(Download PDF) Collected Uncollected Writings David Foster Wallace Online Ebook All Chapter PDF
(Download PDF) Collected Uncollected Writings David Foster Wallace Online Ebook All Chapter PDF
(Download PDF) Collected Uncollected Writings David Foster Wallace Online Ebook All Chapter PDF
Foster Wallace
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NOTES ON THE COLLECTION 3
1
IRIS’ STORY: AN INVERSION OF PHILOSOPHICAL SCEPTICISM 145
LETTER TO MICHAEL PIETSCH 149
QUO VADIS—INTRODUCTION 150
GOD BLESS YOU, MR. FRANZEN 152
LETTER TO DON DELILLO 153
THE FLEXICON 159
100-WORD STATEMENT 164
THIS IS WATER 165
2
NOTES ON THE COLLECTION
The reason for there being notes to a shoddy samizdat PDF collecting the uncollected
writings of David Foster Wallace is because I, the person compiling the writings, have
not done an outstanding job. Not because I haven't tried, but because:
1. English is not my first language, which potentially causes a whole slew of
problems.
2. The files from which I have sourced this collection were not always in good
condition, and as such, sometimes barely intelligible.
3. The writings were originally published in various papers with differing
standards. For example, differing usage of the en dash (–), the em dash (—), the
horizontal bar (―), and line breaks.
4. Sometimes it is hard to know if a mistake, say a misspelling of a technical word,
is intentional or not (some of these papers do not seem to have been edited
that well.)
5. Wallace’s writings often border on being cybertext, further complicating the
two points above.
I have tried my best to deal with these issues. (Though if you are doing serious
academic work on, say, DFW’s use of the em dash, I suggest you not use the versions
here.)
Another point I would like to touch on is the fact that some of the texts really only
make sense in the context in which they originally appeared. A review of another book
for instance, may not be interesting if you haven’t read the book in question, but then
again, some of DFW’s reviews have appeared in his essay collections. Other times
however, the text that DFW has written is presumably not even intended to be read in
isolation, arguably this is the case with The Fifth Column, Quo Vadis, and The Flexicon.
The first nine writings together comprise the fiction in this collection, and are mostly
fairly straight-forward short stories. The exceptions being Rabbit Resurrected, a poke (of
sorts) at John Updike’s Rabbit novels; and The Fifth Column: A Novel - Week Eleven,
which is DFW’s contribution to a weekly serial. The rest of the collection comprises
his uncollected non-fiction works, most of which are fairly short reviews. The
3
collection ends with a transcript of DFW’s famous speech This is Water. It is included
basically because a speech of his on Kafka was included in Consider the Lobster.
There are a few known writings that I have not been able to obtain, and which are
therefore not included in this collection. The ones that I know are missing are:
Ralph and the Legal Milestone, The Piano in the Pantechnicon, The Enema Bandit and the Cosmic
Buzzer, as well as some unpublished Pale King fragments, I’m told. Hopefully these
(and anything else that might surface) will be found and included in future versions of
this collection. If you have a chance to visit the Harry Ransom Center, take good
quality photographs of the relevant works by DFW stored there, and incorporate
these writings into this collection, it would be virtually complete.
4
PART ONE: FICTION
5
THE PLANET TRILLAPHON AS IT STANDS IN
RELATION TO THE BAD THING.
1983, The Amherst Review Volume XII
I've been on antidepressants for, what, about a year now, and I suppose I feel as if I'm
pretty qualified to tell what they're like. They're fine, really. but they're fine in the same
way that, say, living on another planet that was warm and comfortable and had food
and fresh water would be fine: it would be fine, but it wouldn't be good old Earth,
obviously. I haven't been on Earth now for almost a year, because I wasn't doing very
well on Earth. I've been doing somewhat better here where I am now, on the planet
Trillaphon, which I suppose is good news for everyone involved.
Antidepressants were prescribed for me by a very nice doctor named Dr. Kablumbus
at a hospital to which I was sent ever so briefly following a really highly ridiculous
incident involving electrical appliances in the bathtub about which I really don't wish
to say a whole lot. I had to go to the hospital for physical care and treatment after this
very silly incident, and then two days later I was moved to another floor of the
hospital, a higher, whiter floor, where Dr. Kablumbus and his colleagues were. There
was a certain amount of consideration given to the possibility of my undergoing
E.C.T., which is short for “Electroconvulsive Therapy,” but E.C.T. wipes out bits of
your memory sometimes — little details like your name and where you live, etc. —
and it's also in other respects just a thoroughly scary thing, and we — my parents and
I — decided against it. New Hampshire, which is the state where I live, has a law that
says E.C.T. cannot be administered without the patient's knowledge and consent. I
regard this as an extremely good law. So antidepressants were prescribed for me
instead by Dr. Kablumbus, who can be said really to have had only my best interests at
heart.
If someone tells about a trip he’s taken, you expect at least some explanation of why
he left on the trip in the first place. With this in mind perhaps I'll tell some things
about why things weren't too good for me on Earth for quite a while. It was extremely
weird, but, three years ago, when I was a senior in high school, I began to suffer from
what I guess now was a hallucination. I thought that a huge wound, a really huge and
deep wound, had opened on my face, on my cheek near my nose, that the skin had
6
just split open like old fruit, that blood was seeping out, all dark and shiny, that veins
and bits of yellow cheek-fat and red'gray muscle were plainly visible, even bright
flashes of bone, in there. Whenever I'd look in the mirror, there it would be, that
wound, and I could feel the twitch of the exposed muscle and the heat of the blood
on my cheek, all the time. But when I'd say to a doctor or to Mom or to other people,
"Hey, look at this open wound on my face, I'd better go to the hospital," they'd say.
"Well, hey, there's no wound on your face, are your eyes OK?" And yet whenever I'd
look in the mirror, there it would be, and I could always feel the heat of the blood on
my cheek, and when I'd feel with my hand my fingers would sink in there really deep
into what felt like hot gelatin with bones and ropes and stuff in it. And it seemed like
everyone was always looking at it. They'd seem to stare at me really funny, and I'd
think "Oh God. I'm really making them sick, they see it, I've got to hide, get me out of
here." Butthey were probably only staring because I looked all scared and in pain and
kept my hand to my face and was staggering like I was drunk all over the place all the
time. But at the time, it seemed so real. Weird. weird. weird. Right before graduation
— or maybe a month before, maybe — it got really bad, such that when I'd pull my
hand away from my face I'd see blood on my fingers, and bits of tissue and stuff, and
I'd be able to smell the blood, too, like hot rusty metal and copper. So one night when
my parents were out somewhere I took a needle and some thread and tried to sew up
the wound myself. It hurt a lot to do this. because I didn't have any anesthetic, of
course. It was also bad because, obviously, as I know now. there was really no wound
to be sewn up at all, there. Mom and Dad were less than pleased when they came
home and found me all bloody for real and with a whole lot of jagged unprofessional
stitches of lovely bright orange carpet-thread in my face, They were really upset. Also,
I made the stitches too deep — I apparently pushed the needle incredibly deep — and
some of the thread got stuck way down in there when they tried to pull the stitches
out at the hospital and it got infected later and then they had to make a real wound
back at the hospital to get it all out and drain it and clean it out. That was highly
ironic. Also, when I was making the stitches too deep I guess I ran the needle into a
few nerves in my cheek and destroyed them, so now sometimes bits of my face will
get numb for no reason, and my mouth will sag on the left side a bit. I know it sags
for sure and that I've got this cute scar, here, because it's not just a matter of looking
in the mirror and seeing it and feeling it; other people tell me they see it too, though
they do this very tactfully.
7
Anyway, I think that year everyone began to see that I was a troubled little soldier,
including me, Everybody talked and conferred and we all decided that it would
probably be in my best interests if I deferred admission to Brown University in Rhode
Island, where I was supposedly all set to go, and instead did a year of "Post-Graduate"
schoolwork at a very good and prestigious and expensive prep school called Phillips
Exeter Academy conveniently located right there in my hometown. So that's what I
did. And it was by all appearances a pretty successful period, except it was still on
Earth, and things were increasingly non-good for me on Earth during this period,
although my face had healed and I had more or less stopped having the hallucination
about the gory wound, except for really short flashes when I saw mirrors out of the
corners of my eyes and stuff.
But, yes, all in all things were going increasingly badly for me at that time, even though
I was doing quite well in school in my little "Post-Grad" program and people were
saying, "Holy cow, you're really a very good student, you should just go on to college
right now, why don't you?" It was just pretty clear to me that I shouldn't go right on to
college then, but I couldn't say that to the people at Exeter, because my reasons for
saying I shouldn't had nothing to do with balancing equations in Chemistry or
interpreting Keats poems in English. They had to do with the fact that I was a
troubled little soldier. I'm not at this point really dying to give a long gory account of
all the cute neuroses that more or less around that time began to pop up all over the
inside of my brain, sort of like wrinkly gray boils,but I'll tell a few things. For one
thing, I was throwing up a lot, feeling really nauseated all the time, especially when I'd
wake up in the morning. But it could switch on anytime, the second I began to think
about it: If I felt OK, all of a sudden I'd think,"Hey, I don't feel nauseated at all,
here." And it would just switch on, like I had a big white plastic switch somewhere
along the tube from my brain to my hot and weak stomach and intestines, and I would
just throw up all over my plate at dinner or my desk at school or the seat of the car, or
my bed, or wherever, It was really highly grotesque for everyone else, and intensely
unpleasant for me, as anyone who has ever felt really sick to his stomach can
appreciate. This went on for quite a while, and I lost a lot of weight, which was bad
because I was quite thin and non-strong to begin with, Also, I had to have a lot of
medical tests on my stomach, involving delicious barium-drinks and being hung
upside down for X-rays, and so on, and once I even had to have a spinal tap, which
8
hurt more than anything has ever hurt me in my life, I am never ever going to have
another spinal tap.
Also, there was this business of crying for no reason, which wasn't painful but was
very embarrassing and also quite scary because I couldn't control it. What would
happen is that I'd cry for no reason, and then I'd get sort of scared that I'd cry or that
once I started to cry I wouldn't be able to stop, and this state of being scared would
very kindly activate this other white switch on the tube between my brain with its boils
and my hot eyes. and off I'd go even worse, like a skateboard that you keep pushing
along. It was very embarrassing at school, and incredibly embarrassing with my family,
because they would think it was their fault, that they had done something b~d, It
would have been incredibly embarrassing with my friends, too, but by that time I really
didn't have very many friends, So that was kind of an advantage, almost. But there was
still everyone else. I had little tricks I employed with regard to the "crying problem."
When I was around other people and my eyes got all hot and full of burning salt-water
I would pretend to sneeze, or even more often to yawn, because both these things can
explain someone's having tears in his eyes, People at school must have thought I was
just about the sleepiest person in the world, But, really. yawning doesn't exactly
explain the fact that tears are just running down your cheeks and raining down on
your lap or your desk or making little wet star-puckers on your exam papers and stuff,
and not too many people get super-red eyes just from yawning, So the tricks probably
weren't too effective. It's weird but even now, here on the planet Trillaphon, when I
think about it at all, I can hear the snap of the switch and my eyes more or less start to
fill up, and my throat aches. That is bad. There was also the fact that back then I got
so I couldn't stand silence, really couldn't stand it at all. This was because when there
was no noise from outside the little hairs on my eardrums or Wherever would
manufacture a noise all by themselves, to keep in practice or something. This noise
was sort of a high, glittery, metallic, spangly hum that really for some reason scared
the living daylights out of me and just about drove me crazy when I heard it, the way a
mosquito in your ear in bed at night in summer will just about drive you crazy when
you hear it. I began to look for noise sort of the way a moth looks for light. I'd sleep
with the radio on in my room, watch an incredible amount of loud television, keep my
trusty Sony Walkman on at all times at school and walking around and on my bike
(that Sony Walkman was far and away the best Christmas present I have ever
received). I would even maybe sometimes talk to myself when I had just no other
9
recourse to noise, which must have seemed very crazy to people who heard me, and I
suppose was very crazy, but not in the way they supposed. It wasn't as if I thought I
was two people who could have a dialogue. or as if I heard voices from Venus or
anything. I knew I was just one person, but this one person, here, was a troubled little
soldier who could withstand neither the substance nor the implications of the noise
produced by the inside of his own head.
Anyway, all this extremely delightful stuff was going on while I was doing well and
making my otherwise quite worried and less-than-pleased patents happy school-wise
during the year, and then while I was working for Exeter Building and Grounds
Department during the following summer, pruning bushes and crying and throwing
up discreetly into them, and while I was packing and having billions of dollars of
clothes and electrical appliances bought for me by my grandparents, gelling all ready
to go to Brown University in Rhode Island in September. Mr. Film, who was more or
less my boss at "B and G," had a riddle that he thought was unbelievably funny. and
he told it to me a lot. He'd say, "What's the color of a bowel movement?" And when I
didn't say anything he'd say. "Brown! har har harl" He'd laugh. and I'd smile, even after
about the four-trillionth time, because Mr, Film was on the whole a fairly nice man,
and he didn't even get mad when I threw up in his truck once. I told him my scar was
from getting cut up with a knife in high school, which was essentially the truth.
So I went off to Brown University in the fall, and it turned out to be very much like
"P.G." at Exeter: it was supposed to be all hard but it really wasn't, so I had plenty of
time to do well in classes and have people say "Outstanding" and still be neurotic and
weird as hell. so that my roommate, who was a very nice, squeakingly healthy guy
from Illinois, understandably asked for a single instead and moved out in a few weeks
and left me with a very big single all my very own. So it was just little old me and
about nine billion dollars worth of electronic noise-making equipment, there in my
room, after that.
It was quite soon after my roommate moved out that the Bad Thing started. The Bad
Thing is more or less the reason why I'm not on Earth anymore. Dr, Kablumbus told
me after I told him as best I could about the Bad Thing that the Bad Thing was
"severe clinical depression." I am sure that a doctor at Brown would have told me
pretty much the same thing, but I didn't ever go to see anyone at Brown, mainly
10
because I was afraid that if I ever opened my mouth in that context stuff would come
out that would ensure that I'd be put in a place like the place I was put after the
hilariously stupid business in the bathroom.
I really don't know if the Bad Thing is really depression. I had previously sort of
always thought that depression was just sort of really intense sadness, like what you
feel when your very good dog dies, or when Bambi's mother gets killed in Bambi. I
thought that it was that you frowned or maybe even cried a little bit if you were a girl
and said "Holy cow, I'm really depressed, here," and then your friends if you have any
come and cheer you up or take you out and get you ploughed and in the morning it's
like a faded color and in a couple days it's gone altogether. The Bad Thing — which I
guess is what is really depression — is very different, and indescribably worse. I guess
I should say rather sort of indescribably, because I've heard different people try to
describe "real" depression over the last couple years. A very glib guy on the television
said some people liken it to being underwater, under a body of water that has no
surface, at least for you, so that no matter what direction you go, there will only be
more water, no fresh air and freedom of movement, just restriction and suffocation,
and no light. (I don't know how apt it is to say it's like being underwater, but maybe
imagine the moment in which you realize, at which It hits you that there is no surface
for you. that you're just going to drown In there no matter which way you swim;
imagine how you'd feel at that exact moment, like Descartes at the start of his second
thing, then imagine that feeling in all its really delightful choking intensity spread out
over hours, days, months … that would maybe be more apt.) A really lovely poet
named Sylvia Plath, who unfortunately isn't living anymore, said that it's like having a
jar covering you and having all the air pumped out of the jar, so you can't breathe any
good air (and imagine the moment when your movement is invisibly stopped by the
glass and you realize you're underglass...). Some people say It's like having always
before you and under you a huge black holewithout a bottom, a black, black hole,
maybe with vague teeth in It. and then your being part of the hole, so that you fall
even when you stay where you are (…maybe when you realize you're the hole, nothing
else…).
I'm not incredibly glib, but I'll tell what I think the Bad Thing is like. To me it's like
being completely, totally, utterly sick. I will try to explain what I mean. Imagine feeling
really sick to your stomach. Almost everyone has felt really sick to his or her stomach,
11
so everyone knows what it's like: it's less than fun. OK. OK. But that feeling is
localized: it's more or less just your stomach. Imagine your whole body being sick like
that: your feet. the big muscles in your legs, your collar-bone. your head, your hair,
everything, all just as sick as a fluey stomach. Then, If You can imagine that, please
imagine it even more spread out and total. Imagine that every cell in your body, every
single cell in your body is as sick as that nauseated stomach. Not just your own cells,
even, but the e. coli and lactobacilli in you. too, the mitochondria, basal bodies, all sick
and boiling and hot like maggots in your neck. your brain. all over, everywhere. in
everything. All just sick as hell. Now imagine that every single atom in every single cell
in your body is sick like that. sick, intolerably sick. And every proton and neutron in
every atom … swollen and throbbing, off-color, sick, with just no chance of throwing
up to relieve the feeling. Every electron is sick. here. twirling off balance and all erratic
in these funhouse orbitals that are just thick and swirling with mottled yellow and
purple poison gases. everything off balance and woozy. Quarks and neutrinos out of
their minds and bouncing sick all over the place. bouncing like crazy. Just imagine that,
a sickness spread utterly through every bit of you, even the bits of the bits. So that
your very … very essence is characterized by nothing other than the feature of
sickness; you and the sickness are, as they say, "one."
That's kind of what the Bad Thing is like at its roots. Everything in you is sick and
grotesque. And since your only acquaintance with the whole world is through parts of
you like your sense-organs and your mind, etc. — and since these parts are sick as hell,
the whole world as you perceive it and know it and are in it comes at you through this
filter of bad sickness and becomes bad. As everything becomes bad in you, all the
good goes out of the world like air out of a big brokenballoon. There's nothing in this
world you know but horrible rotten smells, sad and grotesque and lurid pastel sights,
raucous or deadly-sad sounds. Intolerable open-ended situations lined on a continuum
with just no end at all… Incredibly stupid, hopeless ideas. And just the way when
you're sick to your stomach you're kind of scared way down deep that it might maybe
never go away, the Bad Thing scares you the same way, only worse, because the fear is
itself filtered through the bad disease and becomes bigger and worse and hungrier
than it started out. It tears you open and gcts in there and squirms around.
Because the Bad Thing not only attacks you and makes you feel bad and puts you out
of commission, it especially attacks and makes you feel bad and puts out of
12
commission precisely those things that are necessary In order for you to fight the Bad
Thing, to maybe get better, to stay alive. This is hard to understand, but it's really true.
Imagine a really painful disease that, say, attacked your legs and your throat and
resulted in a really bad pain and paralysis and all-around agony in these areas. The
disease would be bad enough, obviously, but the disease would also be open-ended;
you wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Your legs would be all paralyzed and
would hurt like hell… but you wouldn't be able to run for help for those poor legs,
just exactly because your legs would be too sick for you to run anywhere at all. Your
throat would burn like crazy and you'd think it was just going to explode ... but you
wouldn't be able to call out to any doctors or anyone for help, precisely because your
throat would be too sick for you to do so. This is the way the Bad Thing works: it's
especially good at attacking your defense mechanisms. The way to fight against or get
away from the Bad Thing is clearly just to think differently, to reason and argue with
yourself. just to change the way you're perceiving and sensing and processing stuff.
But you need your mind to do this, your brain cells with their atoms and your mental
powers and all that, your self, and that's exactly what the Bad Thing has made too sick
to work right. That's exactly what it has made sick. It's made you sick in just such a
way that you can't get better. And you start thinking about this pretty vicious situation,
and you say to yourself, "Boy oh boy, how the heck is the Bad Thing able to do this?
You think about it really hard, since it's in your best interests to do so — and then all
of a sudden it sort of dawns on you ... that the BadThing is able to do this to you
because you're the Bad Thing yourself! The Bad Thing is you. Nothing else: no
bacteriological infection or having gotten conked on the head with a board or a mallet
when you were a little kid, or any other excuse; you are the sickness yourself. It is what
"defines'' you, especially after a little while has gone by. You realize all this. here. And
that, I guess, is when if you're all glib you realize that there is no surface to the water.
or when you bonk your nose on the jar's glass and realize you're trapped, or when you
look at the black hole and it's wearing your face. That's when the Bad Thing just
absolutely eats you up, or rather when you just eat yourself up. When you kill yourself.
All this business about people committing suicide when they're "severely depressed;"
we say, "Holy cow, we must do something to stop them from killing themselves!"
That's wrong. Because all these people have, you see, by this time already killed
themselves, where it really counts. By the time these people swallow entire medicine
cabinets or take naps in the garage or whatever, they've already been killing themselves
for ever so long. When they "commit suicide," they're just being orderly. They're just
13
giving external form to an event the substance of which already exists and has existed
in them over time. Once you realize what's going on, the event of self destruction for
all practical purposes exists. There's not much a person is apt to do in this situation,
except "formalize" it, or, if you don't quite want to do that, maybe "E.C.T." or a trip
away from the Earth to some other planet, or something.
Anyway, this is more than I intended to say about the Bad Thing. Even now, thinking
about it a little bit and being introspective and all that, I can feel it reaching out for
me, trying to mess with my electrons. But I'm not on Earth anymore.
I made it through my first little semester at Brown University and even got a prize for
being a very good introductory Economics student, two hundred dollars, which I
promptly spent on marijuana, because smoking marijuana keeps you from getting sick
to your stomach and throwing up. It really does: they give it to people undergoing
chemotherapy for cancer, sometimes. I had smoked a lot of marijuana ever since my
year of "P.G." schoolwork to keep from throwing up, and it worked a lot of the time.
It just bounced right off the sickness in my atoms, though. The Bad Thing just
laughed at it. I was a very troubled little soldier by the end of the semester. I longed
for the golden good old days when my face just bled.
In December the Bad Thing and I boarded a bus to go from Rhode Island to New
Hampshire for the holiday season. Everything was extremely jolly. Except just coming
out of Providence, Rhode Island, the busdriver didn't look carefully enough before he
tried to make a left turn and a pickup truck hit our bus from the left side and
smunched the left front part of the bus and knocked the driver out of his seat and
down into the well where the stairs onto and off of the bus are, where he broke his
arm and I think his leg and cut his head fairly badly. So we had to stop and wait for an
ambulance for the driver and a new bus for us. The driver was incredibly upset. He
was sure he was going to lose his job, because he'd messed up the left turn and had
had an accident, and also because he hadn't been wearing his seatbelt — clear
evidence of which was the fact that he had been knocked way out of his seat into the
stairwell, which everybody saw and would say they saw — which is against the law if
you're a bus driver in just about any state of the Union. He was almost crying, and me
too, because he said he had about seventy kids and he really needed that job, and now
he would be fired. A couple of passengers tried to soothe him and calm him down,
14
but understandably no one came near me. Just me and the Bad Thing, there. Finally
the bus driver just kind of passed out from his broken bones and that cut, and an
ambulance came and they put him under a rust-colored blanket. A new bus came out
of the sunset and a bus executive or something came too, and he was really mad when
some of the incredibly helpful passengers told him what had happened. I knew that
the bus driver was probably going to lose his job, just as he had feared would happen.
I felt unbelievably sorry for him, and of course the Bad Thing very kindly filtered this
sadness for me and made it a lot worse. It was weird and irrational but all of a sudden
I felt really strongly as though the bus driver were really me. I really felt that way. So
Ifelt just like he must have felt, and it was awful. I wasn't just sorry for him, Iwas sorry
as lim, or something like that. All courtesy of the Bad Thing. Suddenly I had to go
somewhere, really fast, so I went to where the driver's stretcher was in the open
ambulance and went in to look at him, there. He had a bus company ID badge with
his picture, but I couldn't really see anything because it was covered by a streak of
blood from his head. I took my roughly a hundred dollars and a bag of "sinsemilla"
marijuana and slipped it under his rusty blanket to help him feed all his kids and not
get sick and throw up, then I left really fast again and got my stuff and got on the new
bus. It wasn't until, what, about thirty minutes later on the nighttime highway that I
realized that when they found that marijuana with the driver they'd think it was maybe
his all along and he really would get fired, or maybe even sent to jail. It was kind of
like I'd framed him, killed him, except he was also me, I thought, so it was really
confusing. It was like I'd symbolically killed myself or something, because Ifelt he was
me in some deep sense. I think at that moment I felt worse than I'd ever felt before,
except for that spinal tap, and that was totally different. Dr. Kablumbus says that's
when the Bad Thing really got me by the balls. Those were really his words. I'm really
sorry for what I did and what the Bad Thing did to the bus driver. I really sincerely
only meant to help him, as if he were me. But I sort of killed him, instead.
I got home and my parents said "Hey, hello, we love you, congratulations:' and I said
"Hello, hello, thank you, thank you," I didn't exactly have the "holiday spirit," I must
confess, because of the Bad Thing, and because of the busdriver, and because of the
fact that we were all three of us the same thing in the respects that mattered at all.
The highly ridiculous thing happened on Christmas Eve. It was very stupid, but I
guess almost sort of Inevitable given what had gone on up to then. You could just say
15
Chicago. Silverfish sat still with his pajama bottoms at his feet and looked for a
moment, maybe two moments, at the muted orange light that pumped down slowly
into Sophie. From the end of her line of a profile,from her pillow, where more light
lay, came Sophie's voice.
'So then it's Ira who's calling at such an hour?' Silverfish was out of bed in only
the shirt of his pajamas. You could tell from Sophie's voice that she had not slept.
Silverfish shook through a pile of clothes on a chair and found his yesterday pants
from heaviness in pockets. Shorts luckily were still inside the pants. He smelled at his
shorts and his voice came through them. 'So then it was
Ira-the-I'm-too-important-and-sensitive-an-artist-not-to-mention-intellectual-to-obey-
the-basic-laws-and-rules-of-life-we-are-all-expected-to-respect-and-instead-go-drinkin
g-to-drive-around-the-city-so-drunk-I’m-legless-and-somehow-God-knows-how-it-co
uld-only-happen-to-Ira-cracked-up-against-Kretzman's-car-right-in-front-of-the-Dem
pster-precinct-house Schoenweiss, may his large ass hang from the ceiling by the
man's kishkas while Kretzman jabs at it with anything sharp he can find, the sharper
the better, until I get there.' Silverfish found his shoes and two socks which who knew
if they matched.
Sophie turned herself carefully on her back to look at the outline of Silverfish,
who was tying shoes against the edge of the bed. 'Zero Kretzman's car? As in Mr.
D.A. the prosecutor Kretzman?'
'As in Ira-I'm-constantly-in-middle-of-the-night-trouble Schoenweiss who my
wife had to be his sister!' roared Silverfish. He leaped on the bed with the agility of
such a younger person and straddled Sophie. He bit her on her shoulder. He snatched
her wig from her night-stand and flipped it with ease of practice up onto the Pyrex IV
jar, which tink led and rocked on its stand. Silverfish kissed Sophie's sternum. He
flicked at her stomach. 'Fat!' he hissed. 'Whose fat pink obscene wife of mine is the
sister of a klotz, also by the way fat.' Sophie was laughing as loud as she might. The
sound echoed in her chest as in a system of wire. With her unconnected arm she felt
at the buttons on Silverfish's top. 'You still have on a pajama shirt, Mr.
fat-wife-klotz-relative-lawyer-on-a-mission-of-mercy Silverfish.'
'For Ira and Kretzman I should wear a tuxedo? Maybe also with tails? I should
pretend this isn't a bother?' Silverfish felt Sophie struggling quietly to breathe under
his weight and gently rose up off her, walked across the mattress with grace in shoes
and went to his dresser for his keys. He found a tie by the keys and threw it around his
neck. Sophie breathed and watched him in the ditty light.
27
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Ojeda and Pizarro, he was not altogether unfit to hold a Spanish
commission.
CHAPTER XIV.
DIFFICULTIES AND DISCOURAGEMENTS.
About this time a young Spaniard arrived from the interior with a
most welcome story. He had run away from Isabella on account of
having nearly killed a fellow-colonist, and had met a beautiful female
cacique living on the river Ozema, near the present site of San
Domingo, who had fallen violently in love with him. From her he had
learned of rich gold-mines, and he humbly trusted that Columbus
would condescend to look at them and to overlook his little
indiscretion in the matter of his fellow-colonist. The Admiral, secretly
feeling that any man who killed one of his colonists was a benefactor
of the human race, kindly forgave him and went with him to inspect
the mines, which he found to be apparently so rich that he instantly
overhauled his Old Testament and his Geography, and decided that
he had found the original land of Ophir.
A new scientific person, who had been sent out to supersede the
worthless Fermin Cedo, was ordered to take his crucibles, transit
instruments, and other apparatus, and make a satisfactory assay of
the mines. He did so, and, being a clever man, reported to the
Admiral that the gold was unusually genuine, and that the ore would
probably average three hundred dollars to the ton. At least, that is
what he would have reported had he been a modern expert
investigating mining property in behalf of British capitalists, and we
need not suppose that there were no able assayers prior to the
discovery of silver in Colorado. Columbus read the report, expressed
a high opinion of the scientific abilities of the assayer, and ordered a
fort to be built in the neighborhood of the mines.
Carrying with him specimens of gold from the new mines, and
the report of the scientific person, Columbus sailed for Spain, in
company with Aguado, on the 10th of March, 1496. He left Don
Bartholomew as Governor during his absence, and took with him the
captive chief Caonabo, either as a specimen of the kind of heathen
produced by the island, or because he thought it might be possible to
convert the chief with the help of the many appliances in the
possession of the church at home. He wisely refrained from taking
any slaves, Don Diego having informed him that the Queen had
ordered his previous consignment of five hundred to be sent back to
Hispaniola and set at liberty.
The homeward-bound fleet consisted of only two vessels, but
they met with as much head-wind as if they had been a dozen ships
of the largest size, and on the 10th of April they were compelled to
stop at Guadaloupe for water and provisions. Here they were
attacked by armed women as well as men. Several of these early
American advocates of the equality of the sexes were captured, and
set at liberty again when the ships sailed. One of them, however,
improved the time by falling in love with Caonabo, whom she insisted
upon accompanying, and Columbus consented to carry her to Spain
as a beautiful illustration of the affectionate character of the Western
heathen.
It was the 20th of April when the fleet left Guadaloupe, and
Cadiz was not reached until the 11th of June. The provisions were so
nearly exhausted that during the latter part of the voyage the sailors
were almost in a state of starvation. Of course, when the provisions
were scarce and the men were put on short allowance, the prisoner
Caonabo and his affectionate female friend received their share of
food, for Columbus would never have permitted the unfortunate pair
to starve. Still, it did happen that Caonabo died on the voyage, and
history is silent as to what became of his companion.
[Æt. 60–62; 1496–98]