The Pedant

 

For reference:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_sale:_baby_shoes,_never_worn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Paperclips

 

It was three in the morning. Why the fuck was he ringing?

Casting off the dreamworld where I was a giant – or something, it was something big, anyway – and coming reluctantly back into the mundane world, I accepted his call.

Predictably - even in my gargantuan sleep-filled state, I could predict it - he started his spiel with no hello, no apology, no preamble:

“I’ve done it! You’re going to love it! The saddest story ever told! Everyone thought I couldn’t do it in 6 words… but I could and I did and I could!

“Johannes,” I screwed my cyclopean eyes shut and tried not to let the fury show.

But then I realised I was a normal sized man and it was 3 in the morning and he couldn’t see me.

He continued, “They all said it couldn’t be done but I’ve fucking done it. Me! Johannes!” It all seemed a little redundant.

“JOHANNES!” I let the fury into my voice. Who cared? I allowed myself to curl my lip in the way you always hated. At this point, I didn’t need to hide my feelings from my tone and I sure as shit didn’t need to hide it from my face.

I took the speaker away from my ear. Feeling the pressure in my bladder, I knew I would have woken up soon anyway. Not much sleep lost by his interruption. A small blessing - a gift from a tardigrade.

I could just make out a blur of words of billowing from the phone. “Genius,” was one. “Epochal” was another. “Held in the hands of the Lord!” were some others.

“Johannes,” I said again. Third time, as they always say, was the charm.

“Yes?” he said.

My bleary larynx winced its way into the conversation.  “I need to piss. I’ll call you back…”

I hung up.

_________________________________________________________________________

Once pissed, I was awake. Fully. What the tardigrade gives, it can take away.

I tried to snuggle back into bed but the bed was no longer that kind of bed anymore. I was no longer Pantagruel, just a regular man, and the membrane of sleep could no longer be punctured.  

It wasn’t like I has anyone around I complain to about being woken up and, as I said, I was awake now. Fully. So I rang him back

“What, Johannes, may I ask, is your world changing idea?” I inquired, rubbing my brow.

If a voice’s eyes could bulge, his did then. “You know how Hemingway was challenged to write the saddest story ever using only six words?”

I wanted to tell him it wasn’t Hemingway who wrote that story but – even at 3:04 in the morning and as much as I may bitch - it was nice to hear Johannes so happy and I didn’t want to rain on his parade. But, then again, I couldn’t lie to him about that story’s provenance. I fudged by grunting.

*Grunt* I said. He took this for assent.

“Well, I’ve one-upped him. I’ve written a sadder one. In just 6 words. Do you want to hear?”

It wasn’t a question. Why did he ask it as a question if there was only one answer?

“Sure,” I said.

“Ok,” he said and paused. I assume it was dramatically. I don’t know. I was busy staring at my ceiling. There was nothing dramatic about it.

He spoke:

 

For Sale: Paperclips, never used.

 

I sighed to myself.  As quietly as I could.

“I hate to blow my own horn but it’s so much sadder than a dead baby. I feel there’s a Nobel in it for me. I wonder if I’ll be knighted? I’d probably have to turn it down, for moral reasons, you know, but Sir Johannes Birnehaus iii has such a great ring to it, don’t you think? And..”

I couldn’t take it. I tried. I really tried. I tried just to say, well done and very clever and all that but all this boasting after he was so clearly wrong?

“Johannes, listen to me!” I snapped. “Firstly, Hemingway didn’t write that short story!”

Damn it. Oh well, it would all come pouring out of me anyway, like so much Brobdingnagian verbal vomit.  Presently, I continued, “Secondly, you need to know that stupid fucking story in the first place for your story to work.

“AND THEN you have to know...” I took a deep breath and held in my sigh. I was trying. I really was. “Then you have also have to know what the Universal Paperclip Machine is for your story to work.”

I was kind of annoyed that I actually understood his story to be honest. I had spent too much time with him; thought too much like him. Oh well.

“And the original story is sad – that’s if anyone think it’s sad – because it’s about one DEAD BABY. Which everyone thinks is sad.”

He tried to cut in but I stopped him.

“Yes, I know yours is about the whole planet being dead because the Universal Paperclip Machine has made so many paperclips that there’s no other resources left and everyone’s died so no one can the paperclips.”

I heard him say, “So you did get it?” but I wasn’t done.

“But it’s based on sci-fi fantasy story and it’s too abstract for any… ummm … emotional heft.

“And finally… finally… it’s only five fucking words, Johannes!”

We sat there. Well, I assume he sat there as well. I would say the air was thick between us but we were many miles apart. Probably just some thin air meandering about between our beds

Eventually Johannes said, “But you thought it was a good story?”

“Pretty good, Johannes” I replied. “Pretty good.”

 

Later, I lay there thinking. I couldn’t leave it alone.

I began to think. And it’s hard not to. I am a petty, petty man. And I now needed Johannes to know I could outdo him.

I thought, it’s the rhythm that makes it.

I thought, it’s the six words thar are important.

I thought, it’s the punctuation that’s paramount.

I thought, it’s got to seem pithy.

I thought, it’s got to appeal to fucking morons.

I thought of yet another stupid, apocryphal tale which had Picasso charging thousands of pesos for a quick doodle and when questioned over the price saying, “Why yes, it took me only 30 seconds to draw, but a lifetime to learn.”

So, what would my take be? My take honed by a lifetime of precision?

Something modern. Something weird. Something that referenced the riddle of the original. Something that would reply to the original’s implication with a referential wink and grin.

Something the morons would lap up.

I texted Johannes:

 

Not dead: baby born without feet.

 

No comma, he replied.

 

Fuck you, I thought.

The Author Can Never Die

 

Writing is killing me.

Every word is a pain.

You cannot comprehend the effort I expended in typing this sentence.

And this one.

And this.

And still.  Still, I write.  For whom? For you. Because I love you.

And what do you reward me with? Sheer indifference. Indifference of the purest, most unadulterated kind. Which is beautiful, in and of itself, I suppose.

5 days this has taken me.

Every. Single. Word. A toothpulledout.

I just needed to you know what it has cost me.

And why, why does writing hurt me so? Why, when the bard told us all that all talk is cheap and any bird can go cheep cheep cheep and to type this doesn’t even tax my poor vocal cords?

It’s the fact that, no matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I think, no matter how many times I edit, my sentences rot and fester and eventually turn to shit.

If Pierre Menard, Author of Quixote, had written that line, everyone would be clap-clap-clapping - including myself, naturally. But reading it back doesn’t move me. It wouldn’t move anyone. It couldn’t: it’s mine.

If Richard Brautigan had written this line, it would be a thing of beauty. Something to be enjoyed, admired, cogitated upon. Something that improved our three-score-and-ten. The exact same sentence, in the exact same place, from me is stinking garbage.

Even worse: it’s tedious. The world is a worse place for it existing. The Universe regrets creating the matter and energy required for its writing and reading. Every word I write makes a mockery of existence.

But why? Why is my writing so bad? I typed the whole of The Catcher in The Rye out and it was crummy - phony even. It was all crinkly ashes and tension headaches. It was the opposite of whatever Chicken Soup for The Soul is. I picked up a copy from the library and read the ostensibly the same thing. The exact same words in the exact same order. Then, I was spellbound, putty in Salinger’s hands.

I even erased Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 word by word and replicated each letter with my own hand. Syllable by syllable, foot by foot, it became darker and gloomier. In the end, it was not comparable to a summer day, not even a little bit.

And now, 25 days since I began, covered in sweat and yowling with pain, I am near to finishing this.

For you.

I can’t go on. I must go on. I can’t go on.