Appendix W

The Author's (Drastically Abbreviated) Account
Of What Happened To Him On His Return To Moronia

BEFORE ACTUALLY CROSSING the border between country C¹ and Moronia it became painfully clear to me Thomas Wolfe was right about the impossibility of going home again. This was especially true in my case when, as the result of having written a book that would revolutionize the sociocultural status quo of every civilized nation (no matter how minuscule) on the face of the earth, not only could Moronia never be what it once was—I was no longer the obscure JewishAmericanIntellectual who had wasted most of his life "wandering" in the world's smallest² wilderness. Exactly how the news of what was supposed to be my unannounced return preceded me remains a mystery.³ But, when the taxi I took from Country C's airport stopped at the border, standing there in the middle of a plowed turnippatch was a newlyerected flag- and buntingdraped platform on which stood an official "Welcome Home Ambassador Goldberg Committee" including Moronville's Lord Mayor, the Prime Minister of Moronia, all 9 Supreme Court justices, His Holiness, the Archbishop of Moronville & Papal Envoy to Cretiny and His Royal Highness, King Ambrose XXXIII ("the Survivor"⁴)! More remarkably still, flanking the makeshift rostrum were a pair of those temporary grandstands that line Moronville's Main Street on New Year's day for the Annual Turnip Tournament Parade. In which, along with the (5 piece) Royal Brass Band, Bumpkinette Oratorio Society and "world renowned" Tonsilorialists⁵ sat at least half of Moronia's entire population!

     No sooner did the heel of my left loafer come into contact with what the Morons call their "good for nothing except growing turnips in but nevertheless sacred" soil than the band struck up a rousing (if not finely tuned) rendition of The Star Spangled Banner, followed by Moronia The Beautiful. The playing of this patriotic medley left me with little choice. When both of my feet were firmly planted on Moronia's side of the border I stood at attention—first 1 hand over my heart for the playing of our national anthem, and then with the other flexing the brim of my homburg⁶ for theirs. But even when the music did stop there was nothing else I could do but stride manfully to the platform and take my place on it as the Guest of Honor—rather than proceed with my original plans for hitching a ride on some turniptruck bound for Moronville if I was lucky or walking⁷ the mile&ahalf to the hospice where, God willing, Maria would still be desperately clinging to what remained of a (for the most part) disappointing life I would now help her to consummate not with one of those storybook Happily Ever After endings (she and so many other Moronesses opiate themselves on) but a Deathbed Scene whose bittersweet libretto might have been scripted by Schiller, Dostoyevsky or Balzac and scored by Verdi, Puccini—or even Wagner!

     Any hopes I had these homecoming ceremonies would be brief were dashed when the mayor took a full halfhour just to introduce the Prime Minister—who consumed another 45 minutes reminding his audience how much better off they were now under a Have Not administration than they were 4 years ago when the Haves⁸ controlled Moronia's parliament. My anxieties were somewhat relieved when the Chief Justice announced that: "For the sake of brevity my 8 colleagues have chosen me to articulate our views on what we all see, in one way or another, as the constitutional ramifications of this Gala Occasion."  Whereupon, for what seemed like another Hollywood&Vine eternity, he proceeded to read a "Carefully Reasoned Judicial Critique On The Nonfiction Novel Entitled Morons Awake!"—among whose 50 or 60 Major Points these were the most memorable:

1. No matter how wellintentioned or brilliantly written any book—even one of "Biblical" proportions—might be which threatens the domestic tranquillity Moronia has enjoyed for countless centuries by virtue of our Bedrock Belief in the Blissfulness of Ignorance we must carefully examine all the consequences before taking our hats off to a bestselling novel merely because "it puts us on the map" as the birthplace of some New SocioCultural World Order.

7. Although no court has championed more consistently the untrammeled right of free speech, like our opposite American numbers, we must draw the brightest of lines between legitimate wakeupcalls like How To Be Born Again, Secret Of Happiness and Hope For The Troubled Heart (all of which were authored by the Reverend Billy Graham⁹) and such patently false "sociocultural" firealarms as Proudhon's De la capacité politique des classes ouvrières, Vasconcelo's La Razza Cosmica, Owens' Book of the New Moral World, Efremov's Tumannost Andromachy, Hilton's Lost Horizon, More's Utopia, Bellamy's Looking Backward, Gilman's Herland, Hesse's Magister Ludi, Welles' The Shape of Things to Come, Huxley's Brave New World and, of course, Witckiewicz's If Only Enough Of You Dimwits Read My Revolutionary Novels & Plays Poland Would Become A Paradise On Earth!

24. While like any other nation large or small, Moronia is not without its fair share of "sociocultural" shortcomings, the last thing we, who have survived for 10,000 years as the perennial pawns in those geopolitical chess games played by our more "civilized" neighbors, need and/or want is some foreigner (even one who has lived here longer than the life span of an average Moron) to lecture us on how we should conduct our domestic affairs.

25. Moreover, bearing in mind all those other pieintheskyisms that, throughout this continent's turbulent history, have turned countless Europeans into nothing more than experimental guineapigs at best and so much human cannon fodder at worst, we are naturally somewhat skeptical about a NeoEgalitarianism which sounds suspiciously like another elitist scheme to refeudalize the masses rather than arrest their socalled "slide" down the socalled "slippery slope" of some socalled "mindless mediocracy."

32. And from a purely legal, but no less troubling, perspective, Morons Awake! raises the question of whether a prima facie case of false advertising exists when one merchandises a book as a nonfiction novel—a term which is by definition selfcontradictory and misleading. As we argued in the landmark case Archdioces of Moronville v. Rolf Hochhuth when banning all public performances of that playwright's docudrama, The Deputy: "Appellant would have us believe that by coining the obviously nonsensical word "docudrama" he was putting every reasonable Moron on notice his exposé of Pope Pius XII's 'silent' partnership with Hitler in finally solving Germany's Jewish Problem was, in point of linguistic and jurisprudential fact, 'nothing more than a flight of dramaturgical fancy.' Leaving aside the difficulties of defining what a 'reasonable' Moron is; for our adjudicatory purposes we need look no further than those plainly spoken words of folk wisdom one hears every day coming from the babelike mouths of Moronville's Old Fogies, Coots and parkbench philosophers—which, among such other platitudinous pearls as 'Only a born imbecile is always at his best,' 'Every fool must now and then be right if only by accident' and 'Home is where you hang your hat,' make it perfectly clear: 'Spades should be called spades and turnips turnips.' Hence it is the finding of this Court that, regardless of what the Bard of Avon says about roses, a play by any other name is not a play pursuant to the provisions of our Truth In Advertising Statute.

33. It seems axiomatic the Deputy rule should also apply to a book whose title page10 describes it as a "Nonfiction Novel, Bestselling Literary Masterpiece, & Manifesto That Will Change The Course Of Human History"—all of which selfcontradicting statements add up to a virtual litany of incongruities that, no matter how liberally one parses it, fails to pass the aforementioned Spade/Turnip Test.

34. Which, I hasten to add, doesn't mean we are prejudging any future litigation seeking to prohibit the reading of what some say could turn out to be for us "the literary equivalent of California's 1849 Gold Rush." Although in that connection—what schoolboy can forget the tragic fate which befell that most unfortunate of all MoronAmericans, John Augustus Sutter, who ended up without a nickel to his celebrated name when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled the Finder's Keepers Loser's Weepers theory he advanced in lieu of a formal title to his mill-turned-motherlode on the ground it was the common law where he originally came from (as indeed it sill is!) "no longer applied in a nation such as ours, which has already found and intends to keep every square inch of that prime North American real estate the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, Apaches, Cheyennes, Sioux, Comanches, Blackfeet, Arapaho, Navaho, Haida, Kwakiutl, Nootka and Mexicans so carelessly lost."

35. And that brings us to the $64 question, NeoEgalitarian and BornAgainKlutzianitywise, namely: Assuming the average Moron is just as intelligent as the average American, Japanese, Swede, Bulgarian, Greek, German, Serb—or Pole, for that matter—where does that leave us if not on that same "slippery slope" down which Western Civilization has been slowly sliding its way to oblivion while we have remained stubbornly "stuck" in the tranquil—if not altogether blissful—rut of our "Godgiven ignorance?"

36. As for the notion a utopianized Moronia might not only arrest the decline of Western Civilization but blaze a trail to some New Promised Land wherein the Pursuit of Happiness is primarily—if not exclusively—an intellectual affair: Wouldn't any rational analysis of such an absurd proposition indicate that, like the Jack of beanstalk fame, we would be trading our promised inheritance of the earth (as the meekest¹¹ of all God's children) for the oneinazillion chance of proving an average Moron can rise to the loftiest of intellectual occasions—at the oddson risk of confirming what the world at large has always said about the "openended" nature of our simplemindedness?¹²

60. Finally,¹³ we come to the crux of the Klutz Affair, which is: Do all—or any!—of the artifacts and papers left by our late compatriot support the "massianic" claims advanced by his wouldbe "hagiographer" that he was Moronville's answer to Stratford's William Shakespeare, Salzburg's Wolfgang Mozart, Málaga's Pablo Picasso, Prague's Franz Kafka, and/or Bloomfield's Randolf Bourne?¹⁴  My fellow Morons! While it is not my intent to rain on Ambassador Goldberg's Homecoming Parade—and I'm precluded from revealing all the conclusions reached by the Blue Ribbon Commission investigating the cause of Klutz's premature death—I am at liberty to tell you this: They have concluded in no uncertain terms that: "Any comparison of the deceased's musical, literary, artistic and intellectual talents with those of the masterminds he sought to emulate can only be made by scoring the results of his efforts on one of those 'curves' the Americans use when decreasing the level of their academic playingfield to the lowest possible common denominator. And, even when doing so, the best we could come up with was an overall grade of C for the mixed bag of autodidactic projects¹⁵—most of which were unfinished—young (although at the time of his demise he was older than Mozart, Schubert, BŸchner, Marlowe, Bourne, Beardsley, Mayakovsky and Nathanael West—to name but a few certified whizkids—when they died) Klutz left behind in making his early exit from the wunderkind stage."

"SINCE," SAID THE KING, when asked by the mayor to ice the Chief Justice's cake with some accolades of his own for the services I was rendering to my adopted homeland, "we have nothing really memorable to say after what the previous speaker said so eloquently we will not waste any more of your time by saying it." Adding ,as he turned to retake his seat: "Which, now that we think about it, is itself a rather memorable remark to make—considering how these ceremonial speeches of ours usually go!"  When the outburst of laughter provoked by this rare display of regal drollery¹⁶ dwindled to just the odd snicker, catcall, whistle, raspberry (or armpit fart—the distinction between them being difficult to draw from a distance), heckle and mock "hurrah!," the Mayor rose for what I reasonably expected—the sun was beginning to set and no lighting¹⁷ provisions had been made—would finally be his introduction of me. Instead he announced (to what remained of the original crowd) that: "As the rarest of treats on this most Gala Occasion—the combined instrumental and vocal forces of Moronia's National Brass Band, Bumpkinette Choral Society and awardwinning Tonsilorialists will now entertain us with the World Premier Performance of Jack F. Klutz's arrangement of Gustav Mahler's 8th Symphony—also known as 'The Symphony of a Thousand!'"

     My reaction to this stunning turn of events couldn't have been more mixed. On one hand I was (justifiably!) frustrated over this further—and potentially fatal—postponement of my deathbed date with Maria. On the other, however, this would be my first opportunity for actually hearing a sample of Klutz's musical talent.¹⁸ At least in his capacity as an arranger of someone else's original composition. Which, in attempting to transcribe Mahler's Eighth for a choir of (predominantly tonedeaf) turnipfarmer's daughters, a 5piece band, and a barbershop quartet was an act of artistic audacity unrivaled in the annals of orchestrational derringdo.¹⁹  Finding myself in a thoroughly confused state of: (1) Stoic resignation over the time consuming ordeal I was about to undergo, combined with; (2) The acutest kind of curiosity for what I might hear coming from this most peculiar of musical ensembles I did the only thing I could—sit (as far forward as was feasible) on the edge of my folding bridge chair while hoping for the best and praying for a miracle.²⁰ Whether those hopes and prayers were answered is, believe it or not (given my abhorrence of judgmental vacuums) hard for me to say! I can only tell you that when, some 95 minutes later, the last echo from the climactic finale²¹ of Mahler's (Klutzianized) Eighth ceased resonating —all that remained (in the now nocturnal gloom) was the kind of deafening silence Lincoln heard at the conclusion of his (shorter by a good hour&ahalf!) Gettysburg Address. Even my own ordinarily imperturbable analytical faculties were paralyzed by way this most monumental of Mahler's symphonic tempests had been sturmed und dranged in what amounted to an orchestral teacup—and a demitassesized one at that! My dilemma consisted of not knowing whether I should laugh or cry over an experiment in "popularizing" classic music whose results were so evenly divided between comedy and tragedy. Superficially, the turning of Mahler's mountainsized magnum opus into a musical mole hill was an unmitigated fiasco. But the more I think about what I heard in that turnippatch the clearer it becomes that: Beneath the surface of this apparent madness by which Klutz cut the great Gustav Mahler down to a size his fellow Morons could manage (more or less) there was a method whose revolutionary purpose couldn't have been more pregnant with SocioCultural implications. After all, in the final NeoEgalitarian analysis, what is Born Again Klutzianity about if not a performance of Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand by 14 of the world's rankest amateurs? But before you answer that question, my dear reader, consider this: In the 90odd years since he composed it, Mahler's Eighth Symphony has been performed by (considerably) fewer than 1,000,000²² of the approximately 5 billion adults who inhabited this planet during that period of time. In other words; of all those who could have played or sung Mahler's Eighth only .05% actually did.  Moreover, while I can't prove it, I'm confident no other amateur ensemble—large or small, and rank or otherwise—has ever dreamt of doing what this intrepid band of "musical illiterates" had the guts (if not the brains) to do, namely: Participate in a love affair that lasted an hour and 35 minutes (but must have seemed to them like an eternity) with one of the worlds foremost musical masterminds. One can only speculate what Mahler—that conductorial perfectionist par excellence—would have thought (or thinks, if his ghost haunts our concert halls, as I for one believe it does) of such an "unholy" alliance between himself and these sociocultural pariahs. In my opinion (at least the corners of) those always tightlysealed—when he wasn't chewing on some tineared trombone- or absentminded tubaplayer's ass—lips were curling like that proverbial cat's from if not the start then shortly thereafter until the Morons' finished their highly unorthodox rendition of his own quintessentially eccentric choral/orchestral caprice.

     And Mahler wouldn't be the first dead genius to share Klutz's radical idea for getting a housewife's unwashed (Neo Egalitarianwise) feet wet by plunging her headlong into the deepest of artistic waters. Didn't Handel write The Messiah not with St. Paul's cathedral in mind "but rather that my masterpiece shouldn't only be heard, but performed, by England's common folke in the very humblest of their rustik churches."? And wasn't it Thornton Wilder—that greatest of all Post Athenian playwrights—who said on more than one occasion he considered "the average American HighSchool auditorium vastly superior to the most palatial of Broadway's theaters—with all their highfallutin' and -priced actors, directors and (especially) set designers—for a production of Our Town in keeping with its down to earth 'message' about the virtue of simplicity in art as well as in life?"²³ But perhaps the easiest way to put this Mahler's Eighth/Klutz Affair into a Moronic nutshell even the least classicallyinclined "music" lover can understand is by rewriting that famous punchline to Winston Churchill's Battle Of Britain speech so it reads: "Never before in the field of human concertising have so many been so astounded (for so long) by so few."²⁴

WHEN THE MAYOR EVENTUALLY introduced me as "the man you have all been waiting for" he did so to an audience which, but for a few stragglers taking shelter with us on the covered grandstand from the buckets of rain that were now falling, had long since left this bloodless (but what their turnipfarmer's bones told them would soon become a soggy) battlefield where the Morons' war against boredom was lost with the firing of the first of those bombastic oratorical salvos extolling "Our former American Ambassador's—and now the greatest of that nation's great novelists'—Ulysses-, Aeneas-, Moses-, Robinson Crusoe-, Lemuel Gulliver-, Captain Bligh-, Alfred Dreyfus-, V. I. Lenin-, Leopold Bloom-, Thomas Wolfe-, and Prodigal Sonlike struggle to once again set foot on the precious soil of his adopted homeland!" Not that the torrential downpour, galeforce winds, lightning, thunder and lack of an audience mattered very much to me. From the very outset of this misbegotten homecoming affair my mind was made up to deliver a speech along the briefest possible lines allowed by protocol, to wit: "Your Royal Highness, Ambrose XXXIII; His Holy Eminence, Archbishop of Moronville & Papal Envoy to Cretiny; The Right Honorable Prime Minister of Moronia; Mr Chief Justice; Lord Major; distinguished guests, and; my fellow Morons by choice if not by birth: [pause for applause] Because no words can ever express how I feel on such a moving occasion, let me simply state my heartfelt gratitude for this display of your affection—and wish you all a good night (or morning, since by now it was well past midnight)."

     But for whatever reason—jetlag, the tempestuous setting, a divinelyinspired rush of renewed evangelical zealotry, my own need to refute the Chief Justice's excoriation of Morons Awake! and its (unlikely) hero's worldsaving Massiahship, or the chance to vent my rage over (what, before my Great American Novelwriting triumph, had been) a lifetime of quiet desperation in a fit of kingLearlyesque soliloquizing—I scrapped my "Short & Sweet" speechmaking plans and, for the next several hours, unleashed a verbal equivalent of that nonstop literary "ejaculation" by which this book (virtually) "wrote itself."  Unfortunately, dear reader, I can't provide you with even a partial transcript of those impassioned (and, it goes without saying, "seminal") outpourings. Shortly after I began, what little was left of my audience—all of whom were sitting behind me on the sheltered grandstand—took advantage (not that I knew then, or blame them now) of a momentary lull in the storm to make a dash for their official limos, private automobiles, turniptrucks²⁵ or, in the case of those ordinary (hence vehicleless) Morons, the footpaths leading them home-, hut-, and/or hovelward. Which explains the lack of independent witnesses who might help me reconstruct the details of an event you are no doubt almost as curious as I am to learn. My own (normally photographic) memory of what I uttered remains hazy at best. And even then is limited to a rather vague impression I was: (a) Leisurely wandering my way through a maze of MarcelProustianmemorylanes; (b) Drifting down a stream—or "babbling" brook?—of JamesJoyceLeopold&MollyBloomlike consciousness; (c) Standing atop an eiffeltower sized soapbox similar to that from which Louis-Ferdinand Céline spewed his deathontheinstalmentplan screed, or; (d) All of the above!  Although, as I sit here writing this, I'm starting to recall some of what transpired while I was in the throes of that rhapsodic catharsis with increasing definitude—if not total clarity. At least in general terms.

     But about this, dear reader, there can be no doubt whatsoever: I did succeed in expressing those feelings I failed so mysteriously to articulate on that Night of Nights when Jayne laid her dreaded blue pencil down dramatically for what she announced was—

     "The very last time! Yes, my darling, this is the Magic Moment we for which we have both been waiting!"

     "What magic moment?" I asked dispassionately, thinking her "announcement" signified nothing more "magical" than the fact we had passed yet another of her "editorial mileposts" in our endless journey toward a destination (she defined as "Cutting this gargantuan opus of yours down to a size the average housewife—for whom it was written—can handle," and I characterized as her "penenvious attempts to emasculate a manuscript whose original rampant—and/or even rapacious— virility made it so appealing sex- and runawayblockbustingbestsellerwise!") that, like the mirage of a thirstquenching oasis in the Sahara, retreated with every step we took—or staggered—towards it.²⁶

     "The one you and I have both been struggling to reach at the end of this long trail we began blazing when I removed that plain brown paper—in which the rough draft of what is still a literary masterpiece but now has a fighting chance to also become the kind of overnightmustbebought&readbyeveryhousewifewise BookpublishingSuccessStory needed for launching the Second (SocioCultural) American Revolution that will prevent the human race from drowning in its own mediocrity and/or sleepwalking over the edge of a cliff—was wrapped!"

    "Ah, that magic moment—" I responded with the enthusiasm of a man receiving the news someone else has just confessed to the murder for which he spent what could have been the primest time of his life rotting on death row. Or Lindberg's equally less than rapturous response to those fanatical Frenchmen greeting the arrival of his trailblazing transAtlantic flight when all he could think about was "stretching my legs and then collapsing onto the nearest couch—or any horizontal surface—for some welldeserved and sorelyneeded shuteye." Similar "anticlimactic" feelings have been admitted by Charles De Gaulle (when entering the Paris he was—not altogether justifiably—hailed for "liberating" from the Nazis), Lenin ("After fighting tooth&nail to become Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, what was I but the absolute ruler of a U.S.S.R. that would turn out to be absolutely unrulable?"), Christopher Columbus (upon hearing the shouts of "Land Ho!" found himself "strangely unmoved by what, deep down, I always knew would be the terra firma ending of my westward voyage to the Indies—the really crucial issue was, of course, whether we had in fact found the Indies or accidentally discovered a New World whose riches, given the still vast distances involved and the more or less primitive state of our 'modern' maritime technology would require several decades—if not centuries—to fully exploit. Nevertheless, for the sake of my crew I pretended to share their elation.") and, as incredible as it seems, even Richard Nixon (who, on that night in 1968 when his lifelong dream of being President of the United States finally came true, gave this answer to his running mate, Spiro Agnew, who asked why he seemed so glum on what should be such an auspicious occasion: "Because, you ignorant Greek p***k, those f**king deities of yours only elevate hubristic s*nsofb***hes like us to these lofty g*dd**n heights so the c**ks**kers can have more time to laugh those s***ty a*ses of theirs off while we are falling flat on our motherf**king faces!"). And, although such distinguished authorities on the subject of lovemaking as Petronius, Casanova, de Sade, Frank Harris, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Mae West, Anaïs Nin, and Madonna have, in one way or another, all agreed that fornicationwise there can never be too much of a good thing, I must confess: In my practice of superprolonged foreplay there have been times when the result of oversuperprolonging the consummation of a woman's climactic expectations turned out to be less than satisfactory—if not altogether counterproductive.

     Which, of course, raises the distinct possibility a similar state of paradoxical affairs might exist when one practices those fine arts which aren't (at least directly) concerned with satisfying some lovelorn housewife's insatiable yearnings for orgasmic bliss?

     Or, asking the same question in its more scholarly (and respectable) form: When, if ever, is a painting, a symphony, poem (excluding haiku), a ballet, a motion picture, a play, a sculpture, an opera or—that most openended of all art forms—a literary masterpiece finished?²⁷ For even the most masochistic of art gallery/museum habitués, diehard cinemaniacs, avid concertgoers, dedicated theaterfreaks, ardent operalovers and fanatical bibliophiles—judging from their response to nonstop performances of Wagner's complete Ring Cycle, allnight screenings of Fassbinders Berlin Alexanderplatz, exhibitions of every picture painted by Van Gogh, Matisse, Munch and/or even Picasso, marathon readings of Paradise Regained, 7&ahalfhour stagings of Angels in America and/or (to celebrate the bicentennial of his death) hearing all 835 of Mozart's compositions performed—albeit over a span of 12 months—at New York's Lincoln Center, the answer would seem to be: At that point when an audience's patience has been stretched so tightly it either snaps in a harmless release of nervous tension or produces a backlash that can be extremely embarrassing, painful and/or even fatal for the poor artist standing in its path.

     When applying such a rule (if it is one) to the reading of epic novels like Moby Dick, War and Peace or Morons Awake!, however, it must be understood that: Unlike the passive role played by those who sit back and watch as a work of art is performed for them, the reader of a book has an infinite variety of proactive options at her disposal. Not only can she put her curiosity on hold for a meal, a call of nature, a visit to the beauty parlor, a shopping spree, a midmorning catnap, to view the afternoon soaps or refresh her flagging concentration by pumping some iron at the local Family Fitness Center— she has the unrestricted freedom to take whatever liberties happen to strike her feminine fancy with an author's most carefully chosen words. Hence, more often than not—and despite what she readily concedes is, "my respect for the intellectual and artistic superiority of anybody who manages to write a blockbusting bestseller, let alone one that's also a timeless literary masterpiece"—the average housewife rarely thinks twice about: (a) Setting her own (invariably faster) pace regardless of the tempo an author specifies for parsing the "purpler" passages of his prose; (b) Doting unnecessarily on those steamier love scenes inserted at the publisher's request "to satisfy a usually decent woman's hopes for finding some harmless softcore porn sandwiched between the hard covers of even the most respectablelooking book," but which (as if to flaunt her QueenForADay majesty) she finds "written with the unabashed passion and trenchancy one expects to find throughout a novel advertising itself as 'The answer to every thinking woman's Sleeping Beauty and/or Damsel in Distress prayers;'" (c) Skipping words, sentences, paragraphs, pages—especially those whose seams she finds "bursting with footnotes"—and even entire chapters which "needlessly impede" her hellbent pursuit of (psycho)sexual happiness, and in the most extreme cases; (d) "Abandoning this whole goddam 'literary' loveaffair for one of those trashier fictitious flings 'conceived' with my less than MENSAqualifying IQ in its author's 'seminal' mind."

Next    Return to Index

Footnotes

1 Rather than that separating Country A from Moronia where, in the past—and for reasons we needn't go into—it had always been my custom to return after completing some diplomatic (or in some cases personal) mission; hoping thereby to foil any kidnapping/assassination plans Ballbraker and Lord Y might be making.

2 Napoleon's exile was spent on the island of Saint Helena, whose 47 sq. miles made it more than 10 times larger than Moronia.  And even the Ile du Diable where Alfred Dreyfus served only part of his sentence for being a French Jew boasted an area (not to mention a tropical climate and the company of France's most scintillating—if only because of the crimes^2s1 they dared to commit—conversationalists) exceeding that of the landlocked Penal Colony where I was sent to do my 50 years of hard time in a virtual state of solitary confinement sociocultural & intellectuallywise.

3 Despite having used Icky Vanderphd as a decoy by telling him to meet me at the border of Country A my best guess is that some (probably minor!) bureaucrat in the Ministry For Cultural Affairs with a Walter Mittylike flair for dreaming up postColdWarCloak&Dagger scenarios had unwittingly (or otherwise) managed to outsmart me.

4 Socalled because he survived not only the psychotic machinations of more than 1 Soviet dictator (Stalin, Malenkov, Bulganin & Kruschev) during the years when Moronia was still considered strategically significant by the Soviets, but a series of personal scandals arising from his weakness for slow boats (the Royal Yacht—a 14foot sloop—once took 6 months to navigate those 8 miles separating Nice's Baie des Anges from its home port of Monte Carlo!) and fast women.

5 A barbershop quartet whose musical "note" worthiness consists exclusively of the fact it is comprised of 4 practicing barbers.

6 A gesture whose enigmatic meaning I have never been able to fully unravel but a convincing argument can, I think, be made that: Since the Morons equate the extremes of social and antisocial behavior with whether one is or is not hatless, this "on again off again" brimflexing business is probably their typically devious way of expressing what any redblooded (or -necked) American still makes no (postVietnam) bones about when telling the world "My country right or wrong."

7 These highly irregular (and, to say the least inconvenient and undignified) travel arrangements were made necessary by a 17thcentury statute specifying: "Only those publick conveyances owned & operated by dyedinthewool Morons are permitted to ply theyre commercial trayde on Moronia's highwayes, turnpykes, thoroughfayres & roades." And, given the fact Moronville's only taxi (despite advertising itself as "The Greater Metropolitan Moronville Rapid Transportation Company) was in reality the FIB's most effective intelligencegathering "vehicle," I wasn't sanguine about putting the fate of my and Maria's Final Farewell in what were likely to be the treacherous hands of its driver.

8 The Haves and the Have Nots are Moronia's 2 major political parties—names which, unlike those used in more advanced democracies such as ours to keep the public guessing about who and what they are actually voting for, leave no doubt about where they stand on the only turnip&butter issue that really matters in the final electoral analysis, ie., whether you are a Have or a Have Not.

9 Although he declines every invitation to stage one of his RevivalistRallies in their TurnipBowl and vehemently denies the (persistent) rumors there are a few drops of Moronic blood coursing through his AllAmerican veins, these blackest of pastoral sheep (As more than one waggish theologian has put it: "If the Morons are God's Chosen People why did he make so few of them?") continue to idolize Graham no less passionately than do the most whitelyfleeced members of his global flock.

10 Whether—and if so how—the Chief Justice actually got his hands on an advance copy of my novel or, more probably, one of Jayne's publicity blurb drafts I can't say. But one thing is certain: His citation from its title page was (deliberately, I suspect) inaccurate. The correct and 100% noncontradictory title reads, in case you've forgotten, as follows:

MORONS AWAKE!
A MANIFESTO
To Reverse The Decline Of Western Civilization

   Written In The Form Of A Nonfiction Novel-length Answer
To The Burning Question Of Whether Jack F. Klutz Lived & Died
To Prove Even A Moron Can Rise Above His Intellectual Shortcomings
Or Was Simply An Exception To The Rule That All Men Are Created Equally Mediocre

11 According to the Morons: "When Christ used the word 'meek' in the 3rd of his 8th Sermon On The Mount Beatitudes (Mathew 5:3-12) he was really talking about that blissfully mindless state of prelapsarian grace enjoyed by Adam & Eve before they were expelled from Eden—but which still exists (for the most part) in this smallest of the world's corners known as Moronia." Not surprisingly, this claim is regarded in Christian ecclesiastical circles of every stripe and denomination as the hottest of scriptural potatoes. Admitting that piety is synonymous with ignorance, or vice versa, isn't exactly a churchman's (or -goer's) idea of what The Supreme Being had in mind when He created the human race in His image. Nevertheless, parsing Christ's Beatitude #3 in any way other than that suggested by the Morons would be a daunting task for even the nimblest of Jesuitical acrobats—or slickest of Clintonesque spindoctors.  On the other hand, when it came to dealing with what he described in his Memorandum re the Sermon On The Mount Paradox as "nothing less than a life & death issue as it relates to the validity of the assumptions on which the Gospel of NeoEgalitarianism is predicated," Jack F. Klutz faced the Beatitude #3 problem squarely by solving Christ's paradoxical prophecy with this (equally enigmatic) prediction: "The meek will inherit the earth —but only after they have acquired the mental wherewithal for doing so."

     The way I see it, however—and as Klutz's seemingly disingenuous solution correctly pinpoints it—doesn't the real issue raised by the Beatitude #3 riddle deal not with who inherits the earth but what they do with it after they own it?  As humanity stands poised on the threshold of a Third Millennium the argument can be made that: The ordinary citizen of any First World Nation is already the recipient of an estate whose extent and riches (at least in technocybernetic terms) exceeds that ever dreamt of by the most blueblooded of yesteryear's landed aristocracy.^11s1 Nevertheless, even as we count our way through this bonanza of blessings, who among us is so thickheaded (or -skinned) she doesn't feel spiritually, morally, intellectually, sexually and, above all, socioculturally impoverished?  

12 Once again the Chief Justice falls into that trap which, sooner or later, claims all those who, while advocating the Bliss of Ignorance for others, set lower limits on the depth of their own imbecility. Although some of these hypocrites have the chutzpah to argue their lack of logic in this regard proves just how idiotic they really are! Notwithstanding such sophistry, the fact remains no Born Again Klutzian would ever think of imposing an upper limit on the height of the SocioCultural IQ to which she aspires. Even what Klutz describes as the "probably unattainable perfect 100" is, like the 4minute mile, the climbing of Mt. Everest and the bestsellerdom of a literary masterpiece, not a real barrier for the housewife who becomes a truly dedicated NeoEgalitarian.

13 Actually he continued for another 10 or 15 minutes "dilating extemporaneously on certain minor matters that, not unlike the footnotes found in a judicial opinion, lay audiences frequently find more fascinating than the socalled 'major' issues they are merely meant to supplement." Maybe. But this lay audience had stopped listening to what it long ago concluded was just so much more of the hot air one usually hears coming from the mouth of some civil service windbag infatuated with the sound of his own voice. Which was fortunate—because it seemed to me, at least, some of that mud the old fart was flinging at Morons Awake! might stick to it if I wasn't at the top of my oratorical form.  And, given the toll taken by jetlag on my analytical faculties, that was a distinct possibility.

14 This reference to an American intellectual so obscure he remains totally unknown even in what was his home town (and Bloomfield, New Jersey isn't much larger than Moronville) causes me to wonder if this is the author's sly way of providing us with a clue about what has been until now (considering all the space he devotes to his postadolescent years) the sketchiest of biographies prepubertywise?—J. P.

15 Please, dear reader! Don't be alarmed by what at first glance might seem like a complete repudiation of everything I've led you to believe so far concerning the "superhumanity" of this book's hero. If you think about it calmly—and above all rationally—it should become clear: What really makes Jack F. Klutz unique among the Morons or any other breed of Homo sapiens is not that he was born with the brains of a Mozart, Picasso, Kafka, Shakespeare or Bourne but that despite his crippling mental handicaps he continued striving (and, as he himself puts it, "for the most part failing miserably!") to overcome his congenital shortcomings. Moreover if it hadn't been for those repeated failures he would never have acquired that keen appreciation for the greatness of other men's minds which distinguishes Klutzianity as the only (semi- or pseudo-)religious creed offering its adherents a Consolation Prize in the event they can't compose a Die Zauberflöte, paint a Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, author a King Lear or write The History of a Literary Radical—one that teaches them how truly miraculous all great works of art are. Just as no man—not even the most Jewish of intellectuals—can ever hope to know how it really feels to be an average American housewife until he puts on her fuzzy pink mules, slips into her Fredrick's of Hollywood camisole, chemise, neglige, peignoir or teddy, smears his face with her cleansing, moisturizing & rejuvenating creams and, with her plastic curlers festooning (what's left of) his long hair,^15s1 climbs into her bed or sits on her couch to read a trashy novel and/or watch the afternoon soaps; so too no housewife can understand the (albeit ecstatic) agony a Great American Novelist must endure unless his pen is (speaking metaphorically of course) held firmly in her hand as she takes that first plunge into the uncharted waters of amateur authoressdom. Nevertheless, as for the "report card" issued by that Blue Ribbon panel—the only opinion which matters when it comes to measuring the magnitude of Klutz's canon is the one you will render when beholding it with your own (NeoEgalitarianized) eyes.^15s2  In addition to the biases I (being his "hagiographer") bring to the issue of Klutz's success or failure in "emulating his cultural role models" my photographic memory of what I saw during the brief time I spent (all of it with Ballbraker breathing down my neck) in the FIB Evidence Vault remain extremely impressionistic.

16 It's not surprising that, throughout its 6 centuries of ruling Moronia, the House of Ambrosia has been described by its subjects, and the other monarchs of Europe, as "never having had a single bone that could remotely be called 'funny' in any of the bodies in its long line of hereditary clowns."

17 So godforsaken was this particular turnip patch it had yet to benefit from Moronia's REP (Rural Electrification Project); which, like our TVA, became a fact of Big Governmental life in 1933!

18 I saw several of his handwritten scores in the FIB Evidence Vault, but with neither the time nor the sightreading skills that would allow me to play them in my mind's ear I could only make a mental note that they looked like the manuscripts which might have been scrawled by a Beethoven, Bach or Brahms. Which was itself no small accomplishment for someone who was born and raised in a country where—unlike our own—99.9% of the population don't know the difference between an arpeggio and a cadenza, obligato, tremelo, fermata, glissando or appoggiatura!

19 Especially when Mahler himself was ridiculed for setting off on his flight of symphonic fancy with Flügelslieder (wings of song) no more heatresistent than those Daedalus fashioned for Icarus from feathers and wax. Not to mention my own colossal impudence in believing I could write a novel that would save mankind from drowning in its own mediocrity by arresting the decline of Western Civilization and launching a Second (Socio Cultural) American Revolution!!!!

20 A set of conflicting circumstances probably similar to that experienced by those of you who, after having been cajoled, browbeaten, persuaded, seduced, tantalized, badgered, duped and/or shamed into buying a copy of Morons Awake!, found when opening it for the first time your journey from Point A to Point B (or Z!) on this newfangled "TrainOfThought" novel would be on tracks laid out in anything but the straight line of a traditionallywritten bestseller.

21 The reader who is unfamiliar with Mahler's Eighth can (try to) imagine a performance of the Grand Finale to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture played by a string quartet augmented with a one man percussion section armed with only a pair of toy popguns.

22 This is an extremely generous estimate. It doesn't take into account the fact only a handful of orchestras can and do include Mahler's Eighth in their repertoire. The result being: Regardless of how many times it's been played since 1906 it has been done so by the same 5 or 6 hundred musicians— which, even if we triple that number when the personnel turnover occurring in a major symphony orchestra over the span of a century is considered, still leaves us well short of 1,000,000.

23 So far the publisher has been unable to verify this alleged quotation. Although from everything else Thornton Wilder is on record as having said about the woeful state of professional theater in the United States, and the fact Our Town is a paragon of dramaturgical simplicity, it's reasonable to suppose he wasn't unhappy to see his brainchild become (prior to the arrival of Jesus Christ Superstar and Grease on the Senior Play scene) the favorite of middleAmerica's highschool English/Drama teachers and those tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of future average American housewives and husbands who made their "acting" debuts/swansongs as Emily, George, The Stage Manager, Mr & Mrs Webb, Dr & Mrs Gibbs, Simon Stimson and/or any of those minor characters comprising the Dramatis Personæ populating that (notso) imaginary life once lived in New England's villages, hamlets and, of course, towns like Grover's Corners. Once again: The reader is cautioned not to make any assumptions about the "rhetorical" nature of these questions the author has a habit of springing on her when she least expects them!  
     As for Wilder's "Simplicity In Art As Well As In Life" message—alas! My persistent reminders (he calls them "harangues") to the author about these wisest of words any writer ever spoke—if indeed he did speak them—have all been in vain. According to him: "This isn't the same country—or world—it was in 1938 when even the average nonNewYork theatergoer was at least semiliterate. During those 60 years since Our Town played to SRO audiences and won a Pulitzer prize, in addition to 3 or 4 American generations being put through the psychological wringer of WWII, the Korean 'conflict,' a series of high profile assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate and the ballooning of our national debt—not to mention a Cold (but continuously menacing nuclearannihilationwise)War—on the (socalled) cultural front, with the advent of television, actionadventure films, talkradio, rock and rap music, etc., the tide of massmedia merde had risen to a point where one more wave—or ripple!—threatened to fulfill Louis XVI's apocalyptic Après moi le deluge prophecy. So, my dear Miss Playne, we have arrived at that juncture in the history of a declining civilization where there can be no more Mister Nice Guys when it comes to writing plays and novels—or painting pretty pictures for the covers of The Saturday Evening Post. In times like these nothing less than the most revolutionary methods are required! And what could be more revolutionary than writing a novel in complete sentences whose 'trainofthought' plot concerns itself with—of all things!—ideas? While I've gone to considerable pains in sweetening this didactic pill with such standard coatings of bestselling sugar as: Sex (ie, the Art of Foreplay motif); Lady Godiva/Peeping Tomisms (ie, the StarkNakedSex GoddessInTheCadillacConvertible motif); Suspense (ie, delaying the second and by far the most significant of Klutz's 2 Childhood Epiphanies until the final chapter—not to mention keeping Maria Bimbeaux standing on the stage of that Opera House in Moronville for more than 100 pages wearing nothing but a maidenly blush!); Scandal (ie., my upcoming epistolary flirtation with Jackie Kennedy Onassis and vice versa); Sleaze (ie., Ballbraker's crossdressing parties); Prurience (ie., constantly reminding the reader her orgasmic expectations will be fully consummated when I think the time is right); Smut (ie., forcing perfectly decent women to fill those gaps I leave in certain f**rletter words); and Trash (ie., desecrating more than one of America's memorials to its historical amnesia)—the fact remains it is still the bitterest one an average housewife is ever likely to swallow."

[The author could have added to that long list of Dirty Bookpublishing Business Laundry his willingness (at my urging) to deliberately split an infinitive now and then—as I've just done!—or dangle the odd participle—as he did a few moments ago in that most baffling yet of his paragraph length sentences with its midstream changing of subjects from what began as "...3 or 4 American generations being put through a psychological wringer" and finishes with "...the rising tide of mass media merde" in order to roughen a prose style whose otherwise perfectly polished edges his readers might find overly aristocratic for even the most refined of their Sleeping Beauty fantasies.—J. P.]

24 I don't know whether the author is being modest (which, under all those pontifical trappings, he really can be) or if it simply slipped that "occasionally" absent professorial mind of his; but this literary love affair you are having with him (and vice versa) most definitely belongs in that GettingAnAverageHousewife'sUnwashed(NeoEgalitarianwise)FeetWetByPlungingHerHeadlongIntoAMajorWorkOfLiteraryFiction category mentioned above. At this advanced stage in your reading of Morons Awake! is there any need for me to remind you how my dustjacket blurb synopsized its "trainofthought plot" with that single—and superbly constructed—sentence: "The more a woman reads of Goldberg's trailblazing book the wiser she becomes?" I think not, ladies! No. By now it should be perfectly obvious that brilliant blurb of mine represents nothing less than a turning point in the whole postGutenberg history of selling books, namely: For the first time in 500 years the promises made (or implied) by a publisher in hyping the sales of a "MUST READ OVERNIGHT RUNAWAY BLOCKBUSTING BESTSELLER" have actually been kept!
     And, dear reader, since we're talking about the author's effect on women—even those of us who aren't housewives—I'll let you in on a little secret: You aren't the only one whose sociocultural (and psychosexual) life has been permanently altered (for, it goes without saying, the better) by reading your first really deep book since graduating from highschool (and/or college). My own drowsy (if not comatose) cravings for intellectual happiness (although with a Doctorate in English Literature and despite those few wayward chromosomes in the Playne gene pool I can hardly be classified as a complete Moron!) have, in the course of an (unavoidably) intimate "working" relationship with this most—I hate to say it but there's no more suitable word for describing him!—seminal of nonfiction novelists, been awakened no less miraculously and/or romantically than if I had in fact received the Kiss of Life from a fairytale Prince Charming! Which, when you think about it, isn't all that farfetched—taking into account my extraordinary rise from those rags worn by the lowliest of publishinghouse readers to the riches that come from editing The Greatest (but not necessarily the last, if I have anything to say about it) Of All Great American Novels.—J. P.

25 All of which were located a good 7 or 8 stonethrows away in the blacktopped parking lots normally used to accommodate the crowds filling Moronville's Memorial ("For all those Morons who died helping to make football what it is today") Stadium on New Year's Day when the Big Game was played.

26 Lest you think that, like some intellectuals, I'm not always aware of what is happening right in front of my eyes—or under that Semitic nose of mine, dear reader; this wasn't the first time we had reached the final page of Morons Awake! only to start the rewriting process all over from scratch "to be doubly certain," as J. P. put it, "we haven't overlooked any minor continuity discrepancies—or, God forbid!—some fatal flaw NeoEgalitarianism messagewise."

27 Or any one of the God knows how many sentences comprising a Revolutionary Manifesto, all of which are written for what H. W. Fowler (of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage fame) called "That pestilent fellow, the critical reader, [who is] not satisfied with catching the general drift and obvious intention of a sentence [but insists every single word]...must actually yield on scrutiny the [precise meaning its author had in mind when he wrote them.]"

Subfootnotes

2s1 What we call "crime" has been defined by some of Europe's more radical malcontents, like Goeurderoy and Vaneigem, as a "One Man Revolution" against a system in which any organized attempt to upset the dehumanizing applecart is impossible.

11s1 Unfortunately we late20thcentury Americans have been deprived of the excuses Tocqueville made for our sociocultural shortcomings when he wrote in 1834: "I do not believe there is a[ny other] country where...there are so [many educated people] and at the same time so few learned individuals. Primary [schooling] is within the reach of everybody [but higher learning] is scarcely to be obtained by any. This is...[because while virtually] all Americans...obtain the [basic] elements of human knowledge [they remain ignorant about life's finer points. Most Americans must work for a living and] every profession requires an apprenticeship, which limits the time [for acquiring erudition] to the early years of life. At 15 [the average American takes up the tools of his trade] and thus his education ends at the age when ours begins [in France]. Whatever [learning occurs] afterwards is [usually for] some...[economic] object[ive]...Most wealthy Americans...were formerly poor [and those from the working class] who now enjoy leisure were absorbed with commerce during their youth; the consequence of which is, when they might have had a taste for [knowledge] they had no time for it, and when time is at their disposal they no longer have the inclination. There is no class in America, then, in which the taste for [culture] is transmitted [through] hereditary fortune and[/or acquired by] leisure...Accordingly there is an equal lack of [both] the desire [for] and [dedication] to [the pursuit of intellectual happiness]."—Democracy In America Chapter III. And: "It is impossible...to raise the intelligence of the [masses] above a certain level. [No matter how much opportunity exists for Americans to raise their IQs] the human mind can never be [truly improved] without devoting a considerable [effort] to [such a difficult enterprise]. The greater or lesser possibility of subsisting without labor is therefore the [limiting factor] for intellectual improvement. This [factor] is [less restrictive] in some countries and more...in others; but it must exist [to some degree] as long as the [average man or woman must earn his or her daily bread]...It is therefore as difficult [for me] to imagine a society in which all [its] citizens should be [erudite] as [one] in which they should all be affluent..."—Democracy in America Chapter VIII ]. It took us another 100 years or so to prove Tocqueville was wrong when he doubted there could ever be a society all of whose members—even the illegally entered ones —were given the chance to develop their intellectual potential.  But, after having done so, the average American finds herself to be not that much brighter than the average Moronette or -ess!

15s1 In the event you've forgotten: My (alltoo frequent) attendance at Jedgar Ballbraker's crossdressing parties was always in a costume appropriate for such perverted occasions. So the sympathy I exhibit throughout this book for the plight of women in general and housewives in particular is not just a literary affectation but the result of my personal experiences on the receiving end of more than one dirty old man's lecherous (and decidedly unwanted!) advances. All of which transvestorial indignities were, it should also be remembered, suffered by me during those dark and desperate days of the '50s and '60s when America's salvation hinged on the unsung heroism of civilian Cold Warriors like myself who served in the very farthest flung of the Free World's diplomatic outposts. Of which Moronville was by no means the only one of those sociocultural boondocks—such as Ougadougou (Upper Volta), Qonduz (Afghanistan), Thimphu (Bhutan), Cochabamba (Bolivia), Narsarsuaq (Greenland), Ijuw (Nauru), Cluj-Napoca (Romania), Dikhil (Djibouti), Jyvaskyla (Finland), Dakhla (Western Sahara), Timbuktu (Sudan) and Cicero (Illinois)—in which some of my colleagues spent the best years of their lives. But who knows? Perhaps some day a monument (one of René Magritte's bowlerhatted&attachécasecarrying nonentities suitably encrusted over time with pigeon droppings?) will be erected on the State Department lawn—or White House Putting Green—to commemorate those of us in the Foreign Service who actually asked not what their country could do for them but what they could do for their country.

15s2 Regrettably, ladies, this will require a trip to Moronia! Among the papers found in Klutz's apartment was a Last Will & Testament "bequeathing all of my earthly possessions—whatever value they might or might not have—to the People of Moronia." Our efforts to persuade the government of that country to exhibit what they are calling their "Priceless National Treasure" in one of our art museums for at least the early stages of my campaign to make Morons Awake! an OvernightRunawayBlockbustingBestseller have all come to naught. According to them (and who am I to disagree?): "We are not about to risk losing a tourist attraction with the potential—over the long haul—for equaling or even exceeding the revenues generated every New Year's Day by our Annual Turnip Tournament Parade and Big Game extravaganzas." Maybe (and as always, for the wrong reasons!) the Morons are right in thinking what Klutz left them should reside permanently on the soil from which it so mysteriously sprang as a reminder that most, if not all, of life's most epiphanal moments arise when and especially where you least expect them. As, I think you will agree, this recent flurry of footnotes (and subfootnotes) illustrates so vividly!