by Roy Blount
And do you know what people say? After a pause? “You don’t sing as badly as you think you do.”
Which I have no doubt is true. And which I propose as a slogan for the nation’s so-called singing-impaired. Another thing I have been doing is putting the finishing touches on a monograph that pretty well establishes that all known melodies can be boiled down to four or five basic tunes.
These are the four or five basic tunes I feel most comfortable with. “It’s Howdy Doody Time,” as it happens, is one.
LOSS: A GUIDE TO ECONOMICS
MANY HUMANISTS PREFER TO know as little about economics as they do about heavy-vehicle maintenance or how their parents really are. And yet economics is the watchdog of a free society. Thanks to the vigilance of large investors, who serve somewhat the same function here as the Academy does in France, the state of our economy is a key to our moral fiber. Say there is rioting and ill humor in the cities, or too many loud parties in the small towns. Or the President responds to press-conference questions with an eerie; toneless hum. Or infestations rage through a great part of the Midwest. Immediately, the nation’s serious investors discern that the time is out of joint, and, to bring America back to itself, start moving their money to other countries. When the nation straightens out, when the editorials in Forbes have brought an adequate response and things at last seem “right,” then the key investor, even if he has taken a shine to one of those pert Swiss tellers, will start to buy shares in our future again. And we will have a future. This is known as “positive reinforcement and is only one of the ways in which economics lends clarity and order to our lives. (Unlike rock music.)
To understand how the whole great process of economics works, we must begin at the beginning. Take a dollar bill from your pocket, smooth out the wrinkles, and forget it. There is no longer any use talking in terms of one dollar, since it will not buy you coffee and a grilled cheese. Save the one, and when you get twelve more to go with it you can buy a lurid novel. Take out a twenty and look at that.
Now. This piece of “legal tender” (a poignant phrase, since so many things that are tender are still not legal, and vice versa) is not in itself “worth” anything. It bears a nice enough engraving of President Jackson, but few people need one. To realize how relative cash is, try spending a twenty on—to take a fanciful (for now!) example—Neptune, where they have never heard of President Jackson. Or probably of anyone named Jackson, if you can imagine. At least we hope they haven’t. If they have, our intelligence is lagging dangerously behind theirs. Far from knowing who was Neptune’s president from 1829 to 1837, we are not even sure whether they have “hands” or “feet.” Or, more crucial, whether they have something we want badly. If Neptune has something we want badly enough, such as a cheaper material for making in-flight pudding, then Neptune can say to us, “Ordinarily we knock this down at five dollars a barrel, but for you, since it means so much to you, we’ll make it twelve.” Thus your twenty comes to be worth $6.67, if you act now.
Economics teaches us that other things can happen to your twenty:
Inflation. Picture your twenty shrinking, ominously, and Jackson beginning to look like King Farouk. People smile too readily in the street. Your twenty isn’t worth as much any more.
Recession. Picture your twenty growing, ominously, and Jackson beginning to look like Elisha Cook, Jr. Hat sizes run smaller. Your twenty is worth more (that is to say, it is becoming less valuable at a slower rate), but you can’t afford to use it.
Depression. Oh, God.
Action on the street. Someone bigger than you runs up to you on the street and snatches your twenty and says, “Do something about it.” Jackson doesn’t want to get involved.
Obsolescence. Because of the way things are made at certain—or all—points on the economic continuum, all of the ink on your twenty, including Jackson, fades away.
Boom. Picture Jackson robust and hickory-strong, able to whip the pound, for what that is worth, at the Battle of New Orleans. (With the aid of pirates.) People run around slapping each other on the back, often too hard. You slip a disk. Your twenty helps to pay for new and improved medical service and your doctor’s new boat.
BOOM. It is gratifying to be able to say “Boom” in a public-service article. Boomboom! Boooommm. But don’t get any ideas.
Famine. Happens abroad.
All right. How about now? At this point in history, we in the United States enjoy plenty—of both inflation and recession. Thus, money is becoming at once less worth striving for and harder to get. Under these conditions, investments should be made with great caution, as indicated below.
Common stocks. Not a good bet at this time. See preferred stocks.
Preferred stocks. Not a good bet at this time. See commodities (pork bellies, for “instance, and don’t let an economist see you smile; nothing puts off an economist like the simplistic assumption that pork bellies in themselves—or even wearing vests and posed around a long table as the Council of Economic Advisers—are funny).
Commodities. Not a good bet at this time. (Porkbellyporkbellyporkbelly. Did you smile?) See silver:
Silver. Not a good bet at this time. See gold.
Gold. Too late.
Other factors to consider at all times are the wage-price spiral, the supply-and-demand seesaw, and the principle of compensation. These are sometimes known as “real (or speculative) boogers.”
The wage-price spiral. You demand a raise from your company, which bakes cakes, so that you can buy shoes. By the time you get to the shoe store the increase in cake prices occasioned by your raise has caused the shoe-store operator, who had to buy a cake earlier that morning, to raise the price of shoes to the point where you need another raise. Even without taking into account the high-speed cab rides back and forth, this can become extremely complex, especially when your boss’s son or daughter is going out with the shoe-store-owner’s daughter or son and needs more and more money from his or her father in order to convince his or her potential live-in mate that he or she can raise his or her standard of living.
(The need to improve the quality of one’s life, of course, is something to be reckoned with at every point along the spiral. Thus, you ask for a raise that will enable you to buy shoes and will also make things a little more mellow for you all around. The shoe-store operator does the same in raising his prices, and anticipates that you will, and figures that into his equation. This is true of every economic unit except doctors and lawyers, who, being essential guardians against death and/or ruin, simply increase their prices as much as they want to. Life being a serious proposition, a consumer cannot expect to have an easy choice between legal fees and prison, or medical bills and encephalitis. Furthermore, doctors and lawyers must go to school for years and years, often with little sleep, and at great sacrifice to their first wives.)
The supply-and-demand seesaw. When there is enough of something, people tend to say, “Who needs it?”
The principle of compensation. There is something to be said for, if not necessarily during, every economic period; every cloud has, for what it is worth, a silver-certificate lining. In a depression, for instance, when nobody has any money (and people eat pork bellies), that very fact creates among people a common bond.
Common bonds. See common stocks.
REAGAN, BEGIN, AND GOD
DON’T GET ME WRONG, I think the world of God. But it seems to me that He is too much with us lately, in a certain form. Israel’s Menachem Begin is wooing hardcore religionists for a coalition government. America’s (oh, come on) Ronald Reagan is being praised for statesmanship because his first Supreme Court nominee doesn’t quite please that luminous Christian, Jerry Falwell. (Strom Thurmond likes her, though. Great!) And both Begin and Reagan have been rather cavalier—in my view—about the risk of blowing things to perdition. I wonder—I know, it’s none of my business, I don’t tithe—whether the Judeo-Christian ethic is … in ideal hands.
With this thought in mind, and
with apologies to Eugene Field, who anyway is dead, I have dashed off—which accounts for any infelicities—the following verses.
Reagan, Begin, and God one night
Sailed a trilateral ship
Way out past the farthest Right
On a celestial trip.
“Whither are you fellows hurled?”
The moon asked, out of the blue.
“Far away from the, quote, Third World,
As well as worlds One and Two.
No time to chat with you,”
Said Reagan,
Begin,
And God.
The old moon sighed and took off, too—
He guessed what had gone down.
He told the stars, “If I were you,
I would not hang aroun’.”
So moon and stars and Holy Three
Distanced themselves from the globe—
And the sun cried, “How about me?”
“Join the trip (this one’s no probe)
If you’re a good xenophobe,”
Said Reagan,
Begin,
And God.
So close your eyes while Frankie sings:
Things are simpler today.
At any moment worrisome things
Will be nuclearized away.
And you’ll get to heaven, at least you may,
With Reagan,
Begin,
And God.
(Note: As is often the case in poetry, a certain amount of realism has been sacrificed here to exigencies of the verse form. And vice versa.) You are not going to tell me that Jerry Zipkin won’t be on that ship, not after all he’s put himself through; and there is bound to be a berth for—but I can’t bring myself to write the man’s name, except just this once, for purposes of illustration—Edwin A. Meese III.
E-D-W!
I-N-A!
M-E-E-S-E!
Edwin Meese! Edwin Meese!
Forever let us hold his banner high!
How can more than twelve or fourteen people in this entire nation have voted for a man who made no bones about having an aide named Edwin Meese? III!
Why is it that so grotesquely named a person’s closeness to the Last Big Holocaust button does not inflame all those people who thought “Jimmih” and “Rose-a-lyn” and “Jerdan” were ludicrous names? Meese. The man’s name is Meese. Edwin is bad enough. I have known some Edwins from Georgia, but never a Meese, by God!
Excuse me. I have gotten ethnic, after starting out so cosmic. But then, I ask you: what is less sublime than either religious bombing (sorry; forget I said anything) or politics that is deemed centrist because it is just to the left of a jackleg preacher?
99 PERCENT FOUNDATION
IT’S NOT THE MONEY. Well, it is the money. But even if it weren’t the money, it would be the principle. Not to mention the interest. (Is that an old joke?)
I want a goddamned genius grant.
It has been several weeks now since the MacArthur Foundation announced it was giving tens of thousands of dollars a year, tax free, no strings attached, to a number of Americans it deemed geniuses. I have waited long enough for the apologetic phone call: “Geez, it just hit us. Are we all sitting around here feeling red-faced! Casts the whole program into doubt. Forgot you and Jerry Lee Lewis. It’s this new computer …”
“Let it go,” say friends of mine. No. I am still frosted.
For I hold certain truths to be self-evident, among them that no American should be officially branded a nongenius.
Even if I get a grant next year, who wants to be a genius of the second rank?
I’m surprised the MacArthur Foundation didn’t call me up and say, “Listen, we worked out a generalized assessment for everybody in the country as to how much of a genius each is, and you have to send Robert Penn Warren thirty-five dollars a month.”
Don’t get me wrong. I think the world of Robert Penn Warren. But what does he need to be designated a genius for? He’s got a poem in every goddamned magazine you pick up. Every time you turn around he’s being interviewed about how he reads Homer aloud to his wife every night up in Vermont. I believe the son of a bitch owns a couple of homes. He’s won every goddamned prize in the nation. I think it’s tacky to give him a bunch of money for being a genius.
And what do you think this does to my afflatus? Every time I feel a real flight coming on, I hear the critics: “Blount, though no genius …”
The only one of these certified geniuses I have met is Stephen Jay Gould. He and I taped the Cavett show on the same day. I taped first, as a matter of fact. Met him in the greenroom on the way out. Seemed nice. Wrote a good book, I hear. About pandas, I think.
Pandas.
How much is that worth to the common weal? A genius on pandas.
Can I call him up and say, “Hey, Steve. My panda’s got some kind of inflammation …”? Who’s got a panda? Even rich people don’t have pandas. The President doesn’t have a panda. Give me $30,000 a year tax free, I could buy a panda; but what would I do with one?
Sure, I live in the country. I guess we could keep a panda. The dogs and the kids would probably enjoy it—at least until time came to feed it. But I don’t want a panda. What I want is a little consideration.
What am I now? Just some kind of hack?
All right. I did a beer commercial once. Is a man to be branded for life by one beer commercial? “He doesn’t need a grant; he’s got all that beer money coming in.” Come on, it was just a local Pittsburgh deal. I saw the last dollar and the free six-pack from it years ago. I didn’t lie. I like Iron City beer. I was struggling; I needed the money. And I prefer to work for change from within.
Which is something I could do a lot more effectively with $30,000 a year, tax free, no strings. Are you trying to tell me that Stephen Jay Gould wouldn’t do a beer commercial if somebody offered him one?
Now he wouldn’t, no. Now he doesn’t need it. But if you had offered him one six months ago, I bet he’d be on your home screen right now. On a bar stool, surrounded by pandas. “When these little fellas and I work up a real thirst …” It would probably give everyone who saw it a lift. Some of those beer commercials are the best things on television.
I’ll tell you what will offend me. If some of these grantees start popping up in commercials now. “Nobody feels like a genius first thing in the morning. Not even me—until I’ve had a cup of Maxwell House!”
I hope these guys are being ragged unmercifully in the streets. “Hey, Genius! How’s your ineffable spark hanging!” I won’t be surprised to start seeing, in the Times Science section, references to the new problem of Genius Block.
If you don’t read next year that I got a genius grant, it may well be because I have refused it. On political grounds. It seems to me that the genius of the American system is that money is not linked to intrinsic worth, so that the best people don’t make a whole lot of money. This means that the people who do make a lot of money get to make a lot of money. And the people who don’t make a lot of money get to reflect that the best people probably don’t make a lot of money.
I don’t think it’s healthy for people to have genius and money both. A genius, when his or her spouse comes running in yelling “They’ve come to repossess the kitchen,” is the type of person who says, “I don’t want to hear about it. I’m busy manufacturing a new enzyme in my head.” Or at least a genius is not the type to accept a genius grant graciously. A real genius would be saying, “Thirty thousand dollars a year, huh? What does Rona Barrett make? And who’s going to pick up my Blue Cross?”
Pandas. Can you imagine that? I should have gone into pandas.
EAT THAT WIG, WEAR THAT SANDWICH
THE WAY PEOPLE TALK about the hell of the subways these days, you would think it is all a matter of municipal decadence, which is never the fault of the people talking. For my part, I often recall the time I did a bad thing on the subway, myself. And I still feel responsible, although it was owing to the difficulty of modern
life.
In those days I lived in Brooklyn and worked in Rockefeller Center. I was on my way from the former to the latter on the D train. I had had the foresight to leave tardily enough that morning to get a seat. Still the car was fairly crowded, several unfortunates standing. (Even in those days, before sexism, I gave up my seat only to women who could show definite signs of dizziness and a doctor’s statement that they were at least six months pregnant, or to anyone carrying a razor.)
We pulled into, I believe, the Grand Street station. I was absorbed in the Park Slope News, our weekly neighborhood paper, which reported the seizure of $200,000 worth of heroin in a house near ours (we didn’t know them). Suddenly one end of the subway car was aflutter. It was the first time I had been in an even partially aflutter subway car, and I was bemused. I was accustomed to subway cars having the interior atmosphere of cattle cars, or of quarter-ton trucks carrying enlisted men back at night from long, pointless exercises in the rain.
My end of this car, though, was filled suddenly with people gesturing, pointing to a spot just over my head and saying, “The window.” Two men across from me had even risen from their seats and advanced in the direction the others were pointing.
I looked over my shoulder and saw what seemed to be the window in question—an adjustable horizontal vent over the big stationary pane. The doors had closed, the train was just beginning to move out of the station, and a young couple was running alongside, pointing at the window. It was open.
I can’t explain my reaction very thoroughly. All I know was that I felt I had to react quickly, and I suppose that the only previous situations to which my mind could relate this one immediately were situations in which my automobile door was open and other drivers were shouting at me to close it. I knew, in my mind, that you couldn’t be sucked out of a subway window the way you can an airplane window, but I may have assumed subrationally that there might be something nebulously hazardous about a subway window left open. And I loved New York, even including its subways, and I wanted to be a good citizen.