I’m not her cup of tea I’m afraid
Ah ah ah ah ah
I’ll find a way somehow in my lonely room
Ah ah ah ah ah
Emily Dickinson, why have you left me and gone
Ah ah ah ah ah
Emily Dickinson, don’t you know what we could have meant
Ah ah ah ah ah
“HELLO Hogo.” “Hello chaps.” “The floor is yours Hogo.” “Well chaps first I’d like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it. One of them is that this cunt you’ve got here, although I’ve never seen her with my own eyes, is probably not worth worrying about. Now excuse me if I’m treading on your toes in this matter. God knows I love a female gesture as much as any man, as when, for instance, sitting in the front seat of a car in their bikini, they kind of shrug themselves into a street shift before getting out, or while the car door is open but they haven’t gotten out yet; and if you happen to be looking out of a window of a house near the curb, or if you can move your window nearer the curb, you can sometimes see one sitting in her absolute underwear, in the hot weather, and then going through that ‘shrugging’ business, and sort of hitching the shift up over her hips, and then shaking her head to get the hair to fall the right way, and all that. And all this is the best that has been thought and said, in my opinion, or ever will be thought and said, for the only thing worth a rap in the whole world is the beauty of women, and maybe certain foods, and possibly music of all kinds, especially ‘cheap’ music such as that furnished at parades by for instance the St. Pulaski Tatterdemalion Band of Orange, New Jersey, which can reduce you to tears, in the right light, by speaking to you from the heart about your land, and what a fine land it is, and that it is your land really, and my land, this land of ours—that particular insight can chill you, rendered by a marching unit. But I wander. The main thing I wanted to point out is that the world is full of cunts, that they grow like clams in all quarters of the earth, cunts as multitudinous as cherrystones and littlenecks burrowing into the mud in all the bays of the world. The point is that the loss of any particular one is not to be taken seriously. She stays with you as long as she can put up with your shit and you stay with her as long as you can put up with her shit. That’s the way it is behind the veil of flummery that usually veils these matters. Now think, I ask you, of all those women who are beyond the moment of splendor. They are depressed. The minister comes to call and recommends to them the things of the spirit, and tells them how the things of the spirit are more durable than the things of the flesh and all that. Well he is entirely correct, they are more durable, but durable is not what we wanted. The terrible poignance of this predicament is not vitiated by the fact that everybody knows it, in the backs of their minds. Ruin of the physical envelope is our great theme here, and if we keep changing girls every four or five years, it is because of this ruin, which I will never agree to, to my dying day. And that is why I keep looking out of the window, and why we all keep looking out of the window, to see what is passing, what has been cast up on the beach of our existence. Because something is always being cast up on that beach, as new classes of girls mature, and you can always get a new one, if you are willing to overlook certain weaknesses in the departments of thought and feeling. But if it is thought and feeling you want, you can always read a book, or see a film, or have an interior monologue. But of course with the spread of literacy you now tend to get girls who have thought and feeling too, in some measure, and some of them will probably belong to the Royal Philological Society or something, or in any case have their own ‘thing,’ which must be respected, and catered to, and nattered about, just as if you gave a shit about all this blague. But of course we may be different, perhaps you do care about it. It’s not unheard of. But my main point is that you should bear in mind multiplicity, and forget about uniqueness. The earth is broad, and flat, and deep, and high. And remember what Freud said.”
THE VALUE THE MIND SETS ON EROTIC NEEDS INSTANTLY SINKS AS SOON AS SATISFACTION BECOMES READILY AVAILABLE. SOME OBSTACLE IS NECESSARY TO SWELL THE TIDE OF THE LIBIDO TO ITS HEIGHT, AND AT ALL PERIODS OF HISTORY, WHENEVER NATURAL BARRIERS HAVE NOT SUFFICED, MEN HAVE ERECTED CONVENTIONAL ONES.
“Which prince?” Snow White wondered brushing her teeth. “Which prince will come? Will it be Prince Andrey? Prince Igor? Prince Alf? Prince Alphonso? Prince Malcolm? Prince Donalbain? Prince Fernando? Prince Siegfried? Prince Philip? Prince Albert? Prince Paul? Prince Akihito? Prince Rainier? Prince Porus? Prince Myshkin? Prince Rupert? Prince Pericles? Prince Karl? Prince Clarence? Prince George? Prince Hal? Prince John? Prince Mamillius? Prince Florizel? Prince Kropotkin? Prince Humphrey? Prince Charlie? Prince Matchabelli? Prince Escalus? Prince Valiant? Prince Fortinbras?” Then Snow White pulled herself together. “Well it is terrific to be anticipating a prince—to be waiting and knowing that what you are waiting for is a prince, packed with grace—but it is still waiting, and waiting as a mode of existence is, as Brack has noted, a darksome mode. I would rather be doing a hundred other things. But slash me if I will let it, this waiting, bring down my lofty feelings of anticipation from the bedroom ceiling where they dance overhead like so many French letters filled with lifting gas. I wonder if he will have the Hapsburg Lip?”
PAUL stood before a fence posing. He was on his way to the monastery. But first he was posing in front of a fence. The fence was covered with birds. Their problem, in many ways a paradigm of our own, was “to fly.” “The engaging and wholly charming way I stand in front of this fence here,” Paul said to himself, “will soon persuade someone to discover me. Then I will not have to go to the monastery. Then I can be on television or something, instead of going to the monastery. Yet there is no denying it, something is pulling me toward that monastery located in a remote part of Western Nevada.” Lanky, generous-hearted Paul! “If I had been born well prior to 1900, I could have ridden with Pershing against Pancho Villa. Alternatively, I could have ridden with Villa against the landowners and corrupt government officials of the time. In either case, I would have had a horse. How little opportunity there is for young men to have personally owned horses in the bottom half of the twentieth century! A wonder that we U.S. youth can still fork a saddle at all. . . Of course there are those ‘horses’ under the hoods of Buicks and Pontiacs, the kind so many of my countrymen favor. But those ‘horses’ are not for me. They take the tan out of my cheeks and the lank out of my arms and legs. Tom Lea or Pete Hurd will never paint me standing by this fence if I am sitting inside an Eldorado, Starfire, Riviera or Mustang, no matter how attractively the metal has been bent.”
SNOW WHITE let down her hair black as ebony from the window. It was Monday. The hair flew out of the window. “I could fly a kite with this hair it is so long. The wind would carry the kite up into the blue, and there would be the red of the kite against the blue of the blue, together with my hair black as ebony, floating there. That seems desirable. This motif, the long hair streaming from the high window, is a very ancient one I believe, found in many cultures, in various forms. Now I recapitulate it, for the astonishment of the vulgar and the refreshment of my venereal life.”
THE President looked out of his window. He was not very happy. “I worry about Bill, Hubert, Henry, Kevin, Edward, Clem, Dan and their lover, Snow White. I sense that all is not well with them. Now, looking out over this green lawn, and these fine rosebushes, and into the night and the yellow buildings, and the falling Dow-Jones index and the screams of the poor, I am concerned. I have many important things to worry about, but I worry about Bill and the boys too. Because I am the President. Finally. The President of the whole fucking country. And they are Americans, Bill, Hubert, Henry, Kevin, Edward, Clem, Dan and Snow White. They are Americans. My Americans.”
QUESTIONS:
1. Do you like the story so far? Yes ( ) No ( )
2. Does Snow White resemble the Snow White you remember? Yes ( ) No ( )
3. Have you unde
rstood, in reading to this point, that Paul is the prince-figure? Yes ( ) No ( )
4. That Jane is the wicked stepmother-figure? Yes ( ) No ( )
5. In the further development of the story, would you like more emotion ( ) or less emotion ( )?
6. Is there too much blague in the narration? ( ) Not enough blague? ( )
7. Do you feel that the creation of new modes of hysteria is a viable undertaking for the artist of today? Yes ( ) No ( )
8. Would you like a war? Yes ( ) No ( )
9. Has the work, for you, a metaphysical dimension? Yes ( ) No ( )
10. What is it (twenty-five words or less)?
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
11. Are the seven men, in your view, adequately characterized as individuals? Yes ( ) No ( )
12. Do you feel that the Authors Guild has been sufficiently vigorous in representing writers before the Congress in matters pertaining to copyright legislation? Yes ( ) No ( )
13. Holding in mind all works of fiction since the War, in all languages, how would you rate the present work, on a scale of one to ten, so far? (Please circle your answer)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
14. Do you stand up when you read? ( ) Lie down? ( ) Sit? ( )
15. In your opinion, should human beings have more shoulders? ( ) Two sets of shoulders? ( ) Three? ( )
PART TWO
PERHAPS we should not be sitting here tending the vats and washing the buildings and carrying the money to the vault once a week, like everybody else. Perhaps we should be doing something else entirely, with our lives. God knows what. We do what we do without thinking. One tends the vats and washes the buildings and carries the money to the vault and never stops for a moment to consider that the whole process may be despicable. Someone standing somewhere despising us. In the hot springs of Dax, a gouty thinker thinking, father forgive them. It was worse before. That is something that can safely be said. It was worse before we found Snow White wandering in the forest. Before we found Snow White wandering in the forest we lived lives stuffed with equanimity. There was equanimity for all. We washed the buildings, tended the vats, wended our way to the county cathouse once a week (heigh-ho). Like everybody else. We were simple bourgeois. We knew what to do. When we found Snow White wandering in the forest, hungry and distraught, we said: “Would you like something to eat?” Now we do not know what to do. Snow White has added a dimension of confusion and misery to our lives. Whereas once we were simple bourgeois who knew what to do, now we are complex bourgeois who are at a loss. We do not like this complexity. We circle it wearily, prodding it from time to time with a shopkeeper’s forefinger: What is it? Is it, perhaps, bad for business? Equanimity has leaked away. There was a moment, however, when equanimity was not the chief consideration. That moment in which we looked at Snow White and understood for the first time that we were fond of her. That was a moment.
Reaction to the hair: Two older men standing there observed Snow White’s hair black as ebony tumbling from the window. “Seems like some hair comin’ outa that winda there,” one said. “Yes it looks like hair to me,” his companion replied. “Seems like there oughta be somethin’ to be done about it.” “Yes, seems like it oughta be punished with a kiss or something.” “Well we’re too old for all that. You need a Paul or Paul-figure for that sort of activity. Probably Paul is even now standing in the wings, girding his pants for his entrance. So I guess I’ll go along to the hiring hall, where I hear there might be some work.” “I’ll go along with you,” the other man said, “because even though I ain’t a A.B., I am a B.A., and maybe in the dimness the one thing will be taken for the other, and we can ‘ship out’ together.” “I hate to go away and leave all that hair hanging there unmolested as it were,” the first man said, “but we have a duty to our families, and to the country’s merchant fleet, some vessels of which are now languishing at their berths doubtless, down at Pier 27 and Pier 32, for the lack o’ the likes of us. So farewell, hair! Fare thee well, and if forever, still forever, fare thee well!”
Reaction to the hair: Fred the rock-and-roll bandleader addressed his men. “Men, something happened to me today on Monument Street. I saw a wall of hair black as ebony falling from a high window. A girl, a look . . . Men, everything is changed. I am changed. I am no longer the Fred of former times. And I say that things must be different with you, too, because you are my men, and I am your leader. Now it is quite clear to me that you men wish to play the buffalo music of your forefathers rather than the rock-and-roll we have patented, amplified, advertised and been paid for. Now I want to say right now, that that’s all right with me, the buffalo music I mean. From this day forward, until the end of time, it will be nothing but buffalo music, in all the dromes of the world. I don’t care a rap, that’s how all right it is with me, this freedom that I freely grant you, that our gray hides have been hankering for. Now that, with a look, this mysterious dark beauty has changed my life, which needed to be changed, we are, in a strange way, opened to ourselves, and to buffalo music, until the red slag of the nooisphere descends to cover everything with the salty finality of love. So go forth now with your amplifiers and all, and revise your lives upward, as I have revised mine. Put the question mercilessly: Where have the buffalo gone?” Fred’s men exchanged silent looks. “It’s always like this,” the looks said, “in the spring. It’s always this way, when the green comes again. Our leader suffers a spiritual regeneration, from a bad man into a good man. It’s always some girl, who looks at him, at which he falls into her power absolutely. We are tired of having for a leader one who is nothing else than a damned fool. Let’s go down to the union hall, now, and write out the specifications for a grievance against him, under Section Four, the grievance section, of our union constitution. And we can think of other things, too, to add to the list of charges. That will be amusing, writing out the charges.”
Reaction to the hair: “Well, that is certainly a lot of hair hanging there,” Bill reflected. “And it seems to be hanging from our windows too. I mean, those windows where the hair is hanging are in our house, surely? Now who amongst us has that much hair, black as ebony? I am only pretending to ask myself this question. The distasteful answer is already known to me, as is the significance of this act, this hanging, as well as the sexual meaning of hair itself, on which Wurst has written. I don’t mean that he has written on the hair, but rather about it, from prehistory to the present time. There can be only one answer. It is Snow White. It is Snow White who has taken this step, the meaning of which is clear to all of us. All seven of us know what this means. It means that she is nothing else but a goddamn degenerate! is one way of looking at it, at this complex and difficult question. It means that the ‘not-with’ is experienced as more pressing, more real, than the ‘being-with.’ It means she seeks a new lover. Quelle tragédie! But the essential loneliness of the person must also be considered. Each of us is like a tiny single hair, hurled into the world among billions and billions of other hairs, of various colors and lengths. And if God does not exist, then we are in even graver shape than we had supposed. In that case, each of us is like a tiny little mote of pointlessness, whirling in the midst of a dreadful free even greater pointlessness, unless there is intelligent life on other planets, that is to say, life even more intelligent than us, life that has thought up some point for this great enterprise, life. That is possible. That is something we do not know, thank God. But in the meantime, here is the hair, with its multiple meanings. What am I to do about it?”
Reaction to the hair (flashback): Paul sat in his baff, under the falling water. More hot water fell into the baff. “I would retract the green sea, and the brown fish in it, and I would especially retract that long black hair hanging from that window, that I saw today on my way here, from the Unemployment Office. It has made me terribly nervous, that hair. It was beautiful, I admit it. Long black hair of such texture, fineness, is not easily come by. Hair
black as ebony! Yet it has made me terribly nervous. Teeth . . . piano lessons . . .”
EBONY
EQUANIMITY
ASTONISHMENT
TRIUMPH
VAT
DAX
BLAGUE
Lack of reaction to the hair: Dan sat down on a box, and pulled up more boxes for us, without forcing us to sit down on them, but just leaving them there, so that if we wanted to sit down on them, we could. “You know, Klipschorn was right I think when he spoke of the ‘blanketing’ effect of ordinary language, referring, as I recall, to the part that sort of, you know, ‘fills in’ between the other parts. That part, the ‘filling’ you might say, of which the expression ‘you might say’ is a good example, is to me the most interesting part, and of course it might also be called the ‘stuffing’ I suppose, and there is probably also, in addition, some other word that would do as well, to describe it, or maybe a number of them. But the quality this ‘stuffing’ has, that the other parts of verbality do not have, is two-parted, perhaps: (1) an ‘endless’ quality and (2) a ‘sludge’ quality. Of course that is possibly two qualities but I prefer to think of them as different aspects of a single quality, if you can think that way. The ‘endless’ aspect of ‘stuffing’ is that it goes on and on, in many different forms, and in fact our exchanges are in large measure composed of it, in larger measure even, perhaps, than they are composed of that which is not ‘stuffing.’ The ‘sludge’ quality is the heaviness that this ‘stuff’ has, similar to the heavier motor oils, a kind of downward pull but still fluid, if you follow me, and I can’t help thinking that this downwardness is valuable, although it’s hard to say just how, right at the moment. So, summing up, there is a relation between what I have been saying and what we’re doing here at the plant with these plastic buffalo humps. Now you’re probably familiar with the fact that the per-capita production of trash in this country is up from 2.75 pounds per day in 1920 to 4.5 pounds per day in 1965, the last year for which we have figures, and is increasing at the rate of about four percent a year. Now that rate will probably go up, because it’s been going up, and I hazard that we may very well soon reach a point where it’s 100 percent. Now at such a point, you will agree, the question turns from a question of disposing of this ‘trash’ to a question of appreciating its qualities, because, after all, it’s 100 percent, right? And there can no longer be any question of ‘disposing’ of it, because it’s all there is, and we will simply have to learn how to ‘dig’ it—that’s slang, but peculiarly appropriate here. So that’s why we’re in humps, right now, more really from a philosophical point of view than because we find them a great moneymaker. They are ‘trash,’ and what in fact could be more useless or trashlike? It’s that we want to be on the leading edge of this trash phenomenon, the everted sphere of the future, and that’s why we pay particular attention, too, to those aspects of language that may be seen as a model of the trash phenomenon. And it’s certainly been a pleasure showing you around the plant this afternoon, and meeting you, and talking to you about these things, which are really more important, I believe, than people tend to think. Would you like a cold Coke from the Coke machine now, before you go?”