AN EDUCATIONAL SERIES

“Slipping And Tripping“ was the subject of an address given before the boys of the Friday Evening Club yesterday morning, at a specially convened out-of-joint session, by Professor Ivan Fittleford. Fittleford offered a very interesting account of the people of an obscure region of Germany (a region unnamed at his insistence), whom he referred to as “the clumsiest beings upon the earth.” He showed a series of photographs and short movies of the Germans falling that were greeted first with laughter but by degrees converted to a more sober understanding of what Professor Fittleford called “the burdens that may afflict only those far away from us but that we should nevertheless feel as intimately as if they were visited upon us and our very families.” By the end, many of the boys were deep in doleful tears, through which they purchased souvenirs that included hats emblazoned with the slogan “Beautiful Fall Weather” and small sculptures of the Germans tumbling down. Great interest was taken by the boys and membership has increased to more than 100 in advance of next week’s talk. The topic has not yet been announced but the speaker will be Albert Saenz, the famed local acrobat better known as Sky Chicken.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

THE NEIGHBORS RESPOND

 

Sometimes they come over fast; sometimes they come over time. A lot of times I’ll call and someone will answer, a kid or something, and I don’t know who I’m talking to, so I am careful not to introduce myself too specifically, I’ll say “Do you know who this is?” or “This isn’t who you think it is, is it?” and then depending on the response either go on talking or hang up. Because how do you know what’s next? How can you even keep that phone in your hand with so much in the world that’s uncertain? Sometimes in the process of hanging up my knuckle will tap the keypad and generate a tone and then that tone will create something else, a melody let’s call it, and I’ll start singing, fitting words to that melody, and some of the first words are the names of other neighbors, like “the Mitchells and the Meekers / Spiritual seekers” or “Albert Santoro / Was in the war-o,” and those are the people I don’t call, why would you call them when they’ve been in a song so recently, but that also starts to point me toward who I should call next, and when I get a real clear fix on it I dial the next number and see who answers, hopefully not a kid, hopefully someone who can help. Sometimes they come over fast; sometimes they come over time. Sometimes they don’t come at all.

 

 

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

WHAT THE LEMONADE STAND IS NOT

It is not a car wash advertised with signs.

It is not punch served from a bowl at a birthday party.

It is not a list of ingredients for lemonade. 

It is not putting a table out at a garage sale with a few half-filled cups—or even a few filled ones.

It is not a black cube with a yellow cone on top of it.

It is not a row of yellow cylinders animated to look like liquid.

It is not designed as a threat to other businesses or beverages; it is just another option amongst many for a thirsty person on a hot day.

 

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

 

POSTSCRIPT TO THE THIRD EDITION

In previous editions, I have been careful to respect the original wishes of the author, at least as described in the note found with the manuscript after his untimely death. While it was not always easy to decipher the note, clipped and cryptic as it was, the fact that it represented the final piece of writing in the author’s own hand was for me a compelling argument for its authority over the mostly, but not completely finished manuscript. In that spirit, the names of the main characters in the novel were replaced with the two pairs of initials at the top of the note. Readers only know them by their initials, but they were not always so. OJ, the conflicted protagonist, was originally “Philip Campbell,” and his on-again, off-again lover TP, she of the architectural practice and “hypnotically monochromatic apartment,” was originally “Karen Anderson.” Determining which shorter name stood in for which longer one was not a perfect science, but are decisions of that nature not the primary responsibility of an editor, executor, amanuensis, and friend, four jobs that I continue to hold proudly, even (or especially) in the author’s absence? Similarly, the place names on the note, though significantly idiosyncratic and at times even surreal, were duly substituted for those in the manuscript. New York City became Long Grain & Wild Rice. London became Lightbulb. The note also contained several brand names. I struggled with them at first, uncertain how they fit the novel’s overall scheme. About a week before the manuscript was to be submitted to the publisher, it came to me: they were a device for satirizing the consumerism of the world that surrounded its central couple, a world “loaded with signifiers that signified nothing other than themselves,” to quote a bit of the book’s most famous paragraph. And so, when OJ felt anger, it was rendered as “Pepsi.” When TP experienced lust, it was called “Kellogg’s.” The same principle held for Campbell’s (frustration), Kleenex (happiness), Clorox (fatigue), and V8 (ennui). I did not provide a key, as I felt that would interfere with the literary experience of the work, but given that I was assiduous in using the brand correspondence each and every time the pertinent emotion was mentioned, I believe readers were afforded ample opportunity to decipher the code. Those rules guided my editorial practice for the first edition in 1978, and the second in 1982. I must now report that a new biography of the author has proven conclusively that the note clipped to the manuscript was not a set of editorial instructions, but a grocery list. All edits have been reversed. 

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

THE DETAINED MAN

By Ben Greenman

From forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Hard day.

James comes home. 

He stands at the head of his street.

Here's the city whirling around him.

He tries to bring his focus down to the spot where he stands.

That's when he notices that there is a police barricade, lights whirling in the background.

He is not worried about access to his building because all the cops on the street know him.

“Except this one,” says the cop standing there. 

James is not aware he has spoken out loud.

James is the son of a man who was a famous doctor when living, and who is now the memory of a famous doctor, and who was also a writer during retirement, who started with an essay collection that detailed his most important cases, the best-known of which involved a renowned potter and numbness in the fingers, and then, after that memoir was a nationwide bestseller, went on to write a novel, which he called The Golden Age of Silver while he was writing it but which was published as The Detained Man.

The cop has read the novel, but he has no idea that he is speaking to the author’s son.

Even if he did, a brief inquiry would reveal that James has not read the novel as a result of a wrenching rift with his father in his late teens.

The barricade is there, and the lights whirling, because a man a few buildings down has murdered a number of people, some relatives of his, some not, after concealing an echoing sensation in his head that had intensified over a period of months.

The cop can only say to James that there has been an incident. 

The cop adds that James cannot go to his building, not for a little while, and notes James’s pinched frown and the uncomfortable way he shifts his weight at the news that he is being kept back.

The cop is rubbing his fingers because he has recently lost feeling in them.

He does not think to mention it to James, because he has no idea that he is speaking to the author’s son. 

If he did, James would have been able to extend a tentative diagnosis of meningioma, as he read the memoir several times before he saw his father entering a hotel with a colleague’s wife, confronted him about it, and received only stony silence in return.

Lack of bravery which results in lack of communication unfastens the entire race.

JAWS 2020

By Ben Greenman

From future collection, as yet untitled.

Scientists have discovered thousands of tiny sharks in the ocean, many no larger than a human thumb—this gives the species its informal name, “thumb sharks”—which swim in orbit around coral reefs, most of which are in mortal crisis as a result of marine pollution. Polluted reefs pass through two stages of evolution: the “Blue Desert” and then the “Boneyard.” During the Blue Desert phase, any thumb sharks swimming close to the reef will be pulled into its walls by underwater currents created by erosion, though sharks swimming more than six or eight feet away can resist the attraction of the reef, remain independent, and survive. During the Boneyard phase, no sharks are pulled into the reef, but no sharks can profit from it either, as there is nothing left but the rocky husk, and as a result they swim in tight, rapid pinwheel shapes created by groups of ten or more. Recent research has shown that sand disks appear on the shallow ocean floor beneath these pinwheeling groups, and though it is still unclear what the precise function of these disks might be, they seem to be serve as what one researcher refers to as “conceptual spotlights.” What they are spotlighting is less clear. It is also worth noting that the lead shark in each pinwheel formation is designated as a leader, and that all other sharks are not following the pattern at all but rather following the leader (who does follow the pattern). In this, scientists say, the sharks are very much like humans, accepting subsequence as a condition of survival without regard for their own pride. “No philosophy to speak of,” said Regina Sucre, one of the lead researchers on the team. “No quest. Every thumb shark save that lead is a perfect example of a thought unthought, a heart unstirred, a love affair not only unconsummated but unattempted. Nothing is ventured, as the old saying goes, so nothing is gained.” Sucre sat in a sports car that she had purchased with grant money and wiggled her fingers in a burlesque of the lesser sharks.

PITY THE POOR RECTANGLE

In the time of coming darkness, there lived a man named Ralph Angelo, known, because of the square set of his shoulders and his blocky black shoes, as Rectangle. This man was highly skilled in all matters creative and scientific. He could work with wood and silk. He could write songs and poems. He earned money as a television and radio repairman, and he had kept pace with the times by learning how to repair computers and cellular telephones as well. He had a special interest in divination. For an hour each day, beginning at noon, he would sit outside his place of business. Men would bring him books of matches, which he would scatter on the table in front of him, and after inspecting them for a few moments he would lift his head and make an announcement. “Do not leave your wife,” he would say, or “Get to the doctor about that headache,” or “Wake up earlier; you will thank me.” His advice was worth much, and given with a spirit of total sacrifice and generosity. While he sat at the match table, he did not eat and did not drink and would not accept even a penny in payment. His work was tireless. If the community had only listened to him it would have flourished, but the men who brought matchbooks often went away laughing at Rectangle, and their wives and children at home reinforced this mockery, and the men continued sleeping, or did not check out their headaches, or packed a bag and moved out of the house. Appalled by their insensibility, Rectangle folded up his table and went back to repairing radios, televisions, computers and cellular telephones, which brought people news they did not need, and by degrees turned them into people who were needed by no one.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas