On the fourth day of the trial, the young author took the stand. No one could deny that when he opened his mouth the dead author’s thoughts fell out, expressed in the dead author’s unmistakable tone and syntax, premised on his concepts and categories. But was this a case of conceptual theft or conceptual abuse? Had a vigorous young man stolen the work of a vulnerable dead author, as the estate maintained, or had a vigorous dead author pressed himself upon a vulnerable young man, as his father contended?
The case ultimately hinged on whether there was some pith, some essence of the young man underneath all that extrinsic thought and foreign insight. If yes, then the pith, the essence, could be held responsible for plagiarism. If no, if the dead author’s thinking went all the way down, so to speak, if there was no person there to do the impersonating, then the young man, who did not exist, could hardly be considered anything but a victim. So the lawyer was put in the uncomfortable position of arguing that his son, his erstwhile pride and joy, was now nothing more than a vehicle for the dead author’s thoughts, while the estate had to argue that the young man existed in a more substantive fashion than his own father gave him credit for. The young man monitored all this with the dead author’s wry detachment and the dead author’s death-haunted fatalism.
The jury is expected to deliver a verdict later today.
68: LEGACY
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For most of his life, Nathan was referred to as “the son of the famous atonal composer.” Even after three well-regarded jazz albums of his own, none of them atonal, Nathan was still referred to as the “the son of the famous atonal composer.” No matter what I accomplish in my life, Nathan told friends, I will always be referred to as “the son of the famous atonal composer.” Today, however, he is almost universally referred to as “that jazz trumpeter who took out his penis on an airplane.”
69: CRUSHED
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A medical student, the son of a famous obesity scientist and himself a budding obesity scientist, began a relationship about three years ago with an obese paralegal. This huge paralegal had no redeeming qualities, according to the medical student’s friends. When asked why he was dating her, he would simply say that he liked the sensation of being crushed by the colossal paralegal.
Everyone suspected the medical student of somehow rebelling against his father, the legendary obesity scientist, the very first to call obesity an epidemic, but the medical student assured everyone that, no, he just enjoyed the sensation of being physically crushed by this genuinely enormous and not especially friendly paralegal.
Finally he proposed to her. His father at first refused to attend the wedding, but at the last second he had a change of heart and sped to the synagogue. Halfway there he was struck by a garbage truck and killed. On hearing the news, the medical student, breathing what to more than one guest seemed like a sigh of relief, stopped the wedding. His friends and family assumed he would break off the engagement and settle down with a woman of normal dimensions. But as of now the medical student is still engaged to the paralegal, and she is apparently bigger than ever.
70: THE OTTOMAN HISTORIAN’S HEAD
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Nearing the end of his long life, the Ottoman historian began hinting to his two sons, in ways subtle and not so subtle, that he wished to be cryogenically frozen upon his death, and resurrected whenever the needed technology became available. By the very end the historian managed to steer every single conversation toward his own cryogenic freezing and subsequent resurrection. His sons were taken aback. For years he had spoken about the fullness and richness of his life, the importance of dying gracefully, and so on. But now the Ottoman historian’s eyes glimmered with fear and he often cried, apropos of nothing, “Freeze me!”
I doubt any two sons have ever agreed on the question of their father’s cryogenic freezing. These two were no exception. The older brother was vaguely pro-freezing, the younger brother stridently anti-freezing. He, the younger, stressed the exorbitant cost of the procedure, the great absurdity and indignity of it, the unlikelihood that it would even succeed. He implied that their father — who during this very conversation sat on a couch in the other room yelling, “Put me in a special freezer!”—was not in his right mind. The older brother countered that neither of them could grasp the unfathomable terror of imminent nonexistence. The eleventh-hour urge to be frozen was probably completely rational, he said, something that would one day seize them, as well.
At an impasse, they brought in their father and asked him point-blank why he wanted to be frozen. The old man was quiet for a moment and then said that he had not finished thinking about the Ottoman Empire.
Neither of the sons, needless to say, was happy with this answer, and they decided to bury their father rather than freeze him. Still, to comfort him in his remaining days, they got an estimate for how much it would cost to keep his head frozen for ten thousand years, and even forged and signed a fake contract to this effect. At the same time, they secretly paid cash for a burial plot, which was obviously cheaper, though surprisingly not that much cheaper. I hear the Ottoman historian’s last words were: See you soon!
71: THE LABOR HISTORIAN’S HEAD
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That is not the only cryogenic preservation story I know involving a historian and his son, oddly enough. What is it about historians, their sons, and the promises and possibilities of cryogenics? In any case, this other, rather more personal story, which involves a historian not of the Ottomans but of American labor movements, has a happier ending, sort of.
This historian’s son, whom I met during my horrible year in Los Angeles, offered me a beer once in exchange for notes on his screenplay. I accepted, not for the beer but in hopes of making a friend. He sat me on his I think rotting sofa, brought me a glass of Diet Coke — turns out he didn’t even have any beer — and a copy of his script, and shut himself in his bedroom. (He said he didn’t want to “overhear” my reactions.)
The script was bad. I read slowly, painstakingly seeking out details to praise while formulating at the same time a “general reaction” that I immediately realized would have to be completely mendacious, and after ten pages I took a break under the pretense of getting more ice for my soda. I strolled into the kitchen and came upon two large freezers sitting side by side. Some heavy-duty leather work gloves hung from a hook attached by magnet to one of them. All in all, a strange setup.