APPRECIATED WITH A HAMMER

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The first day’s sale of the F. L. Ayer collection brought in $401,000. The chief prices fetched were “Book of Longing,” by Lydon, for $100; “Everybody’s Changing,” by Norris, for $100, “How To Live With Strangers,” by Beard, for $100; “Portrait of Nora,” by Dixon, for $100; “Pillow Dog,” by Vogel, for $100; “Flaneurs,” by Byrne, for $100; “Cacophony in Red and Green,” by Fabian, for $100; “Seafoam Flecking,” by Booth, for $100; “Old Mama,” by Davidovich, for $100; “Whistle-Stop,” by Day, for $100; and “Birds Painted On Sealed Cedar Box,” by Furlino, for $400,000. “You know the legend of ‘Cedar Box,’” said Al Webster, who had the winning bid on the objet d’art, the only one of its kind in the show. “Furlino was a Sunday painter, and he made these little oddities, but his main occupation was being a bagman for the mob. That’s not in dispute. He pled guilty. When he went upstate, the Feds picked through his house, and they found only some of the money. This wooden box was by then in a private collection of an elderly lady who refused to crack it open and see if anything was inside. She said she appreciated it too much. Well, when I get it home I’m going to appreciate it with a hammer.” Webster was also the winning bidder on “Cacophony in Red and Green,” which had been compared in the auction notes to a Kandinsky. “That’s a little optimistic,” he said. “Maybe more an early Bischoff?”

GUY’S STILL GOING

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Guy Dalrymple, though a long way short of the full strength he displayed in years past, still managed to lift up most of the neighborhood, building by building, moving from east to west across town. Starting with the Pine Terraces apartment complex, he then hoisted the school, a trio of moderately sized Tudor homes, a small grocery, an Italian restaurant, an antique shop, and a larger grocery. He had trouble with the hospital, where he was forced to enlist Van Etten and Barker. Even Crook was on hand in case he was needed. Dalrymple got the hospital up, but he also heard the murmurs in the crowd, as did Crook, who conveyed them to Dalrymple with a sly smile. Dalrymple, affronted, sent his two pals packing and went west on his own again, lifting up the jeweler, the shoe store, the bank, the hardware store, the lighting-fixture specialist. The next block was taken up fully by the movie house, which Dalrymplye could not get off the ground at all, as four movies were playing, all popular, and the place was filled to capacity. But he would brook no suggestion of help, even when Crook, who had been following him closely since the jeweler, reminded him that Van Etten and Barker were still available. But Dalrymple’s pride was as prodigious as his strength. He adjourned for the day and released, through his press agent, a late evening statement: “Mr. Dalrymple will be back early in the morning,” it read, “in fact at the crack of dawn. The movie house will be no match for him. Mark it here: Guy’s still going.” Most of those who read it chuckled inwardly at what they knew would be the sight of a man straining vainly against four floors of brutal brick.

A MORAL PRODIGY

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The Invitational of Principles and Practices has surpassed all expectations with regards to the interest shown by the general public, and that interest has been duly rewarded, as the first week’s action has not been without surprise. This past Tuesday saw an unusual incident when Dr. James Cornell had apparently fought the seven-year-old moral prodigy, Eleanor Gregor of Nebraska, to a draw. Gregor has been a sensation since her first exhibition matches at the age of four, at which time she demonstrated a moral sense that most conceded was the equal of the world’s greatest practitioners. The following year, she was among them in competition. Gregor was heavily favored against Cornell, who has recently been diagnosed with a serious illness and who has responded to it by increasing rather than decreasing his impatience and self-interest (though it should be noted that he claims his actions as an example of “healing the self so that the self can heal others”). On Tuesday, Gregor took an early lead but Cornell battled back and appeared to have earned a draw. Cornell, Gregor, and the spectators were filing out of the hall when Gregor could be heard to shout “Oh!,” after which she sprinted back toward the ring of play. A consultation of the rulebook determined that she was still within the ten-minute resumption period, and a review by the head judge did away with any suspicion that an inspired person in the exiting throng had suggested a moral argument to her. Gregor then presented a case that asserted normative ethics without committing to any one binding force, largely through a simple but nevertheless compelling metaphor of a new colonist forced to articulate fundamental principles without infringing upon the freedoms of others. She finished by turning her palms up and speaking a single word: “Society.” Cornell for some time stared across the table silently but was forced to concede. Former moral champion Louis Kostek, who has suffered many defeats at the hands of the so-called Omaha Oracle, repeated with great intensity his well-known phrase: “When Gregor moves, we move toward her, and can not do otherwise.” However, Gregor herself upon her return to the hotel acknowledged that she had not seen the idea the first time, and that its appearance to her as she filed out of the hall was akin to an epiphanic vision. 

Later that night, a throng filled the hall as Gregor simultaneously took on twenty-eight opponents against whom she notched twenty-four wins, three draws, and only one narrow loss. Afterwards, she solidified her hold on the title by remarking that “A loss is necessary among multiple victories, if only as a reminder of the meaning of both."

Gregor now continues to the World Championships, this year held in Nonthaburi.

“POSSIBLY A…STRUGGLE”

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Reuben Elliott, fourteen, has sent a New Year’s message to the adults who live in his house, which include his mother, his father, and his maternal grandmother, along with an uncle who has been an on-and-off occupant of the guest room on the second floor while tying up a few outstanding issues in the conclusion of his marriage.  In this message Reuben says:—

“The New Year will begin with lots of things being different, chief among them the recognition that I need more privacy. I know it will be difficult for everyone, possibly a titanic struggle, but may we all withstand the strain and pass into a period of greater peace and happiness marked mainly by the fact that I will have more privacy.”

HANDSOMELY BOUND

“Ana’s Thoughts” for this new year records that over the course of the past twelve months, twenty-three new beliefs were created while six beliefs became extinct. Twenty-one persistent observations that sprang up during January were still considered valid by year’s end, and fifty-one recurring phrases were added to the roll of reflexive responses. The honor of easy access to complex concepts was conferred in seventy-four instances, and 358 other abstractions came to reside in the mind in a more diffuse form, familiar enough to be referred to in shorthand if not fully grasped. Some twenty-three incidences of deja vu were added to the space between memory and experience, bringing the total up to 309. The list of thoughts includes one moment of true spiritual transport triggered by migraine, twenty-three paradoxes, forty-four shallow intellectual assumptions, sixty-two cases of extreme anxiety, and 201 incidences of physical ecstasy, brought into being by self or others, that temporary obliterated all other thoughts. Other customary features of the publication remain in place for this year’s edition, including a photo gallery of all the people Ana could not immediately recognize, a list of malapropisms, and a comprehensive log of her dreams. The volume has been handsomely bound in leather.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

BACK INTO RAMSFORD

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

On Friday night some Deacon children roving on the edge of the woods on the north side of town found an old automobile, apparently abandoned, with no one inside. The Deacons, ranging in age from nine to fourteen, engaged in an extended debate about how best to approach the vehicle and eventually decided to send Gloria, the oldest, to peer in the window. She found the keys still in the ignition. When the car was started by Juliette, eleven, the radio played a cassette of a classical composition that Sharon, the youngest Deacon, described as “peaceful but with energy.” The trunk contained a half-dozens bags of uncured cement, and in the back seat there were remnants of a take-out meal of chicken sandwiches. One, still mostly intact, indicated a hurried departure. A folder labeled “Map of the Forest” was missing its contents. The ten-year old triplets, Vanessa, Louise, and Penny, eventually encouraged Juliette, by acclaim the most confident driver of the seven and at any rate the only one entirely comfortable with a manual transmission, to take the car back into Ramsford. 

RANGES FROM THE BOISTEROUS

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The Vecsey Toy Company’s collection of miniature figurines have long since come to be regarded as an indispensable part of any home collection. The entries for this holiday season are on a superior scale to those imagined for many a moon. The figurines, one inch in height as in every other year, stride confidently across the line separating craft from art, notably those the represent birds of prey (which hover roughly one foot in the air with no visible means of support) or lake fish, which begin to turn pale and gray if left in open air but which take on vibrant colors when submerged in water. All are rendered in the most exquisite detail imaginable, and one would be forgiven for believing that they are real, and that the rest of us are oversize effigies. And then there are the specimens of tiny female humans, billed as a counterpart to the successful series of men released earlier in the year, which was fine in its own right but cannot live up to the new arrivals. The set ranges from the boisterous (“Carol, On a Bender,” complete with a not entirely rebuttoned skirt) to the more philosophically inclined (“Andrea, Contemplating Being,” the subject of which is nestled in a comfortable leather armchair with a miniature copy of Buber’s “I and Thou”). Other new Vecseys include a first-time mother, staring at a newborn baby with a wondrous expression that is half-smile, half-scowl; and “Foreign Secretary,” which depicts an attractive middle-aged woman en route from her flight to her hotel, sitting in the backseat of the town car paging through a report on regional security. All are lovely and diverting creations that provide collectors with a ready-made store of surprises.