A NOTE ON THE TYPE

The text of this book was set in a digitized version of Arcimboldo, a typeface long attributed to the Italian engraver and silversmith Paolo Arcimboldo, who lived in Parma in the first half of the eighteenth century. However, it has been suggested that these types are actually the work of Arcimboldo’s next-door neighbor, Giancarlo Condulmaro, who studied in Amsterdam under the renowned type founder Hendrick de Bruyn. According to available records, Condulmaro designed at least two hundred other known typefaces, while Arcimboldo’s entire typographical oeuvre is limited to Arcimboldo and a second face, Ciottolo, which consists of pebbles arranged in a shallow bed of sand and viewed from the top of a tall tree, from which distance they look like type, a method that is relatively unwieldy in practical printing. Also contributing to the theory that Arcimboldo may have appropriated one of Condulmaro’s typefaces is an unfinished letter written by Condulmaro and found among his possessions after his mysterious disappearance in 1723. The first half of the letter, which was intended for Condulmaro’s son Eduardo, who was studying to be a painter in Rome, busies itself with Parman gossip, noting that “a cow walked into town and died” and that “Donatella Pitellini, the younger of the two Pitellini sisters, has begun to invite men into her home in the evening and not release them until the early hours of the morn.” After a brief bit of advice for his son (“When you paint, dear Eduardo, paint only things larger than a hat, and please remember that this category does not include hats”), the elder Condulmaro turned to the thornier matter of his neighbor. “Arcimboldo has been bothering me again,” Condulmaro wrote. “I saw him in the market yesterday, and he would not leave me alone. He told me that he plans to kill me, make my death look like a mysterious disappearance, and steal my new typeface, which he and I agree is so elegant that it rivals the finest Dutch faces of Bruyn, Voskens, and Janson. I do not know what these vague threats of Arcimboldo’s can possibly mean. Oh! I must go now. One of the Lollobrigida boys is here, and he has just told me that another cow has walked into town and died.” The type is a rare example of an Italian type that has proven, over the years, to be as influential and sturdy as the Dutch types of the time. No less a judge than William Caslon declared Arcimboldo “mucho excelente.” 

©2001 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

LOOK OUT

It was not until Lucille turned off the interstate onto surface roads and began to make calls that the rumor about her began to harden to a consistency that supported weight and to take a shape that resembled reliable intelligence. The first call, to her brother, was filled with demurrals, but he noticed the way she breathed, as if holding deep within her being something whose escape she could not permit. He suspected, he said when phoning her sister ten minutes later, that this thing was truth. Her sister had just hung up with her. “There was no relaxation of her manner,” she said, “despite her insistence that she felt ‘floaty’ — something about a tincture.” Her sister had to hang up because her boyfriend was on the other line—Lucille’s boyfriend, not her own. “She made a point of maintaining the friendliest tone,” he said, “but I know what that means. That’s her version of an eye for an eye. It scared me so much that I am standing outside now waiting for her to pull up. I think I know what she’s going to say. I hope I’m wrong.” Lucille’s sister let out a noise. “I hope you are too,” she said. Lucille’s sister called her brother back and found him still convinced that the thing held deep was truth. “All I can say is that I wouldn’t want to be that guy,” he said. The line hummed with all variety of perturbation. 

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

BORNE ETERNALLY

Everyone ran off down the street, screaming, trying to make sense of what they had just seen, but there was no making sense of it, as it was at once the most magnetic and the most repulsive thing that any of them had ever encountered, and they were both honored and ashamed to have witnessed it. So what was it? What had they seen? How can it be told? It cannot. It was—it is—like those horror moves made in countries with longer memories than our own, countries where ghosts roam freely through dim halls, where they bang on kitchen pans and knock down bicycles into the dust. In those movies, true horrors, when glimpsed, cannot be described for others, cannot be communicated or replicated. They work like a curse, tunneling into the consciousness of those who have seen them and refusing to be clearly shared. The burden is borne eternally by the witness. And so they must be approximated, which is a form of misrepresentation. This particular one, the one that everyone ran from screaming, was, let's say, a woman, maybe thirty, with long black hair and eyes to match, staring straight ahead, thinking of her freer youth. She fretted a corner of her sweater. A dark light danced in the hedges behind her. No one would survive the sight, not for long.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL

Why were Faye and Delores up so early Tuesday morning? Really girls! 

Why is Lisa called “Lightning”?? 

Who is Dixon Mason’s new admirer? Could it be Judith Rollo Zipton? 

Is Chris Hugo getting gray of head or is Knightsy just seeing things? 

What is the question Alice is afraid to ask Greer????? 

Who are the great surreptitious overhearers of Center Towne High?? How about this Victoria and Hermione? 

“Dollimore! Get Back!” 

Margaret really had the girls worried Saturday night. You’re a good actress, Peg! 

We hear Glenne Kessel has joined the “Rooster Prowl.” Is this true Bertie? 

It seems like Mr. Shaw is hell-bent on destruction every time he teaches his trig class, to the point where he has raised the volume on more than one student, and that a senior who will not be identified is retaliating daily by filling Old Shaw’s car gas tank with goldfish-tank water. Really kids! 

Why are Mackie and Merce studying up on their Latin and sporting shorter and shorter hemlines? Audentes fortuna iuvat.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

FOREARMS ON KNEES

A hint of the darker side of the conjurer’s life was evident during a tour of the home of the Great Oliver, the veteran magician, who resides in Spraight Manor with his second wife, an heiress to a glass-making fortune. Upstairs, beyond the second sunroom and the music room, where the grand piano and harp both lived, there is a studio outfitted with mirrors, tables, and performance lighting. In that room, on the tour, a silk hat was found on a small table filled with chicken salad, rose petals, pennies, and car keys, and beside the table was the Great Oliver, sitting on the floor, forearms on knees, crying like he might never stop. All he could say was that he didn’t understand why the trick wouldn’t work, that it had always worked before, that he didn’t understand why it wouldn’t work, that it had always worked before. The tour hurried on to the gymnasium.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

STACEY RUSSELL MEETS A GUY IN A BAR

“I am overlapping worlds. I receive a daily poetry newsletter and also count among my acquaintances people in the highest levels of government. My friend, who I won’t name—I’ll say only that he’s the current boyfriend of a woman I used to date, and that my character is such that I had no objection to establishing a friendship with him, and no difficulty maintaining it—works at the music industry, where he writes songs and produces records for some of the rawest black metal bands on the planet, including Punctura, Gorgorum, Bloodscape, Killscythe, Elevatorture, Norwegian Moe, and Pagan Throne Bazaar. And his mother, one of my favorites, is an inventor who has done important work on blue-light blockers and is wickedly funny to boot. They are all in different worlds, yet they are all in my world, meaning that I am a nexus, a bridgework, a connector. Some people make the world smaller. I make it larger by being too large for it. Can I buy you a drink?” Stacey Russell stands and leaves.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

UNDERSTUDIES

The role of the delivery room doctor will be played by Albert Jenkins.

The role of the cabbie who drives the new family home from the hospital will be played by Roland Ferris.

The role of your father will be played by an older, sterner man.

The role of your mother will be played by a younger, more idealistic woman.

The role of your hometown will be played by an adjoining town, wealthier but without the same sense of community.

The role of your first job will be played by a fruitless summer at the swim club.

The role of your wife will be played by your ex-girlfriend.

The role of planned pregnancy will be played by unplanned pregnancy.

The role of your loving son will be played by an ingrate.

The role of your loyal business partner will be played by a deceitful colleague.

The role of your best friend will be played by a neighbor who tends his lawn obsessively and rarely speaks to you.

The role of God will be played by a gnawing sense of despair that cannot be alleviated by alcohol.

The role of the twenty-year anniversary will be played by divorce.

The role of prosperity will be played by bankruptcy.

The role of retirement will be played by a brief period of manic travel that culminates in a weekend spent in a Tallinn hotel with a paid companion who follows your night of debauchery with a long story, told at breakfast, told convincingly, about the difficulties that have dogged her throughout life (cruel father, distant mother, a survivor's instinct that kept her moving forward but did not keep her from wandering into danger), a story that has you feeling protective toward her until the moment when, a week later, you discover that she has charged more than a thousand dollars on your credit card and no longer answers the number she has promised you can call any time "just to talk—because I like you."

The role of flu will be played by diabetes.

The role of old age will be played by single-car accident, ruled suspicious.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas