Agape Agape (3 page)

But a novel, even a novel that is basically a deathbed screed, cannot just rail indiscriminately at one thing and another. It needs a center, a more directed thrust. This is where the player piano comes in, supplying the framework for the larger, more abstract obsessions. We are alerted to these right away as Gaddis declares his preoccupation and his stance: “. . . that's what my work is about, the collapse of everything, of meaning, of language, of values, of art, disorder and dislocation wherever you look, entropy drowning everything in sight, entertainment and technology and every four year old with a computer, everybody his own artist where the whole thing came from, the binary system and the computer where technology came from in the first place, you see?” If we don't at first, we do by the time he has concluded his rant.

To begin to approach what Gaddis intended, we might take a moment to parse the novel's most peculiar title A-GAH-PE A-GAPE. Five syllables, two languages and an oxy-moronic opposition of meanings. The first word—from the Greek—has religious meaning, as Gaddis reminds us; it refers to “that natural merging of created life in this creation in love that transcends it, a celebration of the love that created it.” “Agape,” meanwhile, which has embedded in it the word “gap,” carries the customary meaning of something cleft or opened. A wholeness torn asunder, then, a fall away from origins.

The idea of the gap is relevant here, for Gaddis' great interest in the player piano—which clearly has literal as well as emblematic application—is focused on the gap-filled piano roll, which, along with Joseph Marie Jacquard's early nineteenth-century punch-card loom, is seen as a forerunner of the on-off switch simplifications of binary-based systems, and therefore closely linked, at least theoretically, to the eventual emergence of cyberculture.

This is, yes, a great deal to push together, certainly a great deal to lay at the feet—or pedals—of the piano player. But this is how an intelligence like Gaddis' works—finding examples, interrogating premises, and extrapolating outward until a whole world picture starts to come into focus.

Or attempted focus, in this case, for Gaddis' narrator is so enraged, so pill distracted (remember the tone of that opening sentence), so chaotically submerged in his notes and papers that we never get a sustained or lucid argument. We grasp that the player piano appeared in the late nineteenth century, putting applied mechanization in the service of popular entertainment; that it brought the finest fruits of popular culture to the paying masses; that it was a way of “having art without the artist because he's a threat, because the creative artist has to be a threat so he's swamped by the performer.” The sentences here propagate feverishly, treating the instrument not as a tool so much as a symbolic expression of deeply-rooted cultural tendencies, examining it in the light of ultimates,
sub specie aeternitatis,
as it were, building assertions and implications until we finally get to a citation from the philosopher Democritus about how “the finest poems were composed with ‘inspiration and a holy breath' . . . the holy breath that sets us apart from reason and above reason, some inner revelation, some inner ecstasy even some abnormal mental state why they're out to eliminate us.”

The declaration brings relief and clarification. Here, at last, Gaddis sets out the terms of the opposition and links art, at least at its foundations, to the almost hermetic traditions of spirit. The passage—and indeed the book—is now revealed to be an exalted, paranoid outcry, a last proclamation of the idea of the sacred rootedness of true art. In this way,
Agapē Agape
looks back to
The Recognitions,
to Gaddis' fascination with authenticity and the originating impulse of creativity.

As must be evident by now, Gaddis is no aesthetic democrat. He is an unapologetic elitist, very likely a subscriber to the long-banished—but in certain quarters (most recently in the work of Harold Bloom) recrudescent—idea of artist as genius innovator. From Democritus and the “holy breath” he bends his thought back to his own situation, reconnecting with his animus: “. . . why they'd say I'm afraid of the death of the elite because it means the death of me of course I can't really blame them, I've been wrong about everything in my life it's all been fraud and fiction . . .”

His is a dark brooding, and more than a little wounded: “Fact that I'm forgotten that I'm left on the shelf with the dead white guys in the academic curriculum that my prizes are forgotten because today everybody's giving prizes for that supine herd out there waiting to be entertained, try to educate them did they buy those ‘Educator' piano rolls teach them to play with their hands no, went right on discovering their unsuspected talent playing with their feet here's Flaubert's yes, ‘The entire dream of democracy' he says, ‘is to raise the proletariat to the level of bourgeois stupidity.'”

Agapē Agape
is not in any sense of the word a happy book. Nor, indeed, is it in any strict sense a novel. A thinly veiled autobiographical rant does not a fiction make. But—and the conjunction here is critical—the book is something more than the sum of its execrations. It is a brimstone tract, but it is also art. The voice holds fast, draws us back and forth over the art/life boundary with relentless insistence, while Gaddis' artifice of giving his thoughts and howls of outrage to a dying writer imparts the eerie feeling that these are really the author's own deathbed apprehensions of the darker truths of life. Whether we have read Gaddis' oeuvre or not, we bring to these pages our sense of his great authority and attainment. These are not just any lamentations. They are Gaddis' “mene, mene, tekel, upharsin”—we have been weighed in the balance and we have been found wanting—inscribed under obvious duress. The artist's hard-won insights are driven home with a shudder.

Agapē Agape

No but you see I've got to explain all this because I don't, we don't know how much time there is left and I have to work on the, to finish this work of mine while I, why I've brought in this whole pile of books notes pages clippings and God knows what, get it all sorted and organized when I get this property divided up and the business and worries that go with it while they keep me here to be cut up and scraped and stapled and cut up again my damn leg look at it, layered with staples like that old suit of Japanese armour in the dining hall feel like I'm being dismantled piece by piece, houses, cottages, stables orchards and all the damn decisions and distractions I've got the papers land surveys deeds and all of it right in this heap somewhere, get it cleared up and settled before everything collapses and it's all swallowed up by lawyers and taxes like everything else because that's what it's about, that's what my work is about, the collapse of everything, of meaning, of language, of values, of art, disorder and dislocation wherever you look, entropy drowning everything in sight, entertainment and technology and every four year old with a computer, everybody his own artist where the whole thing came from, the binary system and the computer where technology came from in the first place, you see? I can't even go into it, you see that's what I have to go into before all my work is misunderstood and distorted and, and turned into a cartoon because it is a cartoon, whole stupefied mob out there waiting to be entertained, turning the creative artist into a performer, into a celebrity like Byron, the man in the place of his work when probability came in and threw that whole safe predictable Newtonian world into chaos, into disorder wherever you turn, discontinuity, disparity, difference, discord, contradiction, what they're calling aporia they took from the Greeks, the academics took the word from the Greeks for this swamp of ambiguity, paradox, perversity, opacity, obscurity, anarchy the clock without the clockmaker and the desperate comedy of Kierkegaard's insane Knight of Belief and even Pascal's famous wager in a world where everyone is “so necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness” where the artist is today, the artist the real artist Plato warned us about, the threat to society and the, read Huizinga on Plato and music and the artist as dangerous and art as dangerous and music in this mode and that mode, the Phrygian mode to quiet you down and the tenor and bass Lydian to make you sad and the soft and drinking harmonies, the Lydian and the Ionian where the art the, the artist having trouble breathing here I, coming out of the anaesthesia down in the recovery room tried to raise my leg and it suddenly jumped up by itself like a, like the pain avoiding pain that's what all this is about isn't it? Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, beyond the pleasure principle? My golden Sigi his mother always called him, if Emerson was right and we are what our mothers made us? “Pleasure and pain I maintain to be the first perceptions of children,” the first forms virtue and vice take for them, not my golden Sigi no, he lifted it from Plato's Laws Book II, talking about his own high ethical standards. “I subscribe to a high ideal,” he tells Reverend Oskar Pfister “from which most of the human beings I have come across depart most lamentably.” And then just to make clear what little he's found that's good about these human beings, he tells Reverend Oskar Pfister “In my experience most of them are trash,” probably lost sight of their purposes never had any in the first place but pleasure and along comes Bentham with “Pushpin is as good as poetry if the quantity of pleasure given is the same” see that word quantity? The quantity of pleasure not the quality the whole point of it and these digital machines come in, the all-or-none machine Norbert Wiener called it, machine that counts brings in the binary system and the computer with it, so Wiener tells us about a brilliant American engineer who's gone out and bought an expensive player piano. Pushpin or Pushkin, doesn't care a damn for the music but he's fascinated by the complicated mechanism that produces it that's what America was all about, what mechanization was all about, what democracy was all about and the deification of democracy a hundred years ago all this technology at the service of entertaining Sigi's stupefied pleasure seeking trash out there playing the piano with its feet where it all came from isn't it? That all-or-none paper roll with holes in it, 40,000 player pianos built in 1909, almost 200,000 ten years later if ever the daughters of music were brought low I mean that's what I'm trying to explain, dividing the properties three ways one for each daughter all settled ahead of time before the lawyers and taxes swallow it up in dislocation and disorder getting it organized the only way to defend it against this tide of entropy that's spread everywhere since the year the player piano came into being from some Civil War battlefield like Christ, its American inventor said, and its own received it not since Willard Gibbs showed us the tendency for entropy to increase, nature's tendency to degrade the organized and destroy the meaningful when he pulled the rug out from under Newton's compact tightly organized universe with his papers on statistical physics in 1876, laid the way for this contingent universe where order is the least probable and chaos the most introducing probability and chance convinced Wiener it was not Einstein or Planck or Heisenberg but Willard Gibbs who brought on the first great revolution in twentieth century physics but that's not what I'm talking about is it, that's not what I'm trying to explain, no. No where did the, in a folder in this heap somewhere on the theory of wait wait wait, good God the whole pile spilling never get it together again I'd be, I'd be finished, lungs are gone and what's happening down below is nobody's business, metastasized into the bone why I haven't a day to waste, get the properties settled on all three of them with all the headaches that go with it and I'll stay with them by turns, four months with each daughter working on this project because I've got to get a contract and some advance money so I can finish it before I, before the, you see what I mean, before what it's about, before it all turns into what it's about. Where is it, this swamp of ambiguity, paradox, anarchy they're calling aporia his book right here somewhere probably at the bottom of the pile it was a game they played, the Greeks, a game you couldn't win, nobody could win, a parlour game proposing questions there was no clear answer to so winning wasn't the point of it no, no that's ours isn't it, right on the money because that's what the game is, the only game in town because that's what America's wait, little card there falling on the, there! You see? Whole stack of papers here organizing my research here it is, what I was looking for exactly what I'm talking about, 1927, getting the whole chronology in order 1876 to 1929 when the player piano world and everything else collapsed, the first public demonstration of television the image of the dollar sign was projected for sixty seconds by Philo T Farnsworth in 1927, see how I've got everything organized here put my finger right on it? Coming events cast their shadows and all the rest of it for Sigi's stupefied trash out there gaping at television dollar sign's all they see where we are today aren't we? Waiting to be entertained because that's where it started and that's where it ends up, avoiding pain and seeking pleasure play the piano with your feet, play cards, play pool play pushpin here it is, here's Huizinga talking about music and play he quotes Plato yes, here. “That which has neither utility nor truth nor likeness nor yet, in its effects, is harmful, can best be judged by the criterion of the charm that is in it, and by the pleasure it affords. Such pleasure, entailing as it does no appreciable good or ill, is play,” goes on about little children and animals can't keep still, always moving making noise playing skipping leaping making a racket ends up where it started with toys, toys, toys, every four year old with a computer. Press buttons it lights up different colours he's supposed to be learning what, how to spell? No, it corrects his spelling doesn't need to know how to spell, how to multiply divide get the square root of God knows what don't have to read music know a cleft from a G string just keep pumping because that's where it came from like Wiener's engineer, not the music but how it's made, tubes bellows hammers the whole digital machine, whole binary system that all-or-none paper roll with the holes in it running over the tracker bar that's where all of it came from, toys and entertainment where technology comes from going back, back, back to Vaucanson's duck that ruffled its feathers and quacked waddled and shat, back a thousand, two thousand years with the penny-in-the-slot machines and water organs Hero of Alexandria made to entertain the locals and the living statues on the island of Rhodes Pindar talks about, the artificial trees and singing birds made for the Emperor of Byzantium a thousand years ago nothing but toys and games wherever you went, Charles V's armed puppets playing trumpets and drums and a lifesize singing canary made for Marie Antoinette made it pretty clear who this frivolous entertainment was for, artificial birds singing real birdsongs to teach birds how to sing? Mozart writing music for fluteplaying clocks and Beethoven's Wellington's Victory written for Maelzel's panharmonicon while those rococo Swiss watchmakers were still busy making princely gifts of musical snuff boxes and pastorals featuring tiny figures doing farm chores and the French libeled as usual for smutty versions available across the way where Vaucanson's foul duck and his shepherd boy played twenty songs on a pipe with one hand and beat a drum with the other and his flutist, good God Vaucanson's flutist! actually played the flute? Because that's where it came from, where the technology came from right down to that paper roll with the holes in it where the computer came from, you see? Just take a minute to explain all this computer madness besotted by science besotted by technology by this explosion of progress and the information revolution what we're really besotted by is people making millions, making billions from computer chips computer circuitry computer programs one man making thirty billion dollars in a year because that's what we've always been besotted by, Philo T Farnsworth had it right seventy years ago didn't he? What America's all about, what it's always been about that thirty billion dollars? What the computer's all about what all of it's all about, movie stars, ball players, what science is all about, try to pin it on some humble genius so Pascal shows up age nineteen with his digital adding machine, Leibniz with one that multiplies and divides and finally Babbage and his Difference Engine, Babbage and his Analytical Engine with its punched cards Babbage the grandfather of the modern computer so it's Babbage Babbage Babbage but he got his idea from Jacquard's loom so that's all you ever hear, Jacquard's loom Jacquard's loom Jacquard's loom hits you square in the belly no where did I, can't believe it I just saw it here Flaubert, Flaubert must have been alphabetic with Farnsworth everything organized here it is yes here it is, letter from Flaubert 1868 asks about the silk weavers in Lyons, work in low-ceilinged rooms? in their homes? children work too? “The weaver working at a Jacquard loom” he says he's heard “is continually struck in the stomach by the shaft of the roller on which the cloth is being wound, it is the roller itself that strikes him?” There, you see? That was the factory Vaucanson had set up near Lyons that fell into disrepair and Jacquard shows up later, picks up the pieces of Vaucanson's mechanical loom for figured silks, glues the pieces together and we've got Jacquard's loom but that's not what I'm talking about, no, no it's the principle of the thing, eighty years before Babbage, it's the same principle Vaucanson used for his flutist, this drum pierced with holes and levers controlling its fingers and lip and tongue movements the air supply driven through the lips against the edge of the holes in the flute it was actually playing the notes selected by the holes in the drum, the notes selected by the holes in that roll of paper because the piano was the epidemic, it was the plague spreading across America a hundred years ago with its punched paper roll at the heart of the whole thing, of the frenzy of invention and mechanization and democracy and how to have art without the artist and automation, cybernetics you can see where the, damn! Where the tissues, just get cold water on it stop the bleeding, you see? Scrape my wrist against this drawer corner tears the skin open blood all over the place it doesn't hurt no, skin's like parchment that's the prednisone, turns the skin into dry old parchment tear it open with a feather that's the prednisone, reach for a book reach for anything tear myself to pieces reaching for this book listen, you'll see what I mean, opening page you'll see what I mean, “From March to December” he says, “while I was having to take large quantities of prednisolone,” same thing as prednisone, “I assembled every possible book and article written by” you see what I mean? “and visited every possible and impossible library” this whole pile of books and papers here? “preparing myself with the most passionate seriousness for the task, which I had been dreading throughout the preceding winter, of writing” where am I here, yes, “a major work of impeccable scholarship. It had been my intention to devote the most careful study to all these books and articles and only then, having studied them with all the thoroughness the subject deserved, to begin writing my work, which I believed would leave far behind it and far beneath it everything else, both published and unpublished” you see what this is all about? “I had been planning it for
ten years and had repeatedly failed to bring it to fruition,” but of course you don't no, no that's the whole point of it! It's my opening page, he's plagiarized my work right here in front of me before I've even written it! That's not the only one. That's not the only one either, he's done it before, or after, word for word right in this heap somewhere you could call plagiary a kind of entropy in there corrupting the creation it's right in here somewhere I can never find anything in this mess never get it sorted out, never get it in any kind of order but that's what it's all about in the first place isn't it? Get things in order that's half the battle in fact it is the battle, organize what's essential and throw out the rest of it that's the, Phidias? For me an image slumbers in the stone who's that, Nietzsche? Probability, chance, disorder and breakdown here's that punched paper roll holding the the, damn! Getting blood all over these pages of ads for what I just said didn't I? Whole thing turns into a cartoon? an animated cartoon? Chance and disorder sweeping in and this binary system digital machine with its all-or-none paper roll holding the fort yes it was the fort, whole point of it to order and organize to eliminate chance, to eliminate failure because we've always hated failure in America like some great character flaw what technology's all about, music entertainment counting, counting, seventy years ago one great pianist cutting a roll coordinating his hands and pedaling within a fiftieth of a second 1926 one company cut and sold ten million rolls whole thing turns into a cartoon, mob out there crash bang storming the gates seeking pleasure democracy scaling the walls terrifying the elite who've had a corner on high class entertainment back to Marie Antoinette storming the Bastille with here yes, here's one yes, here's a German ad 1926 holding the line for the class act against here they come, here they come, “a still larger class of people who cannot successfully operate the usual type of player, because they lack a true sense of musical values. They have no ‘ear for music,' and for that reason they play atrociously upon pianos equipped even with high grade player actions” talking about the class act? about defending these elitist music lovers? Not here no, talking about what we're always talking about. Sales! “Hence, too often, potential sales in a neighborhood are killed by someone unable to do justice to the possibilities of the player-piano he has purchased. To reach the enormous markets of the non-musical and half-musical and to conquer the growing prejudice of the truly musical” what are we going to do, educate this pleasure seeking rabble? There's Plato again agreeing that the excellence of music is measured by pleasure, but for this gang out there playing You're a Dog-gone Daisy Girl with its feet? Good God no, for them Plato rhymes with tomato, it can't be the pleasure of chance persons, he says, it's got to be music that delights the best educated or you get your poets composing to please the bad taste of their judges and finally the audience instructing each other and that's what this glorious democracy's all about isn't it? Tried to sell sets of “Educator” piano rolls eleven-fifty for a hundred thirty two lessons to teach them how to play the piano with their hands nothing doing no, no, here's one, here's what they wanted. “You can play better by roll than many who play by hand” you see? “And you can play all pieces while they can play but a few. And now even untrained persons can do it,” breaks your heart. “The biggest thrill in music is playing it yourself. It's your own participation that rouses your emotions most,” whole thing breaks your heart, here's another. “Retains its artistic ‘feel' indefinitely,” goes back to the turn of the century before the player piano, when it was still the piano player, big thing you wheeled up to the piano same punched roll it played on the keys with wooden fingers, tiny felt-tipped wooden fingers playing Scarlatti, Bach, Haydn “and old Handel. Unhappy Schubert speaks to them in the sweet tones of Rosamunde. Beethoven, master of masters, thrills alike” right on to Chopin bemoaning the fate of Poland and breathing “the fiery valor of his countrymen in Polonaise” and here's Debussy and Grieg giving testimonials. “Many of the artists will never play again, but their phantom hands will live forever” there that's what it's about, no more wooden fingers but phantom hands. “What stands between you and the music of the masters?” and then “If you were playing the ‘Pilgrims' Chorus,' how much would it mean to you to have the composer, Wagner himself, by your side?” Good God! “great Wagner comes and, lifting them aloft above the clouds, transports them to the mighty Halls of old Walhalla, in Ride of Walkyries, or takes them to the cool, green depths of classic Rhine in Nibelungen Ring” standing beside you? Be terrified, if you had any sense you'd be terrified, no more wooden fingers here's the phantom hands at the keyboard, here. “If Beethoven could be heard by us today playing his sonatas” lucky he was deaf he'd, blood on the, look at that, arm right down to my hand veins look ready to burst no more tiny felt-tipped wooden fingers no, see what breaks your heart? “Science has perfected absolute pianistic reproduction” read Trilby, end up with a physiologist named Johannes Müller tried for a melody by blowing air through a real human larynx prepared with strings and weights for the muscle action thought opera companies would buy them because opera stars' fees were getting so high like they are now, like all of it is now, what happened? What happened! Go back to that biggest thrill in music is your own participation where did it tip, where did it go from participating even in these cockeyed embraces with Beethoven and Wagner and, and Hofmann and Grieg and these ghostly hands on the, what took it from entertaining to being entertained? From this phantom entertainer to this bleary stupefied pleasure seeking, what breaks your heart. “Discover your unsuspected talent” that's what breaks your heart, losing that whole, the loss of a kind of innocence that crept in, drifting away of that romantic intoxication that was really quite ridiculous but it was, no it was really quite wonderful, for the first time music in homes anyone's home “every member of the household may be a performer” this ad says, discovering his unsuspected talent with his feet, this romantic illusion of participating, playing Beethoven yourself that was being destroyed by the technology that had made it possible in the first place, the mechanization exploding everywhere and the phantom hands the, Kannst du mich mit Genuss betrügen yes that, If I ever say to the moment don't go! Verweile doch! du bist so schön! no match for the march of science that made it possible, marches right on and leaves it in the dust, pianos nobody can play and millions of piano rolls left in the dust while their splendid phantom hands are pushed further from reach by the gramophone and finally paralyzed by the radio teaching birds to sing birdsongs O God, O God, O God, Chi m'a tolto a me stesso that's Michelangelo, that's from my book, Ch'a me fusse più presso O più di me potessi that's in my book, who has taken from me that self who could do more, and what is your book about Mister Joyce? It's not about something Madam, it is something and goodbye to that hidden talent, those ghostly fingers hard as petrified wood look at mine, the all-or-none ranks of order in those dusty piano rolls become chips in gigantic computer systems whose operators are at the mercy of the systems they've designed, programmed stock trading and the market crashes, shoot down a dot on the wrong part of the screen that was an airliner full of pleasure seekers fleeing pain and this grand billion byte technology solving every conceivable problem becomes the heart of the problem itself good God it's all, all, nuclear power going to change the world now what do we do with the nuclear waste, the waste, tiny felt-tipped wooden fingers turned to stone look at mine, keep my hands still here a few spots veins like Caesar crossing the Apennines didn't he? Blood splashed here and there you'd never know, all look perfectly normal don't I? sound perfectly normal don't I? Talking about the, about what I was talking about little hole in the memory sometimes cross out this hospital bed see me sitting here on a white sofa, white armchair books and papers in front of me? Getting old your only refuge is your work, can't see the bone scan can't see the needle in the vein drip drip God knows what hour after hour new treatment down below to strip the romantic veil off the naked animal's only function to perpetuate the species the race the tribe the, down in the recovery room leg jumps up by itself not mine no, don't dare stand up like horses the legs go first and darlin yer dancin days are done like the, book right here a minute ago like Huizinga's kangaroo just reading it wasn't I? Can't see across the room everything's a blur that's the prednisone so they're testing the eyes but I can read can't I, up close read ten point eight point but the, the, standing up just standing up take two steps I can't I can't I, I can't it's the, not my leg jumping up it's the kangaroo, it's the savage doing the magic ritual kangaroo dance he is the kangaroo, one of them has become the other, he doesn't know words, doesn't know image and symbol, doesn't know belief from make-believe Huizinga says, he has become the other and the other is the, the other has taken him over when I stand up and I I, I am the other, take two steps I can't breathe can't stand can't sp, speak can't walk across the the, I can't I can't I can't! Got to stop it's got to end right here can't breathe the other can't speak can't cross the room can't breathe can't, can't go on and I'm, I am the other. I am the other. Not the two of us living side by side like the, like some Golyadkin he invented in a bad moment no, no not those Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust one wants to leave its brother, one clings to the earth the other in derber Liebeslust no, no no no, can't breathe can't walk can't stand I am the other. Flight of stairs hold on terrified, into the bathroom the tub the toilet terrified, open the refrigerator bend down and look inside terror just, just terror where's Dodds, should have made two piles here to begin with, one books and articles and papers and clippings that are absolutely necessary the other those that aren't absolutely necessary, thought I knew which books and articles and notes were more necessary for my work than Dodds, that's the pile Dodds would be in but not damn! No, no here he is again! Right there my words right there my idea he's there ahead of me before I've even got it written down. He even writes about it this thinking another man's thoughts, put me in danger of deadening myself out of existence that's his phrase I simply haven't existed since I couldn't manage to think my own thoughts because my thinking had actually been his thinking you see? Following his thinking wherever it went so my thinking was always wherever his thinking had taken him those are my, those are his own words so I was in no condition to do anything not that I'd ever really done anything with this respiratory condition I'd had for so long even that wasn't mine treating it with prednisone while the side effects being bloated by too much prednisone while he'd cut it down or stopped it losing weight and gone back to large doses when I'd cut it down till I'd lost half my weight and he was getting bloated again the day I came I thought this can't go on or he did, he thought this can't go on this stacks of books and papers to get away, to get away I'd been in Corinth all those years before when all this started these books and notes and papers piled in front of me I'd go back, I'd go back, pack it all up and go back to Corinth, get a fresh start where it all began, see myself running through the streets went to Sparta, went to Pylos see myself at some sidewalk cafe making a note, reading all the time in the world sitting here sitting here reading and here it is! Here he is yes, going back to Palma to work, sees himself in Palma running through the street he can't even stand up and walk across the room he's done it again! My idea, my life, my work stolen it before I can get it down on paper it's the, no. No! No it's the, not Palma not Corinth not even the, no what's lost what's gone what's shouting in the streets is that youth when everything's possible good God that's what's gone forever. Young you're a child, get sick get well, get chicken pox get mumps get pneumonia pull the shades take your medicine and get well, get old and there's your pneumonia waiting round the corner the last best friend where the, damn. Bleeding again here, spill this water and that's the end, notes clippings books in one sodden heap better to bleed to death if this is the only reason not to, this work of mine trying to explain this other it's not Golyadkin no, it's not his doppelgänger who's gone with his bed in the morning when Petrushka brings in tea and explains that his master is not at home, shouting You idiot! I'm your master, Petrushka! and the “other one,” Petrushka finally blurts out, the “other one” left hours ago it's not like that, this doppelgänger of Golyadkin's I've never even seen my, seen this plagiarist because I am the other one it's exactly the opposite, I am the other I just said that didn't I? It's exactly the opposite, sit here chatting like Seneca cutting his veins in the bath minute I stand up I am the other, we're not these Golyadkins we're not doppelgängers, it's either/or, it's all-or-none, it's this whole binary digitized pattern of holes punched in those millions of dusty piano rolls why I've got to find Dodds in these piles somewhere here while