Having done all that any editoress can humanly do111 in "setting the stage" for this "dress rehearsal" of the "fatal decisions" you will be forced to make when confronted by the very first sentence of Morons Awake! I leave those of you who choose to proceed without benefiting from the contents of Appendix A with the following words of friendly advice:112
While it's true113 "Every average American housewife will get more than her money's worth by reading Morons Awake! on even the most superficial of its multiple levels," it's equally true that: The deeper one delves into such a manysplendored book the more rewarding its reading will be. Q.E.D.G if one is content to merely skim her way through what might at first glance seem to be the sleazy surface of just another trashy bestseller looking for a quick romantic fix or the cheapest kind of psycho sexual thrill; the gratification she derives from doing so will be diminished accordingly.
On the other hand, if the object of a woman's innermost cravings is to experience the transcendental bliss of having an arm chair loveaffair with a literary mastermind; she has virtually no chance of ever doing so unless she is willing to produce a few droplets of her own intellectual sweat—or whip herself into at least a mildly orgiastic lather of autodidacticG idealism.
Hence, dear reader, we find ourselves face-to-face with the most controversial114 of all those "scandalous facts making the Klutz Affair such an apocalyptic cause célèbre,"G 115 namely; that Cardinal Rule of Born Again Klutzianity which states: "It is only after one masters the principles of art appreciation that she (or he) can begin to appreciate her (or his) life itself as a fundamentally aesthetic116 affair."
But trust me, dear reader, I know only too well117 that before you can accept a "truth" which, to most Americans (and all Morons118), seems as counterintuitive as believing this earth of ours isn't flatter than a proverbial119 pancake, we must first answer120 these basic questions you should be asking yourself—
CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Such as: What is there about appreciating (fine) art that empowers an ordinary housewife like me to attain that ecstatic state of (extra)Marital Bliss, Sociocultural Utopia, Romantic Nirvana, Conversational Camelot, Prurient Paradise On Earth and/or Psychosexual Epiphany while (notso languidly) turning the pages of yet another hot off the presses variation on that classic female fornication fantasy masquerading as just another harmless fairytale, to wit: Sleeping Beauty's magical awakening at the first touch of her Prince Charming's lips?121
EDITORESS: Unlike life, which rushes past (most of) us like
an express train as we stand on the platform of a local subway station, a
work of
art122
focuses our attention on some finite (or in some cases
infinitesimal123) detail of an audiovisual extravaganza whose frenetic pace leaves
the average person in a (more or less) constant state of bewilderment. Take,
for example, Alain Robbe-Grillet's Great French Novel (about America!), The
History of
CakeEating,124 in which he leads his readers on a 748pagelong odyssey through
a snapshot of some New York socialites attending a ParkAvenuePenthouse
CocktailpartycumPianoRecital to benefit Manhattan's homeless he just "happened
to come across while browsing through a copy of Time Magazine in his
dentist's waitingroom." The result of which is a scathing (but not necessarily
malicious) critique on "an America which, after 200 years of ridiculing Marie
Antoinette's lamebrained 'Let them eat cake' answer to France's late 18thcentury
politicoeconomic crisis, takes a similarly mindless approach to the solution
of its late 20thcentury socio cultural
problems."125
The point made by Robbe-Grillet
and Borges (not to mention our author!) being, my dear reader, simply this:
That for
better126 or
worse127 history is always made by the wrong people. At least the
history we have all been (mis)led into believing is the most important kind:
That concerning itself with the (obviously more melodramatic) geopolitical
machinations by which great kingdoms, magnificent nationstates and vast empires
are built; rather than the (actually much more exciting)
downtoearth128 story of humanity's slowbutsteady progress toward establishing
an American civilization in which even the humblest housewife can enjoy (or
at least pursue) the true happiness of a psychosexual bliss previously enjoyed
only by the mistresses, courtesans and demimondaines who consorted with Europe's
intellectual crème de la crème in the legendary salons
of Paris, Vienna and St.
Petersburg.129
Intro Part 8 Return to Index
Footnotes
111 And (taking into account how the author will react to my "infernal female fiddling" with what was his "perfectly publishable as it was to begin with Great American Novel") considerably more than was required of me as a humanitarian—or a woman willing to sacrifice both her career and her love life on the altar of some evangelical novelist's plans for messianic grandeur!
112 The reader who is more sophisticated, astute, sagacious,G discerning, reasonable, perceptive, nimblewitted, discriminating and/or refined should, of course, turn her attention to Appendix A forthwith.
113 Based on the assurances of our legal advisers that all of the claims appearing on the dust jacket of Morons Awake! conform to the appropriate state and federal Truth In Advertising laws, I've put my personal credibility (and future career in publishing!) on the line by embracing what some (obviously misogynistic) critics will call my "Leni Riefenstahl/Triumph of the Will approach" to the merchandising of a "palpably unAmerican" document and its "rabblerousing" author.
114 By reason of its flagrant AntiEgalitarianism.
115 In the words of Jedgar Ballbraker, Chief of Moronia's Federal Investigation Bureau (FIB).
116 Obviously we can't risk losing our educational momentum to discuss all of the "stupendous conclusions" Robbe-Grillet draws from his meticulous scrutiny of that single snapshot, but this salient observation does, I think, demand our attention: "If," he writes on page 667, "after 5,000 years of human history no Emperor/Empress, Tsar/Tsarina, King/Queen, Maharaja/Maharanee, Pharaoh, Mikado, Shogun, Doge, Mogul, Shah, Tyrant, Negus, Hospodar, Sachem, Warlord, Satrap, Despot, Kaiser, Chancellor, Führer, President, Prime Minister, Nabob, Pope, Patriarch, Prophet, Saint, Guru, Imam or Mullah has ever had the slightest success in reversing the decline of a civilization; perhaps the time has come to see if some 'lowly' American novelist (or playwright, screenwriter, poet, painter, sculptor, composer or choreographer) can prevent such a calamitous sociocultural eclipse from once again repeating itself."
117 Not unlike our "fictional" Jayne Playne ,I have spent the better part of my professional life waging an allout war against my own sex when it comes to the average housewife's refusal to buy any book whose pretensions are remotely "didactic," "highbrow" or "literary" (no matter how prurient, obscene or pornographic they might otherwise be). To give you an idea of just how hopelessly lost this crusade to raise America's reading habits to a level above that of Neanderland, Cretiny or Moronia has become—selling 7,000 copies of a "literary" novel in a market comprising no less than 150 million potential readers is considered to be a publishing miracle. According to Nan Talese at Doubleday, "There are four thousand serious book buyers in this country you can count on (when it comes to publishing) literary fiction That's your basic number, including libraries, if there isn't a bell or whistle, like having a very beautiful author(ess) do a crosscountry publicity tour in the nude." ["Moby Dick In Manhattan," The New Yorker, June 27/July 4, 1994, p.59.]
118 If we can credit the latest Moronian Census Department figures indicating that 99.9% of the Moron's responding indicated their negative/hostile attitude toward "fine" art, "classical" music, "message" movies, "literary" fiction, "impressionistic" painting and "talking head" TV. Whereas the results of polling public opinion in the USA on similar matters are consistently in the 85-90% range.
119 Or such similarly hardtoswallow medicinal nostrums as: Honesty is the best policy; Patriotism is a scoundrel's last refuge; The most satisfying sex is that practiced from the neck up; A writer's pen is mightier than a warrior's sword; Winning is less important than how the game is played; No man is an island; Money can't buy happiness; In the long run turningtheothercheekism actually is a better strategy for getting revenge on one's adversaries than aneyeforaneye and atoothforatoothism, etc.
120 But not completely. To do so now would be exceedingly premature in what is, we must remember, only my introduction to the book whose author is, after all, far more qualified than I am to deal with these weighty matters by reason of his erudition, seminal mystique, mental machismo, fanatical altruism, artistic "cojones," Quixotic gallantry, foreplay expertise, literary genius, psychosexual skills, sociopathic personality, revolutionary aspirations, iconoclastic instincts, predatory proclivities, congenital spunk, totalitarian temperament, Jewish Intellectualism, Wagnerian weltanschauüng and/or the divinelyinspired nature of his messianic "delusions" of civilizationsaving grandeur (as proven beyond all doubt by his Mount Olympus Conversation with God—a verbatim transcript of which appears at the end of Book One).
121 Make no mistake about it, ladies, regardless of who writes your next bestselling romance novel; or whatever its title might be; or its protagonists' names; or the locale and period in which its plot unfolds—the message is always the same: To attract the man of her dreams all any housewife need do is simply be what she already is—the comatose victim of an evil spell (or misbegotten marriage) waiting to be rescued from her lifelong torpor by the tender lips (or some other more manifestly masculine anatomical talisman) of a knight in (or out of) shining armor.
122 For reasons of simplification we are dealing here with only those (comparatively) static art forms (literature, painting, sculpture) which permit the reader/viewer to (more or less) establish her own space/time parameters and analytical agenda (ie., to reread the passage of a book she finds particularly prurient; or whose convoluted sentence structure, arcane syntax, neobaroque vocabulary and/or erudited content presents a masculine challenge to her female brain she cannot refuse)unlike the more kinetic variety (film, theater, radio, television, opera) whose audiences find their critical options (for the most part) preempted by such totalitarian tricks of the performing arts trade as: (1) The "jumpcutfromthesceneofascreen writingcrime scam;" (2) The "seeingisbelieving (or verisimilitude) hoax;" (3) The "prologueasanexercisein dramaturgicalforeplay ploy;" (4) The "hot/panic/emotional/ erogenousbutton pushing bamboozle;" (5) The "subliminaltitillation diddle;" (6) The "fullyfrontalized leitmotif (or alienation) gambit;" (7) The "postprematureclimax decrescendo gimmick;" (8) The "notaltogetherpseudo pornographicpasdedeux stunt;" (9) The "matterovermindthunderandlightning (or Nuremburg Rally/pop concert) effect" and that 6waycurtainclosingorgyofvocalfreeforallism known as the "knocktheirsocksofffinaleofanotherwisenotsograndopera (or sextet) flimflam."
123 See Chapter VIII of Freud's Character and Culture for his Sherlock Holmeslike solution to the "artistic" mystery surrounding the inscrutable way Michelangelo posed the figure of Moses as one of the five Prophets supporting his monumental (but unfinished) tomb for Pope Julius II. in the Church of S. Pietro at Vincoli, Rome.
124 What redblooded (or -necked) American elementary schoolchild hasn't learned this most notorious of all lessons in the history of (French) mindlessness—along with such classic examples of our own oxymoronic wisdom as: "What's good for MGM, CBS, NBC, ABC and MCA is good for America!" "Television is better than ever!" "One woman's Judith Krantz is another woman's Franz Kafka!" "God must think highly of the common housewife because he made so many of them!" and, "If the Germans are so goddamned smart why didn't they realize they were playing Faust to Hitler's Mephistopheles in 1933?"
125 Obviously we can't risk losing our educational momentum to discuss all of the "stupendous conclusions" Robbe-Grillet draws from his meticulous scrutiny of that single snapshot, but this salient observation does, I think, demand our attention: "If," he writes on page 667, "after 5,000 years of human history no Emperor/Empress, Tsar/Tsarina, King/Queen, Maharaja/Maharanee, Pharaoh, Mikado, Shogun, Doge, Mogul, Shah, Tyrant, Negus, Hospodar, Sachem, Warlord, Satrap, Despot, Kaiser, Chancellor, Führer, President, Prime Minister, Nabob, Pope, Patriarch, Prophet, Saint, Guru, Imam or Mullah has ever had the slightest success in reversing the decline of a civilization; perhaps the time has come to see if some 'lowly' American novelist (or playwright, screenwriter, poet, painter, sculptor, composer or choreographer) can prevent such a calamitous sociocultural eclipse from once again repeating itself."
126 Pericles' democratization of Athens, Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon, Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy, John Adams' seminal role in declaring American "independency" from Britain, Carry Nation's one-woman crusade against Demon Rum, Mussolini's reforms of the Italian railway system, Castro's "liberation" of the Cuban people from their Yankee "oppressors."
127 Eve's GardenofEdenAppleEatingFling, Paris' abduction of Helen, Nero's persecution of the Christians, Torqeumada's 15th century deJewification of Spain, the Lenin/Stalin/Brezhnev "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," Hitler's 20th century deYiddification of Germany, Mao's "Cultural Revolution" (not to be confused with the sociocultural Revolution advocated in Morons Awake!) and the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon Vietnam war policy.
128 It is interesting to note how profoundly more entertaining and edifying Shakespeare's Comedies (Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Tempest, Midsummer's Night) and Tragedies (Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet—and even Titus Andronicus) are than his Histories of kings, exkings and wouldbe kings whose tediously repetitive tales of battles, wars, regicide, courtly intrigue and counterintrigue, signify nothing except the quintessential futility (and boredom!) of all politics.
129 Such as Jeanne Antoinette Poisson (Marquise de Pompadour), Anne Louise Germaine Necker (Madame de Staël), Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin (Baroness Dudevet) and those prototypically freethinking and broadminded American (s)expatriates—Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Beach and Anaïs Nin.
Glossary
Q.E.D.(abbr) [L quod erat demonstrandum] which was to be demonstrated, or therefore:
autodidact noun [Gk autodidaktos self-taught, fr. aut- + didaktos taught, fr. didaskein to teach](1748) : a self-taught person ¦ autodidactic adj
cause célèbre noun, [F, lit., celebrated case](1763) 1 : a legal case that excites widespread interest 2 : a notorious person, thing, incident, or episode
sagacious adj [L sagac-, sagax, fr. sagire to perceive keenly; akin to L sagus prophetic ¦ more at SEEK](1607) 1 obs : keen in sense perception 2 a : of keen and farsighted penetration and judgment : DISCERNING <...judge of character> b : caused by or indicating acute discernment <...purchase of stock> syn see SHREWD