimating the grandeur of the contribution he was yet to make in fulfilling God's Masterplan. After rewrapping the Mystery Manuscript and delivering it to me along with my usual supply of literary junkmail on that Most Momentous of Mornings one more task remained for Bloom to perform before his "supporting role" in this prepublication "drama" was finished. And dear reader, you should be happy (if not delirious) to learn: It is that task which brings us back not only to the beginning of this longish story but—more happily still!—to the very brink of ending what started out as my "brief" Introductory Remarks on your reading of this book.
In keeping with God's (and the author's) fondness for theatrical metaphors; When the "curtain" finally did open on that Most Momentous of Mornings I was—you will no doubt remember216 "discovered" sitting in my personal Hell Hole after having spent the previous night reading the Morons Awake! manuscript. And, as the "audience" learns later, what imbues that first scene with so much dramatic impact is what transpired before the "play" actually begins. It was during that pregnant period when my initial euphoria over having at long last found what I thought was the Golden Needle for which I'd been searching through those countless haystacks of unsolicited manuscripts suddenly evaporated in a puff of anticlimactic smoke when the terrible truth suddenly dawned on me that:
LIKE THE GARGANTUAN FIRST DRAFT OF THOMAS WOLFE'S LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL; WHILE THE MANUSCRIPT OF MORONS AWAKE! CONTAINED ALL THE STUFF FROM WHICH A GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL (OR 2—AND MAYBE EVEN 3!) COULD BE MADE; IN ITS PRESENT RAW, UNRULY, FORMLESS AND EMBRYONIC217 STATE AN EDITORIAL MIRACLE OF TRULY BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS WOULD BE NEEDED BEFORE IT HAD A SNOWBALL'S CHANCE IN HELL OF BECOMING JUST ANOTHER TEMPEST IN A NOVELISTIC TEACUP; LET ALONE THE LITERARY WHIRLWIND THAT WOULD SWEEP AWAY AMERICA'S SOCIOCULTURAL MALAISE WITH A SINGLE BLOCKBUSTING BURST OF RUNAWAY BESTSELLERDOM!
HENCE IT TRANSPIRED THAT, at the very ,moment I reached the deepest depths of my despair, Bloom made his Grand Entrance bathed in the glow of a Celestial Aura through which I slowly began to perceive him not as the Dirty Old Man I had always known him to be; but as a Biblical Patriarch and/or Prophet descended from heaven218 (or the "flies") in order to dispel those second thoughts I was having about my fatal lack of editorial clout in lobbying for the Morons Awake! cause. And, before I knew what was happening, somehow219 he had smoothtalked me into acting as if I were "the heroine of a Frank Capra movie" by marching220 my way straight up to the penthouse offices of the President, CEO and EditorInChief with the manuscript of Morons Awake! clutched to my maidenly bosom and read them the following
RIOT
ACT!
Promulgated as the Diatribe of a (formerly)
DISTRESSED DAMSEL
against the
PHILISTINE PROCLIVITIES
of a certain midtown Manhattan
PUBLISHINGHOUSE
in clear contravention of its
SACRED DUTY
to Protect, Perpetuate & Promote the Pursuit of
SocioCultural Happiness and/or True
INTELLECTUAL BLISS
through the reading of
GOOD BOOKS
"Listen up gentlemen! Believe it or not, this massive manuscript you see clutched to my maidenly bosom is destined to become nothing less than the Greatest of All American Novels! Even more incredibly, its (longish) title is: Morons Awake!—A Manifesto to Reverse the Decline of Western Civilization written in the form of a novellength answer to the Burning Question of whether Jack F. Klutz lived & died as a Martyr for the Cause of Human Mediocrity or was simply an Exception to the Rule that All Men Are Created Equal. And, beyond that most unlikely of handles for a blockbusting bestseller, consider these farthestfetched of the fanciful facts comprising this fairytalecometrue: Not only are you going to publish Morons Awake! you will do so after making me—the ugliest of occupational ducklings and plainest of publishinghouse Janes—its editoress; with all the budgetary and/or moral support needed for cutting this mountainously more manifesto than psychosexualthriller down to the size of (what should at least look like) the kind of trashy novel millions of average American housewives would think seriously about adding to their bedside and/or coffeetable collection of hardcover softcore porn.
* * *
And that, dear reader, was in fact what I (more or less) actually did! As for the rest of this "story" I've been telling221 you: With the successful launching of the Second American Revolution (which. incidentally, reversed the decline of Western Civilization) caused by Morons Awake!'s publication and subsequent runaway bestsellerdom-the results of my having read the foregoing Riot Act can, of course, be found recorded in that latest (and greatest) chapter of Human History entitled:
THE TRIUMPH OF ERUDITION OVER
IGNORANCE
ARISING FROM THE NEOEGALITARIAN CREDO
FOR WHICH JACK F. KLUTZ LIVED & DIED
† † †
AS CHRONICLED
IN
THE MORONS AWAKE!
GOSPEL
ACCORDING TO MORDECAI
GOLDBERG
(AS EDITED BY A CERTAIN
JAYNE PLAYNE)
To Book One, Chapter 1 Return to Index
216 For those who may have forgotten—or are sticklers for editorial precision—the following excerpt is reprinted to save you the time and trouble of searching through the text for it to refresh your memory (and/or check on my credibility in using a flashback to make the aforementioned pre climactic point):
"But, Jayne suddenly realized to her dismay, in critiquing Morons Awake! she had overlooked the most serious of all its many problems— and the one that, as things presently stood, it would be impossible for her to solve! Having at long last discovered her Great American Novel needleinahaystack she also discovered her dreams of doing so had been fatally flawed from their very outset! As a lowly reader Jayne's sole function in the book publishing scheme of things was to forward any potential bestseller up the corporate chain of command for the kind of editorial and marketing judgments she was unqualified to make by the terms of her job description. Consequently any ideas she had about her "intimate collaboration" with its author in their joint rewriting of Morons Awake! were nothing more than the wishful thoughts of those housewives whose own 'pathetic delusions of romantic grandeur' Jayne had trained herself to simulate when opening the cover of each new manuscript before she tested the 'bestselling mettle' of its first sentence."
[Since we're at it, dear reader: While I can't speak for you—and contrary to every editorial bone in my body!—frankly I've missed these little "footnote chats" of ours since avoiding their use for the sake of gathering "narrative momentum" as we approach the long delayed consummation of your climactic expectations.]
217 Not to mention flagrantly elitist, militantly intellectual, excessively antiestablishmentarian, irritatingly didactic, inexcusably egotistical, rampantly phallocentric, unabashedly procrustean, excessively allegorical, potentially libelous, possibly pornographic, probably obscene, and most decidedly overwritten.
218 Not unlike that starknaked platinumblonde SexGoddess whose miraculous (or muselike) appearance at the corner of Hollywood & Vine was subsequently construed by the author of Morons Awake! as God's way of helping him to write its elusive first sentence.
219 Similar to the author's Hollywood & Vine "epiphany" it was only in retrospect that I could fully appreciate the overpowering effect Bloom's newlyacquired "angelic" persona had on me.
220 Needless to say, I did my "marching" up those 47 floors by elevator!
221 Believe me,
dear reader; until I was completely corrupted by the absolute power of
"authorship" in writing this "brief introduction" my plans for doing so couldn't
have been simpler—or more modestly motivated! All I intended to do was
give you a few "swimming lessons" before you plunged headlong into the
deceptively deep waters of a book whose untutored reading by an average American
housewife might prove "fatal" in terms of confirming her (mistaken) belief
that: Like all women, she is congenitally incapable of appreciating the finer
things in life—at least artwise. While I'm tempted to explain
my "authorly shortcomings" in detail, rather than "bore" you at this Climactic
Moment with an editorial mea culpa I've decided to include the original (and
wholly unexpurgated) outline from which this "brief introduction" grew like
the proverbial Topsy as Appendix E for
those who are curious about the vagaries of the "creative process." What
can't be left unsaid at this point, however, is this: While writing a booklength
preface to Morons Awake! may have taught me I will probably never
become America's Great Female Novelist I think it's also fair to say my failure
in that regard has enhanced my prospects for one day being hailed as "the
woman who turned the simple act of editing someone else's literary masterpiece
into a genuine art form."
And now, dear reader, before we exchange our final (and
hopefully fond) farewells; let me take this last opportunity to tell those
of you who have persevered to "the bitter end" of this introduction of mine
that by simply doing so you've demonstrated your ability for going the rest
of the way without any more help from me!
[Not that I won't be with you in spirit as you fight the Good Fight to prove your "neoegalitarian" mettle by reading Morons Awake! from cover to cover! An "ordeal" which—if you haven't already discovered on your own—can be made considerably easier by coloring the footnote reference marks with a felttipped pen (or any similar instrument) before reading the footnotess they refer to so you can more readily find your way back to the aforementioned reference marks after having read the footnotes they refer to. This is especially helpful, if not essential, when navigating your way through sub-, subsub- and subsubsub footnotes. While the obvious downside of such a technique is the mess it leaves behind, it has the added benefit of proving, should the need arise, that you have either: (1) Read Morons Awake! from cover to cover and from the top to the very bottom of every single page, or; (2) Gone to the considerable trouble of creating the false impression you did so!—J.P.]