Fall 2013 Issue - The Harvard Advocate

The November 1951 issue of The Harvard Advocate addressed a single theme: William Faulkner. Reviews, essays, and excerpts from dissertations crowded the now-yellowed pages of the magazine, tackling everything from the author’s novels to his childhood. Two names in particular jump out from the list of contributors: Albert Camus and Thomas Mann. The Advocate editors were eager to milk this literary windfall, placing their names in bold print on the cover of the issue, and noting their “gracious acknowledgment” to contributors including Camus and Mann “for making this issue possible.” In the Contributors’ Notes, the two are described as follows:

I hide in the family woods and

wait for it.

Brother and Sister,

Ask and Embla come



to the edge.

I was born from driftwood.

I made myself

a thrush—



the song is smoke over the fire now.

Aspens are charred limbs.

They are abstract.

Brother and Sister set this



I hold the veiny leaves

falling blackened to the dirt.

Impress them in my palm they come apart.

The trees contort



from heat, they

groan—the branches scribble furiously and

I am separated

in the burning. Plumes float over.



Now I recover form.

I walk the limbs and am forever forgetting

what was my name

Life or zest or Leaf or Lifprasir







what was my detail-soaked skin—

Not this

the convulsion didn’t save the other

half of things.



What was here

before they came through the unveiled sex of

the sky and left fire

for small things?



Ask and Embla,

Brother and Sister made

a perfect forest.

It is perfect. I remember my limb. 

**Escape** 



 



 



1.



It cannot be said—



 



to see it utterly absorbed



into the private blues of her clean eyes—



to feel it discharged, flushed away, by the ‘me’



she keeps hidden inside



the bathroom of her ‘I’—



 



Is it impossible to know her?—



Can I only purge myself of this immemorial ‘it’—



this phantom limb, this imperishable guilt,



this astonishing confinement, this self—



*my *self?—



 



No, I must speak—



if only to have a word of mine



plunge into the center of her will



and be forgotten; I am homesick,



 



homesick for myself.



 



 



2.



Our pale hidden hands, longing, guiltily



gesturing toward a greater cognizance of pain—



as if to misinterpret the matrix



of God’s suicidal compulsions



 



were to see a disk of vindictive love



fall from the sky and incinerate



the last punishable traces of *our *will.



Have I no tongue, no fingers, no eyes—



 



only ears with which to suffer the abuse



of infinite black doors



swinging open & slamming shut



in the flattened palace of the sky.



 



Black time rolls his negative dice through space,



as bells toll the extinction of the wild.



 



 



3.



Ricocheting like a siren in a block of ice,



your excitement settles, a kaleidoscopic veil,



over the soft warbling of her intent.



 



It is not, you suppose, unlike the hysterical dawn



retrieving the stars, one by one,



from the palm of your mind.



 



The injustice, the torn signature



of the absolute, drawing you shut—



She tiptoes, like a priest, through your secrecy—



 



Accused parrots



quivering in the black branches of her eye—



a ring of hazel witnesses poised to speak—



 



 



4.



A labyrinth of me’s



to confuse the course of you and I—



 



I do not dare, I do not speak—



pacing anxiously, like a faithful dog,



the shores of your invitation—



 



I do not dare, I do not do,



gawking at the world as it bends itself into a ball—



thinking whether a moment’s indecision



were better spent sheltered and clean,



alone inside the cage of my me.



 



No, it cannot be said—



 



to see it exiled, apprehended



by the petty judges of your foreign smile—



 



doused again and again in the oils of unreason—



and sentenced to the darkening waters



of lonely remembering.



 



No, I will not speak, and have



my every yes shown to be a matryoshka doll of noes.



 



 



5.



Sickened by the thought



of world masked by, and masking, world—



of some implacable creativity



miming destruction, a straitjacket of images



hurrying to restrict the mad twirling



of twisted limbs—



 



dysthymic jaguars or retarded fish



carried like sleeping children



to the door of insomnia—



 



Taking his face in his hands,



he thinks, Yes!, there is no greater joy



than that of never seeing myself,



of never feeling contained within



what, when barred without,



hangs the world in its greedy frame.



 



 



6.



The crippled girl walks when father shuts his eyes.



I watch with shame, and wait for her to fall.



You will tire of yourself, and still ask for more time.



 



I have been lazy and afraid, hiding from my life



in a nightmare of my self; letting thought,



like a crippled girl, walk only when I shut my eyes.



 



I have sat like a dog, and watched the empty streets—



the nobodies and nothings that time will turn to fear.



I will tire of myself, and still ask for more time.



 



Should turns pale, and could grows thin, and you cannot—



cannot forget and cannot begin, needing time, time to worry, and time to wonder—



until, crippled in your will, you walk with eyes that time will soon shut.



 



Have I courage to speak, reason to try?—



when she may laugh, or pity my crooked heart,



tiring of me, while I beg for more time.



 



An elbow on the table, the riptide of hysterical dread



sweeping past the stove—voices** **rise when faces fall away.



The crippled girl walks, and father shuts his eyes.



You are tired of yourself, still you ask for more time.



 



 



7.



Time, like God, hangs itself in the scarlet sky.



Without reason, thought descends the black rope,



 



Enclosing the world, for a time, in a mind.



The mind, a child, scrupulously imagines



 



That it is free, and arranges the night



In an austere array. Then, the mind



 



Forgets—the cell doors swing open.



It is as though some pitiless form



 



Slowly, like a fist, unclasps itself.



A procession of images



 



Exits the mind, the poor, inside-out mind.



Strangers with downcast eyes move briskly



 



Through the rain. The cold, homeless world.



Pain persists where thought from thought lies barred.



 



 



8.



The evening whistles, walks with his hunters through the sky,



my eye sixteen thousand bicycles riding blue out of the sky.



The mad acrobat bows blindly to the crowd, whimpering,



his marionette legs dividing at the knees. A tantruming child



sin-spinning away his merry-go-round memory.



 



The evening blinks, wakes drugged and naked in the morning,



his hunters eight thousand blue bicycles riding black out of my eye.



Missing mothers and fantasized fathers,



exchanging fits of laugher and interpretations of dreams,



spill like violet ink into stenciled minds.



 



Stricken, the mad acrobat peers disconsolately at the abandoned stage.



His lies four thousand ruby eyes depleting the sky.



Meek mothers and volatile fathers,



clipping the wings of zeal, secretly auction



stained glass yesterdays and papier-mâché muses.



 



Morning wears a face, silver and magnetic, mimes an afternoon,



her juggling clubs one thousand jack-in-the-box fears in my smile.



Broken bells fill the world—the rocking-horse homes,



Persian rugs, and flickering trick candles—with incorrect sound



and incorrect silence, herding wayward feelings into gravedug thoughts.



 



The mad acrobat asks again and again, is it me?, is it me?,



the homeless animal that emptied its eyes of pitiless resolve



to give itself a name and call its thoughts thoughts; the skittish wolves



chasing worry and neglect into indignant dogs; a red-nosed crisis full of laughs.



Tomorrow stretches and folds itself into today. Figure eight heroes dissolve into zeroes.



 



 



9.



It cannot be said—



 



to see it grow dim in a chamber of mistrust—



to feel it unpardonable, torn from the page



of an unutterable truth.



An unspeakably private hole in my center.



 



My tongue nails itself



to the amber cross in her sunset eyes—



 



And I see that it is you,



not her, to whom I address my silence—



 



Words harpooned in the fabric of what I see,



a daisy chain of voices enclosing what I am able to feel,



a two-faced mistress nude with the mind,



turning me against myself—



 



Dividing time into time



enslaved and time ignored—



 



as when an insult to the mind



sickens our love into a defensive coil—



a black hole of mercy—



 



Speaking, I appear,



lighting an old chaos,



from which we may never escape.



 

Let me begin. I am 



a Grinder. Bones are what I grind. 



  



I come from a long line. 



  



And I haven’t spoken recently 



to a child, but 



I remember 



  



childhood well – 



  



remember half cocked, livid, nowhere to climb. 



I mean to come on strong; 



  



maybe we can get acquainted here. 



  



You can’t know a man until you know his profession. 



Will you get to know me, boy? Will you 



  



walk with me while I explain 



how to grind an Englishman? 



  



In my work 



  



I don’t use many metal tools 



save a knife to ease the husking; 



  



instead I push my hands 



  



at what-was-flesh, unrigging it, 



at huddled masses of unincorporated cells 



and through fluids. 



  



Where at first they are dead bodies, tangent to my table, 



  



when I’m halfway through they carpet it 



and run apart through its grooves. 



  



And then the grinding of the bare bones. 



And then the baking of the white meal, 



  



alchemy! born 



  



into bones into 



bread I come (from a long line) from my workshop 



  



stained 



  



with no remorse Jack 



I am tired though 



and a Grinder is what I am; 



  



when I go to church my body 



is loose lost fumbling in the blind pew. 



  



Still you don’t know that my mother asked for no husband, 



  



and raised me up in this tall thin house; 



suckled me in the nursery down the hall, you must have passed it. 



  



And I chose to walk the church with a ruddy girl, 



  



purple pink and dust her skin - 



but you’ve met my wife. You clung to her 



breasts like her own babe, though I think your thoughts were less than filial. 



  



But you will never know her, never 



  



work in her as sunrise works in night, 



as my grindstone in bone. 



  



Jack, Jack. 



  



I still remember - it’s not easy to forget - 



my mother’s motto, passed to me: 



  



fee, fie, foe – 



  



meaning first 



the holding of land 



second the cursing of lovers 



  



and third, one on whom you’ll have to set your sight, 



  



someday, Jack, who will 



want you gone. 

    Someone once told me that the Shibuya Scramble intersection is organized chaos, a piece of Tokyo at its unrehearsed best. In the sidewalks, crowds of black wind and hair wait. The red traffic-light man waits too. Vehicles cross and rush, and still. Green-blue lights flicker on in every crossroad. Then comes pedestrian paradise.



    Strip the Shibuya Scramble intersection of all activity, and there are two major roads, forming a giant black X. Draw a square tightly around the X, creating four white isosceles triangles. Welcome to Shibuya. These four white triangles represent the stores that lead fashion for Tokyo. Crossing the triangles, from one store to the next, requires a strip of white zebra lines: a white diamond square upon the middle of the black X—or, in other words, a run-of-the mill pedestrian intersection.



    But this is Japan. 250,000 hurried people cross this intersection per day, all in pursuit of lost time. It makes little sense for them to follow the outline of a square when they can cut straight across. Instead, when the green lights flicker on, 2,000 people cross in 35 seconds, moving directly or diagonally. The scrambled crossway system routinely stops all traffic. This is the mechanics of the Shibuya Scramble: This is pedestrian paradise.









    Apparently, the system itself can be traced to a Denver-based traffic engineer with slight Methodist leanings, and his curious daughter who jay-walked often on her way to school. Henry Barnes hated the normal traffic procedures for intersections. He thought pedestrians needed voodoo charms or four-leaf clovers to escape accidents. He also did not believe in bothering God with problems he could fix on his own, as he states in his autobiography, The Man with the Red and Green Eyes. So he reintroduced an earlier concept: the scrambled traffic crossing.



    Barnes’s first trial run for the Scramble was in September 1951. He slept for an hour and a half in a car parked near the trial intersection—a restless sleep. He had to succeed, or else it was an unpaid trip back to his rural Colorado hometown. The mayor and the city council of Denver had long supported motorists’ votes over those of pedestrians. Barnes was determined to tilt the odds in favor of the two-legged.



    Yet when the trial began, and metal cars locked into position, framing the intersection on all four sides, there were very loud honks. The street froze. Pedestrians didn’t know what to do and scuttled at the curb. Both man and motor stalled, and crowds began to form. A few people hurried across the streets the normal way, straight across, from one white triangle of the X to the other, armed with newspapers and extended arms. Barnes held his breath, along with the newspapermen, whose pens were poised to report the sad failure of the traffic engineer.



    But the adventurous ladies of Denver started to experiment with their newfound freedom. They crossed diagonally, forwards, backwards, dashing back and forth. One of them got so carried away that she thumbed her nose joyfully at motorists as she finished her sixth diagonal crossing. By the end of the day, according to City Hall reporter John Buchanan, people were so happy with the new intersection that they were dancing in the streets. Cars stopped yelling, and the wait for traffic was reduced, thanks to the new system now baptized the “Barnes Dance.”



    50 years and 5,000 miles from Denver, people dance with unrehearsed precision in the Shibuya Scramble. They are masters of utmost control. Pedestrians religiously adhere to traffic laws, and there are no mad dashes into traffic. The Japanese have eliminated the search for lost time.



    In Shibuya, the pedestrian scramble—the Barnes Dance—works, as 2,000 people converge on the small crossing at once. Without large volumes of people, the Scramble actually has negative effects. It wastes time for motorists, and studies show that it increases the level of accidents, because drivers in a hurry use pedestrian time to fly across seemingly deserted streets. Without a crowd, there is no use for the Scramble. “The Barnes Dance was a waltz,” writes Barnes in his memoir. Until forty years ago, however, its Japanese equivalent was largely a waltz without dancers, today’s crowds.



 



    In 1968, a young man with a poet’s eyes but a businessman’s spine walked up and down the suburban valley of Shibuya. Shibuya, until the early 1970s, was a prosperous part of suburbia, a railway terminal on the way to the more popular Shinjuku or Ginza. Many referred to Shibuya as “Tokyu Town” due to the famous Tokyu department store, which catered to wealthy, middle-aged patrons shopping for high-end products and electronics.



    This young man’s name was Seiji Tsutsumi, and he was the head of Seibu Department Stores. In five years, this scion of one of Japan’s wealthiest families would transform “Tokyu Town” into “Seibu City,” molding this nondescript, distinctly middle-aged neighborhood into a glittering temple of fashion and youth.  



    Seiji Tsutsumi wasn’t your typical Japanese business magnate. He was terrible at golf, for one, and he wrote poems until 3 a.m. each night. All he owned was a chain of department stores, a tiny fraction of the all-encompassing Tsutsumi business empire. But what he lacked in a traditional business background—he had been a student revolutionary and Communist in his youth—he made up for by reading the pulse of Japan’s future. Tsutsumi understood that the post-war generation of savers and purse-counters had now become parents, and that their children—an influx of baby boomers with no memory of war—were starting to spend. And he managed to diagnose their collective cry for individuality, which served as the source for his next project: a PARCO in Shibuya.



    PARCO was a boutique-style department store that emphasized individuality for a generation that, according to Lesley Downer’s biography The Brothers, had “everything they could possibly want.” Instead of electronics Tsutsumi sold fashion, and instead of sturdy home goods he sold an image, one that, though fleeting, defined personalities and advocated a certain lifestyle. Tsutsumi became patron to the avant-garde, the experimenters, the youth who would detract from tradition to become artists and writers willing to be “unaccepted.” He capitalized on the sense of alienation and the loss of identity pervasive among many who felt themselves to be no more than human cogs in what was becoming the banking and industrial capital of the world. He advocated taste and glamour and an aesthetic that could be found in, say, French fashions and cuisine.



    By the time he was done, Shibuya typified modernity for Tokyo. He filled the white isosceles with glamour instead of suburbia. By the 1980s, instead of middle-aged matrons, it was well-dressed, chic Japanese men in ponytails who flooded the Shibuya Scramble, accompanied by thin girls dressed in modish black. A brilliant advertisement agent for PARCO, the young Kiyomi Kuragami, built the image of PARCO itself. In one of her most iconic commercials, Oscar winner Faye Dunaway, her black lace veil covering a face of sophisticated perfection, spends a long, sensuous minute cracking, unpeeling, and eating a hard-boiled egg. Her dry voice-over pronounces, “This is a film... for PARCO.” In another commercial, a French ac-tress, Dominique Sanda, smokes, glitter coating half of her face. In a voice-over, a male narrator states, “She is a mother. She is an actress. She is Dominique Sanda. PARCO.” Both are close-ups. Both women are alone.



 



    A profound sense of alienation pervades Seiji Tsutsumi’s literary work as well. Perhaps it’s be-cause of his constant battle of identity between poet and businessman. Perhaps it was the student within him who had rallied for communism, grappling with his present position as the head of a burgeoning capitalist empire. His prose is powerful, gripping, and bleak. The brutal, confessional style that defined the postmodern Japanese literary novel is apparent in many of his autobiographical works of fiction. In an excerpt from a poem entitled “Letters from America,” he describes his loneliness:



 



   * People line up who have forgotten they*



*        were once created by people and*



*        flow like magnetic sands on a magnet.*



*    There, on the continent that was*



*        proclaimed to be new, love is no*



*        more than a crudely fashioned*



*        machine.*



*    I, like you, am alone and drink salt in the*



*        dawn.*



*

*



    In the Shibuya Scramble, people continue to line up in crowds, flowing like streams of sand on a magnet. It is controlled chaos, restlessness expressed through consumer goods. The customers Tsutsumi attracted in pursuit of self-recognition coalesce, and combine, in the crowd.



    In 2008, a truck ignored a red light and ran over five pedestrians in a crossing in Akihabara, between Chuo Way and Aoyama Crossing. People at the scene thought it was a traffic accident, and rushed over to help. Then Tomohiro Kato, the driver, got out of his truck. He approached the men and women aiding the victims and took out a combat knife.



    He was dressed in a black t-shirt and off-white trousers. After years of perfect grades and filial obedience, Kato stabbed 14 people and ran away into the crowd, screaming. A young police officer grasping a gun told him to drop his knife, or he would shoot. In a land where gun homicide deaths are in the single digits, the knife dropped before the gun.



    The Akihabara Massacre took place on a pedestrian paradise: a scramble. The police cancelled the scramble for weeks. To prevent imitators, they said, blaming the system instead of the individual. When webs are so thickly intertwined, it is hard to pick apart each of their lines.



    In the midst of a crowd, Kato felt his impermanence. He had outlined his plan in minute detail on an internet forum before carrying it out: He said he considered himself lower than trash, because at least trash gets recycled. “If it had been me, I would have smashed into the Shibuya Scramble,” someone commented on another online forum the day of the massacre. “Too many people,” replied Anonymous. Two other users streamed videos from the scene of the crime. Cars. Ambulances. Fire engines. Green tarp to cover the bodies. For ‘Lyphard,’ one of the U-streamers, it was all very exciting, as for the thousands who watched online.



    A minor novelist immediately churned out a parallel story. A character types on an Internet forum that he is going to drive into the Shibuya Scramble, because he wants to kill to gain attention. The book title states, in black letters on thick, white paper: It Didn’t Matter Whom. Kato later testified that he had written on the forum not to gain attention, but because he wanted the police to stop him. The book received disappointing reviews.









    A red man blinks at all crossing points, warning pedestrians to get off the streets, as motor traffic starts to flow again. Thirty-five seconds later, he turns green. Every ninety seconds, it all repeats.

    In J.D. Salinger’s *Catcher in the Rye*, Manhattan serves as a catalyst for Holden Caulfield’s maturation. In Sylvia Plath’s *The Bell Jar*, literary ambition joins forces with New York in the development (and descent) of Esther Greenwood. In Marjane Satrapi’s *Persepolis*, assimilation into a Western culture independent from her parents’ Iran is essential to Marji’s self-realization.



    According to this rubric, Tao Lin’s *Taipei* and Adelle Waldman’s* Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.* ought to be exemplary specimens of the bildungsroman. New York, immigrant parents, youth, and a literary career: These books have all the bearings of the transformative tale. And yet they are the antibildungsroman, their narratives fundamentally static and their protagonists allergic to growth. The sense of stasis that they develop, moreover, is essential to the project of each. In *Love Affairs* Waldman voices young literary Nate’s stubbornly prejudiced intuitions, unchanged despite his love affairs and politically correct education. In *Taipei*, Tao Lin narrates Paul’s wandering and placeless existence, unchanged despite changing circumstances and perception-altering substances. No enlightenments, revelations, or matured under-standings are on offer here. The point is to characterize the way things stay the same.



 



*



 



    *Love Affairs of Nathaniel P*. begins with an en-counter: Nate sees Juliet on the street and starts to make small talk. Juliet responds,* Really?*, astonished that Nate considers his nonchalant inquiries appropriate given the occasion (what the occasion is, we don’t yet know). Before walking away, she calls him an asshole.



 



    This encounter, it turns out, was the first time Juliet and Nate had seen each other since Juliet’s abortion, after his condom broke. In the pages following his confrontation with Juliet, we fall into the clutches of Nate’s consciousness, which is churning in self-defense, Nate convincing him-self and the reader that he is “a product of a post-feminist, 1980s childhood and politically correct, 1990s college education” and that he has there-fore committed no moral misdeed.



    This opening scene sets up the central conflict of the novel: Is Nate a misogynistic asshole, or isn’t he? The book’s omniscient narrator presents a Nate who is rational, thoughtful, and critical, but reasonably so. He passes judgment on writers and friends and makes generalizations about women that have just enough of a ring of truth to pass, perhaps, as justifiable. When his girlfriend Hannah remarks that she doesn’t care whether or not people who wouldn’t appreciate *Lolita* read it anyway, “it flashed through Nate’s mind that Hannah’s position wasn’t very feminine. She sounded more like an aesthete than an educator, and women, in his experience, tended by disposition to be educators. He felt intuitively that she was paraphrasing someone else...and that the someone else was a man.”



    Nate entertains the possibility that he’s a misogynist. He admittedly considers women to be uninterested in rational thought and favors “inherently masculine” writing. Yet whenever he’s caught articulating his gender-based prejudices, either aloud or to himself, he does so unquestioningly and almost confidently, at times nearly convincing the reader, too, of their harmlessness. In one instance, Nate labels a woman’s intellect as just another aspect of her feminine allure: “Atheism and Marxism and other such antiestablishment, intellectual isms are sexy in an attractive woman.” The feminist reader is inclined to shudder at the suggestion that men who read Marx can be Marxist, while women who read Marx can only be sexy, as Nate reinserts “antiestablishment” women into the very heterosexual, patriarchal establishment they are presumably rebel-ling against. Yet another reader, less quick to find offense, may accept Nate’s sexual attractions as just another rounding characteristic; don’t we all incorporate our intellectual prejudices into our sexual preferences?



    Like Nate’s lovers—Hannah, Greer, and Elise—Adelle Waldman is steeped in the Brooklyn literary scene. Nate is clearly constructed out of bits and pieces of men that she has confronted in her own career and love affairs. Nate, therefore, is uncomfortably familiar and familiarly complicated. Because the narrator cleaves to Nate’s perspective throughout, any assessment of him falls to the reader. This process is aided by the introduction of Hannah, a sympathetic character whose intellect and independence threaten Nate’s preconceptions. Hannah stands her own in conversations with his male friends and with his best female friend Aurit, whom Nate deems the height of female intelligence. She challenges Nate’s confidence in his unwavering intellectual superiority. When Nate finds himself complaining to Hannah about an article pitch that was rejected, he worries: “Between the two of them, he had always played the role of the more successful writer. He had been the one to champion *her* work, to build *her* up. For their roles to be reversed, even temporarily, would only add to this sense of indignity.”



    A couple of weeks after Nate and Hannah decide their relationship has failed, for reasons neither of them can articulate (but that clearly have something to do with Hannah’s threatening intellect), Hannah writes Nate an email. In it, she expresses her anger and calls Nate out on his transparent misogyny: “Why do you think it was that we had a good time when we hung out with Jason and Peter? It was because they were nice to me—they acted like they actually wanted to hear what I had to say, which you barely did at that point.”



    While plenty of writing is described in *Love Affairs*, it is always seen through Nate’s eyes and related in his sharp critical terms. Hannah’s angry email is the only text that appears on the page naked and unfiltered, lending the reader a perspective independent of Nate. The perception enabled by this distance is revelatory. When Nate finishes reading the email that the reader, too, has read and presumably judged to be reasonable, he feels like doing a number of things: 1) throwing his computer against the wall; 2) running hard for ten miles; 3) reading a “very bracing, very austere, very *masculine* philosopher” like Schopenhauer; and 4) not getting back together with Hannah. His failure to respond to her email then provokes Hannah to send another, declaring Nate “a bigger asshole than I ever imagined.” The chiasmus between Hannah’s writing and Nate’s response grants the reader perspective, and the author a new voice. Through Hannah’s emails, Waldman briefly exits her protagonist’s consciousness to articulate the reasonable thoughts of the antagonized woman, and nudge the reader along in her assessment of Nate.



    The *Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.* is a modern novel of manners. As its 19th- century predecessors, it details the social mores of a time and depicts a character striving to adapt to them while searching for a mate. Like the Bennet sisters at a high-society ball, Nate strains to contain his behavior within a taught decorum (in his case, to suppress misogynistic impulses within a politically correct society). In Waldman’s novel, as in all examples of the genre, drama derives from relationships, and complexity from conversation. Yet unlike *Pride and Prejudice*, the quintessential bildungsroman, *The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.* is a roman that investigates not a character’s bildung, but rather his resistance thereto. In skillfully conveying Nate’s consciousness, Wald-man examines the stubborn persistence of subtle prejudice in a politically correct society, without exiting the confines of the very mind whose prejudice she reveals.



 



*



 



*    The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.* and *Taipei* might share, in some rendition, a nearly identical book-jacket description: Young man, in his mid-to-late twenties, with immigrant parents and Brooklyn literary connections, jaunts about the city, falls in and out of love, and remains essentially unchanged by it all. Yet despite taking place in the same city and the same time, the novels seem centuries apart. While Waldman echoes the conventions and concerns of the likes of Jane Austen, Tao Lin’s prose is more like that of Ernest Hemingway, or rather that of @ernest-hemingway, were the author to be alive, drugged, and an avid tweeter.



    The opening sentences of *Taipei *do not introduce a moral conflict, as in *Love Affairs*, but rather a set of syntactical features. These features lay bare the novel’s style of narration and the difficulty it presents to a compassionate reading experience:



 



     It began raining a little from a hazy, cloud-less-seeming sky as Paul, 26, and Michelle, 21, walked toward Chelsea to attend     a magazine-release party in an art gallery. Paul had resigned to not speaking and was beginning to feel more like he was           ‘moving through the universe’ than ‘walking on a sidewalk.’ 



 



    Whenever a character is introduced, throughout the novel, her name is followed by an age. Hair color, height, and skin tone are often left out, but age is always included. This strictly numerical characterization—a narrative tic that flies in the face of the grade-school dictum, show, *don’t tell*—is journalistic and, like much of Tao Lin’s authorial style, sourced from the internet. As on any online profile, “26” and “21” serve to flatten Paul and Michelle, reducing them to the single characteristic that is most easily transcribed.



    Yet another stylistic refrain appears in the second sentence: Phrases are packaged as quotations —“moving through the universe,” “walking on a sidewalk”—even though they are unspoken. The punctuation suggests that so many expressions in Paul’s world (in our world, as Tao Lin sees it) have become stock phrases or clichés that the author must put scare quotes around them to publicly acknowledge their uncouthness. If the removal of quotation marks from spoken text intimately unites narrator and character, Tao Lin’s insertion of quotations marks around unspoken text (we might call it “Solitary Direct Discourse”) does the opposite. Even the narrator is barred from the genuine expression of the characters whose thoughts it narrates.



    As *Taipei *progresses, it becomes increasingly evident that Lin’s cold syntactical habits—the flattening of characters into quantifiable traits, the division of language into quoted phrases—mirror those of the novel’s protagonist. Paul, it’s announced loud and clear, is not at home in the world around him: “He was becoming isolated and unexplainable as one of those mysterious phenomena, contained within informational boxes, in picture-heavy books on natural history.” And: “He felt like a digression that had forgotten from what it digressed.” *Dispersed, indiscernible, dissembling, isolated, unexplainable, forgotten, digressed*: This is the vocabulary that describes Paul’s sense of himself in the world.



    Paul’s relationship to himself is likewise isolated, dispersed, and digressed. He accesses his thoughts indirectly, as though looking at himself through a screen. “Paul became aware of himself analyzing when he should’ve left”; Paul “wanted to ask if this already happened, but didn’t know who to ask, then realized he wanted to ask him-self”; “Paul realized he was...rushing ahead in an unconscious, misguided effort to get away from where he was: inside himself.” Paul analyzes himself analyzing; perceives himself wanting to ask himself something; realizes his own desire to exit himself. He is anywhere but in his own body, and yet, as in the above quotations, he is anywhere but there as well.



 



    Paul’s gratingly persistent “meta”-recognition might be labeled an effect of (or an affect of) the internet, which is aggressively featured in *Taipei* in the form of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, StatCounter, Gawker, Wikipedia, Tumblr, and Gmail. One could argue that Tao Lin depicts, in the character of Paul, the existential consequences of existing simultaneously in person and online. Facebook, Tumblr, and MySpace allow Paul to observe himself, summarized in a profile and framed in photos, from a removed seat of observation. This mode of self-identification has punctured the boundary between the virtual and the real, leaving Lin’s protagonist with a third-person experience of self and with fantasies of “being able to click on his trajectory to access his private experience.” The internet, then, may be the only place where Paul feels at home: Stretched out on his yoga mat with his Mac-Book on his bent knees (a position he assumes throughout the novel) is just where Paul belongs.



    *Taipei* often feels icy and ungenerous. The narrator is barred from characters; language is barred from expression; Paul is barred from the world and himself; and the reader is left barred from them all.



    After splitting up with Michelle at the magazine release party in Chelsea, Paul goes to Taiwan to visit his parents. When he comes back, he goes to a Mexican restaurant, a book reading, and a BBQ-themed party, where he meets Laura, with whom he goes to another Mexican restaurant. A few days later, he and Laura take an Ambien and kiss each other lazily on her bed, until Paul looks at his phone, sees that two hours have gone by, and exclaims, “Jesus.”



    Plot moves forward at an aggressively monotone pace. Chapters are broken into sections, and almost every section begins with a description of time or place: “In early June,” “At Legion, twenty minutes later,” “The next night,” “Around 1:30 a.m,” “On UCLA’s campus the next night,” “In his room, around 2:30 a.m.” “Around three hours later.” At each of these locations, Paul takes drugs and makes obtuse observations about aspects of his character or the nature of memory or time. He often buys groceries, frequently pineapple chunks, and eats to console himself: While marching on chronologically, the plot circles back on itself in cycles of consumption. Even when Paul makes grand revelatory perceptions, his character never develops, the drug’s temporarily altering effect always remaining just that. 



    About one hundred pages in, feeling lonelier, emptier, and more restless by the sentence, this particular reader was about to close the book, scorn Tao Lin, deactivate my Facebook, and go hug a friend, when *Taipei* took a surprising turn. Erin, 24, whose blog Paul has followed, begins to visit Paul more frequently, to share his drugs and attend his book readings. Erin, like Paul, is understated and wandering; but in each other’s company, their icy expression becomes dryly humorous banter: 



 



    “No, Beau,” said Erin.



    “Nobo?” said Paul grinning.



    “Beau. He said ‘mons pubis.’ Ew.”



    “What does that mean?”



    “It’s a part of the body,” said Erin with a worried expression.



 



    Along with complementing each other’s cursory manner, Paul and Erin together develop a more authentic and expressive conversational mode. Paul confesses, “There was a period of like three days when I was really obsessed with you. But you weren’t responding to my email and I kind of lost the obsessive nature,” to which Erin responds, “Whoa.”



    The couple’s increasing intimacy climaxes in their spontaneous decision to get married and visit Paul’s parents in Taipei, a place associated, from the outset, with a potential for spiritual transformation. In the first chapter, Paul imagines himself moving to Taipei mid-life and projecting “the movie of his uninterrupted imagination” onto the “shifting mass of everyone else,” thereby accessing a “second, itinerant consciousness.”



    The hypothetical power of the honeymoon is quickly deflated: After several days in the foreign country, Paul and Erin confess to one another that they haven’t “noticed anyone” and had for-gotten they weren’t in America. Instead of inhabiting their new surroundings, Paul and Erin spend their time drugged, holding a MacBook in front of their faces, and filming themselves in the local McDonald’s. In some sense, they do realize Paul’s ambition to create a “movie of uninterrupted imagination,” but the outcome is hardly enlightenment. The specific landscape of Taipei serves as a mere backdrop to a static set of places that are not reliant on location: the World Wide Web and a global fast food chain. When Paul and Erin return from their numbed Asian vacation, then, they recommence the rhythm they’d established before they’d left and see each other less often. The novel largely returns to its early frigid-ity and monotonous pace.



    Throughout *Taipei*, Paul remains untransformed and stubbornly seeks out facilitators of stasis—globally uniform restaurants, the quotidian consumption of drugs and pineapple. Yet at the end of the novel, believing (wrongly) that he’s overdosed on mushrooms, Paul declares distractedly, “I think I’m dead.” His false experience of death purportedly serves not as a conclusion, but as a source of revelation and regeneration. When he exits his deathbed, Paul feels running water as though for the first time, “cold, grasping, meticulous, aware.” And the book finishes with Paul saying “that he felt ‘grateful to be alive.’”



    This supposedly revelatory ending, unearned by the nonevent that precedes it, identifies the novel not as a bildungsroman but rather a “bildungsromockery.” To conclude with such a facile and uncharacteristic revelation is to gesture at the genre of the bildungsroman, only to indicate what this novel is not. To read it as a member of the genre, as many critics have, is to mistake its very meaning and project. Early on, Paul acknowledges that “he didn’t want to die—less because he had an urge to live than because dying, like knitting or backgammon, seemed irrelevant to his life.” For Paul to conclude by adulating life, then, simply means that he’s grateful to have overcome a passing moment of irrelevance. To continue living, means continuing to do just what he’s done throughout the course of the novel; the epilogue, were there to be one, would chug along in the same static rhythm that defined Paul’s life before and then with Erin, and before, in, and after Taipei. This is not to say that Lin’s novel is devoid of a direction or project, but rather that it indulges in a recognizable modernity, in which perceptions are altered by the hour and statuses are updated accordingly, in which “transformation” is quotidian and not necessarily transformative.

*For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty; like a butterfly it seeks colour and basks in warmth. On a winter’s night like this, when nature has been at pains to polish and preen herself, it brings back the prettiest trophies, breaks off little lumps of emerald and coral as if the whole earth were made of precious stone.* –Virginia Woolf, “Street Hauntings ”



 



The bike ride from Harvard to the East Campus of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center takes approximately half an hour from the Square. To ride a bike is to be in perpetual motion. The moment we hop on, the ground beneath us evens out, and the world transforms into an infinite landscape, no longer sectioned off into red lights, pedestrian crossways, or emergency stops. Rather, it is a continuous flux of scenery that flows together as images do in daydreams.



 



The bike ride to lab takes us from one world to another. One has to navigate past the chaos of the Square, past the hordes of pedestrians standing on the brink of the curb, past the taxi stands in front of the Harvard Coop, away from the traffic jams caused by construction, over the steep incline of JFK Bridge, across the intersection, onto the main bike path, and then finally along the Charles River for the next three miles.



 



On some days, when the journey starts at rush hour, this first part becomes particularly difficult, as there are twice as many pedestrians, twice as many cars, and twice as many ambulances rushing forward to overload one’s senses. The bike path, which stays mostly empty, is suddenly full of joggers and bikers also making their evening travels. With the onslaught of winter, the evenings are now shrouded in darkness, and the headlights of the cars travelling in the opposite direction are so blinding that they conceal the shadows of people in the distance.



 



On a good day, though, the ride there is utter beauty. On a good day, the weather is about sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and the trees are all shades of warm, popping out against the azure light of the sky. There are joggers, but they all smile slightly as they huff by, and the smiles somehow enter our expressions too. Or perhaps the smile we see in others is just a reflection of our own. The path twists and turns, widens and shrinks. On one part it becomes so narrow that we’re constantly afraid of hitting the pedals of other bikes when we cross, but it never happens—the disaster is averted, and we utter a small prayer of gratitude.



 



Every time we go, in the fall, the trees change color, first from a deep green to yellow, then to a brighter and brighter orange, until becoming a vivid tunnel that engulfs us. The next time we enter this part of the bike path, the leaves have started to fall off, and their crimson-blood color spots the black pavement. The wind feels inviting and crisp on our skin. We bring a jacket but don’t wear it. The weather reminds us of Halloween all those years ago, when the weather was just as brisk and reached through the thin costume fabric of our disguise.



 



Remember that time we went apple picking, and you were wearing that blue navy blazer with the gold buttons along with that worn black corset, and you were pleased because it was the second time you’d been in an orchard since you picked strawberries and peaches when you were ten years old?



 



Yes, yes, I do remember. And that year I was a ninja for Halloween.



 



To the left, on the side facing the river, couples, families, and those dreamy walkers, wrapped in their silence, admire the river. We can’t help but look on too, at the skyline, at the bell towers in the distance, at the occasional solitary rower. We once tried to scull, remember? And you got that swim card but never ended up going? 



 



Yes, yes I do remember. And when I took that swim test I remembered how I love to swim.



 



The turn is coming soon, but right before it is the bridge. It is made entirely of wooden planks. Often people will stop here to lean over the railings and look at the view of Boston, to the right, and of Harvard, to the left. It is always quiet here—the water beneath the bridge is calm. This wooden bridge passes under a larger, square bridge, perhaps part of the railroad; above it is an even larger bridge that carries cars over the river. But at ours, below these crossing paths, the planks make gentle clucking noises under the wheels, and our motion is indicated, not just by the wind, or the change in landscape and shadow, but also by the shift in noise. We are moving—forward.



 



We have almost reached the end. Head straight off the bridge, and be sure to look both ways for cars before crossing. Turn left onto Common-wealth Avenue, and right onto Brookline: the East Campus of Beth Israel will be on the left. Enter the main entrance, up the elevators to the eighth floor, make a left, and go inside room 864. The sleep subject has finished the third session and is waiting in the Solarium.



 



This is a sleep lab. The head of the lab prefers to be called Bob. He is an ancient man with bright eyes, white hair, and a gentle voice. In his office is a plant that is almost bigger than a small child. It is an exotic plant, a spider lily, with two-inch stems that rise three feet and then end in a firework-shape of white flowers. There are three of these stems, and the base is adorned in thick, wavy leaves. In 1991, when he went to Mexico on a lab convention, Bob stood on the beach and found a seed washed up on the shore. He snuck it back to America and planted the thing, curious to see what it would become.



 



Spider lilies only bloom at night. This ability is called nyctinasty, and it occurs because nature has matched a specific set of flowers to nighttime pollinators: bats, moths, and rodents. Color is of minimal importance at night, so these flowers tend to be light colored. To attract their pollinators, the flowers wear strong fragrances. Their petals stay closed during the day to prevent the perfume from evaporating, but when the sun has set and the pollinators have awoken, they bloom.



 



It takes less than two seconds for a spider lily to bloom. The petals are held together by a little locking leaf, and when that leaf releases the whole flower springs open. In the entire time that Bob has had the lily, he has only seen it bloom twice.



 



It’s amazing what can happen in a day. We wake up every morning new, the trouble and anxieties of the night before having dissipated along with the dreams. Something happens during sleep that renders them less important, as belonging to a different world; something that refreshes the mind, restores the brain. Since this is a sleep lab, people come here to dream, to be deprived of sleep, to nap. Some will stay here for several days, sometimes an entire week, to participate in a particular study. Ours is less costly—the subjects don’t have to stay overnight and instead stay at lab from morning till night. Sometimes, when they take naps, we record the activity of their brains.



 



There are four stages of sleep, and each one has its own special pattern. At a waking state, the brain waves are tiny and dense, jittery and sporadic. When people close their eyes, however, the pattern immediately sooths out, and a wave-like image starts to form. When the brain waves even out enough, they have officially entered the first stage of sleep. If they were to be woken up now, they would not recall ever being asleep.



 



After roughly ten minutes, though, something strange starts to happen. The spacing of the waves becomes a bit wider, loosening up, becoming slower, until suddenly, they spike up into an enormous tsunami and then sinks into a trough. This is a K-complex, and it is a major indicator of Stage Two sleep. Occasionally, the smaller waves will seem to condense, as if a hand is squeezing them together. This is a sleep spindle, and it is another defining landmark of Stage Two.



 



The rise and fall of the K-complex will grow more frequent until the reading screen becomes filled with only these large waves. They come much more slowly, like gentle, rolling giants, and once the brain activity is composed entirely of these, we know the person is in slow wave sleep.



 



The final and most fascinating part of sleep is Rapid-Eye-Movement. All at once, the canyons and peaks shrink to tiny, fast, schizophrenic waves that resemble those of the waking state. Yet the subjects are asleep, and at this point their eyes are rolling in synch, and their bodies have absolutely no muscle tone. They are dead yet alive at the same time. This is the point at which dreams occur.



 



Every person, no matter how old, how sleep deprived, or how intelligent, will go through these exact sleep stages in the same order. A full night’s rest will exhibit multiple cycles of these sleep stages, each with its own unique chemical make-up and function.



 



At ten at night, the subjects have finished the last session for the day and can be checked out of the clinical research center. We’ve forgotten to do this a few times, to the consequent scorn of the night nurses, but today we remember.



 



The ride back at night is quiet. Back down Brookline, only now we turn left onto Commonwealth Avenue, right onto Silber Way. 



 



This bridge crosses the main highway. At the top of the crossing, one can stand and look at the six-lane highway from either end, wondering where all these cars are coming from and where they are headed next. We are at the point between two worlds, the space between night and day, but instead of choosing one over the other, we simply continue heading home.



 



We leave Silber Way behind, biking ahead of a slow couple walking down the same bridge, and join the bike path once more. 



 



By now the Hyatt hotel has its lights turned on, and the red zigzag of its outlines ripples along the river to the right. We are alone on this path. The trees line up on either side of the road, and their branches reach across and hug each other under the sky. Cars drive past along the left, and we feel pity for the drivers stuck inside their metal containers, unable to feel the night against their skin. We pass through the tunnel of trees and ride past the sailing house, now with its doors closed and boats harbored to the shore. We slow down to make the sharp right turn onto the wooden bridge under the bridge under the bridge. Again, the wheels of the bike make clanking noises across the wooden panels. Halfway across, we pause to look at the water. It is especially calm tonight and shines like obsidian under the moonlight. With eyes closed and hands cupped and resting on the balcony, we close our eyes, our brain waves soothing out.



 



After an entire day of seeing and looking, of observing, distinguishing, choosing, our perception has become twisted and unfocused. Our brain is like an offset scale, and to restore it to normal, we will have to sleep. Dreams will first flood our brain with exaggerated simulations of reality, testing the springs of our scale. After dreaming will come slow wave sleep that realigns the spring bit by bit. These two stages of sleep will work together to test and adjust, test and adjust. After several cycles, the brain will be fully recalibrated, and we will wake up again, reset.



 



When we open our eyes—the world is still there. Up above, the moon glistens. The water shines with globes of blue, green and red from the land lights. Somewhere, a night flower is blooming.

 In celebration of Seamus Heaney, we include here a tribute read at a service in Harvard Yard’s Memorial Church honoring the life and work of the poet. Professor Robert Kiely, who served as Master of Adams House from 1972 until 1999, read “Seamus at Adams House” as an introduction to “Anniversary Verse”. Heaney himself had composed and read “Anniversary Verse” for the 50th Anniversary of Adams House, where he often stayed during his years at Harvard. Adams House was known as the Left Bank of undergraduate life back when students were allowed to choose their Houses: the vibrant center of the arts on campus. We include Professor Kiely’s portrait of the poet during his Harvard years in remembrance of Heaney the teacher, and Heaney the friend: the Heaney who guides us still.



 



-The Harvard Advocate



 



 



    Harvard can be a strange and difficult place for a newcomer, freshman, professor, or poet. I remember a new colleague telling me that although everyone was friendly and polite, he could not find the center of the place. He always felt lost. That was not Seamus. Seamus had his own center. He also had his own home at Harvard. When he first came to the university in 1979, the English Department welcomed him warmly as Visiting Poet, but it was in 1981 when he moved into I-entry of Adams House that he became one of us, a neighbor, a friend, a member of the family.



    The guest suite in I-entry was not a five star accommodation. These rooms were only a step up from the days of the founding Puritan Fathers. There was indoor plumbing, electricity, a bed, a desk, a table, and a few chairs. A visiting professor who had arrived near midnight some years earlier phoned me to say that the place had no door and she was afraid to go to bed. Buildings and Grounds had been working on the room and had not quite finished the job. I told her to pile furniture at the threshold and try to get some sleep. We did install a door before Seamus arrived. In any case, he never complained. In fact, I think he liked the spare simplicity, the convenience, the company when he wanted it, and the solitude when he needed it. When Marie came for visits, she put flowers on the table and said it made them feel like newlyweds.



    Seamus came back every year for one semester. It soon seemed as though he had always been there with us, taking meals in the Dining Hall, chatting with someone in Randolph Court, reading poetry and listening attentively and with evident pleasure to students reading their own poetry in the Common Rooms. Like any true survivor at Harvard, Seamus learned how to disappear and do his work, but he also loved celebrations and a good party. One of his favorite Adams occasions was the Saint Patrick’s Day Tea at Apthorp House. He often brought Irish friends who could sing or play the penny whistle. Students tried to dance something resembling an Irish jig. He would stand on a chair and recite poems, beaming all the while, not for the attention he was getting but because of the attention poetry was getting. When he was informed of the Nobel Prize, he was travelling in Greece. He phoned to say he couldn’t keep the astonishing news to himself. It was during a Tea, so I announced it to the assembled crowd of students who cheered so lustily he could hear them in Athens.



    Seamus was a great story-teller as well as a great poet. Among the many he told, there are two stories about Ireland, poets, and poetry that keep coming back to me. One night when he was driving alone through the Irish countryside after an event—a wedding or banquet—he was stopped by a patrolman for speeding. The patrolman seemed tired, wet, and angry: “Show me your driver’s license,” he shouted as if to a deaf man. Seamus began fumbling around his pockets, realizing that he may have forgotten to carry it with him. The patrolman shone a flashlight into the car as if looking for contraband. “Can you identify yourself?” Seamus noticed an envelope with his name and address on the empty seat next to him. “Will this do?” The patrolman shone his light on the name, looked up and said, “The poet?” Seamus nodded modestly. “Drive on,” said the patrolman.



    The other story is about a poet looking for a poet who was not an Irishman. Seamus loved the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. He knew that Hopkins had been sick, lonely, and unhappy in Dublin; that he died there; and, though an Englishman, he was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery where Irish patriots had also been laid to rest. One day, Seamus decided that he wanted to visit Hopkins’ grave. In an almost Shakespearian scene, the young Irish poet got lost among the tombstones, unable to find his way to Hopkins until he came upon two gravediggers. “I’m looking for Gerard Manley Hopkins,” he said. “Who?” “The poet. Hopkins.” The first gravedigger shrugged and looked at his mate, “Have you heard of a Hopkins?” The second gravedigger scratched his chin, looked at Seamus, and said, “Oh, you mean the convert!” And then glanced over his shoulder and said with a nod, “He’s over there.”



    I hardly need to say that Seamus loved Ireland. But like those ancient Irish monks who sailed off in their currachs and made themselves at home all over the world, Seamus was a hardy traveler and, through his poetry and generous disposition, his was a welcome presence and voice in many parts.



    I have saved till last my most treasured memory and a copy of a message from Seamus to Harvard—to all of us—that most of you will not have read or heard. In the spring of 1982 Adams House celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding. Throughout the semester there were festivities—an original opera, an art show, poetry readings, concerts, and finally a banquet. Seamus, of course, was there. As a surprise, he composed a poem and dedicated it to Adams House. I now hear it as a toast to Harvard, a thank you note to all of us, and a light-hearted, but serious reminder of what we can be at our best, why he liked being here and, though he doesn’t put it that way, why we loved having him with us. 



 



-Robert Kiely



 



Anniversary Verse



SEAMUS HEANEY 



 



“For Bob and Jana with much gratitude”



                                         --19 May 1982



 



Master Kiely, guests and friends,

Tutors, tutees, alumni, students,

               You stair-case dwellers

Whose amplified hard rock and reggae

Resound from every dormitory,

You fiftieth anniversary

Revellers, 



Ye maids and swains of Adams House,

Ye actors, athletes, sexy muses,

                Ye gilded youth-

I rise to rise to the occasion

And not disgrace my art or nation

With verse that sings the old equation

                Of beauty and truth.



I rise as one who comes and goes

Beneath your storied walls and windows

               A visitor,

Part tourist and part faculty,

An ethnic curiosity

Dubbed by grace of poetry

               Guest lecturer.



Inspire me then, occasional muse,

With verse to cure the exam blues

                And banish care,

To greet old academic ghosts

Who once caroused on the gold coast

Whose love of learning vied with lusts

                For flesh and beer.



That I may briefly celebrate

Community, half-collegiate

               And half domestic,

And say a word about the way



A scholar’s personality

Can keep its health emotionally

               Yet stay scholastic.



The diapers we first were dressed in,

Our graduation gowns of ermine,

               Which, would you say,

Will mean more to us in the end?

Those powdered folds pinned tight around

Our little backsides, or that grand

               Scholar’s regalia.



All of us are amphibious

Between our universities

               And where we come from.

No one gets born in a campus bed.

Even the trendiest school of Ed.

Has never weaned or bathed or breast-fed

               Or wiped a bum.



No co-ed dorm supplies the joys

Of an attic full of dusty toys

               And old dolls’ houses.

No faculty of engineering

Repeats the thrill of tinkering

With model planes, that hankering

               To fly with aces.



It seem illiterate solitude

Is the first place that the true and good

               Awaken in us.

The later freedom we call leisure

Cannot supply that buried treasure

Which is the basis and the measure

               Of personalities



 And which we name imagination,

A word I cite with much elation

               And some unease

Because it can sound slight and airy,

An entry in the dictionary,

A bubble word. Yet while I’m wary

               I realize



All need its salutary power.

All men and women must beware

               Who would deny it

And go against their childhood’s grain

And dry up like earth parched for rain.

They’ll grow mechanical and then

               No drug or diet,



No health farm, clinic, yoga course,

No mantra, om, no Star Wars force

               Will compensate

For what is lost when the mind divides.

Even science now concedes

The brain has two conjugal sides,

               The left and right,



That have to marry intuition

To the analytic reason

               For psychic balance.

Head sleeps with heart, begets a creature

Free yet cornered in its nature.

To be your whole self you must mate your

               Brains and glands.



Which is why I bless the atmosphere

Of Adams House; and toast our master

               And his wife.

I toast good nature in the staff,

The way that nothing’s done by half-

Those who work hard and still can laugh

               Are the spice of life.



I like your hospitality,

Your literate vitality,

               Your casual styles.

The way that love of liberal arts

And loves inspired by Cupid’s darts

Have educated all your hearts

               Is in your smiles.



So all together, gaudeamus,

Because as sure as my name is Seamus

               To-day’s the day

For intellectuals to play.

On your fiftieth anniversary

Rejoice, and as the jazzmen say,

               Take it away.

    CLINIC 1K: ADULT NEURO-ONCOLOGY. The sans serif sign announces the location as if for a lemonade stand, or for a neighbor’s garage sale. But this is a place where brain tumors come in spheres the size of oranges, causing some to lose speech, some memory, some personality. A grandmother stutters when asked to state the day of the week. A defense lawyer can’t remember a simple list two minutes after hearing it. A man watches from across the room as his wife spins her wedding band around her finger.



    These are the patients of Dr. Vandermonde, a cancer physician in Durham, North Carolina. A self-described “reckless optimist,” he sees roughly forty patients with brain tumors each day. His clinical presence is marked by a loud whisper and cans of Mountain Dew, and he insists his patients call him “Jim,” or at least “Dr. V.” 



    Most of Dr. V’s patients go through the same routine of procedures: surgery, radiation, chemotherapy. The average successful surgery removes close to 99.9 percent of tumor cells, leaving around 108 residual ones. Radiation—carefully aimed high-energy waves—burns through 99 percent of those that remain, leaving 106 to be treated by chemotherapy, often prescribed in the form of DNA-attacking oral drugs. When the tumor appears to stop growing, all treatments are dropped in exchange for quality of life, even though 90 percent are known to grow back in a more lethal recurrence.



    From the perspective of the tumor cell, I would imagine that this treatment routine is quite different. After a life of darkness (save a skull-breaking freak accident years ago), a silver saw appears cut-ting through the dull bone of the skull. A hint of fresh air. The sheath of the brain is pulled aside like a wet curtain; the cells gasp for light while staring at a person in scrubs scooping away their relatives. Hours later, it is dark again. The cells dress in black, prepare their eulogies. But an invisible laser attacks the mourning cells and does away with the remaining majority. And finally, enraged, the last cells standing fight a losing battle with daily or twice-daily waves of identity-stealing macromolecules, engaged until there are too few left to matter to an oncologist.



    It is no wonder they grow back stronger.



 



    Some attribute the field of surgical oncology to Guy de Chauliac, a 14th-century physician of the French clergy. He cared for three Popes in both life and death: while they were alive, he acted as their physicians, and once they were dead, he aided in preserving their bodies. Only after their death did he take to using a scalpel, curious to map human anatomy. He was the first to suggest that “Cancer must be cut out early with a knife.”



    That was a time when cancer was thought to be caused by black bile, when limb amputation was not unusual treatment, and when anesthesia was nonexistent. By contrast, in today’s “operating theater,” there is a drill, a team of nurses, and an anesthesiologist. There is also a vertical sheet. On one side is a brain, and on the other is its owner, Margaret, awake. A grandmother of four, she listens carefully. As Dr. Phillips, the surgeon, considers cutting a certain area of the brain, he first stimulates it with an electric current. “Go ahead and move your left hand, Margaret,” he says. She gives it a slow wiggle, and he goes on to stimulate a different region. “Now yesterday was Wednesday,” he says. “Can you tell me what day it is today?” She stutters, and so he stops. 



    Intraoperative brain mapping, as it is called, allows the surgeon to deal with a brain that we don’t fully understand. He drills through the skull, locates the tumor, and removes the malignant cells with care, crossing creases and folds, navigating a geography of memory, perception, speech, and emotions. This is how he tries to win the battles, and eventually the war.



 



    “Dog, tree, bicycle. Can you remember those for me?”



    Dr. V pauses as he gives a routine diagnostic exam to his patient, Martha, a middle-aged lawyer and mother of two who suffered brain damage from x-rays during radiotherapy.



    Physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered the x-ray over a century ago, unearthing its unique role as a carcinogen, cure, and diagnostic tool. Only months after his November 1895 study, members of the medical community began experimenting with the ray’s unknown properties. (There is little coincidence in its namesake, the unknown mathematical symbol X.) Radiologists used the skin of their arms to test the strength of radiation, looking to measure the minimum effective dose, many of them later diagnosed with leukemia. A medical student in Chicago began using x-rays to treat diseases. Röntgen himself scanned his wife’s hand, showing her a picture of her own skeleton.



    Her response—“I have seen my death!”—foreshadowed the ensuing difficulties with x-ray treatment. Early radiotherapy sessions consisted of a single large dosage, often curing the disease but also later killing the patients. In today’s radiotherapy clinic, treatment has reached a much higher level of sophistication: Particles are accelerated, shaped to fit the tumor’s size and contours, and shot through a focused laser beam. But there remains a trade-off between killing every last tumor cell and damaging nearby healthy tissue. Tactical warfare ensues.



    Dr. V proceeds through the remainder of the exam, asking Martha to lift her arms and legs, to listen for a faint noise, to follow a movement with her pupils. Lastly, he returns to the test of memory. “Do you remember the three objects I told you?”



    Martha squints, fighting off the damage, tapping into her reserves of memory. “Can I tell you about my children?”



 



    The early roots of chemotherapy are traced to a WWII battle, when German bombers raided. Allied forces in 1943. A U.S. military ship, John Harvey, contained a secret cargo of 2,000 mustard gas bombs, reserved for retaliatory use in case the Germans resorted to chemical warfare. When German bombs unexpectedly hit the ships, U.S. troops were unaware of the gases released, and 628 were poisoned and rushed to hospitals. There, physicians noted a depletion of the soldiers’ lymph nodes, organs of the immune system known to be especially inflamed in some patients with cancer.



    From this incident came Mustine, the earliest form of chemotherapy, which successfully reduced tumor size through destruction of cancer cell DNA. But it also targeted other rapidly dividing cells in the body—those in bone marrow, the digestive tract, and hair follicles—causing predictable side effects in patients. The model for modern chemotherapy remains largely unaltered: Malignant cells comprise the majority of the fallen, but the drug cannot fully distinguish friend from enemy.



    In the clinic, toleration of chemotherapy is often mixed. As Dr. V enters the room to meet his patient, he offers a warm “How’re we doin’ today?” in his usual raspy chord. Robert, 32, sits in the patient chair, although he may as well be lounging on his couch watching football. His face is a deep red, and his globular stomach renders the leprechaun printed on his shirt three-dimensional. “Nowhere else I’d rather be,” he says with a smirk. His wife, beside him, rolls her eyes and squeezes his hand.



    Robert starts to talk about his biopsy, which he had just days ago. “So there I was, sitting in the chair as they were trying to lock this thing onto my skull.” This is the metal device used to keep the patient’s head still and mark the drilling area. “They kept fidgeting and fidgeting and finally they got it. And man, was that thing gripping the hell out of my skull. I was going to call up Disney and tell ‘em they need to make a ride out of this thing!’’



    His wife laughs, as does Dr. V. The three ex-change stories, Robert is prescribed chemotherapy, and they leave.



    Three months and a round of chemotherapy later, they return to the clinic for a follow-up. As Dr. V comes in, Robert sits with his arms crossed. His stomach has shrunk, and the whites of his eyes are dull. His wife stares at her own lap, fidgeting with her ring finger.



    Dr. V delivers good news: The tumor has receded, his condition is stable, and he won’t need to return to the clinic for another six months. Robert’s wife stands up and gives Dr. V a hug.



    “Not bad news, huh?” says Dr. V as he grip’s Robert’s shoulder.



    “Yeah,” says Robert, pursing his lips.



    As intended, Robert’s tumor had been robbed of its DNA, or identity. Only Robert had been robbed of his, too.



 



    Tumor cells, they glisten a fatty white, skip from tumor to tumor, invade fresh ground like steadfast soldiers. It’s their corps against ours, mutant versus wildtype, a carnal red clashing with a bathroom-tile beige. Cancer, a metaphor for battle: Is it a coincidence that the operating room is called the theater, that radiation doubles as a weapon in warfare, that chemotherapy was discovered in a world war?



    There are the simpler similarities between war and cancer: that war is a battle for freedom, that health is a form of freedom, that both are fought by humans. But there is a deeper sense of likeness as well. Any two cells in battle—one healthy, one malignant—share over 99.9 percent of their genes. Any two humans in battle—one from the Allied, one from the Axis—share 99.9 percent of theirs. Both cancer and war entail a form of self-harm, leaving us to grapple with the paradox of hurting to heal. They require us to draw from human tools of inquiry to fully internalize the narrative of loss. Literature professor Haun Saussy, who writes on the politics on loss, holds a view of disease that applies equally well to both: “An adequate explanation of what has gone wrong [...], as opposed to the remedies to be applied to its effects, may demand the talents of the geographer, the economist, the historian, the hydroelectric engineer, the novelist.”



    There is also the etymologist. When Hippocrates, namesake of the modern physician’s oath, found swollen veins surrounding a tumor to resemble a crab’s limbs, he named the disease after Cancer, a giant crab in Greek mythology. As the story goes, when an affair involving Zeus produced Heracles, Zeus’s wife Hera vowed to have the illicit son killed. In a violent battle between Heracles and a many-headed serpent, Hera sent the giant crab to aid the snake in slaughtering her husband’s son. Cancer nipped at Heracles before being smashed by his foot.



    As a reward for its service, Hera placed the crab’s image in the night sky, only for it to watch another human family fight its own kind.

It had been so hot for so long that “heat” was losing its place in the lexicon. Stifling humidity had enveloped the town so completely that there was no longer any use for a comparative or qualitative descriptor of the yawning, prickly fuzziness that seated itself upon anyone unlucky enough to find himself outside. Heat had flattened everything.

The town was bounded to the east by the large, sheer cliff of a plateau, which had a sizable dam built into it. The hill cast a shadow, but it was barely any comfort, and only lasted until midday or so at best. In the hydroelectric plant atop the cliff, the water had been evaporating before it could turn all of the turbines, which threatened the grid and precipitated much civic hand-wringing.In the first few days of the heat, people observed lawns heaving and cracking and giving birth to bricks of earthworms, fused together and squirming orgiastically. Birds dropped dead mid-flight and floated lazily to the ground in the swollen breeze. Hands darted out of houses through mail slots and deposited eggs and other griddle-friendly comestibles upon their own doorsteps, just to see what the heat would do to them. All of this may still be happening, but nobody notices because nobody opens their blinds.Young Dave looked down at Dave and was pleased to see that he had fallen asleep. The flat heat, and the endless circadian limbo that the closed blinds fostered, made it rare for Dave to get more than an hour of uninterrupted sleep. Worse yet, the baby had been rationed a single can of formula a day for the past week. He was a peaceful baby—he hardly ever screamed—but the hunger pangs were starting to keep him awake and whimpering.Thank god for the formula, though, thought Young Dave. If his father, Dave, hadn’t pushed so hard about being prepared, they never would have had that stockpile full of cans. Young Dave remembered the day he gave in to Dave’s insisting and drove the Bronco to the store—this was months before the weather changed and the Bronco’s hood bubbled and evanesced right up into the air—and bought all those pallets of franks-and-beans and baby formula and corn and greenbeans. Dave had said why don’t you get the store brand but Young Dave had to hold the line somewhere, so they ended up getting half name-brand and half store-brand because if there’s no difference dad you can eat the generic and I’ll pay you the difference when we get home. Good that they got those cans, for certain, although Young Dave was a little upset because the other day he noticed Dave eating some of the Bush’s chili instead of the white-label C-H-I-L-I cans. He couldn’t be too mad, though, because if it hadn’t been for Dave they wouldn’t have had the cans in the first place.Since Dave was finally asleep, Young Dave and Dave agreed it was time to open one of the condensed milks for Sunday Treat. They hadn’t ever been a particularly religious family, but two generations of spousal abandonment had opened a gap that faith wormed its way into, and the flat, hot darkness of the past few weeks had made it even more important to set aside Sunday as a special day, if only to keep the days from running together too much.While Dave and Young Dave were taking turns sipping Sunday Treat, they heard a scratching at their door. Before the weather turned, such spookiness would have been grounds for retrieving Dave’s oldpump-action shotgun from the basement. Now, laden with weeks of torpor, Dave and Young Dave simply nodded their chins towards the door and continued to take turns pouring the condensed milk down their throats. The scratching continued, and a whimpering noise was audible. The thick air conducted the sound so well that Dave and Young Dave felt it like it came from inside their own ears.Dave started to cry. Dave, surprised and frustrated at his grandson’s unusual misbehavior, set the condensed milk down and watched his son tend to the howling infant. The scratching and whimpering continued outside. Dave opened his mouth—mostly dry except for some thick, sweet saliva coating the front of his throat—and exhaled heavily. It was a weary sigh, even though it had been provoked by indulgence.The scratching grew steadily more urgent. Dave screamed louder and Young Dave buried the child’s face in his shoulder and swayed back and forth with an annoyed, matronly expression. The ceiling fan beat away at the stale air, and its motion made the whimpering and scratching and infant screams pulsate nauseatingly. Young Dave, Dave nestled near his armpit, made eye contact with Dave from across the room. They gave each other the same expression of irritated comprehension.Dave began to get up from his chair. Young Dave sat down and fed the baby a few spoonfuls of formula. Dave stood above the table with his hands on the back of his chair. He looked at the doorknob and noticed that the metal foil covering it was peeling. He turned and brought the empty condensed milk can to the sink. As he rinsed it out, he watched small, sugary trails of the sticky liquid circling down the drain.  ***The living room looked different. It was darker than usual. Young Dave looked around, disoriented by the slight change, until he noticed that the crack between the front door and the floor, which usually let in a sliver of light, was partially blocked. Young Dave padded up to the door and crouched to inspect the obstruction. It was a worn-out looking piece of paper, and it had been folded into a thick, uneven square. Young Dave hooked his fingers around a corner of it and pulled it out of the crack.He unfolded the paper. There was a message written in the center: “Help. Nofood.” The note had another set of creases on it apart from the right angles that made it into a square; Young Dave retraced these and ended up with a paper airplane. He set the plane on the kitchen table, walked over to the pantry, and returned with one of the last cans of brand-name chili.Young Dave sat at the table and ate the chili. The airplane leaned on its left wing. Young Dave contemplated the now-aeronautical missive as he stirred a piece of gristle around the can. He flipped the can over and began reading the nutrition facts. He lost focus, because the light had begun to flicker. This was normal. Then the lights went out entirely.The power had been off for what Young Dave could only guess to be half an hour when Dave shuffled into the kitchen. Young Dave pointed at the airplane on the table, and his father picked it up. He unfolded it and stared at the message for some amount of time, and then retrieved a can of name-brand chili for himself. The two men prodded their stews—Young Dave prodding more resentfully than his father—and watched the baby sleep in his crib across the room.There was no more hot, and now that the power had given out, there was no more time. The sun went up and down dozens of times. Dave, Young Dave, and Dave remained dispassionately suspended in their torrid living room.On the plateau that overlooked the town, a group of people had assembled near the newly-defunct hydroelectric plant. They stood near the railing of the dam and looked down the buildings in town; one or two pairs of eyes surely passed over the house where Dave and Young Dave and Dave lay in the doldrums. Thegroup of people had fumbled their way up to the top of the cliff in darkness, and the sun was beginning to rise behind them. A sweaty man who stood with a woman close to the edge of the cliff looked behind him and nodded at another sweaty man. The second sweaty man shuffled into a small shack perched above the dam. The plateau was still again, except for a collective shrugging of shoulders that pushed up against the morning languor each time the group drew a breath.The group exhaled, and the plateau was no longer still. A tremendous, grinding creak resonated over the entire town, and the people atop the cliff stepped back and held one another as the ground moved beneath them. Then the water began to move.The water poured over the lowering lip of the dam and onto the asphalt of the town’s main street. For a full twenty seconds, the torrent hissed into vapor when it hit the street, and one of the men closest to the water shrieked and turned to face his cohort with red, scalded hands covering his eyes. Water continued to pour out of the dam faster and faster, and it began to run down the street. Mailboxes, dead birds, bricks of earthworms, and fried eggs were caught up in the deluge and washed down the thoroughfare.In the bedroom, Dave woke to a knocking at the window above his head. It was different from the scratching he had heard while he and his son had enjoyed Sunday Treat—more of an insistent thump. The thumping strengthened. It felt like the entire house was moving.On the couch in the living room, Young Dave sat up slowly, and then got to his feet very quickly. He ran to the crib and pulled Dave out of it just before the kitchen wall gave in and the water started to come through. Dave, held tight in his father’s arms, began to scream and cry—the second time he had done so during the entire heatwave. Young Dave felt the water pulling at his ankles, then his thighs, then his chest, and he wondered why it had taken him so long to realize that infants often have an uncanny understanding of the gravity of events. 

Es war einmal ein
König,
Der hatt’ einen
großen Floh.... 



    Does not matter when, does not matter where, but there lived in one country a Prime Minister. Unlike his predecessor, a grumpy old man, a stamp collector and a staunch conservative, our Prime Minister was a rotund, jovial middle-aged man with a small bald patch and endless energy. He liked to grow Chinese roses in his garden; he invented a reward-reaping machine, and patented a special medicine against too much thinking. In his free time, the Prime Minister attended to state affairs. He was somewhat of a liberal, and his court was always full of Western ambassadors as well as Eastern goods.

    His life was wonderful—until the trouble came.

    A junior clerk from the Ministry of Difficulties by the name of Alberto Polites was looking through some ancient documents. In a 16th-century chronicle, he found a reference to an even older chronicle, which mentioned that in the old times Prime Ministers were elected for a four-year term.

    And it was decided to schedule elections.

    Not because people did not like their Prime Minister—how could one not like such a nice man?—but solely in order to uphold the historical tradition: the fourth year of his term was about to end.

    Dr. Stamm, the Minister of Education, became a Liberal Party candidate. The Conservatives put forward the former Prime Minister, a grumpy old man called Zubski. Alberto Polites became the campaign manager. Elections were scheduled for the next January.

    And it was already October.

    Our poor Prime Minister sat in his bedroom and looked at the fire in his fireplace. Brown leaves were flying behind the window, the Prime Minister’s bed was cold, and he did not feel good. He drank two tablespoons of his medicine against too much thinking, and a big glass of rum. But the sadness did not leave him.

    At this moment, the Golden Bedbug fell down from the ceiling.

    The Prime Minister looked at the insect sadly. “I could squash this bedbug,” he thought. “But will I feel better after it? Let him live.”

    The Bedbug was touched by the Prime Minister’s kindness. “Listen,” he said, “being sad will not make things any better. Instead, let me make true three of your sincere wishes.”

    “But what will you ask in return?” asked the Prime Minister sadly. “Nothing,” replied the Bedbug, “only that you provide me with food and drink and keep me close to yourself.” “But representatives of your species normally feed on human blood,” said the Prime Minister, “would you not require my blood?” “Oh no, - cried the Bedbug with disgust, “don’t you see my golden skin? Though I was born in such a lowly image, fate gave me the mind of a man, and not of a simple one; so I drink not blood but Burgundy and Mosel wines; above all, however, I prefer Scotch. My table should be as exquisite as my appearance.”

    Unsettled by such boasting, the Prime Minister went back to the subject of three wishes, and found that the Bedbug was quite serious about it. “Why then do you need my table and my court if you are such a great magician?” our hero cleverly asked. “You see,” the Bedbug picked his teeth with a crystal toothpick that appeared in his thin fingers, “while my livelihood depends on people, I have no power to force them to obey and serve me. Thus I reach my goal through a reasonable exchange of services, without calling on my magic—which would not work anyway in this case.”

    “Wait a minute,” cried the Prime Minister, “if so, then what are you good for? If I order you to destroy my enemies, would you be powerless to do it?”

    “Oh no,” replied the Golden Bedbug, “you see, that would be your wish, not mine; and I can make any people’s wishes true, if they are sincere. But would any of you wish something good for me, your benefactor? This is why I only ask you for food and shelter but for nothing more. You people, such a truly beastly race you are! Just spend one of your three wishes on me; just wish some riches or a small crown for a poor bedbug, but no! You say ‘go, bedbug, go, we do not need you anymore,’ you force me to go away, and I cannot do anything since I have no power over you.”

    The Prime Minister thought hard, while the Golden Bedbug, with tears in his eyes, sat in a fancy chair in front of him. “Well,” said the Prime Minister, “but what if I wish something three times, here and now, and you made all three wishes come true—why would I feed and keep you after that?” “Oh no,” replied the Bedbug slyly, “excuse me but it would be very foolish to spend all your three wishes at once; these are not three walnuts or three cigars: things are much more serious here. Look, for example, do you want your country to be the first on Mars? I give you a spaceship right now—go! I guarantee a safe and comfortable flight there and back.”

    “Well, this is tempting,” admitted the Prime Minister, “but why has nobody yet been to Mars with your assistance?” “Oh,” - sighed the Bedbug, “life is short, and people are much more concerned with Earth... Another example: would you like to have a cure for cancer? Your uncle died of it, remember? But you would be saved; moreover, you would be a savior of humankind, with the Nobel Prize and all the fame.”

    “This is tempting as well,” replied the Prime Minister, “but tell me, why did scientists search for this cure for many years and nobody approach you?” “I approached many myself,” confessed the Bedbug, “but they all wished for money or a career, and nobody ever mentioned humankind. And I could do much more: I could make all people healthy and happy, I could remove war and poverty, borders and laws, make everybody’s life perfect—just wish for that! and it will come true.”

    “My God, “cried the Prime Minister in amazement, “so why has nobody made this wish?!”

    “If everyone were rich and happy, the envy would disappear,” sadly replied the Golden Bedbug, “and people always want to live better than others. So they always wish happiness only for themselves, not for everyone.”

    “But you could wish it for everyone,” tried the Prime Minister, “if you have such power...” “Ha ha,” laughed the Bedbug, “don’t you see that I exist only due to people’s vanity? Who would feed and keep a poor Bedbug if everyone was rich and happy? Who would need me, a hapless parasite?”

    They sat silently facing each other for a long time.

    “Very well,” said the Prime Minister, “stay with me. I will think and tell you my first wish tomorrow.” Next morning, Alberto Polites was on TV. The first week of the campaign showed that the old man

    Zubski was clearly going to win the elections: he shouted and cursed the Prime Minister much louder than anybody else. The Liberal candidate, Dr. Stamm, only got 28% in the polls: many people did not like him because he wrote the textbooks they used as schoolchildren. Our Prime Minister only got 5%—all due to Alberto Polites who was on TV every night diligently explaining why it is much better to change the government every four years.

    Then they showed an animated advertisement paid for by the Conservatives. Our good Prime Minister was shown as a bloodthirsty Indian, and the old Zubski as a noble cowboy. Eventually the Indian was hanged, quartered, and fed to four alligators.

    The Prime Minister shuddered, turned off the TV, drank two glasses of rum, and went upstairs to the quarters of the Golden Bedbug.

    Fresh from his bath, the Bedbug slowly drank icy champagne when the Prime Minister lumbered into his bedroom. 

    “Bedbug,” uttered the poor ruler, “please rid me of my enemies!” “This is your first wish” - noted the Bedbug. He dreamingly raised his beautiful eyes to the ceiling and said a few words in Latin. “Amen,”— whispered the Prime Minister, leaving the bedroom on tiptoes. He turned on TV again and found the news.

    They reported that:

            - The old man Zubski just died from a heart attack

            - Alberto Polites was jailed as a foreign spy

            - Dr. Stamm resigned from his campaign due to undisclosed reasons

            - Yesterday polls were in error: a recount gave 97% support to our Prime Minister

    “And I have two more wishes!” - thought the Prime Minister in excitement, coming out to the balcony. Then he remembered the old Zubski, turned pale and crossed himself.

    “This is what you wished for,” - the Bedbug told him from the upper balcony. He stood there smoking an expensive cigar and observing the small country and adjacent regions with his cold eyes.

    Half a year has passed, and a new trouble came.

    The court of Prime Minister was always full of Western ambassadors. Mr. Qwerty, the most important of them all, happened to dislike Eastern goods, which also abounded at the court. Shortly, the Prime Minister faced an ultimatum and a draft of a peace treaty that mentioned exclusive trade rights for the West.

    The Prime Minister was forced to sacrifice Eastern sweets for Western chewing gum. Still, Mr. Qwerty, the ambassador, did not rest: now he wanted a part of national security as well. So it started: custom fees got canceled, coastal shots were fired, and city folks got restless. A Western sailor got hurt in a brawl—as it turned out later, by his own mates and not too seriously; but that did not matter. Next morning, two legions of Western infantry entered the country to protect their citizens, and camped right there on the palace square.

    The Prime Minister looked and looked at all this: what if they start shooting? He was scared but was not yet willing to spend his second wish.

    But as soon as the first shot was fired (someone crossed the square in a wrong place), the Prime Minister stormed into the Golden Bedbug’s quarters. “Bedbug, please,” begged the Prime Minister, “do rid me of my friends!”

    The Bedbug who had become quite fat, sipped his Scotch, and said “That’s the second one,” and then a few words in English.

    The Prime Minister went out to the balcony. The square was clean. Sun just came up, pigeons quietly walked on the square, and here was Mt. Qwerty running to the palace to apologize, and to ask for permission to depart. That was gladly given.

    “What else could threaten me if I have gotten rid of everything?” - thought the Prime Minister happily. His life became even more splendid than before. Humming of his reward-reaping machine could be heard all over the palace, his Chinese roses were in full bloom, and he drank liters of his patented medicine against too much thinking.

    This medicine, however, was not popular in his country. And people started thinking. These were neither the Conservative enemies nor Liberal friends, neither the rich merchants nor poor relatives—just simple people.

    At this time there lived a poet named Sandor. He sang about love (any true poet, whatever he sings about, sings about love), and love in this country was mostly found among simple people, maybe because they were poor and never had to buy it.

    Once, Sandor heard humming of the reward-reaping machine from the palace, or maybe he even saw the Golden Bedbug who used to smoke his cigars on the balcony. And Sandor wrote his Ballad About a Sound.

    It was April, and sounds were easily born in the clear air.

    The ballad was full of love and anger. One could hardly finish reading it: one’s eyes lit up so that the paper with handwritten lines caught fire.

    And then, at night, came the first thunderstorm of that spring. It reached the square and stood in front of the Prime Minister’s palace. One could hear its faraway thunders and see its lightings zipping through the darkness. 

    The frightened Prime Minister ran upstairs where the Golden Bedbug was drinking cognac on a luxurious sofa. “What should I do?!” cried the poor ruler. The parasite’s eyes flashed. “The doing should have been done before,” he replied. “But it is not too late to make everybody happy, to build the heaven on earth,” babbled the Prime Minister, “I have one more wish, haven’t I?” “Is this your sincere wish?” asked the Bedbug. The Prime Minister did not answer.

    “See,” said the Bedbug, “your soul is not able to wish such a thing; and I cannot force you. So it cannot be done.” “Then destroy this!”- the Prime Minister pointed toward the window with a trembling hand. “Destroy what?” asked the Bedbug approaching the balcony. “Please be specific! One can destroy the leaders, an army, or a crowd. But one cannot destroy people’s love and people’s anger—it would mean to destroy the people altogether.” “So destroy them!” screamed the Prime Minister in madness. The Bedbug thought for a moment. “Yes, I could do that,” he said, “but you are also a man. Who will then feed and keep me?”

    The Prime Minister fell into a chair. “I did not mean ill to anyone”, he whispered. “They will enter now, and I will vanish; but I do not want to vanish without a trace!” “Should we consider it your last wish?” – asked the Bedbug without turning. “Great,” - he made a gesture with his hand.

    At that moment, the balcony door opened, and a man called Belk stepped into the room. Belk used to work as a pharmacist but now was mostly a small crook. Using the thunderstorm as a cover, he wanted to help himself to something from the palace.

    And he succeeded.

    I do not know the details, but next morning President Belk was on the palace balcony, looking peace- fully down at his small country, which had no more rich or poor. It had only obedient people who never did much thinking. There were no poets among them.

    And the President had two more wishes left.

    By the way, the palace gallery got a new statue that day: a life-size one of the former Prime Minister. With a dignified expression on its face, the statue is the last in a long row of realistic, life-size statues of former kings and presidents.

    The gallery still has a lot of empty space.