Enslaved by the sheer quantity of people

Margrum wondered if the founders of this democracy had ever contemplated the possibility that one day the citizens of the Great Republic they had initiated with such gusto and had organized with such passionate care would be one day walking around with their wallets and purses and key chains bulging and stuffed with what were called bonus cards in order to get what were called bonuses.

Margrum was older now and it was difficult for him to say exactly if the word itself had changed or if it was merely his attitude toward the word that had, but he had begun to feel that he had started life as one of the free and proud and privileged of the world, one to whom “much had been given and from whom much would be expected,” and but who now felt surely and squarely and without too much in the way of hyperbole or self-pity that he was what had in former times been called a slave. A slave! (And perhaps one deserving of a handout.)

Not a slave bound with chains always so literal as handcuffs, nor so visible as bonus cards; but from every side, — legally, economically, physically, politically — he had come to feel constrained, and “slave” did not seem a word too melodramatic to describe the intensity of his feelings about this constraint — his sure feelings of the impossibility of making what a reasonable person might call progress. (And he didn’t feel like a slave — in fact, he often didn’t feel that way — but felt that he was a slave: felt there had been this dramatic palpable change in his societal status.)

He had been raised with the thought that slavery had been abolished some while ago; he was now of an experience that told him such things go away only to return again in more familiar, less imposing forms. To a degree, Margrum felt defeated and enslaved by the mere fact of the sheer quantity of people that were alive with him now (and these people had to be organized somehow after all; slavery, he supposed, would do just fine!) (When there are so many people all about maybe that just naturally results in there being one Pharaoh over all the slaves. Maybe the population size was itself a sort of Pharaoh.) He who had always thought of himself as nothing special but no redundancy or duplicate, now did very much indeed question the grounds for making such a distinction, with all these people grown up around him.

Or maybe it was not that he had become a slave (he didn’t for example think he belonged to anyone else). Maybe he had only become (without having fully realized it was happening) kind of poor. And a lot of people with him too, a whole class of people made poor without their quite having known. As if he and everyone else he knew, the whole middle class of the country even, or a chunk of it, like a giant ice shelf calved from the polar cap, had been barreling along having a good time, having the feeling they were making progress, only gradually the times became less good, the road more rocky with more traffic, with less space in the overhead compartment, no leg room, with food that didn’t taste right –you had to go to unaffordable stores to get the decent food– until finally they came to understand that they were in the middle class no longer. They still had cars, houses, college educations, children, in many cases, the trappings of the middle class, but now none of it was paid for, none of it was any good. They had cars and homes and educations, but they were shoddy and imbued with cheapness, pieces of paper, and the sense was there was to be no future.

But what most pisses him off at the moment is his can of beer. He’s looking at it and it really pisses him off to the extent that he completely forgets the issue of his enslavement. They have altered the shape of the can to save money and increase profit. It isn’t a comely shape. Anyhow, he’s passed out.

ambition of Bromer

Bromer. He feels that as Max brod was the “light in which Kafka appeared” he is to be the light in which Margrum and Higgs are to appear, only he can’t make them appear or hasn’t been able to do it yet. They are in need of publicity to a certain extent, he realizes. They need to be ‘written up’.

Now it’s not of course that the public doesn’t know about Higgs and Margrum — for who hasn’t yet heard about Higgs and Margrum– but Higgs and Margrum, Margrum and Higgs, haven’t yet been made real to them, the general public, considers Bromer. That is to be the big challenge for him, if, as is his ambition, he is to be their ‘light.’

bungle

Higgs looked at the perfect cut shadows on the well trimmed grass that was most close beneath the biggest closest trees that he thought “seem like a jungle”

It was also as if there was a “jungle of thought” between his perception of what he referred to as a jungle (some bamboo) and his appreciation or naming of it — he could not even think that he thought a “jungle” was between him and the jungle.

He did not say “grungle”, portmanteau of grass and jungle that he thought ; he did not say jurungle, portmanteau of “grungle” and “jungle”, though he did think “grungle” and “jurungle” and “jurunglegungle.” Higgs did say “bungle” portmanteau of ‘bamboo’ and ‘jungle’ which was odd, because though he had seen the bamboo and had been made to think of a ‘jungle’ because of it, the word itself had not yet come to mind for him — bamboo

He did not laugh as he said it (“bungle”), indeed he almost whispered it, for he knew it would cause him to seem intoxicated and he was not intoxicated, not by the ordinary things, not by the ordinary things

[…]

Higgs: not feeling like himself

Higgs, according to his notes, felt himself to be “at a greater than forty degree angle from the person [he] should be, the person that [he] might have been.” Had “accumulated significant evidence that his his [sic] life was wildly off track,” the notes said.

One vision of the person he might have been was of a nicely dressed, closely shaven, thoroughly organized, and very serious person. This was a vision of a professional person who was moderate in his consumption, focused on his appointed tasks, a dedicated and dependable family man and worker who performed efficiently and flawlessly and who openly established clear boundaries in his relationships with others. This person was on top of the very nicest fads and trends besides all that– he wore clean colorful shirts frequently. I might have been this person, Higgs lamented. This was the Higgs, Higgs would feel, who was on the right track.

Another vision of the person he might have been was a messianic figure dressed in desert garb, a St. Francis type figure in a serious struggle for eternal contentment, marked by real victories and defeats rather than being concealed in “the muck of my days” […] and still another version was Margrum himself. (“I do love that about Margrum!” is a phrase repeatedly sprinkled across Higgs’ notes.) He loved about Margrum what he so hated about himself: that Margrum was absolutely so Margrum, was so himself and unlike any other. Everything was okay for Margrum and he seemed to live in a magic bubble, impenetrable to the world’s worst indignities and slaveries, because he was Margrum himself; whether acted properly or improperly he was always essentially right because he was always doing what only he could do, according to the notes…. “Margrum was Margrum but Higgs was not Higgs” is a phrase you would find repeatedly in the notes. Maybe it was because of Margrum, Higgs realized he was not totally himself, he occasionally pondered too. Maybe it was Margrum who had somehow prevented him from becoming himself?

In the end, Higgs appears to find he can’t form a proper idea of his true self without being fully himself and can’t be fully himself without having that proper idea of whom to be. Unless this was who he was meant to be, an essentially incomplete person, who needed other people to complete him, a country, a society, a church, a partner like Margrum. Margrum, whom to Higgs seemed complete in himself, however; Margrum didn’t need others, or at least didn’t need Higgs.

Skill at throwing

Perhaps among the most remarkable of Margrum’s lesser known amazing attributes is that he is of all things an expert thrower –any kind of object, no matter how unwieldy or unlikely a projectile it may be, he throws with utterly extraordinary accuracy, distance and power — delicacy even.

— I think, Higgs tells him, that while my ancient ancestors were in the back of the cave fermenting bones into various wines, medicines, unguents and vinegars, yours were outside juggling and the like–

(it might be said that as patient as Higgs was with Margrum’s tardiness, about that patient was Margrum with Higgs’ sense of humor. Perhaps Margrum thought of Higgs’ humor as a kind of mental being late, comparable to his physical being late*, although in so many other respects Higgs could be intellectually farseeing and on point, just as physically Margrum, when engaged in domestic activities that did not involve throwing or heaving, could seem ridiculously maladroit) (*though when Margrum threw things they were on time)

and so Margrum considered it appropriate to ignore Higgs’ ‘humorous’ remarks most of the time. He replied with an assenting grunt….

*

Margrum was panting heavily (It seemed as much a weight of concentration, as of the tree he had just heaved, that had caused this heavy, almost pained, heavy breathing). Margrum had just whirled the ceramic-potted tree, a sapling fig, about him in a circle five times, before sending it and the pot both over the balcony and down eight stories directly onto the engine of Mr. Banks’ moving pickup truck. Absolutely Amazing (Higgs had said this staring over the balcony railing watching Mr. Banks exit running from the ruined smoking truck, the potted plant on its ruined hood.) He said this drawing his pistol. Then he said, “Hold it right there, Mr. Banks!”

How Margrum had Seemed to Higgs a Portal by which he Might Escape The Historians (by which he meant, “Consideration”)

What Higgs called “Conscience” was the perception of how the historians of the future would look on one’s present activity. To know if an action was conscionable or not, one must somehow commune with, or be otherwise mindful of, these so called historians of the future, who could tell you.

Whatever Margrum’s idea of what conscience was and of what was conscionable, if he had one (for he certainly never spoke of having one) it was nothing like this idea of Higgs’. Margrum would perhaps even have distrusted the idea that conscience could coexist with “educatedness” in a high degree– “Conscience” was nothing like this “Education”, he might have argued (if Margrum ever argued over this kind of stuff) which was just a trapping of Wealth; it could be nothing like this “looking on the present as if it were the past” that Higgs was so fond of — just as Higgs was so fond of looking at and judging the past as if it were the present. And Margrum would frequently grow weary of Higgs for living so much in the realm of “consideration” as he called it. “Consideration –not conscience,” he would say or seem to say. (Because Margrum didn’t really say things of that sort.) It was just more “respectability,” he would seem to think. It was only conscionable indeed to not care what those historians might think. Because historians were education and education was wealth, and conscience must be available to all people and wealth was not and was not natural therefore and education and wealth were not universally available and never would be yet all people should be able to do, through conscience or by nature, what was right.

Higgs who, in the normal course of things, tended to believe much more in what Margrum had to say about him than in what he had to say about himself (and not in every instance unwarrantedly, because Margrum was plainer and more straight forward), Higgs would come to look on Margrum as one who spontaneously and naturally did everything that was good and conscientious, while being authentically always himself; and would come to think of himself as one who, through intense serious careful calculation, got everything wrong and was deadly dull and false and incorrigibly morally weak –an insect. (And Margrum would never think of himself in derogatory terms, another proof). He, Higgs, seemed to view all the world as something to be made for the benefit of the future’s historians, out of which sad world the totally ignorant but authentic Margrum offered the only clear way out.

(Then Margrum would so something that was highly authentic and characteristic and natural, and yet so utterly execrable, deplorable, and stupid, that Higgs’ ideas would be set again upon a different track. The track of how did he get away from this guy. Those historians of the future, he would think again, were ourselves that knew better. The future, he would think again, is to be, or to be thought of, as “our beautiful judge,” provided, however, that we progress.)

10 theses of Higgs

Higgs wrote down these ten “theses of Higgs”:

The 10 Theses of Higgs/ DRAFT

1. Everything a real person is, however bad, is more consequential than anything an unreal person is, however good. (Thus the real person’s bigotry is greater than the unreal person’s humanity, etc.) (In Margin: is being unreal being immoral, the most immoral though well-intended?)

2. The use or abuse of mind altering substances, although not endorsed by Higgs, is yet felt to have a more positive effect on the unreal person than on the real. The idea is that it is somehow substance, not having any, that is at the root of the unreal person’s unreality. (Added to the margins here: Perhaps when he’s sick he’s the closest to becoming real.)

3.Unreal people comprise a significant minority of all people. (The margins: By ‘unreal people’ do I just mean ‘underconfident people’? No.)

4. The unreal person tends toward timidity and keeping to himself.

5. Higgs, besides being a timid person, had this attribute in a measure: that, in other circumstances, he was always trying to show off and could be something of a ham, attempting to be a center of attention. (Sometimes, While he was doing things for show, he was leaving something important undone. Joking and careless when it was time to be serious and watchful.)

6. For the “real person” there are no “unreal” people –all people are “real”– only some people are also, in a very real sense, “weak.” (Would Higgs be found dependable in a life or death situation?)

…6b. Only unreal people believe unreal people exist.

…

7.The unreal person understands the statements and intentions of real people, even when unexpressed, while the real person understands nothing of the unreal person’s intentions and ideas, expressed or unexpressed.

… 7b. To the real person, the statements of the unreal person seem funny ways of saying what he himself thinks.

8. This is all obviously another subterfuge: Higgs hiding from Higgs Higgs, where everyone who is not Higgs knows exactly where Higgs is, exactly what Higgs is, exactly what Higgs is really hiding from by writing this…

Higgs somehow expanded these eight theses to ten, slapped a title on them, dropped his pencil, and held on tightly to the edges of his face.

“He Who Looks Up The Word”

Margrum, “who brings on the wings of the flash of his pistols a message to those who will but hear him.”

Margrum, who exhibits an extraordinary style of gunplay. He usually quickly fires his gun widely to either side of his opponent. The way he holds his gun is quite fantastic: it seems always to be falling over his fingers, end over end, to be rolling over his hand. An effect that is more than doubly marvelous when he happens to be wielding two or more pistols.

“I come as an emissary of the excellence of television…” (He will often utter absurdities so as to disorient his opponent)

Higgs always comes from behind Margrum like a cleanup crew or editor. If Margrum was the word then Higgs would be he who looks the word up. Higgs’ bleakness was somewhat attributable to this….

Returning to the subject of Margrum’s unique gunplay, he could often bobble the weapon; to keep it from hitting the ground he would often juggle the weapon; it would slip from the limp finger of one hand to the shaking palm of the other; you wouldn’t think a man could be so jittery by design; you would not think a person so jittery as Margrum appeared to be, whether by design or not, could manage to hit what he aimed at, or manage not to hit what he did not aim at, but that is what Margrum did, and almost every time.

Punctuation of Rage

Then there’s a deus ex machina type situation where a letter bomb arrives (a message on tape with a blackberry enclosed) and in order to keep it from detonating Margrum has to take dictation very quickly and with exactly the proper punctuation. Margrum of course has no idea about this and Higgs is unsparing in lording over him his far superior grammatical knowledge not only pointing out all of Margrum’s missing marks but also by giving the reason for each one and saying “apposition” an unnecessary number of times. Problem is that, even after the message has been typed in to Higgs’ satisfaction, and apparently correctly, the bomb continues ticking and seems poised to go off. Higgs, apoplectic, insists “the bomb is wrong” but offers no further suggestions, so that it’s Margrum to the rescue again: he throws the letter back in the box, puckishly lifts the delivery flag up, and tackles the fear-rooted Higgs into the safety of a nearby ditch.

It is unclear what lesson is to be drawn from this episode (had Higgs’ message in fact been typed correctly? Will purveyors of grammatical authority be baffled by still greater authorities?) yet Higgs’ confidence, not in his correctness, but in the importance of being correct itself, is, though for only a time, shaken.

Unavailable Thoughts

“because not only will what’s true always be written well (unlike those passages I’ve crossed out) but what has been written poorly once will never be written of truly again […] either because essentially they’re not available to be said or because they were available once to be said but were ruined through our poor writing (or for some other reason) so that those erased out portions of our report are not only things that we wanted to say but couldn’t –that we can’t, Higgs– they are also what can’t be said again no matter by whom or how they may be said– these thoughts are accursed in other words Higgs –Higgs we have ruined these thoughts–“