Heller, in fact, presented his collection of writings as a deft, deviceful way to describe humanity “in all its puny glory.” Brushed off for forty minutes straight, he employed actual gunpoint to prevail upon the men and women in the room, along with any family members who happened to be visiting at the time, to read the whole manuscript. As the exercise was wrapping up he went to them one by one, hammer cocked, and demanded to know what they had thought. He came to understand by the consensus that coalesced out of these intensely solicited reviews that the portrait of the species was perhaps not as vivid as he had wished, but that nevertheless he had to accept as he found it. He lifted and turned the pistol until the barrel was on his temple. He considered eliciting a reaction from himself. Newcomb saved him, citing Pearson, who referred to Gluecomb, who paraphrased Fleerson, point being that many other thinkers of the time agreed that the most significant unit for the production of empathy was not definitively the extended narrative but might instead be a series of short telegraphic paragraphs. When he got home that night, breathing easier now, maybe easier than ever, with the gun stashed in a paper bag beneath the front seat of the car, he couldn’t get the key into the slot in the lock despite several attempts. It never occurred to him, not the first time, the second, or even the third, that it was a metaphor.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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