READERS OF MORONS AWAKE!
REGARDLESS OF YOUR SEX, RACE, NATIONALITY, RELIGION, MARITAL STATUS, SOCIAL STANDING, ACADEMIC BACKGROUND AND/OR IQ YOU ARE ALL ELIGIBLE FOR THIS
SENSATIONAL FREE OFFER!
A GENUINE & SUITABLE FOR FRAMING PhD
DIPLOMA*
(Doctor of Pursuing Happiness) from the University of Moronia
can be yours by simply passing—with a minimum score of only 50%—the following OPEN BOOK test of the knowledge you will gain from THE EASY READING of this informative and ENTERTAINING novel!
SECTION I MULTIPLE CHOICE:
1. The capital of Moronia is: (a) Washington, D.C.; (b) Hollywood; (c) Moronville; (d) New York City. ANSWER ( )
2. Jack F. Klutz was named after which of these American Presidents: (a) Herbert Hoover; (b) Andrew Jackson; (c) Richard Nixon; (d) John F. Kennedy. ANSWER ( )
3. According to the Klutzian system for measuring human intelligence, the average Moron (and/or American) is born with an IQ of: (a) 0; (b) 25; (c) 50; (d) 100. ANSWER ( )
4. Morons Awake! is: (a) A Literary Masterpiece; (b) A Revolutionary Manifesto; (c) The Greatest Of All American Novels; (d) A Treatise On The Art Of Superprotracted Foreplay; (e) A Biblical Revelation; (f) All of the above. ANSWER ( )
5. To a Born Again Klutzian which of the following is considered "one of the Finer Things in Life": (a) light beer; (b) Monday night football; (c) the Pasadena Rose Parade; (d) Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle; (e) a weekend in Las Vegas; (f) a really decent cornedbeef sandwich. ANSWER ( )
6. The author's world record for superprotracted foreplay is: (a) 1 hour; (b) 2 hours 24 minutes; (c) 3 hours 44 minutes; (d) 5 hours; (e) 9 hours 6 minutes. ANSWER ( )
7. Americans and Morons share which two of these cultural traits: (a) a cuisine consisting almost entirely of turnips; (b) a passionate hostility to all forms of highbrowism; (c) wearing hats in bed; (d) a vocabulary lacking the words "intelligentsia" and "mediocrity;" (e) sexual practices putting a premium on form over substance. ANSWERS ( ) ( )
8. Jack F. Klutz couldn't have been fathered by the author of Morons Awake! because: (a) the author is gay; (b) Klutz is a fictional character; (c) Klutz was conceived immaculately; (d) DNA tests on Klutz's foreskin prove he was a congenital UMB [UpperMiddleBrow] Moron while the author is an SHB (SuperHighBrow) JewishAmerican. ANSWER ( )
9. You will know the decline of Western Civilization is being reversed when: (a) the swallows return to Capistrano; (b) the Chicago Cubs win the World Series; (c) there is a chicken in every American pot; (d) Mahler's Fifth Symphony (or any other "classical" music) is heard coming from the car next to yours while stopped at a traffic light. ANSWER ( )
SECTION II TRUE OR FALSE
1. Holden Caulfield was illiterate but he read a lot of good books. T__ F__
2. All civilizations are doomed to fail. T__ F__
3. The Second (SocioCultural) American Revolution is a figment of Mordecai Goldberg's imagination. T__ F__
4. A single literary masterpiece (like Morons Awake!) can solve all of Moronia's and America's sociocultural problems. T__ F__
5. Works of art like Picasso's Guernica, Mahler's Fifth Symphony and Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment never have, or ever will, alter the course of human history. T__ F__
6. The average Moronic and/or American housewife is capable of reading only the trashiest sort of romance novels. T__ F__
SECTION III ESSAY (CHOOSE ONE)
In 250,000 words or less:
1. Describe the differences between the Egalitarianism of Thomas Jefferson and the NeoEgalitarianism of Jack F. Klutz.
2. Compare the Morons' Ignorance Is Bliss ethos with pursuing the American (or that of any other nation) Dream of Living Happily Ever After Just Because I Was Born In The USA (or Poland, France, Cretiny, China, etc.).
† † †
Relevant Quotations
Greater love hath no man for his country than to compare it with Moronia.
Anonymous, possibly Marcus Valerian (77-12 BC), Preface to Vegetate Romanus!
A kick in the pants is frequently a step forward.
ancient Moronic proverb
More and more, human history is becoming a race between education and catastrophe.
H. G. Wells
Nine women out of ten go through life without realizing their own special nature: they cannot lose their souls, for they have never found them. For every daughter of Eve, this is the supreme defeat, the final disaster. Yet no one I know has ever warned [the average female about this] danger...That's why I love this book [of mine] in spite of all its shortcomings..it is the first book ever written to glorify the [female intellect] and its passionate desires...I only wish I'd begun [writing it] five years ago, before I [became] half-drowned in the brackish flood of old age and...failing memory; but notwithstanding this handicap I have tried to write the book I always wanted to read; the first chapter in the Bible of Humanity.
Frank Harris, Foreword to Volume I, My Life & Loves
CLINT EASTWOOD: Have you seen a blonde in a pink
Cadillac?
GAS STATION ATTENDANT: Only in my dreams.
Dialogue from Pink Cadillac, Warner Bros., 1989
I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.
Holden Caulfield (speaking for J.D.Salinger), The Catcher In The Rye
Utopia is the opiate of the Jewish people.
Ludwig Lewisohn
This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me: There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no one remembers that same poor man. Then said I, Wisdom is better than [brute] strength; nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.
Ecclesiastes, Chapter 9 verses 13-16
I don't want the world to be asleep.
Jennifer Saunders (as Edina Monsoon), penultimate episode of Absolutely Fabulous
klutz, noun, Slang. 1. A clumsy person. 2. A person regarded as stupid. [Yiddish klots, from Middle High German kloz, block, lump.]
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition
And, finally:
For those who think the decline of Western Civilization can't be reversed by the millions of ordinary housewives who will read this revolutionary manifesto (masquerading as a trashy bestseller) from cover to cover, let them consider these words written 400 years ago by William Shakespeare:
THE EPILOGUE to Henry VIII
'Tis ten to one this play can never please/All that are here. Some come to take their ease/And sleep an hour or two; but those, we fear,/We've frighted with our trumpets, so 'tis clear/They'll say 'tis naught: others, to hear the city/Abused extremely, and to cry `That's witty!'/Which we have not done neither: that, I fear,/All the expected good we're like to hear/For this play at this time, is only in/The merciful construction of good women;/For such a one we showed 'em: if they smile,/And say 'twill do, I know, within a while/All the best men are ours; for 'tis ill hap/If they hold when their ladies bid 'em clap. [Italics added]
† † †
THE TRAIN OF THOUGHT STORY
In its simplest version the story goes like this—
An Ordinary Housewife from the Eastcoast boards a train bound for the Westcoast and sits next to a Strange Man who begins a conversation with her about a novel he is writing which doesn't stop (except for a few "calls of nature") until they reach their destination 3 days later.
* * * * *
Exactly who this "Ordinary Housewife" is, her sophistication or lack thereof, what she looks like, where she is going and why she is going there? The "Strange Man's" age, appearance, marital status, literary credentials and nature of the novel he is writing? The possibility their (presumably prurient) conversation might in fact be part of the very book they are discussing? Whether the East and West Coasts are those of Australia, Italy, England, Madagascar, Crete, Samoa, South Africa, Canada, Borneo, India or America? The effect (if any) such a "Platonic affair" has on the Ordinary Housewife's Cultural IQ? The effect (if any) such a "Platonic affair" has on the Strange Man's understanding of the average house wives he writes for and about? And most intriguing of all: What becomes of them after they arrive at their destination? Are questions this simplest of versions doesn't answer.
Which, of course, is the problem with all simple stories. And perhaps the only point the (unknown) author of this one was trying to make, namely: That such questions form but the tip of what is usually a very large iceberg, bestselling novel- and (even moreso) literarymasterpiecewise. Nevertheless, because of the pressures exerted by modern massmerchants in satisfying their customer's short attentionspan, a starving artist (those earning less than a thirdround NBA or NFL draft pick) must reduce the "storyline" of his novel, film, play, television show—and/or even his poem, ballet, painting, opera or symphony—to not only a single sentence but one using words of no more than 4 syllables (and preferably letters!) if he is to avoid the fate of that metaphysical "tree" which falls "soundlessly" in the depths of a forest (or wasteland) uninhabited by intelligent life forms.
[Less than 24 hours before Morons Awake! went to the printers someone (whose identity still remains a mystery) left the remarkable document above—in its original form a page torn from a spiral notebook!—on my desk. I call it "remarkable" because both the author and I had been wracking our (by no means average) brains for nearly a year trying to do what this mysterious person—he could be an office boy or the night watchman for all we know!—hastily scrawled in a matter of minutes! Which was: To summarize in one sentence what this monumental book is all about so the average American Housewife for whom it was written could decide to buy it without browsing her way through several dozen pages looking for the words she finds sufficiently provocative to arouse her jaded curiosity. Whether, like so many of the other "miracles" involved with the writing and publication of this book, The Train Of Thought Story (along with its explanatory annotations) was an act of Divine intervention; or the answer to those Prince Charming prayers a Sleeping Beauty makes while vegetating on her bierlike bed (or couch) doesn't matter if, in the final analysis, the result is that Happiest Of All Happy Endings when the decline of Western Civilization is reversed by your reading of this Revolutionary SocioCultural WakeupCall!—Jayne Playne, EditoressInChief]
† † †
A SHORT LESSON IN AMERICAN HISTORY
For Those Unfamiliar With Or Skeptical About The Nonfictional Nature Of
THE KLUTZ AFFAIR1
by I. F. Vanderphd, Chancellor of The University of Moronia
"Although [during America's Reconstruction Period (1865-77)] the white South was willing to tolerate "colored clowns" in office, it bitterly resented any Negro who showed political intelligence or ability, since he disproved the theory that his race was incapable of improvement. James Pike, on his way south in 1873, looked in at the lower house of the Virginia assembly where a "member three-quarters black" was speaking ably against a certain tax bill. He was "listened to with a good deal of interest after it was found that he could not be drowned out by rustling and loud talk," although "the venerable old Virginia gentlemen on the Democratic benches looked on with a mixture of surprise and chagrin at the spectacle." That was typical: surprise that a Negro could do it, chagrin that he was in a position to do it; and, had these been poor whites instead of gentlemen, there would have been a note of hatred [in their bigotry]."
Samuel Eliot Morrison, The Oxford History of the American People, p.719
Why did the South's poor white trash harbor more hatred than its gentry did toward these former slaves who were arguing so eloquently on behalf of all the 2ndclass citizens of Dixie—no matter what the color of their skin might be? The answer is: Because if blacks were capable of such civilized behavior, the implication for poor white trash was unavoidable—they no longer had any excuse for wallowing in their own "congenital" subnormality, intelligenthumanbeingwise!
Professor Morrison was describing a cultural situation existing in the America of 1865-77; but what he wrote applies with equal force to explain why, at the end of this century, the government of Moronia considered the Klutz Affair as a "dire threat" to what that microstate's F.I.B. Director, Jedgar Ballbraker, warned the XXXVII Conference of International Law Enforcement Agencies was "not only Moronia's belief in the Blissfulness of Ignorance, but the mediocracy of every other egalitarianized nation on the face of the earth!" Although in the past Moronia's opinions concerning global law enforcement matters weren't taken seriously (indeed, some of her sister microstates—notably San Marino, Lichtenstein and Monte Carlo—frequently express their doubts about its very existence!)—this time Ballbraker's Klutz Affair alarmbells resulted in a Top Secret2 Memorandum authorizing "a fullcourt press to prevent the writing and/or publication and/or distribution and/or—if all else fails—the reading of the exposé planned by America's former ambassador to Moronia."
Needless to say—since you are holding a copy of Morons Awake! in your hands—these conspiratorial efforts all failed. The only issue which remains is for you to decide after reading it whether Ballbraker's "dire warning" about the threat ambassador Goldberg's book represents to Moronia's (and that of all other modern mediocracies) belief in the blissfullness of ignorance was justified or not?
1 April 1998,
Moronville
† † †
A LETTER FROM THE
PUBLISHER
To the Readers of
Morons Awake!
Unlike all the other "Captains of Industry" whose sole purpose in life is promoting the commercial prosperity of their particular enterprise, a book publisher wears 2—and on occasions such as this, 3—hats. The first one (a homburg, a bowler or a fedora depending on what's "fashionable") is that worn by the CEO of any corporation and is meant to signify his single minded devotion to only one task—maximizing the shareholder's profits. The book publisher's second hat (a beret, a trilbyG or, in certain circumstances, a mortar board) denotes his concerns with matters of an artistic, cultural and/or scholarly nature. Matters which, more often than not, are at odds with his "bottom line" objectives. And in extreme situations—such as that represented by Morons Awake!—the publisher's life is made that much more difficult by having to don a Minuteman's cocked hat, a Bolshevik's cloth cap or even one of those ski masks worn by that pipesmoking leader of Mexico's Zapatista National Liberation Army!
What makes Morons Awake! such a special case that I—a pillar of America's bookpublishing community, a registered Republican and a cardcarrying WASP—felt compelled to join the NeoEgalitarian fray (shouldertoshoulder with a Jew and a Moron!) by "baring my soul" with this most unconventional (late 20thcenturywise at least) letter?
There are several answers to that question.
The first of them being that when a book like the one written by this Mordecai Goldberg comes along (ie., Martin Luther's 95 Theses, Karl Marx's Das Kapital, Jean Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Inequalities of Men, Tom Paine's Common Sense, Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, and/or Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique)—a book that will hopefully change the course of human history (for the better)—every publisher (at least the reputable sort) has a duty toward the society in which he lives transcending his crasser "commercial" responsibilities. And that's especially true in these troubled times when our beloved Western Civilization itself is in danger of being swept away by a deluge of socio- (and multi-) cultural mediocrity. Some of the blame for which, I'm ashamed to admit, can be attributed to men such as myself who have helped swell the tide of trashy gothic novels and all those other mindless "bestsellers" millions of American housewives habitually drown their romantic sorrows in.
On a somewhat less altruistic level I was faced with making the toughest decision of my executive life concerning the multiple lawsuits for slander, defamation of character and infliction of emotional distress looming on the corporate horizon. Every one of which, according to our attorneys, we were certain to lose if Morons Awake! were published as a nonfiction novel rather than the usual kind including the standard disclaimer that "any similarity between its characters and real people is strictly coincidental." And it didn't take an Alan Dershowitz or a Melvin Belli to know the damage awards in what the jury would be told were "the most flagrant examples of literary mudslinging in the history of American jurisprudence" would put us out of business. An "us" that included not just those of my "Golden Parachute" ilk but thousands of ordinary, hardworking and decent folks who jobs and/or careers would be destroyed.
If my analysis of the legal problems associated with publishing Morons Awake! sounds like the one made by Chicken Little consider the following facts reported in the Los Angeles Times of 23 February 1997:3 (a) A New York City librarian filed a $100 million defamation suit against Joe Klein for falsely creating the impression in his nonfiction novel, Primary Colors, that she and Bill Clinton had a sexual fling; (b) Rita Gormley of Birmingham, England is suing the Beetles for £145 million because she thinks their portrayal of her as a "meter maid" led people to believe she was brainless; (c) John Updike is accused—to the tune of $3 million!—of dubbing his fictitious antihero "Rabbit" Angstrom after a real life resident of Beverly Farms, Mass. by the name of Hare "Bunny" Buggs; (d) A Texas waitress is seeking unspecified damages from Gabriel Garcia Marquez for palimony—despite the admitted fact they never met, let alone lived together—on the creative theory this state of nonaffairs obviously inspired the title of his One Hundred Years of Solitude; (e) A $60 billion class action for libel has been brought against the estate of the author who wrote The Man With The Gray Flannel Suit by 500,000 businessmen who've been "unjustly accused of being sleazy advertising types simply because they happen to attire themselves in clothing made from the aforementioned gray flannel material," and; (f) Madonna is said to be contemplating "the Mother of all Tinseltown tort actions" against Andrew Lloyd Weber and the producers of Evita for "inducing me to play a tramp, a slut and a glorified bimbo—all of which stereotypes contribute to an unsavory image that could severely restrict my future career options and/or earnings as a serious actress."
To make matters more complicated: Converting Morons Awake! from a nonfiction novel into the standard kind whose characters are disguised and given litigationproof aliases would only increase the credibility problems of a book most readers were going to find extremely hard to swallow in the first place! Besides which, what more manifestly fictitious names could one invent than those with which Jack F. Klutz, Maria Bimbeaux, Jedgar Ballbraker, Ichabod Vanderphd, Doris Darlinge, Leopold Bloom and Vicky Truelove were actually christened. Even the author's moniker—"Mordecai Goldberg, PhD & former American Ambassador to Moronia"—reads like one Charles Dickens might have dreamt up. Not to mention the Runyonesque handle by which our EditoressInChief, Miss Jayne Playne, is known! And, even if all those difficulties were somehow overcome, there was the absolutely insurmountable obstacle of publishing a factual book about Moronia without being hauled into court by an entire nation of plaintiffs. A prospect that, no matter how small and sparsely populated Moronia might be, our stockholders were unlikely to look upon with favor, to put it mildly.4
On the other hand: How could a book entitled "Morons Awake!" not concern itself with Moronia and its inhabitants? As for the "obvious" solution of changing the title (to Americans or Poles or Chinamen Awake!?) one need only recall the coldshoulder treatment Thomas Wolfe got from his family and fellow citizens of Asheville, (despite his renaming that North Carolina town "Altamont" in Look Homeward, Angel) or the hornet's nest Sinclair Lewis stirred up among his former neighbors in Sauk Centre, Minnesota (the "Gopher Prairie of Main Street). Besides which, if what our editoress calls "this Greatest Of All Great American Novels" isn't about waking a bunch of Morons up before they plunge over the edge of that abyss toward which they've been so blissfully sleepwalking their ignorant way while we go about the brighteyed and bushytailed business of pursuing our American Dream why bother to publish the goddamned thing in the first place? Who cares if some imaginary breed of Neanderthal-like lowbrows drown in their own mediocrity—as long as they don't take the whole of Western Civilization down with them? A state of sociocultural and/or geopolitical affairs that, given the small numbers of Morons (with a capital 'M') in this world, doesn't seem remotely possible.
No. The only reason for publishing Morons Awake!—and putting the very existence of this centuries' old business (I hate to call it just a "business" but "institution" would sound frightfully selfserving, even though that's the God's honest truth) at risk for doing so is my conviction that: When millions of average American housewives like you read about the (albeit microcosmic) decline and fall of Moronia they won't repeat the mistake of believing—as so many of us5 now do that Ignorance Is (or can be) Bliss. Whether we like it or not, ladies, as Alexis de Tocqueville6 indicated more than 150 years before the hero of this nonfiction novel, Jack F. Klutz, formulated his NeoEgalitarian theories: There are some disturbing similarities between the All Men Are Created Equal idea enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and the One Moron One Vote Principle which is turning Moronia into a vast (relatively speaking) sociocultural wasteland that makes America look (deceptively!) like the successful experiment in selfgovernment men like Paine, Adams, Franklin and Jefferson hoped (& prayed) it would one day become.
All of which explains why I've reverted to what was once the standard practice of prefacing books like Gulliver's Travels, Looking Backward, Flatland and Utopia (which their readers might otherwise mistake for fiction) with a letter written by a publisher such as myself, whose reputation for integrity7 is beyond reproach, guaranteeing its factualness. What made my departure from the normally prefaceless bestseller (nowadays a publisher's letter is frowned upon as being "pretentious," if not counterproductive) so crucial in this case where credibility is the name of the game Morons Awake! wise are all those stories8 concerning the intimate nature of the "working' relationship" that developed between the author and our editoress during their extensive rewriting of his original manuscript. Whether all the gossip about "this steamiest of literary loveaffairs since Mrs. Parker & Mr. Benchley scandalized the editorial offices of The New Yorker" is true or not (and I'm not in a position to confirm or deny them) doesn't really matter because Ms. Playne's editorial objectivity has been compromised to such an extent her introduction—which, among other things, is intended to help the author establish his veracity—creates more problems than it solves, this is a nonfiction novelwise.
ACCORDINGLY I, Samuel "Straightshooter" Smith, do solemnly swear that: With very few exceptions (and most of them either unintended or irrelevant) every word in this book is, literally, The Gospel Truth. So help me Klutz.
Samuel S. Smith
† † †
WARNING!
As Herrnstein and Murray did when writing The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life,9 the author of this equally (if not more at least to Morons) controversial book has made certain assumptions concerning its readers about which, in my opinion as his editoress and a lifelong advocate for truthful advertising, you should be made aware before deciding whether to buy and/or read Morons Awake!.
The most important (at last count there were 124!) of these assumptions are, that said reader is:
1) A citizen of Moronia, America or any other country among that family of GraecoRomanJudeoChristianAnglo Saxon nations comprising what is generally regarded as "Western Civilization." Accordingly, those who take pride in their Asian, Arabic, African, Eskimo, Polynesian, Mayan or Native American heritage (or that of any other clan, tribe, race, sect, breed, clique, group, culture or ethnic entity) if they should decide to proceed should do so with the utmost caution.2) An average housewife in the broadest (no pun intended) sense of that muchabused term; which nowadays encompasses not only every woman who is, has been or hopes to be married but—because the word "housewife" really describes a postmodern state of mind rather than the domestic servitude once imposed exclusively on the female sex—also includes a growing number of today's men. And, while we welcome—indeed encourage!—our husbands (and/or lovers) to join us in raising their sociocultural IQs, the sad fact is: Most of them still find it hard to satisfy their psychosexual cravings between the covers of any book; let alone one that is a Great American (non fiction) Novel, Revolutionary Manifesto & Literary Masterpiece.
3) The recipient of a highschool diploma or college degree whose postgraduate reading habits have, for the most part, been confined to trashy romance or "gothic" novels.
4) Someone others may—and probably do—regard as "well past her prime" but who remains heroically determined never to stop pursuing the Happily Everafter Ending she spent so much of her girlhood dreaming about.
5) The victim (whether or not she still believes in fairytales) of "a magic spell" similar to that from which Sleeping Beauty was rescued by Prince Charming. Hence her desires (no matter how blissfully betrothed and/or passionately engaged in a pre-, post- or extramarital affair she might be) for "having a fling with some Knight in Shining Armor whose magical kiss will awaken me from the mindnumbing mediocrity of my middleclass milieu." While such miraculous kisses are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to come by in real life; they abound in that literary realm where the most distressful of a damsel's inner fires—the one raging between her ears—is quenched by what flows from the potent tip of a poet's (or in this case, novelist's) pen; rather than that seminal (but not brainchildwise!) instrument an average Heman believes is his "answer to every maiden's prayer."6) A respectable, decent, upright, Godfearing, lawabiding and, above all, egalitarianminded pillar of a society whose Moronic (or American) "Dream of Blissful Ignorance" occasionally turns itself into a nightmarish scenario whereby she and her compatriots find themselves traveling as passengers on the HMS Titanic.
7) A woman10 who, notwithstanding her addiction to trashy romance novels, has always whether she knows it or not secretly identified herself with such historically tragic heroines as Eve, Electra, Cleopatra, Salome, Joan of Arc, Charlotte Corday, Mata Hari, Rosa Luxemburg and La Pasionaria.11
And finally, if I can (which, as an EditoressInChief, I most certainly may) add an observation based on my personal experiences with the author you might find helpful it would be this: Unless you are prepared to lose your friends, your family and every other Moron or American whose affections you cherish (not to mention the most dire socioeconomic consequences resulting when one is branded a "highbrow," an "elitist," a "snob," an "aristocrat," a "weisenheimer," and/or an "intellectual") DO NOT TURN ANOTHER PAGE!
On the other hand: Should the life you are presently leading be as lusterless as mine was before that magical morning when I discovered the manuscript for what would become this Greatest of All Great American (nonfiction) Novels on my desk; what have you got to lose but those chains Marx and Engels wrote about in their historymaking Manifesto—or the bra Germaine Greer identified as "the symbol of downtrodden womanhood?" If that is the situation you find yourself in, it seems to me you might just as well follow my example12 by TAKING THE PLUNGE NOW AND LEARNING TO SWIM LATER!
Jayne Playne,
EditoressInChief
Return to Index
Footnotes
*A (slightly reduced) facsimile of which is provided hereafter. In addition to the fullsized (14 x 10) Diploma every successful Ph.D. candidate will receive a handy walletsized replica and a set of Morons Awake! bumper stickers, including: "ERUDITION IS BLISS." " I LOVE MAHLER'S 5TH," "FOOTNOTES ARE FUN," "ONE MORON ONE VOTE" and "DON'T HONK IF YOU'RE A MORON!"
1 And/or such other obscure "historical chickens" (all of which have demonstrated a nasty habit of returning to their original roost in the form of vultures who feed on the carrion of decaying civilizations) as the: Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Dreyfus Case, Dred Scott Decision, Teapot Dome Scandal, Trial of Josef K, Message to Garcia, Watergate Tapes, Pentagon Papers, 21 Demands, My Lai Incident, Wansee Conference, etc., etc., ad infinitum et nauseum.
2 Which I learned about when Ballbraker himself spilled the beans in circumstances not unlike those (one of the drunken orgies he staged to "relieve the tedium of Moronville's nonexistent social life") in which he disclosed the equally Top Secret details of what would become known as "the Klutz Affair" to the author of this exposé.
3 p. M3, "Is It Reality or Art? The Perils of a Fictional Life" by Bruce McCall.
4 Unless, of course, like most people they didn't believe such a country really existed.
5 Since, as you will discover, the author and his editoress have seen fit to spill the beans about it I might as well beat them to the punch by admitting up front that: While "housewife" is a term we publishers use when referring to our female readership which, trashy romance novelwise, constitutes more than 95% of the bookbuying public in a literary fiction (or masterpiece) context, like that surrounding Morons Awake!, it also includes those members of my own gender who occasionally find themselves attracted to objects d'art which aren't exclusively pornographic (or, as you ladies would say, "prurient,") in nature.
6 Not to be mistaken as the pen name for some gothic novelist, Tocqueville was a French aristocrat who in 1832, after traveling extensively through our infant republic, wrote Democracy in America a study of that topic which is still regarded by many scholars as nothing less than "Biblical" in the prophecies its author made about some of those 18th- and 19thcentury chickens (ie., the intractability of America's racial problems, the rising tide of mediocrity and the democratic tendency to concentrate political power in the hands of those least qualified to exercise it) which have come home to roost with a vengeance at the end of this one; but-God willing and if enough "housewives" read Morons Awake!-not in the next!
7 One doesn't get to be the CEO of a Major American Publishing House unless he demonstrates his capacity for knowing the difference between fact and fable when it comes to the realities of surviving in a world where nice guys (ie., idealists, visionaries, dreamers, bleeding hearts, crusaders, Bohemians and philanthropists) never make it past the bottom rung, climbingthecorporateladderwise. As anyone who really knows me will tell you: "Sam Smith hasn't got a deceptive-or, for that matter, an aesthetic-bone in his body."
8 No doubt you've read or heard about "the sensational revelations" in the National Enquirer, Globe, Star, Weekly World News, National Examiner and Sun comparing the "red hot romance between the young(ish) WASP editoress of Morons Awake! and its alte kocker author with such legendary artistic love affairs as those involving Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, Richard Wagner & Mrs. Hans von Bülow, Chopin & George Sand and Dashiell Hammett & Lillian Hellman."
9 Several examples of which are: "Although they are not likely to be among our readers, the [groups] at the bottom of the educational scale comprise lower and narrower ranges of IQ today than they did in 1930." [p.48] "Important gradations in social behavior occasionally separate the top 2 percent from the next 2 percent. This is in line with another of the themes we keep reiterating because they are so easily forgotten: You—meaning the self- selected person who has read this far into [our] book—live in a world that probably looks nothing like the [one we have illustrated.]" [P.121, emphasis added]
10 Once again you are reminded: The gender terms used herein and throughout Morons Awake! generally refer to both sexes.
11 If this assumption applies to any of you, ladies, mark my words: While your reading of Morons Awake! will help to save the human race you should think long and hard or at least twice before plunging headlong into a "harmless literary flirtation" that is actually fraught with perils no less fatal than those which befell Orpheus & Eurydice, Samson & Delilah, David & Bathsheba, Frederic Chopin & George Sand, Daphnis & Chloe, Troilus & Criseyde, Tristan and Isolde, Romeo & Juliet, Eloise & Abelard, Henry VIII & Anne Boleyn, Napoleon & Josephine, Henry Miller & Anaïs Nin, Adolf Hitler & Eva Braun, Joe Dimaggio & Marilyn Monroe—or even Rhett Butler & Scarlett O'Hara.
12 Not that you can realistically expect to duplicate the "ragstoriches" story of how a humble publishinghouse reader rises to the top of the corporate ladder after the best years of her life (not to mentions her eyesight, figure, complexion, sanity and marital prospects) have been sacrificed looking for a golden needle among those daily mountains of unsolicited manuscripts delivered to the basement "salt mine" in which she slaves away from 8 to 6. Nevertheless I can promise you a postmodern "Ugly Duckling" scenario whereby The Everyday Life Of An Average Moronic (Or American) Housewife Becomes Beautified When She Learns To Appreciate Its Finer Artistic Points.
Glossary
trilby noun; plural trilbies. A soft felt hat with a deeply creased crown. [After the novel Trilby by George du Maurier, because such a hat was worn in the original London stage production.]