Q: A Novel (20 page)

“Don’t we?” asked Spencer. “I claim no expertise in the field of entomology, but it is my firm belief that over the millennia, slavery will be eliminated by natural selection, just as it has fallen into ignominy among humans. This is its manifest destiny.”

“It is a mistake to say that because something has happened then it was inevitable that it would happen,” said Freud.

“Yet this is the obvious and inevitable direction of things.”

“It is neither obvious nor inevitable!” Freud shouted, as he banged his fist onto Gladstone’s desk. “For every example of animals increasing in size, nature offers an offsetting example of simplicity being favored. Consider the pygmy elephants of Borneo or even Darwin’s beloved finches. When food grows scarce in the Galapagos, the beaks of the finches diminish in size.

“The great lizards of the ancient world, the so-called dinosaurs, were the largest, most complex animals ever to walk the planet. They were doomed, but insects and worms prospered. Turtles are among the most ancient creatures on Earth, yet they are virtually unchanged from their most ancient ancestors, and they are indignantly and irrevocably antisocial.”

Spencer rose and said, “Animal size may change as conditions demand that it do so, but again, my good friend, the physical development of a species is not to be confused with its social evolution. On this count, you have no evidence to support you.” He turned to face his adversary. “Herr Freud, can you cite a single example of a species that reversed course on the path to social progress?”

“I deny that the adaptation of species ever represents progress. This is my central point.”

“Indulge an old man. Can you offer an example of a species that abolished slavery and later returned to it?”

“No,” said Freud.

“Perhaps, then, you have an example of a species that began the discussion of enlightened ideas and then returned to more primitive discourse?”

“No,” said Freud again, “but our field of science is merely in its infancy.”

“So we are left, then, to speculate about what the evidence will ultimately show,” said Spencer, smiling now. “If I may, for my part, I believe that time will demonstrate the steady progression of life toward the ideal. Man is the greatest proof of this. We are imperfect to be sure, but we are decidedly better and happier than our ancestors. I do not know what we will ultimately be, but I am fiercely sanguine about the end result of history.”

Freud replied, “History is a long game and the world is a big place.” He smiled. “Man is an impressive creature to be sure, but so too are pachyderms and dung beetles and moles. In my travels, I have seen firsthand the infinite complexity of life. It is my judgment, informed by this experience, that in the contest for survival each of these creatures, each of the other species we have not mentioned, and the hundreds of thousands that have yet to be discovered, rate in that long-term race an even chance against man. This is so despite all of the many advantages of enlightened society, such as electric lights, debating clubs, and my personal undoing, fish and chips.”

When the laughter subsided, Spencer said plainly, “You are a pessimist, Herr Freud.”

“I do not believe so. I simply make no judgments about the value of life. You see the life of man as intrinsically better and happier and more worthwhile. I draw no distinction between the life of man and the life of the dung beetle. Each is magnificent in its own way. Each is miraculously and specifically adapted to its own particular niche. Each finds meaning and pleasure in its lot, or not, as the case may be. I thus attach no great weight to the fate of man. You and I differ there, Spencer. But I am no pessimist. I am fiercely and irrevocably buoyant about the future of life, and life, I may say, on the basis of the experiences I have been so fortunate to have, is truly wondrous.”

“So, Herr Freud, as to the progress and future of man, at the end of this evening we are left only with hypothesis and conjecture.”

“And sadly, friend Spencer, neither you nor I shall bear witness to the resolution of this question.”

“On this we can definitely agree,” said Spencer.

Then, with the spirit of truly great men and the humility of truly great minds, Freud and Spencer warmly shook hands and embraced, to the warm applause of the Oxford Union. F. E. Smith came forward and gave each man a glass of champagne to celebrate the inaugural public debate, a success by any measure.

“To the future of man,” said Spencer, raising his glass.

“To the future of life,” said Freud, raising his own.

Each drank heartily.

Chapter Nineteen

T
he morning after I finish writing the Spencer-Freud debate chapter, another note arrives from myself. It is all business. A messenger delivers it to my office at 9:00 a.m., summoning me to lunch at noon that same day. This time my older self has arranged the table. The efficiency and professionalism of the invitation gives me hope that this time I may be spared the bill.

At Café Muriel, after brief introductions, I-63 gets right to the point. “Your writing is crap,” he says.

“That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Besides, all taste is subjective.”

“My subjective perspective is yours.”

“Is that technically right?” I rub my chin as I mull this one over. “There are quite a few years between us. You are in many ways a different person.”

“But I am still you.”

“Obviously you don’t believe that entirely or you wouldn’t be here trying to get me to change my life in some way that suits your agenda.”

“Still, I am inclined to see things as you do. Our tastes are the same.”

“I see you have a lime in your Diet Coke.”

“So?”

“I don’t like lime.”

This agitates I-63. He is obviously frustrated. “Let’s put aside the debate over notions of identity for a moment. Whatever our relationship is, your writing is crap.”

Now I am agitated. “You made this point already,” I say, peeved. “In what sense is this the case? ‘Crap’ is not a very descriptive word, you know.”

“Well, first of all, no one pays attention to it.”

“Not the Freud book either?”

“The Freud book sells eight hundred copies.”

“I have a new one in mind. I think it’s even better than the Bismarck and Robespierre ideas. Karl Marx becomes a rabbi. You know his father, Herschel Mordechai, converted from Judaism so that he could practice law.”

“I know. You write that book.”

“And? How does it do?”

“It sells eight hundred copies.”

I think about this for a moment. “Isn’t that an odd coincidence that each book sells exactly eight hundred copies?”

“I was rounding. The Freud book sells 806 copies. The Marx book sells 743 copies, almost all of these to synagogues, and a few to people who think from the cover that the book is about Groucho. In
payis
, it’s hard to recognize Karl as the communist.”

“Commercial success isn’t everything.”

“This is true.”

“I mean if the books have literary merit, then each is an end it itself.”

“The books have no literary merit.”

“You don’t like them. You already have made that perfectly clear. But you don’t speak for everyone. Some reviewers must like the other books.”

“No reviewer likes any of your books.” He says this with complete conviction and sincerity.

“Surely I must have fans. I-60 said that I would develop a small but loyal following. He was quite specific.”

“I-60 was a moron.”

“So no following?”

“Let me be clear,” says I-63. “You will publish three novels in all. None of these books will ever receive a single favorable review, mention, or comparison. You will have no literary legacy and no fans.”

“Not even Minnie Zuckerman?” I am grasping at straws.

“No,” he says, “Especially not Minnie Zuckerman.”

When the waiter arrives
to take our order, I-63 appears much less concerned with the food than with the speed of the meal. He orders a mesclun salad with raspberry vinaigrette. I order the turnips with bulgur wheat and a gluten-free bread stick. The waiter asks whether that will be all, and I say yes. I don’t feel much like eating. I-63’s news has hit me hard. I suspect I shouldn’t ask any further questions, but I feel compelled.

“What’s the problem with the books?”

I-63 looks up from a slice of bread he is absently buttering. “You want me to analyze their deficiencies for you?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“I hardly know where to begin.”

“Try.”

I-63 considers my question carefully. This strikes me as odd. It seems as if, given the purpose of his visit, he would already have devoted extensive thought to this question. For a moment, I doubt him. I want to doubt him. I-63’s grim news about the fate of my books is in its own way as difficult to take as I-60’s report on the fate of my and Q’s son. I could certainly imagine the wonder of that yet-unborn child, and the attachment that would develop. I had no trouble empathically channeling the suffering that such a loss would cause. But that little boy, QE II, was still a notion.

To me, these books are living, breathing entities, as much my product as any flesh-and-blood child. I live with them every day, inhabit their characters, experience their joys and sorrows. The message they carry with them into the world is my tangible contribution to solving the mystery of human existence. It is my whale song. And here is a stranger to tell me that no one will ever care to listen. That feels as much like death to me as the loss of any loved one. My stomach is sick, in knots.

But much as I want to doubt him, if I am being honest, truly honest, I know that he is genuine. He is not delaying answering because he has not previously considered the question. He is delaying because he is considering my feelings. He is wondering whether there is a way to do this without eviscerating me. He rubs his hand over his chin and massages his lips with his fingers. I recognize the gesture as authentic; I recognize him as authentic. Soon enough, he arrives at the answer he will share with me.

“Each book is flawed in its own way,” he says quietly. “Take the William Henry Harrison novel for starters. First of all, the premise is entirely uninteresting. No one cares about William Henry Harrison. Most people haven’t heard about him. None of the people who have heard of him care what would have happened if he had worn an overcoat.”

“It’s a poignant story,” I say, defending the choice. “Everyone can relate to the idea of finally achieving something they have worked toward for their entire life, only to have it slip from their grasp. Besides, whose mother hasn’t told them to wear a coat? It’s a good story. It strikes a chord.”

“It doesn’t strike a chord.”

“Surely with a few people.”

“No one. No one is moved by it.”

“Even if they don’t care about Harrison as a character, then surely they can become absorbed in the history. It’s a critical period in the evolution of the United States.”

I-63 pauses for a moment. “Here’s where I am perplexed by, shall we say, your artistic choices. Suppose everything you describe came to pass—Harrison serves two terms, then Webster becomes president and signs the so-called Comprehensive Compromise with John Calhoun. Then, help me here, the abolition of slavery would have been . . .”

“Slightly delayed,” I say quietly.

“Slightly delayed,” he repeats.

Again, this hits me hard. “I never looked at the big picture before. In the end, my story doesn’t make much of a difference. It is not very consequential.”

“Why did you pick it?”

“It’s a good question. I suppose I was trying to balance the desire to write fiction with the hope of securing tenure.”

“Even so, why would you make gastroenteritis such a major part of the book?”

“I thought it struck a chord.”

“No,” he says again. “No chord.”

When the waiter arrives
with the food, neither of us shows a particular interest. I cannot speak for I-63, of course, but for my part I have no appetite. I-63 nibbles at the mesclun salad. I put the turnips to the side. I wonder what about the dish appealed to me in the first place.

“What about the Freud book?” I ask. “People may not care about Harrison, but they surely care about Sigmund Freud. His personality could carry a book.”

“It’s true,” says I-63. “Freud is a rich, compelling character.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is the life you gave him is less interesting than the one he actually led.”

“How can you say that? In the novel, he’s a swashbuckling environmentalist.”

“A swashbuckler who spends seventy-five pages cataloging whales and whose life culminates in a debate at Oxford with Herbert Spencer.”

“And your point?”

“No one wants to read a debate in a novel.”

“It’s lively. There’s banter.”

“It’s nineteenth-century inside baseball. It’s boring. No one cares about the Oxford High Table, no one cares about whale taxonomy, and, most of all, no one cares about Herbert Spencer!”

“I was trying to say something about the nature of progress.”

“It’s abstruse. No one gets it.”

“No one?”

“No one.”

“Even the whale stuff?”

“You spend an entire chapter detailing the anatomical differences between toothed and baleen whales.”

“It went over well in
Moby-Dick
.”

“You’re not Melville,” he says. “Besides the stuff about the humpback whale is basically stolen from
Star Trek IV
.”

“It’s true,” I say. “I thought of having Freud and the
Kaiser Heinrich
track an Atlantic right whale instead, but rights don’t really sing. They just make a bunch of clicks and groans. It seemed important that they sing.”

“I understand the dilemma,” says I-63, “but in context it seems derivative.”

“What about the Marx book? Is it any better?”

“It’s worse.”

“That can’t be possible. Even if by luck, one of my books must have some merit.”

I-63 takes off his glasses, rubs his nose, sighs deeply. “Look, I know you’re looking for me to throw you a bone.” he says. “The truth is, you’re not a terrible writer. Some of your sentences are elegant. You occasionally use language in an interesting way. But you have a poor sense of what makes a good story and a horrible eye for detail. You lack the ability to empathize with the experience of the reader, envision what would be interesting to
them.”

“For example?”

It’s obvious that I-63 takes no pleasure in any of this. He hesitates again before answering. “Okay,” he says. “For example, do you recall the details in the Spencer versus Freud debate about the life of F. E. Smith, the president of the union?”

“Yes,” I say. “I just wrote it yesterday.”

“It’s boring, insufferably boring.”

“Oh.”

“I am sorry to say it.”

“The message is there. The message of the book.”

“All the same.”

“Surely I get better from the practice of writing all those years.”

“No,” he says. “You don’t.”

I-63 has a trusting appearance.
Unlike some of the others who have come before him, I do not feel as if he is trying to sell me on anything. The truth is, I am aware of the shortcomings of my own work. I see people’s reactions. The 92nd Street Y and Manalapan World of Fish and Hamsters audiences were not exceptions. People are generally respectful but rarely engaged by my readings. Further bolstering his cause, I-63 has made an effort to keep the bill to a minimum, which I very much appreciate. I am inclined to go with his advice.

“So what do you want from me?” I ask. “What should
I do?”

“You should be funny.”

“I think I’m pretty funny. Just the other day I made a spirited pun about a shrimp that had been lying on its back in the sun. Another shrimp walked by and asked, ‘Are you tanning or are you just lying in a
prawn
position?’ Isn’t that a good one?”

“I don’t want you to
be
funny,” I-63 says. “I want you to
write
funny. Being humorous would free you up artistically. Furthermore, I believe that if you could separate your aspirations as an author from the demands of your academic career, your writing would improve dramatically. It would relieve you of your impulse to include superfluous historical detail.”

“Who is to say what historical detail is superfluous?”

“I mean from a literary standpoint.”

“I have been writing this one way for a very long time. I don’t think funny would come naturally to me.”

“Writing doesn’t come naturally to anyone. It’s largely a matter of perseverance.”

“Fair enough.” This resonates with my own experience. “But I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“At the beginning.”

“I mean I wouldn’t even know what to write for a story.”

“Let me give you an example.”

I-63 starts to relate his idea, but I cut him off. “Hold on a second,” I say. “Is this ethical?”

“How do you mean?”

“Isn’t it plagiarism?”

“I don’t think it would be plagiarism. I’m not going to write the story for you. I’m just giving you the germ of idea.”

“Even if it’s not technically illegal, it still feels wrong. The idea belongs to someone else and, more importantly, to the future. It somehow violates the sanctity of the written word. It feels icky.”

I-63 thinks about this for a moment. Finally, he says, “I guess it does.” He thinks for a while longer, then asks, “Suppose I just tell you the idea as an example of the sort of thing I have in mind for you but you don’t actually use it.”

I consider this. “You don’t seem very funny to me.”

“I’m here to unlock your potential. My failings are beside the point. How about I just give you this example and you see whether it resonates?”

“What harm could that do?”

“All right, then,” I-63 says. “Here’s the premise. A diffident and downtrodden corporate accountant gets into a cab at the end of a long day of work. He tells the taxi driver to take him home to the East Side by going through Central Park, but the cabbie goes west to avoid traffic. ‘This better,’ he says. He keeps going west and west, and midway through Ohio, the corporate accountant, one Eric Needleman, realizes the cabbie means to drive him around the globe. He tries to redirect him, but the cabbie insists on his route saying, ‘This better.’

“Needleman is extremely anxious about the fare. But in time he accepts his fate and through the journey discovers himself. He regains his self-confidence and dislodges a sesame seed that had been caught in his teeth for eleven years, since the Super Bowl game at the home of his oppressive boss. It had been up there for so long that Needleman had started to doubt himself and the very meaning of life. But then, in Irkutsk, on the Trans-Siberian Highway, the seed dislodges itself and Needleman’s spirit soars.”