His pathetic efforts at rewriting Hamlet's Act III, Scene 1 soliloquy reflects the torment he suffered because of his own "cowardice" in procrastinating over a cause of far greater "pitch and moment" than avenging the murder of one's father. But unlike Hamlet, who was compelled to do what he finally did within the confines of a five act play, Bloom's ruminations on the constipated nature of his perpetually postponed attempts at authorhood became an openended affair that continued until he reached what will shortly be the happy ending to this seemingly saddest of stories.
If there is a lesson to be learned from Leopold Bloom's misbegotten dreams of messianic grandeur it might appear at first glance to be the bothersome one about ignoranceisblissism80 (or the procrastinational perils of overintellectualization81) first recited by Hamlet 4 centuries ago. And while that praiseworthy mea culpa threatens to throw a conceptual monkeywrench into the clockwork82 of Morons Awake!'s utopian scheme of things (to come); when bestselling push comes to the shove of editorial integrity it must be conceded that: Whether one contemplates writing a novel,83 launching a revolution, committing adultery84 or simply crossing the street; a little ignorance is a virtue "devoutly to be wish'd." As the Morons themselves are fond of saying: "Show me an armchair turnipfarmer and I'll show you a turnipless turnipfarm." Or as Clausewitz put it more pointedly in his Matter Over Mind: A Treatise On The Prussian Dueling Scar As An Indelible Reminder That, In The Final Analysis, Geopolitical History Is Written With Blood Not Ink—"Show me an author who really believes his pen is mightier than my sword and I'll show you a writer with a vagina where his virility once was." In either case; whether a man is raising turnips or waging war (and certainly when he's making art or love) Hemingway's rendering85 of Manolete's "Toreador Rule" is probably the best advice: "When trying to outsmart a bull one must think as much with one's cojones as one does with one's cabeza."
Indeed, as Bloom's extensive investigation of the subject demonstrated: The world's greatest masterminds were men (ie., van Gogh, Wagner, Celine) more concerned with creating artistic tidal waves, rocking boatloads of musicologists, upsetting literary applecarts and smashing their bullish way through the china shop of cultural conformity than with meticulously observing the rules of grammar, counterpoint, and "the physiological properties of color perception." And while Clausewitz was correct in believing geopolitical news is (or until recently always has been) made by bloodthirsty tyrants, homicidal maniacs, fiendish zealots and sociopathic ideologues like Genghis Kahn, Caligula, Torquemada and Lenin; the only headlines that really matter in the chronicle of human history—and those which never become outdated—are those made by Culturo Intellectual swashbucklers, daredevils, desperadoes and conquistadors such as Petronius, DaVinci, Rabelais, de Sade, Rodin, Picasso and Stravinsky. Not to mention those Titans of Science: Pythagoras, Galileo, Darwin, Marx, Einstein and Freud. Nevertheless, unlike great art (which by definition is timeless) because of its evolutionary nature sooner or later most scientific "news" is rendered passe by the even newsworthier announcement of a more "uptodate" scientific discovery. Thus, while the aforementioned "Titans of Science" played their indispensible (and heroic) roles in the development of the modern world as we now know it (or think we do), only their names remain as mileposts on that yellow brick road leading to the Emerald City of technological Ozdom; whereas the actual objects created by the most ancient artists (the cave painters of Altamira and Lascaux/ Montignac, for instance, or the craftsmen who decorated Tutankhamen's burial chamber) remain as striking—and relevant—today as when they were first made. One has only to compare the shelflife of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa with the (now generally discredited as charlatanism) medical "breakthroughs" of Galen and even Vesalius—or the flash in the pan rocketeering superstardom of a Werner von Braun (no matter how far we may ultimately travel in space) with (what will surely be) the eternal and universal popularity of Thornton Wilder's classic play about a small New England Town, in order to grasp the simple truth that: Ars Longa, Vita Brevis (Art is Long, Life is Short).
If any further proof of this Roman axiom is needed it's noteworthy that in the monetary scheme of things objects d'art are universally regarded (by those who really know) as the most valuable of all currencies. According to the best investment mavins in the art market business Van Gogh's Sunflowers or even Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe is worth more than all the moon rocks we spent God knows how much of our national treasure (or increased our national debt) to gather from the lunar surface.
But despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary; when it comes to appreciating art—not unlike our Moronic counterparts—we Americans persist in putting the cart before the horse by treating culture as if it were merely the frosting on our vocational cornflakes when in point of dietary fact (soulfoodwise) it is the very stuff from which our daily bread is (or should be) baked! Hence we think it perfectly logical to spend the day working ourselves into a complete state of mental, physical and emotional exhaustion before we attend the plays, operas and concerts whose nocturnal delights constitute the principal reason for our being human —while doing just the opposite would be regarded as a typically Moronic exercise in puttingthecartbeforethehorseism. Why this should be the status quo Americanus when most of us spend our quality time slaving away at a mindless job in one sort of salt mine or another doing something that could just as well be done by a robot (or not done at all!) has always been a mystery to me.86 How much saner (not to mention safer) our society would be if we devoted the brighteyed and bushytailed hours of 9 a.m. 5 p.m. to the quest for intellectual exaltation; and those too pooped to pop ones from 6 p.m. 2 a.m. to the brainless pursuit of yet another weekly paycheck!
IF YOU CAN BEAR THE DOING OF IT, dear reader, close your eyes with me for a just moment and try to imagine what our lives would be like if we belonged to a social order in which an average woman engaging in an intelligent conversation, receiving a cultural thrill or even undergoing a genuinely transcendental psychosexual epiphany was the rule rather than the exception! As you will learn later from your reading of Morons Awake! this was the very concept Jack F. Klutz himself was trying to formulate in terms his fanatically AntiIntellectual compatriots would find palatable at the time of his death.87 However it is worth noting in this connection that, when it comes to establishing their "workversusplay priorities" the Morons—once again!—seem to be somewhat more sophisticated than we (and the rest of the "civilized" world) are. Whether it's a genetic trait, or one that became part of Moronia's cultural ethos during its long history of subjugation, the result is just as startling: The average Moron is capable of performing his (or her) daily chores in a state of total mindlessness! No doubt this amazing feat of intellectual hibernation can, for the most part, be explained by: (a) The workaday chores performed by the average Moron couldn't be more rudimentary in nature (the hewing of wood, the drawing of water, the weeding of turnipbeds, etc.) and; (b) What little there is of a Moron's I.Q. to start with makes its zeroization that much easier to attain than it would be for the ordinary American highschool (or college) graduate. Nevertheless, as with so many other facets of Moronic behavior, there may be some valuable lessons to be learned from these pathetic creatures who, if we truly revere the All Men Are Created Equal principle articulated in our Declaration of Independence,88 are entitled to the same "tolerance" we extend to those of our fellow Americans whose opinions on most matters are no less idiotic, absurd, dimwitted, halfbaked, inane, foolish, stupid, knuckleheaded, cretinous, birdbrained, superficial, addlepated, irrational, numskulled, doltish, crass, vacuous, daft, infantile, simpleminded, gormless-and downright "moronic"—as are those of the typical Moron!
Intro Part 6 Return to Index
Footnotes
80 In one of the (several thousand!) footnotes I succeeded in deleting from the published version of Morons Awake! the author expounds at length on the paradoxical part Hamlet plays in shaping the Morons' AntiIntellectual mindset. My own recent visits to Moronia confirmed the curious fact that, despite their fanatical hatred for anything considered to be remotely artistic, at the drop of a hat—and I mean that literally (as when an otherwise reasonable American actually knocks on wood or tosses real salt over his shoulder to ward off some curse or evil spirit)—even the dullest Moron can (and does!) rattle off the Act III, Scene 1 soliloquy as if it were (which indeed it is!) a sacred mantra or ethnic anthem. What I found equally remarkable was the skill with which these "turnipeating Country Bumpkins" delivered a speech that, for at least the last halfcentury, has continued to stump America's socalled "superstars of stage, screen and radio." And (Freud's oracular diagnosis of its "obvious Oedipal etiology" notwithstanding) while the majority of Shakespearean scholars have yet to reach anything approximating a consensus on the true meaning of Hamlet's cryptic behavior the Morons have no doubt whatsoever that: "If the melancholy Dane hadn't been too smart for his princely britches he—and Ophelia!—could have lived happily ever after."
81 One can only speculate on how much time Shakespeare himself spent on composing what he must surely have known would turn out to be the most famous speech ever written for an actor.
82 Specifically the Mainspring Maxim of Klutzian dogma holding that: Erudition and not ignorance is the source of True Bliss.
83 Even one of such "pitch and moment" it might awaken America from its sleepwalk toward the cliff's edge of civilizational extinction.
84 In this particular regard, as we shall see throughout much of Morons Awake!, questions can be raised about how loudly its author brags about his credentials as a "foreplay artist" and how silent he is on the subject of his copulational skills!
85 As it appears in the unexpurgated edition of Death in the Afternoon—Hemingway's "armchair" salute to that most machismoistic of all Spanish bullfighters, Manuel Rodriguez y Sanchéz; who, ironically, was fatally gored in the groin.
86 In my own case, of course, there were some very good reasons why I willingly "wasted" the best years of my girl- and womanhood buried alive in the bowels of a Manhattan skyscraper hoping to one day discover the Great American Novel—which (as this Editorial Introduction of mine to the book that will change the future course of human history clearly demonstrates) I eventually succeeded in doing!
87 Not only does this "coincidence" raise the gravest questions about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the Moronic Messiah's "untimely demise," it brings us to the crux of the Klutz Affair—and, thereby, to the very reason why Morons Awake! was written. But, since the purpose of this introduction is simply for me to "set the stage" for your "literary loveaffair" with the genius whose masterpiece you will soon be reading, any further illumination by me of these crucial matters at this premature point would be both indiscreet and counterproductive.
88 As the Morons themselves
have been doing every July 4th since 1777 with a display of pride in their
adopted principles of sociocultural democracy rivaled in its outpouring of
patriotic exuberance only by their annual Tournament of Turnips Parade and
Footballfest. There will, of course be some cynics who see Morons Awake!
not as A REVOLUTIONARY MANIFESTO FOR THE LIBERATION OF AVERAGE AMERICANS
FROM THE SHACKLES OF THEIR IGNORANCE, but rather as: "The repackaging of
Ortega y Gasset's allbutoutofprint and rarelyread AntiEgalitarian
tirade—The Revolt of the Masses (or that other radical recipe
for the repurification of Germany's Aryan gene pool, Mein Kampf) in
the form of a socalled 'bestselling' nonfiction novel." It wouldn't surprise
me if these latterday Doubting Thomases went so far as to accuse Morons
Awake!'s author of being "just another embittered highbrow preaching
the gospel of mindovermatter to a captive audience of sexstarved housewives
in the name (Jack F. Klutz?!?!) of a modern savior whose messianic credentials
(born and raised in a 'microstate' called Moronia?!?!) couldn't be more blatantly
allegorical—or fraudulent!"
But even conceding there might
just be a scintilla of neoNazi gotterdämmerungismus ("If the
German people can't rise to my Nietzschean challenge let them be wiped from
the face of the earth!"—Adolf Hitler) between the covers of Morons
Awake! isn't this par for the course of any book (Das Kapital, The
Babylonian Captivity Of The Church, Brave New World, 1984, The Autobiography
of Malcolm X, etc.) seeking the overthrow of a bankrupt economic, religious,
political and/or sociocultural order?
Moreover, can you really blame the Persecuted Protagonists
(Jack F. Klutz/ Mordecai J. Goldberg), and Distressed Damsels (Jayne Playne/
Yours Truly) of a "notsononfiction" novel for occasionally exhibiting
proclivities that can indeed be described as fascistic? Having been the (in
some cases lifelong) victims of a nationwide (or global) conspiracy to scorn,
ridicule and ghettoize (if not exterminate) them, is it any wonder if now
and then a trace of vitriol leaks its poisonous way into the wellspring of
their humanitarian motives?
Of course when the emotional dust raised by your reading
of this book settles it will be for you alone to decide whether, in the final
analysis, Morons Awake! is: (a) The product of a
(notallthatmuchaboveaverage) mind warped by the relentless peer pressure
of a social order bent on making mediocrity the litmus test of American
citizenship; (b) A bestselling novel, literary masterpiece and Salvational
Manifesto that will in fact—as its author promised!— reestablish
America's claim to fame as a cultural superpower; (c) A book that might make
its way onto the N.Y. Times bestseller list and maybe even win a Pulitzer
and/or Nobel Prize but, in the final analysis, one that will do nothing to
halt the decline of Western Civilization and/or reEdenize America's cultural
dust bowl; (d) A cause célèbre—in the wake of which
perhaps a few thousand housewives will be (temporarily) added to the ranks
of an American intelligentsia whose numbers, relative to the general population,
have never exceeded a ratio approximating that between the Jewish Zealots
of Masada and the military might of the entire Roman Empire; (e) Another
failed attempt by some ivorytower armchair dogooder to "rescue mankind from
itself" but one which just might (ala John the Baptist crying in the wilderness)
manage to keep the flame of his evangelical faith flickering until the One
True Cultural Messiah makes his worldsaving appearance on the literary,
theatrical or cinematic scene, or; (f) All of the above—at least to
the extent that, as with most crusades, revolutions and literary loveaffairs
which fail to fully meet our climactic expectations, half a loaf is infinitely
preferable to none.