Wild Ducks Flying Backward

by Tom Robbins

  The quips of the condemned prisoner or dying patient tower dramatically above, say, sallies on TV sitcoms by reason of their gloriously inappropriate refusal, even at life’s most acute moment, to surrender to despair. The man who jokes in the executioner’s face can be destroyed but never defeated.

  When a venerable Zen master, upon hearing a sudden burst of squirrel chatter outside his window, sat up in his deathbed and proclaimed, “That’s what it was all about!”, his last words surpassed Wilde’s in playful significance, constituting as they did a koan of sorts, an enigmatic invitation to rethink the meaning of existence. Anecdotes such as this one remind the nimble-minded that there’s often a thin line between the comic and the cosmic, and that on that frontier can be found the doorway to psychic rebirth.

  Ancient Egyptians believed that when a person died, the gods immediately placed his or her heart in one pan of a set of scales. In the other pan was a feather. If there was imbalance, if the heart of the deceased weighed more than the feather, he or she was denied admittance to the afterworld. Only the lighthearted were deemed advanced enough to merit immortality.

  Now, in a culture such as ours, where the tyranny of the dull mind holds sway, we can expect our intelligentsia to write off Egyptian heart-weighing as quaint superstition, to dismiss squirrel-chatter illumination as flaky Asian guru woo woo. Fine. But what about the Euro-American Trickster tradition, what about Coyote and Raven and Loki and Hermes and the community-sanctioned blasphemies of the clown princes of Saturnalia? For that matter, what about Dada, Duchamp, and the ’pataphysics of Alfred Jarry? What about Gargantua and Finnegans Wake, John Cage and Erik Satie, Gurdjieff and Robert Anton Wilson, Frank Zappa and Antoni Gaudí? What about Carlos Castaneda, Picasso, and the alchemists of Prague? Allen Ginsberg and R. D. Laing, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Lewis Carroll, Alexander Calder and Italo Calvino, Henry Miller, Pippi Longstocking, Andrei Codrescu, Ishmael Reed, Alan Rudolph, Mark Twain, and the electric Kool-Aid acid pranksters? What about the sly tongue-in-cheek subversions of Nietzsche (yes, Nietzsche!), and what about Shakespeare, for God’s sake, the mega-bard in whose plays, tragedies included, three thousand puns, some of them real groaners, have been verifiably cataloged?

  Obviously, while crazy wisdom may have been better appreciated in Asia, nuggets of meaningful playfulness have long twinkled here and there in the heavy iron crown of western tradition. (It was a Spanish poet, Juan Ramón Jiménez, who advised, “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”) The question is, when will we be hip enough (thank you, Fred) to realize that these sparklers aren’t mere rhinestones or baubles of paste? When will our literati—in many cases an erudite, superbly talented lot— evolve to the degree that they accord buoyancy and mirth a dime’s worth of the respect they bestow so lavishly on gravity and misfortune?

  Norman N. Holland asked a similar question in Laughing: A Psychology of Humor, concluding that comedy is deemed inferior to tragedy primarily because of the social prevalence of narcissistic pathology. In other words, people who are too self-important to laugh at their own frequently ridiculous behavior have a vested interest in gravity because it supports their illusions of grandiosity. According to Professor Donald Kuspit, many people are unable to function without such illusions.

  “Capitalism,” wrote Kuspit, “encourages the pathologically grandiose self because it encourages the conspicuous consumption of possessions which symbolize one’s grandiosity.” I would add that rigid, unquestioning allegiance to a particular religious or political affiliation is in much the same way also symptomatic of disease.

  Ironically, it’s this same malignant narcissism, revealing itself through whining, arrogance, avarice, pique, anxiety, severity, defensive cynicism, and aggressive ambition, that is keeping the vainglorious out of their paradise. Among our egocentric sad-sacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation. Taken out on others, depression becomes a weapon. But for those willing to reduce and permeate their ego, to laugh—or meow—it into submission, heaven on earth is a distinct psychological possibility.

  III

  It’s good to bear the preceding in mind when trying to comprehend the indignation with which the East Coast establishment greets work that dares to be both funny and deadly serious in the same breath. The left-handed path runs along terrain upon which the bowtiesattvas find it difficult to tread. Their maps are inaccurate and they have the wrong shoes. So, hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to the house of woe they go.

  Nobody requires a research fellowship to ascertain that most of the critically lauded fiction of our time concentrates its focus on cancer, divorce, rape, racism, schizophrenia, murder, abandonment, addiction, and abuse. Those things, unfortunately, are rampant in our society and ought to be examined in fiction. Yet, to trot them out in book after book, on page after page, without the transformative magic of humor and imagination—let alone a glimmer of higher consciousness—succeeds only in impeding the advancement of literature and human understanding alike.

  Down in Latin America, they also write about bad marriages and ill health (as well as the kind of governmental brutality of which we in the U.S. so far have had only a taste). The big difference, though, is that even when surveying the gritty and mundane aspects of daily life, Latin novelists invoke the dream realm, the spirit realm, the mythic realm, the realm of nature, the inanimate world, and the psychological underworld. In acknowledging that social realism is but one layer of a many-layered cake, in threading the inexplicable and the goofy into their naturalistic narratives, the so-called magic realists not only weave a more expansive, inclusive tapestry but leave the reader with a feverish exaltation rather than the deadening weariness that all too often accompanies the completion of even the most splendidly crafted of our books.

  Can we really take pride in a literature whose cumulative effect is to send the reader to the bridge with “Good Night, Irene” on his lips?

  Freud said that “wit is the denial of suffering.” As I interpret it, he wasn’t implying that the witty among us deny the existence of suffering—all of us suffer to one degree or another—but, rather, that armed with a playful attitude, a comic sensibility, we can deny suffering dominion over our lives, we can refrain from buying shares in the company. Funnel that defiant humor onto the page, add a bracing shot of Zen awareness, and hey, pretty soon life has some justification for imitating art.

  Don’t misunderstand me: a novel is no more supposed to be a guidebook to universal happiness than a self-indulgent journal of the writer’s personal pain. And everyone will agree, I think, that crime is a more fascinating subject than lawful behavior, that dysfunction is more interesting than stability, that a messy divorce is ever so much more titillating than a placid marriage. Without conflict, both fiction and life can be a bore. Should that, however, prohibit the serious author from exploring and even extolling the world’s pleasures, wonders, mysteries, and delights?

  (Maybe all this neurotic, cynical, crybaby fiction is nothing more than the old classroom dictum, “Write what you know,” coming back to haunt us like a chalky ghost. If what you know best is angst, your education commands you not to waste a lot of time trying to create robust characters or describe conditions on the sunny side of the street.)

  In any case, the notion that inspired play (even when audacious, offensive, or obscene) enhances rather than diminishes intellectual rigor and spiritual fulfillment; the notion that in the eyes of the gods the tight-lipped hero and the wet-cheeked victim are frequently inferior to the red-nosed clown, such notions are destined to be a hard sell to those who have E. M. Forster on their bedside table and a clump of dried narcissus up their ass. Not to worry. As long as words and ideas exist, there will be a few misfits who will cavort with them in a spirit of approfondement—if I may borrow that marvelous French word that translates roughly as “playing easy in the deep”—and i
n so doing they will occasionally bring to realization Kafka’s belief that “a novel should be an ax for the frozen seas around us.”

  A Tibetan-caliber playfulness may not represent, I’m willing to concede, the only ice ax in the literary toolshed. Should there exist alternatives as available, as effective, as potent, nimble, and refreshing, then by all means hone them and bring them down to the floe. Until I’ve seen them at work, however, I’ll stand by my contention that when it comes to writing, a fusion of prankish Asian wisdom, extra-dimensional Latin magic, and two-fisted North American poetic pizzazz (as exotic as that concept might seem to some) could be our best hope for clearing passageways through our heart-numbing, soul-shrinking, spirit-smothering oceans of frost. We have a gifted, conscientious literati. Wouldn’t it be the cat’s meow to have an enlightened, exhilarating one, as well?

  Harper’s, 2004

  Till Lunch Do Us Part

  From an author’s perspective, writing about sex is risky, because if you write well enough, evocatively enough, vividly enough, you make the reader want to put the book aside and go get laid. Writing about food is dangerous for much the same reason, except, of course, that you chance driving your audience to table rather than to bed.

  Because it takes more resolve to suddenly flee a theater than to abandon a novel, the filmmaker is largely immune from the danger of over-stimulating captive appetites, although the aftereffect of certain movies can be quite interesting. Tampopo, for example, may have been the most conflicting film ever produced for the reason that at its conclusion, at least ninety percent of couples in attendance were surely in an absolute quandary over which to run and do first: feed or fuck.

  In my private life, I’ve endeavored to award a fair, unbiased share of attention to each of the sensual pleasures. In my novels, however, it’s a different matter. Risky or not, I’ve simply been unable to resist the temptation to write about sex, but except for riffs on vegetable stir fry and banana Popsicles in Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, and a well-deserved ode to mayonnaise in Villa Incognito (not exactly fare destined to activate the saliva glands of your typical gourmet), I’ve been willing to leave culinary fiction in the garlic-scented hands of such masters of dinner-plate drama as Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane. If the pages of my novels are ever damp, it’s likely from a substance other than drool.

  When, a few years ago, an editor informed me that she was compiling an anthology in which selected celebrities would talk about their most favorite food, I declined to contribute—and not only because I find it impossible to think of myself as a “celebrity” without laughing. I must confess, however, that I seriously considered the topic for a day or two; and recently, after a pal posed the question (he must have been stoned, the wicked fellow), “If you were on death row, what would you request for your last meal?”, I gave the subject further attention. I’m thinking about it still…

  Well, the best thing I ever put in my mouth—no, let me rephrase that—the best food item I ever put in my mouth was the foie gras mousse with brown morel sauce that came my lucky way during an alarmingly extravagant lunch at L’Ambroisie, a perennial contender for the heavyweight restaurant championship of Paris. In second place, I’d rank the lamb’s tongue vinaigrette at Babbo in New York.

  Let me say right here that after having occasionally viewed with suspicion if not disgust those rubbery, grayish-pink, papillae-puckered puds that lie like beached dolphin fetuses in the refrigerated cases of certain butcher shops, I long ago vowed that my lips would never admit entrance to any lingual organ that was not securely anchored inside the oral cavity of a living human female. Yes, but those were beef tongues on display in the shops, and the lamb’s tongue vinaigrette was chef Mario Batali’s signature dish. How could I be taken seriously by Mario, that jumbo jinn of gastronomy, if I refused to at least sample his favored creation? Now, I’m here to report that in color and texture, lamb’s tongue resembles cow’s tongue little more than it resembles wagon tongue. Tastewise, the dish proved to be heaven without an asterisk, and I’ve been wowed by it each of the half-dozen times I’ve dined at Babbo. But I digress.

  Writing about asparagus, as I did briefly in Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, was a breeze because I could expound poetically yet accurately on the shape and color of the vegetable, as well as its singularly bloomless place in the otherwise florid lily family. I wisely refrained from so much as mentioning the taste of asparagus, because it is virtually impossible to talk about the flavor of one thing without comparing it to the flavor of something else—which is why we’re all doomed to hear the cliché “Try it, it tastes like chicken” a thousand times before we die. And with complex dishes such as the two cited above, any lengthy discussion of form and hue would be irrelevant.

  So, I’ve never written about lamb’s tongue vinaigrette (layered with mushrooms and topped with a poached egg) or foie gras mousse in brown morel sauce, nor do I intend to do so; and as for requesting one or both of those delicacies for my final repast, let’s be serious: the prison warden does not exist who is sympathetic— let alone sophisticated—enough to send off to Paris or Manhattan for lamb’s tongue vinaigrette or foie gras mousse in brown morel sauce in order that some condemned rat fink criminal might be catapulted into the Beyond with a purring palate and an ecstatic smile.

  No problem. It’s no problem because were I planning my death-row menu, neither of the aforementioned haute-cuisine items, as unforgettably toothsome as I know them to be, would sit at the top of my wish list, and they’d be excluded even if money and logistics were no object, and even if I didn’t feel guilty about the poor goose and the lamb. The truth is, the food I’d actually prefer for my terminal treat is something more downhome and ordinary—although as last meals go, not entirely traditional. (According to surveys, the exit entrée most often requested by condemned convicts is fried shrimp, which isn’t necessarily a terrible choice, except that any shrimp fry available within 30 miles of a maximum-security prison, with the exception of seaside San Quentin, is likely to consist of cocoons of greasy batter swaddling thin, pale, bland crustaceans so long frozen they haven’t been near an ocean since Jacques Cousteau was in high school.)

  Now I’m an Appalachian boy who grew up on grits and turnip greens, but who, spurred by irrepressible curiosity and a Cancerian stomach rather than any ambitious yearning for upward mobility, later developed an appreciation of fine foods. Certain fare from my childhood still appeals to me, however, and I assure you nostalgia has little or nothing to do with it. Most honest epicures will concede that there exist relatively simple dishes that throughout their lives have banged the oral gong with such proficiency, that have provided such unfailingly consistent pleasure and satisfaction, that, in the end (the literal end), those beloved dishes must be picked ahead of seductive offerings from the celebrated kitchens of Bernard Pacaud or Mario Batali. And that is precisely why I would direct the warden’s flunky to fetch to my cell the following items:

  A. Salt and pepper.

  B. A fresh, squishy loaf of Wonder Bread. (It’s rare that I remember a major corporation in my prayers, but lately I’ve been calling on God to assist the Continental Baking Company in emerging from Chapter 11, worried as I am that that cheery wrapper, with its ebullient red, yellow, and blue balloons, might disappear forever from grocery shelves. Sure, great little bakeries abound [think European earth mother], producing breads chewy, aromatic, dense, and nutritious, but when it comes to the construction of particular sandwiches—tuna-and-kimchee, for example, or crispy Spam—Wonder Bread [think trailer park cheerleader] is indispensable. Who cares if it builds strong bodies twelve ways, eighteen ways, or no way at all? As a support platform—so pliable, so absorbent, so uncomplicated, so sensual, so ready—for our most soulful spreads and fillings, Wonder is a natural unnatural wonder.)

  C. Two ripe red tomatoes. (Depending on the season and the location of my hypothetical incarceration, this could be a problem. It was with great expectations that I recently attended
the Palmetto Tomato Festival near Bradenton, Florida, only to discover that every single tomato on display there was green enough to be mistaken for the Incredible Hulk’s left testicle. It’s become a national taboo to allow tomatoes to ripen in the fields, and when you see a sign in your supermarket advertising “vine ripe tomatoes,” you know you’re looking at a lie so blatant it would make the Pentagon blush. To be worthy of its name, a tomato must mature slowly and fully during a very hot, very humid summer. Moreover, as with wine grapes and cigar tobacco, the soil must be chemically perfect. Thanks to global warming, temperatures in the Pacific Northwest are higher these Augusts, yet local tomatoes, even when permitted to ripen in the garden, continue to taste like wet Kleenex; and those grown in hothouses bear the same relationship to an outdoor tomato from Hanover County, Virginia, or truck-farm New Jersey that canned sardines bear to freshly caught salmon. I can only hope that, upon learning of my imminent execution, Good Samaritans in Colorado will be moved to ship me a plump love apple from their backyard patch—and should they happen to be friendly with Hunter S. Thompson, perhaps persuade him to inject it with a little something beforehand. Hunter will know just what I mean, and, trust me, it won’t affect the taste of the tomato.)*1

  D. A knife. (Okay, they probably aren’t going to let a knife into my death cell: I might accidentally nick myself or else threaten the priest who’s come to console me with the spiritual equivalent of “vine ripe tomato” ads. I’ll have to cajole a jailer into doing the slicing in his office.)

  E. A jar of Best Foods mayonnaise. (Whether it was invented by the personal chef of Duc de Richelieu, or by a gaggle of nymphs entertaining hungry satyrs in an alpine glade, mayonnaise’s origins are definitely French, and for that I bow thrice each and every morning in the direction of the Eiffel Tower. My refrigerator contains at present two jars of mayo purchased in France. It also holds jars, squeeze bottles, or tubes of mayonnaise from Spain, Mexico, Germany, Norway, and Poland. There are eight varieties from Japan, including cheese-flavored, corn-flavored, wasabi-flavored, and, the best, Kewpie brand regular. The Japanese have become so smitten with the Western condiment—its texture as silky as a kimono, its tang as understated as the tang of Zen—that today they have a word for a mayonnaise junkie: mayora. Order a Domino’s pizza in urban Nippon and it will automatically arrive with a mayonnaise topping. You gotta love it! Maybe I should start bowing toward the Tokyo Tower. That notwithstanding, the greatest mayonnaise in the world happens to be… America’s own Best Foods [or Hellmann’s, as it’s called east of the Rockies], a claim repeatedly verified in the blind tastings that mayora friends and I stage in my kitchen every July. There’s nothing the least chauvinistic about it, either: we’re capable of pinning a blue ribbon on Al Qaeda mayonnaise if it could cut the mustard. The bottom line is, any halfway evolved human being is going to demand that Best Foods be served at his or her last supper, and those insipid prisoners who’d just as soon eat Miracle Whip probably are deserving of their fate. Pardon refused!)