(The discrepancy between what they say they’re doing and what they actually think they’re doing is also an important source of understanding for disinterested observers or partisan investigators.)
When it is proposed, the third possibility is almost certain to encounter trouble with the university’s curriculum committee, and yet it follows most logically from our argument and is in many ways the most attractive:
English 400. Silence.
Insomniac Rhapsody on Vitalism1
July 9, 1985
2:13 a.m.
Insomnia, my God I’m insomniac!
Can’t sleep on my stomach or on my back.
Thoughts race through my muddled brain,
Do U-turns and race back again.
I like the last couplet of the quatrain. Definitely, I have a flair for rhyme. In fact, that might be my only flair.
My flares are all burned out. My gifts are silver ashes and hollow red tubes beside life’s freeway. The semis roar past, carrying their cargoes into the night, through Wyoming, Utah, Nevada. “Breaker. Breaker. This is Boilermaker. Smokey’s parked behind the Little America billboard. So slow down, you hard drivin’ mothers.”
If I had any guts, any initiative, I’d call ___2 right now and arrange to meet you in Las Vegas, where we’d see some shows, play some roulette, drink some whiskey—because, you know, Las Vegas is LIFE! The glittering signs, the whirr of the ivory ball as it races around the wheel, the snap of the cards, the clank of the one-armed bandit, all the cigarette smoke, the prime rib dinner (any hour of the day) for $4.99, and look at that fat lady over there in the pink polyester pantsuit: her hair is blue! She’s pumping quarters into the slot. A widow from Southern California. (Her husband was a fireman in Anaheim.) My heart goes out to her—poor lost soul in her K Mart clothes, looking for some kind of lease on life (before she joins her late husband in the family plot at Rose Hills Memorial Park), pumping coins into the slot as if . . . as if . . . as if she had found a hypnotic, mechanical act of love to see her through. Oh, may she achieve the three-bar orgasm that will bring a cascade of quarters, enough to sustain her through the next two days, for she’s on a three-day tour and has allowed herself only twenty dollars for gambling. Notice her posterior. As the saying goes, it’s as broad as two ax handles and a plug of tobacco. If you’ll get a bit nearer to her, you can smell her perfume—so sweet that it reminds me of a childhood visit to a candy factory.
No, I’m not tempted by this little bon-bon, the Tootsie Roll. But why am I now turning cynical, for, you see, my intent was to understand and love her, yet the perfume was so overpowering that it subverted my best intentions. Should we, as an act of kindness, tell her how repulsive her scent is?
“Breaker, Breaker. This is Humpin’ Harry. Just pullin’ into Vegas. Think I can find me a sweet little widow to haul my ashes? Be talkin’ to you later. Over and out.”
But, of course, the vitalists are right.3 Just think of what I’m doing now—not what I’m doing, but what the language is doing to me. Gee whiz! The flow of my creativity—the surprises—the twists and turns—the happy accidents—the vivid images—the unintended metaphors. Oh, the joy of it! Why didn’t someone tell me about this before? Alas, I was imprisoned by the tagmemic4 grid! It was my cell, and fool that I was, I didn’t know I wasn’t free! Lahd Amighty, free at last! I have overcome!
Image: my face staring blankly out from behind the grid, my hands clutching the vertical bars.
Oh, if I had the wings of an angel,
Straight out of this grid I would fly,
And I’d land in the arms of ___________5,
And there I’d be willing to die.
Oh my God! I just realized: the woman playing the slot machine wasn’t a California widow at all. She was ________. I should have recognized her sooner. The way she was pulling the handle—definitively, resolutely. The way she was inserting the quarters—reluctantly but resignedly. That scowl! Those practical walking shoes! And I can explain the perfume: she thinks it will attract some truck driver, lure him into a liaison, for, after all, this is her one and only fling, after which she will go back to her work of correcting freshman themes.
Vell, I vill tell you dis: dee only reason vye peoples gembles is dat dey sublimate dare libido. Yust tink of all dem dirty gemblings vords. Poker! Blackjack! Roulette! Craps! Keno! Slot machine! Dat filthy language make me turn blush.
But, of course, we need an explanation for ______’s obsession with the slot machine, and now we have it. None of our characters will be without plausible motive.
Yawn. Calistoga sparkling mineral water with natural orange flavor. Very refreshing.
Truckdriver Harry was in a casino—
Must have been in Vegas or Reno.
He was sippin’ his booze and playin’ his game
When his eyes lit on a lonely dame.
He finished his drink and picked up his chips,
And he eyed that gal from her chin to her hips.
She was pumpin’ a slot with all her might.
He knew that he could score that night.
He stood behind her and nuzzled her ear
And asked if she would like a beer.
She said that she was not a drinker—
Claimed to be a learned thinker.
She turned and looked him in the eye;
His hand crept slowly up her thigh.
What happened next? Please be specific.
To develop an answer, use a heuristic.
. The romantic theory that truth and beauty are in the individual, just waiting to be evoked by the proper instruction.
. The reader is invited to supply any name he or she chooses.
. The rest of the paragraph is, of course, an explanation of vitalism.
. An overdetermined method used by some English teachers to squeeze or wrench ideas from their students.
. The reader should here supply the name of any English teacher that he or she has suffered under. Unfortunately the teacher supplied must be female—not that only women wreak their havoc in composition classes.
Writing Theorists Writing: Life Studies
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