ERNEST: I never said my way was easy. I said that Man was not meant for defeat, however many individuals may be defeated. I said that the effort to be conscious enough and brave enough was admirable, whatever the consequences.
FRANK: Consciousness? Bravery? Consciousness is only aware of its own suffering in this blind existence, and bravery is only a gesture against the inevitable end. A stupid gesture, since the cowards live longer, and if they're cowardly enough, they make all the comfortable decisions and have all the security possible in a Death Universe like this.
ERNEST: I deny none of that, and I have shown the f cruelty more nakedly than any of your generation. I still say it is admirable to be brave and take big risks for the things you value. When everything mammalian and mechanical tells you to run, and you stand and don't run, you learn what Man can be.
And so on. Marvin was obsessed with something he called the Dignity of Man. He was not at all amused by ecological relativists who told him that an ant or a swine might equally believe in the Dignity of Ant or the Dignity of Swine. Men were not ants or swine, he would say coldly; and he would classify the heckler as probably brain-warped by the extraterrestrial Amazons.
In truth, like most philosophers, Marvin never wrote explicitly about the one factor that really determined and explained everything in his philosophy. Just as Marx never mentioned his carbuncles in Das Kapital, and Freud didn't publish anything about his own sexual hang-ups, Marvin Gardens never wrote a word anywhere about the source and motive of all his theorizing. This was his penis. It was four inches long at best, and it had given him a defeatist psychology about things in general, and women in particular, against which he had struggled mightily to build his philosophy of Transcendental Male Courage. The women he classified as extraterrestrials frightened him only a little bit more than the ordinary women he classified as terrestrials.
Sometimes Marvin wrote dialogues between Pavlov's Dog and Schrodinger's Cat, instead of between Frank and Ernest. These were usually quite short and almost like Zen stories:
DOG: I've got a million proofs that we're not free.
CAT: I've got one proof that we are.
DOG: What's that?
CAT: Who asks what's that?
64 AMOEBAS
The belief or unconscious conviction that all propositions are of the subject-predicate form-in other words, that every fact consists in some thing having some quality-has rendered most philosophers incapable of giving any account of the world of science.
–bertrand russell, Our Knowledge of the External World
DECEMBER 23, 1983:
Natalie Drest was amazed as the conversation swung in a new quantum direction. "You," she gasped, "you dig Krazy Cat too?"
"Indeed, my dear," Blake Williams beamed. "I may be the most devout student of Herriman's work anywhere in the civilized world."
He didn't tell her (yet) that he regarded Krazy as a symbol of Schrodinger's Cat in the great wave-mechanics puzzle.
Even Blake Williams occasionally worried that he was talking over his audience's head.
But Joe Malik seeks purchase for an elbow on the back of the couch, noticing the statue of the Virgin of Guada-lupe in the corner alcove, her foot pressed down on the head of the Serpent. He was wondering what the hell Santaria was, amazed as always by the blind skill of female fingers, Carol guiding him into her without looking down actually lying with her eyes closed as she reveled no doubt in strictly private fantasy (Am I Paul Newman? Woody Alien? That damned third ex-husband? First or second ex-husband? Some damned high school football hero ten years ago?), slipping in smoothly, interlocking, beginning to merge; to meld; to float on the great ocean of sensation, to find the window.
No wife no whores no mustache (Carol Christmas was thinking) a real weirdo he is but Arab that's nice a Sultan we're in the harem it's my first time again, no a movie, yes a movie the camera moving in technicians all over the place watching me watching eyes watching me fuck the first really high art porn movie deeper ah good deeper first porn flick to win the Academy Award no more Off-Off-Broadway for me watching me watching me fuck millions of men watching me in theaters like that Pussycat we passed jerking their cocks fantasizing me fantasizing and coming don't think of Ronnie don't think don't think Mongoloid the doctor said and I said I never balled a Chinaman didn't understand at first why me why of all the millions of births on the planet that day why me don't think about it don't get sad again just go with it the camera the eye of the camera moving in on my face to get my orgasm and millions of men watching in theaters spurt after spurt damned cruel unjust murderous universe my poor Ronnie coming spurt spurt spurt Academy Award coming now me coming no wife? no whores? no mustache?
And, "I love you," Joe Malik gasped, really believing it in that warm moment slowly coming back from the reverberation of her orgasm and beginning to gallop toward his own climax as she muttered "darling oh darling" Paul Newman? Ex-Husbands? Me? Me? ME??? Me?
But Natalie Drest, fifty blocks north, was still objecting: "And I thought you were just some high-brow…" "I am, my dear, a high-brow. And a low-brow. And I suppose, alas, even a middle-brow. A single ego, as our friend Malik was pointing out at the party tonight, is a ridiculously limiting perspective on the universe." Williams smiled.
"You mean like you've got three minds and one is a Krazy Kat fan and another is trying to study modern physics from an anthropological point of view? What does the third mind do?"
"Ah, my dear, that is the Great Work, opening the third I…"
What they forgot to kill, said Joe,
Went on to organize
"What I like is the way Offisa Pup gets embarrassed about being a dog, you know? That's symbolism."
Went on to organize
"Offisa Pup, my dear, is the superego…"
Went on to organize
PETER PAN! CHILDHOOD! INNOCENCE!
In a fine old mansion on Lake Shore Drive, Markoff Chancy toddled down the hall leading to the Master Bedroom. He was dressed in a Teddy Snow Crop suit and felt like a perfect damned fool.
Oh, well, the money is good, he told himself. Then he pushed the door open and entered the first rich person's bedroom he had ever seen.
There was, as he had been told, only one light, behind the bed, playing upward on the ceiling and shedding a soft glow by reflection. The bed was made up, covered with an expensive-looking heirloom spread. Beside it, lit up nicely by the indirect light, was the table bearing a single can of Snow Crop orange juice, as he had expected.
And on the bed, nude, eyes tightly closed and pretending to sleep, was his hostess.
Chancy caught his breath. Judging from what he was expected to do, he had been prepared to see a crazy old frump; instead, to his intense delight, it was obvious that the lady was still fairly young, quite well preserved, and definitely stacked. Crazy she might be (but how could he judge? Maybe it was normal for rich people to act out any fantasy that struck them.), but unappetizing she definitely was not.
Although she was the first live naked woman he had ever seen, she was no less strikingly golden and rounded than, say, a Pussycat Pussyette of the Month. A head of gloriously fiery red hair was spread on the pillow, and below it her supposedly sleeping face was lovely in its peaceful anticipation. His eyes swept over her rounded shoulders, the two snowy-white breasts rising and falling with her respiration, the cute nipples that stood in surprisingly large areolas upon those breasts, the soft pillow of her belly, and, best of all, the thick swatch of reddish fur that hid her sex. And she had legs like a chorus girl.