Dear diary,
Now since Fernando Pessoa and I kicked Johnny Patmos out of his own text and saved everyone — all the so-called sinners and even the fundamentalists — we decided to go around and tidy everything up, and make everything new.
Stealing a book is a lot like stealing a car. When you enter the lot of an automobile dealership in midafternoon and pick the lock on, say, a 2020 Nissan Altima, the first thing you do, on average, is drive to the paint shop and change the color from pea green to pale yellow. Then you get out your screwdriver and replace the doors: you tape mosquito netting in their place — now you can feel the breeze when you drive. Then you head back to the car lot and exit the augmented Altima by punching thru its roof; now you pick the lock on a 2020 Honda Accord and change its color from orange to off-white (you do this by summoning all the local birds to cover the vehicle with their droppings); and you replace the tires with slender skis. And you do the same thing for all the 2020 models, while the sales staff watches you with awe because you’re efficient: You take a Chevrolet Malibu and alter its color from turquoise to washed-out pink — this is accomplished by gluing thinly sliced raw meat to the frame — then you carjack from the dealership one Ford Focus, one Honda Civic, nine Ford Explorers, three Chevrolet Impalas, and sixty-seven Toyota Corollas, and you turn them all gold, by hand, using a wide horsehair brush that is dripping with glitter paint, plastering each vehicle from sunroof to tires, not forgetting to glob over the rims and the rubber, and you even paint the mirrors; then, again, for each of the above motor coaches, you replace their interior seating with a frozen waterbed.
In other words, when a customer shoplifts an item, his immediate impulse is to improve the stolen property, because he is now that merchandise’s true owner. One would never vandalize one’s hard-earned loot. So, like I said, as soon as Fernando and I tossed Saint John of Patmos out of his own Book of Revelation, and he landed in the golden gutter, and we commandeered the scripture for ourselves — also recall that, while doing this, Fernando had transmogrified into THE DRAGON OF DRAGONS, while I took the form of THE BEAST (as played by Tyger Bryan) — we instantly set about improving the place’s décor. As it is written:
Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. (Isaiah 65:17)
So we stopped all the bloodshed that the previous author had instituted, and we made Hell blissful, and we took the icy aloofness out of Paradise, and we amended the relationship between God and his Serpent and his Lamb. So everyone was friends now; and the Wolfman reclined on the selfsame sofa with Humper Bunny the businessman and the first human-devil named Pig. And all those automobiles that we stole and revamped above got their trunks filled with airplane novels. And if you like ice cream, then you can have ice cream, and if you like absinthe, then here’s some absinthe — everyone can eat or drink what they prefer. I myself choose absinthe. Or if you want both, have both. There’s no limit to the amount of goodness that we bring to a scripture that we break into and ransack.
And the rest of what happened, behold, is it not written in my own propaganda pamphlet titled Why I Am Not a Surrealist? — I’m asking you in earnest, gentle reader; I seriously cannot remember. (No, that’s a joke — I’m just trying to coax you into purchasing a copy of my book.)
So, after defeating Johnny Patmos and gaining control of The Revelation of Jesus Christ, Fernando and I returned to Eagan, Minnesota and told our fellow-herdsmen Monica Vitti, Anna Karina, and Jeanette MacDonald about our adventure.
“Wow, that sounds like a blast,” sez Jeanette. And the others nod in agreement.
“It was, believe me!” I say, now having transmogrified out of my Burning Tyger form and back into the body of a regular human hero. (I’m played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.)
“Well, shall we continue our herdsmanship fidelities?” asks Anna Karina.
“Yes, let’s!” sez Fernando.
So we all split up into teams and go watch over our livestock. We lean against the palm tree as our beings graze contentedly in green pastures; then we lead them beside the crystal river and they lap up its elixir, which restores the soul. And if we ever graduate out of our current immortality, we will continue this pastime forever; only instead of watching our animals from the grassy hillocks, we’ll behold our own prior existences as well, gazing down on those ancient blue heavens from the darkness of outer space.
§
What this means for those who are trapped under strict, ruthless gangster-style regimes at present is that you will likely live miserably and die miserably. But I wouldn’t dissuade you from trying to send a positive message to the future. Who knows what is ultimately possible? It’s worth a shot. However, kill yourself before you kill yourself.
§
[The novel closes.]
“Well that ended weird,” say you, the reader.
“No it didn’t,” sez the author Bryan Ray.
“Yes it did,” you say.
“No it didn’t,” sez the author.
“Yes it did,” you say.
“OK, maybe it’s a little weird,” the author Bryan admits; “but it’s the cool type of weird, don’t you think? If you pretend to enjoy it, then you look as if you’re in on the joke, and whoever doesn’t like it is too slow to understand.”
The reader thinks this over. “Eh, maybe for you it works that way. It just leaves me with that same kind of uncomfortable pity that I feel, when, on the city streets, I encounter a bedraggled man who is wildly talking to himself.”
“No,” sez the author Bryan: “it’s not like that at all.”
You tell the truth: “I’m just giving you my honest reaction.”
“No you’re not. I can tell that you’re speaking duplicitously,” sez Bryan the author. “You loved the whole series, but you’re embarrassed to admit it, because you know that you don’t have a way of articulating why you found all these books so fascinating; so you take the easy way out by pretending insouciance, hoping that thereby you’ll blend in with the multitudes of average, normal folk, who’ll then accept you.”
“Oh, if we’re talking about the whole multi-book project,” you, the gentle reader, now perk up and exclaim with sincerity, “I did love the series in general, yes — I’m not shy to admit that. I’ve been sharing little quotes from my favorite parts, online, as I read—”
“Seriously?” the author Bryan Ray is touched.
“Yeah!” you say, “these non-novels, or whatever you call them, are brilliant masterworks; it’s true that they’re uneven, but one can tell that they’re unabashedly so, which is somehow charming — it’s obvious that they’re supposed to be uneven: that that’s a feature rather than a bug, as well as so much other seeming mistakes and bad-taste blunders. No, taken together with your so-called fake novels and your collection of stuff that led up to them, I’d say that this present barrage of whatchamacallits (Not Novel 8 thru Not Novel 14), which I suggest you bind together under the title No More Fake Novels, is your best work yet. I’d go so far as to say that, if aesthetic merit were ever again to center the World’s Scriptural Canon, these plotless narratives of yours would be as close as our post-literate eon could come to the heights of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, not to mention Shakespeare or Dante. I truly mean that, from my heart. — The only thing I was complaining about is the ending of this last composition. I just think it sux.”
While you, the gentle reader, are voicing the above, Bryan the author becomes almost blue but then mastering himself he grows yellow, and at last white pink and smiling; whereon he sez:
“I’m happy to hear that you liked all these texts until now. That means a lot. Now, tell me: What’s your beef with the finale?”
After thinking long and hard about this, you decide upon the right way to answer; thus you say: “Well, actually, the groove is quite good; but… I don't know: There seems to be just a little something missing.”
“Like WHAT!?” Bryan the author questions desperately. “Do you think I should add another scene of dialogue, or maybe have my characters enter the diner again and order more food and drinks? Is that what you want?”
“I’m not sure,” you, the reader of this book, reply. “Lo, if I knew what would make the story perfect, then I’d write it myself and collect the fat cash for devising yet another bestseller. But I’m just trying to pass the time on my airplane by reading all these things that you dreamt up. I’m sorry — I wish I could offer more help… Hm, let me think for a sec. — I guess, for one, that last line ‘kill yourself before you kill yourself’ doesn’t seem the right note to end on. I can’t quote that on the social network: they’ll pull the plug on my account! They’ll accuse me of telling the truth to the youth. No one wants that. Would you pass the hemlock?”
“Sure,” the author Bryan Ray finishes sipping from a big bottle of hemlock and passes it to you, the reader.
“Ah-h-h,” you say, after taking a few great gulps. “That hits the spot.” Then you blink a couple times and your eyes glow red and you ask: “Now, where was I?”
“You were explaining to me the best way to end my final book,” sez the author Bryan Ray.
“Oh, yes, now I remember,” you, the gentle reader, drape your arm around Bryan the author as you restart pontificating. “I think it would be better if you finished the poetic tale with a whole fleet of spaceships.”
Bryan the author begins to note these ideas down on his pocket-size detective’s pad. “Ooh! I like that a LOT. Go on…”
“And,” you continue, “maybe tint all the lights in the starfield so that they’re multicolored, instead of plain white. Then pan down and have all the spaceships crash-land in a huge explosion of fire and lava.”
“Fire…” Bryan scribbles frantically on his notepad, “…and…” he keeps chicken-scratching, “…lava. — OK, Got it; please proceed!”
“And then the panels of the spaceships come open…”
“Wait,” sez Bryan, the author of this book, “that doesn’t make any sense at all — how are these spaceship’s panels opening, if they don’t have knobs on them that one can pull upwards or outwards?”
“The panels are silver,” you, the gentle reader, explain, “and they open automatically, whenever their extraterrestrial overlords who are piloting each spaceship stand in front of the magic sensor.”
“Ah!” Bryan nods and writes: “Magic sensors! NOW you’re talking!”
“And then these Overlord Pilots who are extraterrestrials step out of their spaceships and walk right into the fire and lava, because these things cannot hurt them.”
“Why not?” asks Bryan the author. “Why wouldn’t they get burnt up and at least glow bright orange and then melt into the oozing magma that surrounds them?”
“Cuz the aliens themselves are super hot,” you explain. “The otherworldly pilots of the spacecraft are made of material that’s much more razzling than fire and lava, so they can walk right thru these things, just like we earthlings walk thru lukewarm water or balmy summer air.”
“Ah, gotcha,” Bryan writes all this down.
“Now, here’s the climax,” you say.
“Ooh, wait for me — I’m interested in this part,” Bryan Ray the author finishes writing the word “CLIMAX” in all caps. Then he looks up, breathing expectantly.
“Check this out,” you say. “These overlord pilots that crash-landed their spaceships and walked thru the fiery lava without receiving the slightest harm, who also prove (by way of a series of shots that we’ll tack on to this part of the production) that they not only can tolerate eating toxins — like radioactive poisoning, or fish that have too much mercury in their bloodstream — but they actually LOVE the taste of these things and they THRIVE off their energies — so these extraterrestrials can eat sushi even when earth-people must remove sushi from their diet, cuz all the oceans have been poisoned by the publicans — I say, these beings that came to our planet from afar now step right out of the book and we finally see what they look like.”
The author Bryan Ray’s eyes are very wide now. After a few moments, he asks: “And what do they look like?”
“Check this out,” you say. “They look like beautiful women.”
“Oh my…”
“Super smart and compassionate and alluring.”
“This is going in the book,” Bryan sez definitively.
“You like the idea?” you, the gentle reader, seem pleased.
“If this is what you want to hear, at the end of the book,” Bryan sez, “then I’m putting it in there; because it totally appeals to me, too. Who wouldn’t want a superior species to conquer our galaxy while looking salacious in modest apparel?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” you say, while smiling. “And I was thinking that these alien victors should speak in a way that even people who don’t normally care about diction will note the eloquent nature of their discourse.”
“God, you’re on a roll,” the author Bryan admits that you, his reader, have even better ideas than he does.
“Also, if possible,” you add, “I would have these gorgeously intelligent alien females step directly out of the book, right off the page and into the room where one is reading about them, so that they appear before we readers in physicality. And I was hoping that it wouldn’t be too much trouble to make them exude a spellbinding aroma.”
“That’s no problem at all,” Bryan sez; “we can have the art department mix up something that smells really good, and just daub it behind their ears.”
“Are you saying that the women who work in the art department at whichever publisher publishes our book,” you, the gentle reader, inquire, “would serve as the models for the seductively scented alien goddesses that step right off the last page of our scripture? Or do you mean that the women who work in the art department would actually play the roles themselves and thus appear in the flesh to anyone who reads the series of memoirs thru to their end?”
“YES!!” Bryan sez, “That’s a really good idea: let us have the actual, real-life Barbara Bel Geddes, in her role as Midge in Vertigo (1958), plus Nancy Olson, while she’s playing Betty Schaefer in Sunset Boulevard (1950), literally drive two spaceships to Planet Earth inside our storybook and befriend the audience, which consists of you and I, the author and her gentle reader, fused into ONE MIND on the very last page of our text.”
“I like it,” you say. “Now, how do you want to realize this? Should the women either remain as individuals or merge into a semi-abstract yet bodied exemplariness?”
“Why not do both?” Bryan smiles. “What’s stopping us?”
You laugh, “OK!”
§
So you, dear reader, join forces with the author Bryan Ray to lure Midge and Betty out of their tales to star as UNE FEMME, the titular émigré in our interactive neo-reality.
Permit yourself to tell us eternals how Bryan now fancies everything shall go…
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