Wilson

by David Mamet

B – Better for what? For the purposes of this, finally, meaningless bon mot? For the eye? For what?

  I wouldn’t kick her out of bed on a cold night to hear her go thump on the floor.C

  Let us follow the logic of the case:

  1 I wouldn’t kick her out of bed

  2 On a cold night

  3 To hear her go thump (on the floor)

  We must, I think, accept the third phrase toute entiere, as tempting as it may be to bifurcate the thing; for, finally, the appositeness of “to hear her go thump” can only be assured/assumed/accepted by a pre-facto understanding that “on the floor” is (as it must be) implied.D

  And, further, we must say that the third and final module is not “supererogatory,” which is, after all, the point of the whole ironic exercise, but vitiating, as it points out on the part of the writer two conflicting motives:

  1 To keep warm

  2 Percussion

  The two, in conjunction, violating the (observed? implied? indwelling?) rule of irony: the simply oxymoronic or hyperbolic opposition, where (a), in being denied, is, in fact, affirmed.

  By the light and direction of which rule we must see the strength of the construction weakened.E

  2 – Cf. Maritime Anthropophagy, or That’s Why They Call Him Captain Cook, publication of the HMS Aurora Society, Jubilee Issue: “We’re Here, and We’re Staying” (1987).

  C – Is it more sexual?

  D – The thump otherwise, attributable to the kick, or to a verbal or preverbal idiosyncrasy on the part of the victim.

  E – Consider: “better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick previously used to stir soup.”

  1 – We would assume the author here intended death, and that we had been granted a rather delightful example of the “Freudian slip,” were it not that the original (manuscript) title of the poem was “Placenta.”A

  A – Also the name of the author’s country house in Berks.*A1

  * Berkshire, England.

  Al – “What is the connection between Berks and Placenta?” asks the twenty-first century commentator (The Narrow Way: Responsa Literature of the Shires, Leeds: Halachic Press, 2111).

  See also Memories of the Berkshire Hunt, by “A Member.” Long attributed to G. W. B., or “Bootsie,” this is the slim volume which is “The Book in the Case” at Roycroft, the site of the (second) original Bootsie Archive. As scholarship has disproved any connection between the book and either the aims, the members, or the history of the Bootsie Clubs, its display suggests either a love of whimsy congealed into tradition, or an obduracy bordering on the deranged.

  1 – This is generally accounted the seventh mention of the Capsule. The numerologists of the time of “The Great Decampment” suggested that the primes 1 and 7 suggested the absence of the immediary primes 3 and 5.A

  A – Which, it has been further suggested,* equals 8, which is not a prime at all, and, so, what are we talking about?

  * Established.

  1 – Pique, boredom, rage, an inexplicable propensity to mischief … The list is endless.A

  A – The list, of course, is not endless, but, rather, screamingly finite, being limited to but four terms.

  The author, we believe, means to suggest that the list could be infinitely expanded. But even here he errs, and, perhaps, more egregiously; for in his primary assertion he makes a (granted, rather stunning) error of fact – a mathematical solecism, whilst the implications implicit in his second assertion suggest egoism, nay, suggest self-idolatry and, thus, a spiritual malaise so deep and necessarily destructive as to make an error in arithmetic positively charming in comparison: it is the difference between “Give me a lever and a place to stand” and “Give me a lever or I’ll blow your head off”. See Mott’s

  The difference is vast

  The difference is unbridgeable –

  She is so far above me.

  Oops! She’s coming down now –

  Here she comes …!

  (Quoted in Masterman, Polley and Winocur, Our Feral Young.)A1

  Al – Found on the Shelf in the Capsule, in position 3. This volume was long considered a page-holder.* This is, I believe, the first supportable application of its contents!.1A

  1A – Though much has, of course, been made, numerologically, of its position, cf. “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”, etc.

  * More importantly, more importantly.

  † Ha ha.

  * Between volumes 2 and 4.

  1 – Actually, gouache. (The difference between the two,A and its importance in this instance, having been exhausted in “Just Keep It Out of the Rain” (editors of Vogue), I will not touch upon it here. Suffice it to say that a too early exposure to the Lake Poets most surely and egregiously warped Greind’s aesthetic sense, and that this writer concurs with Reb Bartholomew in the opinion that “any of his [Greind’s] endeavors:

  A – The difference between watercolor and gouache is one of opacity – the latter generally being held to’ve been executed using a large concentration of gum arabic, or other fixative, thus rendering the medium (and, thus, the result)† closer, in resemblance, to oil painting than to watercolor.

  Semantically, the terms and their use are differentiated even (and, perhaps, especially) in the absence of this information, by the supposition (on the part of the speaker) that use of the latter (gouache) bespeaks a greater acquaintance with the question, and can, thus, be (even in ignorance), applied equally to an (optional) subgenre of Fine Arts containing both and perhaps all species of admixture of design media in which the pigment is diluted (and fixed) with water.

  This acceptance of (and, perhaps, truth to tell, preference for) inexactitude in dealing with those occupations not considered suitable for the gentry dates, of course, to the Victorian (AD 1836–1901) freak that the nobility should not know how to do “one goddamned thing.”A1

  Interesting aberration.

  What a funny time. What did they fancy? Stiff collars, whipping (as a diversion), horses and dogs. Funny old time.

  And how will they look back on us, our progeny, I wonder, “in our fog”?

  If we knew, should we alter our (to them, certainly) pathetic folly?

  It is too late. It is much too late. painting, drawing, verse, drama, or song remotely classifiable as ‘art’ rather than otherwise ‘smelt of wet dog’.”)B

  Al – Except deal with (a) horses and (b) dogs [emphasis in the original].

  QUESTION: Does the degree to which the symbolic partakes of the absolute vitiate its (symbolic) power?

  We must note that Goebbels said, “When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my Browning Automatic?” Did ya think he could eradicate the Arts with a 7–13 shot handgun?C

  His untimely demise ensures that we will never know. But, to return to the wider questions: How does a wet dog smell? And: Why should we find that offensive?

  Obviously, the more “doggy” will not: the British, Anglophiles, sheep-herders, lesbians, and many of the overtly sentimental among us may find the scent – and, indeed, anything pertaining to the canine – somewhere on the scale from inoffensive to pleasant to provocative (and, perhaps, to extend the scale, to irresistible, and, perhaps, intoxicating, et cetera, et cetera).D

  Well, hell, it’s just an animal, and what do we think we (humans)E are, anyway?

  Animals – one and all. Vicious, self-delusive beasts. Bad models, and bad company. So what if he read the Lake Poets? Must we then say that it’s “catching”?

  What is our concern with germs?

  Is* homosexuality, AIDS, flu, cancer, artistic sensibility “catchy”?

  If not, why, then, this constant preoccupation with the “smell of dogs” – I just don’t get it …

  B – As they were found in a trunk in the eaves of the tackroom, “The Copse”, Bromley, Herts, it’s not surprising.

  It has been suggested that Bartholomew means his indictment to be taken not as sarcasm, but as reportage. But could it not be both?

  C – It is
, perhaps, not inapposite at this point to refer to the riddle of Goebbels, and his brown hen, “automatic?”

  (“Whenever I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my brown hen, ‘automatic.’”)C2

  D – In the third edition, “et cetera.”

  E – Episcopalians? See Chuck Scott, That Darn Terrier, chapter 4.

  c2 – Evalyn Trudgely-Worth, She Lays Eggs for Gentlemen: George Goebbels and the Riddle of the Bootsie Clubs, and the inevitable She Lays Down for Gentlemen: The Life of Evalyn Trudgely-Worth by “A Colleague.”†

  * Hertfordshire, England.

  † Not necessarily.

  * Was.

  † “A Collie”???!!!

  1 – The “Trent” Saga: Trent’s Lost Case, in Anton de Meulemestière (“Scruffy”), Belgian National Archives, Neue Zeebrugge, Mars.

  1 – See also The Archbishop of Kent, “Tales of Old New York,” in Shadow Puppets and the Gamelan = Indonesian Days of Love and Mystery (Beneath the Yum Yum Tree). Notable for its complete absence of the “Missionary Position,”A this book is an otherwise unremarkable survey of the purported sexual practices of clergy in the employ of the British East India Company. Dull reading indeed (except for chapter 12!!!).

  A – And its dust jacket (1st edn), which, when held up to the light and rotated through 90 degrees,* showed two tigers copulating.

  * In either direction.

  * Unless he was somewhere warm.

  † Customary sensory input.

  * Cargo.

  1 – Perhaps there was no Toll Hound, and it lived, as did the Hippogriff, but in the credulous memory of the misled, reposing there as fact – inoperative and dormant till that time it would be called into life as misinformation.

  2 – From The Living Will Envy the Dead: A Viewer’s Guide to Watching the French Cinema:

  Well, what it would mean, if “everything was different”? What in the world would it mean? It would mean everything would be the same. ’N’t that the thing of it? I believe it is.

  3 – See Why Did the Toll Hound Dance? (pamphlet), op. cit.

  4 – Cf. Reculer pour mieux sauter (Fr.).

  1 – The ongoing battles of the “Learn-to-Read” Foundation to secure not-for-profit status (and, so, defend its claim to copyright) would cause us to far exceed the strictures of the (Emergency) “Self-Restraint-in-Publishing Guidelines” (Tri-Lateral CommissionTM). Our display of the copyright bug (©) here does not constitute an endorsement by this publication of any right or prerogative on the part of the “Learn-to-Read” Foundation or of any other group. It is for this reason that it appears hereA in inverted commas.

  2 – Whence the conflation of the Martian and the Canine? It has been suggested that one link is the astronumerologic.B It has been suggested that previous literary allusion indicates a more venerable – no, we will not stick at saying a primordial – link between the two.C

  A – As, of course, it does not in the original.

  B – Cf. “Let’s Get Sirius, or Rinty is a Dog Star”, Screenworld, October 1938.

  C – See Greind, Shakespeare and the Toll Hound, wherein we find:

  “My dogs, Tray, Blanch, and Circumstance” (King Lear), by which he may have slyly alluded to Mars, being the third planet.

  I will not insult the erudition of the reader by a reminder that Mars is, of course, the fourth planet, and that Greind was either an ignoramus or a fool, or was “trying to pull a fast one.”

  Nor shall I affront the reader’s sense of the likely and possible by including the ludicrous position of Greind’s apologists, to wit: that Shakespeare meant to imply not the “third planet from the Sun,” but the “third planet from Mercury.”

  Nor shall I waste the reader’s time with their endless, and fractious, and, finally, dull ratiocinations in support of their case.

  Nor shall I pull the reader’s ears, nor shave his belly, nor invite him out to tea, nor other caffeinated drinks. I “just don’t feel like it.”

  1 – Quoted here in the hope that it may do some good in this shithole of a world where everything is passing so quickly … so quickly … Acknowledgment(s): courtesy of The Cousins Club, anniversary issue,A “The Things You See When You’re Out Without Your Gun.”

  A – The one known copy of this issue, discovered 2111 in a shoebox in (then American) Samoa,A1 was itself, of course, defaced (embellished?) with an inkblot upon its cover. The shape of the inkblot arguably resembling, when inverted, the profile of Colonel House (see fig. #5) gave rise to the debate, “So What?”,A2 and, more notably, the poem, “Washrag”:

  Archie Butts on the Titanic With his britches down

  An him and Missus Strauss, jes’ goin’ to town.

  Down to the bottom to prepare the way

  For a good old-fashioned welcome for the

  Lus-a-Tain-Eye-Aye.

  Oh, the hush in the Forest of Argonne

  And Colonel House and Woody when the day was won … [etc.]

  Where = 160 (marchtime)

  Al – See Buster Brown: The Man and the Myth (M.P.P.), op. cit.

  A2 – “Question Time,” The Long House, Mon/Wed/Fri. If closed, simply drop keys in slot.

  * Phenomena.

  † The “Modern Novel” presumably.

  1 – The Flat Pass: A Life on the Run (Green Bay Publications, 2002).

  2 – Ryzybski wakes up.A

  A – A transcription of Ryzybski’s dream:

  I was on a tall building, But I did not want to jump off. I was waiting for someone. A girl, I think.

  She was late. No, I was late. I was late for a meeting with her. And so I thought: maybe this is why she isn’t here. And then I looked down, and I saw that the whole world was under water. Then I was a fish, or something. Maybe I was an oyster, or squid, or a cuttlefish. I don’t know. And then I was at work. But I’d forgotten to do something, or I’d left something back at home. My work, or something, or my homework, and then the door was stuck, and the sunlight I think it was was coming in. I tried to get up from my desk, but I couldn’t because I was stuck, and the harder I tried, the worse I felt, because I felt like it was my responsibility, or something, to get up and close the door, But, if it was closed, then I couldn’t see. Huh. But anyway …A1

  A1 – Here the Doctor re-enters. It can be seen on the film that Ryzybski recoils, attempting to secrete the paper behind his back. He smiles at the Doctor, to indicate a lack of aggressive intent. He slinks back toward the wall, holding the paper behind him.

  It was at this point an unexpected power outage caused not only darkness in the room, but the abrupt ending to the tape of the therapeutic encounter.

  When the lights come back the actress playing POLLY stands downstage arranging her wig. She looks up, as if caught in the act of primping.

  POLLY: Oh. Hello. They told me you’d be coming. It’s a treat to have friends stop by. (Pause.) It sure gets lonely out here sometimes. (She sighs.) What with Ma away. Golly, I miss ’er.

  (Sound off, as if a door opening. POLLY reacts.)

  Huh. That’d be Mr. Black.

  (She straightens her dress. Enter MR. BLACK, a well-set-up middle-aged fellow in a prosperous looking black cutaway.)

  MR BLACK: (Looking around) Hello, Polly. Where’s your ma?

  POLLY: Well, you know, Mr. Black. She’s down the village, lookin’ after Grama Wooster.

  (Pause.)

  MR BLACK: … then … we’re alone?

  POLLY: I spose so – course, there’s Rusty …

  (She gestures off. Sound as if a dog “woofing.”)

  MR BLACK: (Distracted, as if thinking) Yeeees … quite.

  Pony: (Putting her hand in her pocket, revealing a white envelope) I got the rent here, Mr. Black.

  MR BLACK: Mmm. (He turns to the audience.) Alone, her Ma in town, no living soul within five miles … (He turns back to POLLY.)

  POLLY: (Holding out the envelope) Here it is!

  MR BLACK: (Taking the envelope) Hmm. Yaaas. Come here, in the next roo
m, where the light is better …

  (He ushers her offstage, as if into the “next room.” And we hear a mournful, questioning “woofing,” as – the curtain falls.)

  SCENE TWO

  One million years later. Space.

  Nebula, asteroids, space “dust” and debris stream past the windshield of the Nebula Explorer.

  Sound, as if a dog “woofing.”

  1 – A man habitually leaves his car at a parking meter some distance from his place of business. The meter requires 25 cents an hour but will accept only one quarter at a time.

  The fine for letting the meter elapse is five dollars.

  The man finds it inconvenient to return to feed the meter each hour during the day; and he finds the anxiety of keeping the hourly deadline in his mind onerous.

  Should he overlook the hourly renewed deadline, he is almost assured to find, on returning to his car, a “ticket”

  Reason suggests to him the alternative of not feeding the meter at all, and accepting five dollars a day as a “fee” for parking.

  The man, however, frets that such behavior, although not “technically” criminal, is wrong; and that to trade rather constant (if low-level) anxiety about his parking space, for worry about his personal rectitude is a bad bargain.

  What should he do?

  THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER.

  2 – Do It (Bogside Press, 1996).

  3 – And once, in fact, secreted beneath her bodice, stopped a bullet intended for the Infanta Beatrice.

  1 – Quoted in Fifty Years a Tailor, or Elohanu and Schneider,A by “A Member of the Profession” (Morris K. Trotz), in which we also find:

  Big hands and big feet, Ladies, big hands and big feet, and you know what that means …*

  and later,

  … or try this: you take the foot part of the sock, the foot part, mind, and wrap it around the fist. If it meets nicely, as it’s wrapped around the fist, then it’ll fit your foot.

  And here’s another one:

  Take the pants – this one’s for you, gents – and close the button at the waist, now wrap ’em round your neck, cause that’s your waist size.