Issue 49:
Don't Bother Me, I'm Thinking
By
Medulla Vesuvius
I recently read The Great Gatsby for a book discussion group. I happened to have a paperback copy of the book that my dad used when he was in college. The $1.50 printed price was only one of many visual cues that this was a relic from a bygone era. In my head the Mondrian-esue, sea-foam green minimalist cover, now very faded with sans serif font, belied an attempt by the publisher to market this particular tome to the bohemian hipster set. The fruitlessness of that particular project seemed slightly wrongheaded, as any fan of the stream of consciousness of the beat writers would have felt swindled by Fitzgerald’s elegant, sometimes dense prose. He used words like an artist would work with solid steal beams in a gloriously complex abstract sculpture, not a single element wasted or out of place.
I am a fan of reading used books. There is a particular kind of nerd that gets excited to see someone else’s handwriting in a book. I would be that particular kind of nerd. To see someone else’s notes in the margins or a well-placed “Hmmm” next to a sentence that wouldn’t have elicited the same thought for me adds another layer of appreciation to the reading act. I’ll never forget the mysterious, sprawling mathematical equations in pencil that accompanied several pages of the local library’s copy of Zen and the Motorcycle Maintenance, looking something like very orderly, concise hieroglyphics to me.
For when someone else’s response to a book is so handily documented for you, the two-way conversation between reader and author quickly becomes a three-person party. Not to mention the reminder that you are merely one in a chain of people throughout time to face the same ideas. Sometimes you need to be reassured of your role in a larger story, convinced of the idea that maybe the world isn’t created anew by your gaze, no?
Imagine my excitement at not only reading this well-revered American classic, but reading the exact same copy my old man did when he was in college. What a rare opportunity! To get inside dad’s head when he was twenty-something! Maybe I would find out that my dad had a clandestine artistic impulse that he learned to suppress long before I ever came along. Or perhaps it would become apparent that the college version of dear old dad’s soul would have resonated with Gatsby’s isolated, individual longing for the past and his idealized love for Daisy. A hand-written notation could make that apparent in ways he never showed by going to work at the office every day. To say the least, holding this particular copy of this book held promise for finally getting a look inside the head of my progenitor.
Indeed, my dad had made some notes, but unfortunately they were simultaneously unexpected and exactly what I would have expected. Next to the following evocative passage in the book, displaying Fitzgerald’s full descriptive powers:
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
Dad had written: “Indent and single space. No quote marks except single quotes.” Mere lecture notes on how to properly format a paper!
I should have known. Dad was a procedural guy just like me.
Looking back on the book and my frustrated expectations, I find that Dad and I may have re-lived one of the more pathetic elements of the book, only in reverse. Gatsby’s dad travels half-way across the country to attend his son’s funeral. Impressed by the signs of the young man’s wealth, it quickly becomes apparent that Father didn’t really know the real son, but rather an idealized image of honesty and success, neither of which corresponded to the reality of a man dying alone with only a handful of strangers who could be bothered to show up for his last rites. I wondered if this would be our fate-dad and I, to be largely unknown to each other.
What an awful, morose culmination for Fitzgerald’s tale and mine!
Happily, it’s not the end of mine.
For just yesterday I was discussing the book with pops over a light lunch and he was going on and on about Fitzgerald’s style, breathlessly telling me how “perfect” every word seemed, how artful and intentional the sentence constructions, the importance of symbols like God’s eyeglasses and color, the beautiful descriptions of The Valley of Ashes and his favorite Fitzgerald short story…
All of which he remembered from when he read it back in college.
Issue 49:
Various and Sundry
By
Medulla Vesuvius
I have come to love grocery store Saturdays. In the morning I’ll roll out of bed at whatever time I feel like it, go to the store with list in hand and make my rounds through the aisles at a leisurely pace. I do my best to not get run over by the people in their motorized carts who have ostensibly given up on upright life and go to the check-out counter, smile at the middle-aged cashier as a couple weeks’ worth of food goes parading between us, each item making that beep sound. Sometimes I’ll ask a particularly unenthusiastic cashier if they ever get tired of hearing the beeping. It comes from all of the registers in the store during an eight hour shift. Ceaseless-the actual sound of sustenance and commerce.
(I keep to myself the idea that I wish the cash register manufacturers would design their systems with adjustable pitches for the beeps. Imagine how much more interesting the check-out process would be if each register was tuned to a different scale degree. Every day would present the opportunity for employees to participate in a brand new aleatoric piece of music.)
Sometimes a particularly talkative cashier will observe my inclusion of some out-of-the-ordinary produce. A pack of shallots here or a colorful squash there will start a conversation like: “Wow! What’s that for?” And then I’ll tell them about a new recipe I’m trying that week.
Or sometimes I’ll want to splurge for company and pay a visit to Rhett’s Meat Market and he’ll show me the book he published about the history of early rock n’ roll records by Oklahoma musicians in between dispensing tips on the best way to cook up some lamb and how truly good, right, and salutary a stew is in the middle of winter.
All of these seemingly innocuous, insignificant human interactions combine to make life more enjoyable and interesting. Trading perspectives with fellow humans reminds me of my own humanity.
That is why last week’s Time magazine feature about “10 Ideas That Are Changing the World” sent me into a tailspin of despair. As part of the special coverage Barbara Kiviat, in “The End of Customer Service” paints a picture of a world where the cashier is no longer necessary, replaced by do-it-yourself kiosks. Here is the most troubling sentence: “Companies love self-service for the money it saves, and with consumers finally playing along, the need to interact with human beings is quickly disappearing.” Did you catch that last little bit? The need to interact is becoming a thing of the past!
This is a truly dystopian vision of the future: wandering around the store in silence with your cart, avoiding the other consumer-entities, staring fully in front of you, the only emanating sound being the ever-present beeps of computerized efficiency. Or consider doing all of your purchasing with only the company of the warm glow of your home computer’s monitor. It’s a page right out of Orwell or Huxley, the mass of humanity reduced to unrelated, lonely machines, made distinct only by their purchasing power.
Let us pray we never reach that state of total self-sufficient mechanization. For it is the collection of the inefficient elements of life, our reacting to and interacting with the wondrously unpredictable “other” that keeps us fully human, regardless of corporations and their collective bottom line.
Issue 49:
Tournament of Villainy
By
Rascal Stallion
| Name: Ivan Drago |
|
Name: Erik Magnus Lehnsherr aka Magneto |
| Occupation: Boxer |
vs. |
Occupation: Mutant |
| Origin: Rocky IV |
|
Origin: X-Men |
“I’m better”
“Nuh uh, I’m better.”
Ivan Drago and Magneto glared at one another with jaws clenched and eyes full of hatred. The two men were firmly entrenched in a verbal battle of which one of them was superior to the other and neither was ready to yield. Eventually, as these things usually do, the verbal battle escalated into one of physical proportions.
“I am in top physical condition,” yelled Drago. He gave Magneto a shove to emphasize his point.
“Your species’ top physical potential is still beneath me, you swine,” retorted Magneto before giving a shove of his own.
“I have been given every physical advantage science and technology have to offer! Whatever I hit, I destroy!” This statement was accompanied by a very forceful shove that sent Magneto sprawling.
Magneto picked himself up with as much grace as he could muster and replied “And that is what makes you humans so pathetic. Even at your very best you still pale in comparison to those of us who have taken the next step in evolution. It’s a lesson I’m afraid you’re going to find most painful.” Magneto raised himself up in the air until he floated several feet above the Russian.
Drago opened his mouth to speak but was cut short by the mutant. Magneto used his power to pull the fillings free from Drago’s teeth and brought them hurtling through his lips into the adjacent wall.
Drago howled in pain and spat out the blood that was gushing from his mouth. He fought through the pain and unleashed a barbaric left-right combo that started at Magneto’s groin and finished at his knee. Magneto’s plummeting confidence coincided directly with his ruptured testicle and shattered femur.
Magneto struggled to concentrate through the excruciating pain but managed to fend off the Russian’s next attack with a magnetic burst that sent him sprawling. Despite wave after wave of force keeping him at bay, Drago’s attack was unrelenting. The ensuing time gave Magneto the moments he needed to unleash his next attack.
With a horrible rumbling, the walls began to shake until the air conditioning vent vomited forth a gnarled mass of metal that had formerly been the air duct. In mid-flight the metal re-shaped itself into a long blade that found its way cleanly through Drago’s thighs.
Ivan dropped to the ground and slipped around in the pool of blood that was quickly forming about him. Fear shown in his eyes, but not for long because moments later the air duct blade severed through the thick muscles of his neck and neatly severed his head.
The Russian was dead but Magneto would carry the wounds of this battle around with him for a very long time.
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