EDITORESS: The short answer to your question is, of course, an unambiguous and resounding—"Yes!"

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Don't tell me: The long answer will, of course, be somewhat more muted —and considerably less simplistic?

EDITORESS: Brava! Perhaps this introduction of mine hasn't been a complete waste of time after all! For someone so habituated to speedreading her way through the latest list of trashy bestsellers you seem to have gained at least a rudimentary understanding of what's required before a woman can hope to fully parse a masterpiece like the one we're discussing.

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: If anyone's responsible for my "speedreading" habits it's people such as yourself who, in the name of making a "career" for themselves have helped turn the once noble book publishing profession into a sordid business affair where making money is more important than making artistic history!

EDITORESS: It seems to me, darling, the real issue is: Would you rather continue playing this blame game; or take advantage of my editorial expertise on the subject of your dormant lovelife?

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Frankly, darling, I'm getting more than just a tad fed up with this steady diet of holierand/orsexierthanthouputdowns you've been forcefeeding me! For your "editorial" information I'm not nearly as "downtrodden," "frustrated," "demoralized," "frumpy," "prurientminded," "nymphomaniacal," "illiterate," "somnambulistic," "culturally impoverished," "unsophisticated," "birdbrained," "common," "typical," "average," and/or just plain stupid as you seem to think I am! However, in order not to derail this "Tutorial ThoughtTrain" of yours, I won't "bore" you by defending at any greater length what I regard as a life which, in its own "humdrum" fashion, hasn't been entirely devoid of "sociocultural" thrills—and even the occasional "pyschosexual" epiphany!

EDITORESS: I can't tell you how much I appreci—

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: —except to state for the record that: It doesn't take a Ph.D. in abnormal female psychology to diagnose the root cause of your¹³⁹ zealous belief in "the superior bliss of literary sex" over that of the "pedestrian" kind practiced so imperfectly (and infrequently) by an "ordinary American housewife" such as myself!

EDITORESS: If you're finished blowing off all that notsosisterly steam, darling?

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Please! Proceed! I'm all ears, darling!

EDITORESS: Well then, in the first place; my promotional plans for making Morons Awake! America's AllTimeNumberOne Bestseller by solemnly promising its potential purchasers "they would live happily ever after by simply reading it" was meant to deceive only those females whose belief in such a manifestly incredible claim qualified them for a crash course on HOW NOT TO JUDGE A BOOK BY THE BLANDISHMENTS OF ITS DUSTJACKET BLURBS.¹⁴⁰

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Or the (nearly) unanimous raves of those public opinion pundits whose predictions of a book's bestsellerdom are supposed to be infallible.

EDITORESS: Well, well, you really are learning a thing or two about differentiating between fact and fiction!

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Yes; but only at the expense of losing my faith in that last Bastion of Journalistic Virtue—the New York Times Sunday Book Review!¹⁴¹

EDITORESS: In our quest for the truth, my dear reader, nothing is sacrosanct. Even The New York Times which, if we accept what most feminists say on the subject, "is just another fossilized remnant of those patriarchal institutions like the State, the Church and the Intelligentsia dedicated to preserving the phallocentric myth that "all females are created equally brainless!" According to the more radical of these philosopherettes, psychoanalystes, scholaresses and historiennes,¹⁴² in fact, such "bastions of the feudal status quo represent only the tip of that (long)dead(and not necessarily)white(or even) European(but always)male iceberg of doctrinaire misogyny—otherwise known as 'Western Civilization.'" Indeed, there are some major league manhaters who seriously suggest that "under every female's bed lurks a rapeminded member of the opposite sex waiting to play his notsochivalrous version of Prince Charming to her Sleeping Beauty."¹⁴³

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Excuse me—but if there is some point you're trying to make would you mind making it before what little remains of my "orgasmic expectations" evaporates in nothing more "epiphanal" than the anticlimactic puff of yet another flamedout fling at "psychosexual" smokemaking!

EDITORESS: My point, dear reader, is simply this: The author's principal reason for disguising Morons Awake! in the trappings of a (more or less) trashy novel rather than fullyfrontalizing his didactic (and/or predatory) intentions was that by taking advantage of the average American housewife's prurient proclivities he might slowly (buteversosurely) seduce her into gaining not only a keen appreciation for the artistic treasures buried in the fine print of a footnote¹⁴⁴ but an even healthier respect for the fine print of life itself—specifically as it sheds light on those shadier aspects of a man's psyche which tell a woman what she really needs to know about his romantic prospects.

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Having said all that, aren't you overlooking a rather obvious—and potentially fatal—flaw in the author's Literary Lion Wearing Sheep's Clothing strategy?

EDITORESS: Believe me, darling; as a result of our extremely close collaboration in foolproofing his masterplan you can be assured that neither the author nor I left even the smallest stone unturned.

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: What about the woman who opts to do her reading of Morons Awake!—and your introduction thereto—sans all the fine print?

EDITORESS: As you did by refusing to read Appendix A—

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER:—Exactly!—

EDITORESS:—which, incidentally, had you not done so, by now we would both be that much closer to actually arriving at our destination!

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Perhaps. But remember: According to your rules the reader can't be held responsible for trying to—

EDITORESS: I know damned well what you were trying to do, darling. However, as I keep reminding you: This introduction of mine is the aperitif to a cultural banquet—not the beer and peanuts prelude for yet another of your literary junkfood binges!

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Listen, lady—as a woman, an American and a human being, I don't have to sit here and take that kind of "elitist" crap!

EDITORESS: Of course you don't, darling! But I'll wager my share of the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes Morons Awake! is destined to win that is precisely what you are going to do!

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: I wouldn't be so sure of that if I were you, Miss KnowItAll—

EDITORESS: But that's just it, sweetiepie—you aren't me! If you possessed even a scintilla of my intellectual luminescence —not to mention the glamour, prestige, sophistication, celebrity and romantic "fringebenefits" of my stature as the Great American Editoress—we wouldn't be having this argument.

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Maybe not, but since we are, I have something to say that needs saying.

EDITORESS: If you insist, there's very little I can do about it, is there? For the time being, at least, this country of ours is still one in which every citizen (no matter how unqualified she or he is to do so) has the "democratic right" to express her or his opinion on every subject under the sun.

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: I won't waste my time quarreling with what should have been an unambiguously patriotic statement of First Amendment fact.

EDITORESS: Good!

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: No. What I really want to find out is this: Do you seriously expect your readers to believe that no other novelist has ever used a few footnotes for the alltoo obvious purpose you've just spent God knows how many pages "educating" me about?

EDITORESS: Of course I do, darling! For the very good reason that it happens to be true!

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: How can you say that when every highschool graduate knows there have been dozens of such novelists?

EDITORESS: You're bluffing! I defy you to name a single bestselling novel in which the footnote comes even close to playing the kind of "reader rapport" role it has already played in what is only this introduction to its more profoundly intimate function in Morons Awake!.

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Well, the one that leaps most immediately into my mind is, of course, Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths—

EDITORESS: No, no, no! That's preposterous! It's absurd! You'll have to do much better than that, darling, if you expect to challenge my literary expertise!

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Who's bluffing whom about whose "literary expertise" now?

EDITORESS: Careful, sweetie; you're dangerously close to crossing the line that separates a housewife's healthy curiosity from the catkilling kind!

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Don't be silly; I crossed that line a long time ago! And, having done so, I defy you to explain in no uncertain terms why the footnotes in Borges' Labyrinths don't steal most (if not all) of Moron Awake!'s "fine print" thunder?

EDITORESS: While not necessarily minimizing¹⁴⁵ any influence he may have had on the writing of Morons Awake! by Borge's own admission "Labyrinths is merely a collection of stale fictitious coldcuts sandwiched between the covers of what the public can be deceived into thinking is my longawaited Great Argentine Novel."¹⁴⁶ Moreover, the "fictional" nature of Borges' writing is itself a subject of considerable and ongoing debate. And, finally, there is the fact that not a single one of Borges' books ever appeared on the bestseller list of the Buenos Aires Critica,¹⁴⁷ let alone that of The New York Times.

CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER: Leaving Borges aside for the moment then; what about those four famous footnotes¹⁴⁸ in J. D. Salinger's Seymour; an Introduction?

Intro Part 10    Return to Index

Footnotes

139 And if The Confused and/or Perplexed ReaderI can be permitted a footnote of her own—presumably that of the "literary mastermind" whose "Revolutionary ManifestocumSocratic Kama Sutra" you clutch so fervently to that "maidenly" bosom of yours.

[My dear reader; I couldn't be happier with your fledgling efforts at using this advanced technique for creating a deeper rapport between a student and her teacher. But, since our collegial hair is down, what I do object to is the way you've conveniently forgotten that this "extracurricular tutorial" of mine was undertaken strictly because of your educational shortcomings.—J. P.]

140 And all of those other gaudilytissued masculine lies we women so foolishly find impossible to resist.

141 At the time this introduction is being written Morons Awake! has, of course, yet to be critiqued in the Times Book Review. Nevertheless it's not at all unreasonable (or immodest of me) to presume that, when it is, it will be universally hailed as "The Greatest of all American Novels." And one every American, female and male, has no choice but to buy and read (if she, or he, has the slightest curiosity about comparing her, or his, IQ to that of our Moronic counterparts).

142 The titles chosen by the following authoresses tell us nearly as much about the current state of feminist manhating (and frequently make better reading) than the books and articles they describe: Nancy Chodorow (The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender), Jane Marcus (Liberty, Sorority, Misogyny), Patricia Parker (Literary Fat Ladies), Gayle Rubin (The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex), Shoshona Feldman (Women and Madness: The Critical Phallacy), Barbara Johnson (Teaching Ignorance: L'Ecole des Femmes), Eve Sedgwick (Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire), Nancy Hartsock (Money, Sex and Power), Mary Daly (Beyond God the Father, GynEcology and Pure Lust), Carol Duncan (The Esthetics of Power in Modern Erotic Art), Carol Christ (Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological, and Political Reßections), Judith Fetterley (The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction), Sheila Rowbothom (Women, Resistance and Revolution), Cicely Hamilton (Marriage as a Trade), Kathleen Barry (Female Sexual Slavery).

143 Cleopatra Haightlyfe, A PostModern-NeoMarxian Analysis of The Fairytale as a Prototypical Patriarchal Ploy to Opiate the Female Proletariat, p.213.

144 And/or an appendix, a parenthesis, a punctuational impertinence, a (deliberately?) dubious proposition, an act of grammatical virtuosity, a midsentence flight of metaphysical fancy, a sly stroke of linguistic promiscuity, the partiallyspelled4letterword whose spelling leaves nothing to the imagination, the trick (or tricky) question, etc.

145 Despite what might seem like my "contemptuous dismissal" of this matter raised by the CONFUSED AND/OR PERPLEXED READER I have since discussed the issue of Borges' possible influence on him (at some considerable length) with the author. Briefly stated his position is as follows: Although his normally photographic memory is curiously vague on the subject he is not unwilling to concede some of the seeds for his "pseudoscholarly" writing style may have been sown subconsciously when, as a college student 60 years ago he might indeed have read 1 or 2 of Borges' footnoted "stories." And, while he (more or less) humbly acknowledges his indebtedness to a long line of deceased literary and artistic luminaries, he remains confident his "plagiarism" will be viewed by future critics as not merely the sincerest form of flattering his illustrious precursors but as "an act of consummate genius" in transforming what was a minor aesthetic gimmick into a historymaking (and mankindsaving) sociocultural revolution.
     [Lest my use of the word "genius" in quoting the author is misconstrued I hasten to point out he was only predicting how his future critics would (erroneously) describe him. Believe me, dear reader, underneath his "Godlike facade" the author of Morons Awake! is the most modest man I have ever known. Moreover, as the Arch Apostle of Klutzianism he not only rejects the nonegalitarian nature of his own IQ but that of all those other "geniuses" (from Moses to Mozart) responsible for making Western Civilization the supreme expression of human culture. As Klutz Himself said so frequently, "The most glorious chapters in the history of art were written by men (and women) whose minds couldn't have been more ordinary." Or, to slightly paraphrase those Words of Female Moronic Wisdom (from which Klutz may well have derived his Doctrine of NeoEgalitarianism) —"It's not the size of a man's mind that matters so much as the way he uses it."]

146 Although the precise source of this statement remains a mystery most Borges scholars agree that: Since it could very well have escaped from his lips, according to Borges' own rules for "Mistrusting All Scholarly Citations" there is no good reason to doubt it actually did.

147 Of which, by the way, Borges was the editor!

148 At pages 100, 117, 126 & 139, Bantam paperback edition.