Snow White

Well chaps first I'd like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it.

How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains?

The horsewife! The very basebone of the American plethora! The horsewife! Without whom the entire structure of civilian life would crumble! Without the horsewife, the whole raison d'être of our existences would be reduced, in a twinkling, to that brute level of brutality for which we so rightly reproach the filthy animals. Were it not for her enormous purchasing power and the heedless gaiety with which it is exercised, we would still be going around dressed in skins probably, with no big ticket items to fill the empty voids, in our homes and in our hearts. The horsewife! Nut and numen of our intersubjectivity. The horsewife! The chiefest ornament on the golden tree of human suffering!

Of course we had hoped that he would take up his sword as part of the President's war on poetry. The time is ripe for that. The root causes of poetry have been studied and studied. And now that we know that pockets of poetry still exist in our great country, especially in the large urban centers, we ought to be able to wash it out totally in one generation, if we put our backs into it.

Dan keeps telling Snow White that "Christmas is coming!" How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains?

We regarded each other sitting around the breakfast table with its big cardboard boxes of "Fear," "Chix," and "Rats.

... your father and I were in the trenches together, in the Great War. That was a war all right. Oh I know there have been other wars since, better-publicized ones, more expensive ones perhaps, but our war is the one I'll always remember. Our war is the one that means war to me.

Well, what shall I do next? What is the next thing demanded of me by history?

The President looked out of his window. He was not very happy. “I worry about Bill, Hubert, Henry, Kevin, Edward, Clem, Dan and their lover, Snow White. I sense that all is not well with them. Now, looking out over this green lawn, and these fine rosebushes, and into the night and the yellow buildings, and the falling Dow Jones Index and the screams of the poor, I am concerned. I have many important things to worry about, but I worry about Bill and the boys too. Because I am the President. Finally. the President of the whole fucking country. And they are Americans, Bill, Hubert, Henry, Kevin, Edward, Clem, Dan and Snow White. They are Americans. My Americans.

On the other hand I myself have impulses toward violence uneasily concealed. Especially when I look out of the window at the men and women, walking along in the course of a day because I spend so much time, as we all do, looking out of windows to determine what is out there, and what should be done about it.

Che ne sarà di noi, Hogo? Di te e di me?" "Non ne sarà nulla di noi, Jane. Il nostro essere è già stato. Noi siamo ciò che siamo. Adesso si tratta solo di andare avanti prendendo le cose come stanno fino alla morte". "Non dipingi un quadro molto roseo, Hogo", "Il quadro non è mio, Jane. Non sono stato io a concepire il quadro. Non sono mie le pennellate originarie. Io mi dissocio nel modo più assoluto dal quadro. È vero che opero all'interno della cornice ma il quadro..." "Quanti anni hai, Hogo?" "Trentacinque, Jane. Un'età nient'affatto priva di attrattive". "Non t'importa allora di non essere giovane?" "Ha i suoi aspetti molesti ma che cosa non li ha?" "Non t'importa allora di declinare in direzione della morte?" "No,Jane".

Ciascuno di noi è come un piccolissimo capello, scagliato nel mondo in mezzo a miliardi di altri capelli di varie dimensioni e colore. E se Dio non esiste, allora siamo messi ancora peggio di quanto pensavamo. In tal caso, ciascuno di noi è come una minutissima festuca di insulsaggine, che turbina in mezzo a una più grande insulsaggine spaventosamente libera, a meno che non esista una vita intelligente sugli altri pianeti, vale a dire una vita ancora più intelligente della nostra, una vita che abbia escogitato uno scopo a questa grande impresa che è la vita. È possibile. Ma noi, grazie a Dio, non possiamo saperlo. Nel frattempo ci sono i capelli, con i loro molteplici significati. Che fare?

Mamma, lo so che Hogo ha trentacinque anni ed è totalmente malvagio in tutto e per tutto, ma c'è qualcosa che m'attira verso di lui. Verso la sua casa. Verso la disinnocenza che so che m'attende laggiù". "Acquietati, piccina. Nella mia cattiveria c'è del metodo. Negandoti il permesso di recarti a casa di Hogo, attirerò Hogo qui, nella tua casa, ove potremo colmarlo di sformato di mirtilli e altre squisitezze, e ridurlo alla nostra mercè, in una maniera o nell'altra". "È un piano assai astuto, mamma".

Biancaneve", dicemmo, "perché rimani con noi? Qui? In questa casa?" Ci fu silenzio. Poi disse: "Credo che si debba a una mancanza di immaginazione. Non sono stata capace di immaginare niente di meglio". [...] "Ma la mia immaginazione si sta risvegliando", disse Biancaneve. "Come dopo un lungo sonno il certificato azionario si sente rivivere nella sua verde cassetta di sicurezza a causa di un interesse dell'investitore, la mia immaginazione si sta risvegliando. Sappiatelo".

Ma quei giorni sono finiti. Quei giorni migliori. Adesso coltivo la mia malizia. È una malizia coltivata, non la pallida malizia naturale che conoscemmo nell'adolescenza del mondo. A mano a mano che i giorni caliginosi trascorrono impercettibilmente sfumando l'uno nell'altro e i mesi muschiosi sprofondano nella memoria come in un pantano, palude o padule, io divento sempre più stregonesca. Ma ho la mia malizia. Quella ce l'ho.

Do you feel that the creation of new modes of hysteria is a viable undertaking for the artist of today? Yes ( ) No ( )

How old are you Hogo.” “Thirty-five Jane. A not unpleasant age to be.” “You don’t mind then. That you are not young.” “It has its buggy aspects as what does not?” “You don’t mind then that you are sagging in the direction of death.” “No, Jane.

We have decided to stop voting, so pull down the posters. Let’s get all those ugly faces off our streets and out of our elective offices. We are not going to vote any more, no matter how often they come around with their sound trucks and statesmanlike gestures. Pull down the sound trucks. Pull down the outstretched arms. To hell with the whole business. Voting has turned out to be a damned impertinence. They never do what we want them to do anyhow. And when they do what we don’t want them to do, they don’t do it well. To hell with them. We are going to save up all our votes for the next twenty years and spend them all at one time. Maybe by that day there will be some Rabelaisian figure worth spending them on. And so, raw youth, with your tentative air, go out and work our will on the physical world. We are going to go whole hog on this program, to a certain extent, and you are our chosen instrument. We are not particularly proud of you, but you exist, in some rough way, and that is enough, for our purposes. You are sub-attractive, Bobble, and so are your peers there, but here is the money, and there is the task. Get going.

Irruption of the magical in the life of Snow White: Snow White knows a singing bone. The singing bone has told her various stories which have left her troubled and confused: of a bear transformed into a king’s son, of an immense treasure at the bottom of a brook, of a crystal casket in which there is a cap that makes the wearer invisible. This must not continue. The behavior of the bone is unacceptable. The bone must be persuaded to confine itself to events and effects susceptible of confirmation by the instrumentarium of the physical sciences. Someone must reason with the bone.

It is possible of course that there are no more real men here, on his ball of half-truths, the earth.