Yesterday I doubled the dose of Prozac and despite my unhappy situation I feel quite violently cheerful. My mind is busy, busy, busy. I just don’t see how I’m going to fit dying into my packed schedule. In December I’ll be writing a deathless work of art. January’s no good, I’m having a reconciliation with my ex-wife. The spring’s out – it’s the cherry season, for God’s sake. The summer’s not looking good either: my daughter is coming down to the coast to say a last farewell; I wouldn’t miss that scene for all the world. We’re going to have to reschedule this thing for next autumn. I know it’s a whole year, but what can I do? I’m sorry.
Busy, busy, busy.
This morning I realized that my true subject – at least, for the purpose of getting an advance – is not death, but consciousness. It was Patrick going to that conference that gave me the hint. I rang Arnie’s secretary and made an appointment for the next day, then I went to Brentano’s and bought all the books on consciousness I could lay my hands on.
Luckily, I’ve done a speed-reading course and by the time I arrived at Mi Casa Ti Casa I had been able to scan twenty-six books with the word ‘mind’ in the title, as well as a rogue volume called Now and Zen. Unluckily, I am only able to retain for a few hours an impression of the material I read at this punishing pace, and the first dozen books had already faded on the drive over. Still, I was unlikely to forget the central point: nobody has a clue how consciousness works. That’s why it’s such a fertile field for fiction, unlike the steam engine, for instance, which is relatively well understood.
I found Arnie ripping the shell off a lobster and pouring a little battered tin of melted butter over its quivering body.
‘This is better than sex,’ he commented. ‘You got that treatment for me?’
‘I’m not writing about death any more.’
‘You’re just like my wife,’ he said, and chuckled. ‘She goes to the doctor every day. It’s an illness: hypochondria. She thinks she’s dying. I have to work my ass off so she can afford to be hysterical. So what’s the new project?’ he asked, expertly lowering the entire lobster down his throat like a sword-swallower.
‘It’s a novel,’ I said.
Although he had a claw sticking out of each corner of his mouth, Arnie’s indignation allowed him no pause.
‘An ovel!’ The claws appeared to become animated as he mumbled. ‘What the fuck you writing an ovel fo? Ovelist is the schmuck gets aid peanuts for the wights if, ig if, he finds a poducer.’
‘It’s about consciousness,’ I persisted.
Arnie spat out the claws. They clattered onto the plate, the flesh sucked from their shattered exoskeletons.
‘What’s the story line?’ he mocked. ‘Consciousness meets consciousness, they become super-conscious and live consciously ever after?’
‘You must be psychic,’ I said.
‘Sure I’m psychic,’ said Arnie, reluctant to refuse a compliment. ‘Listen, Charlie, first you tell me you can’t get death off your mind; now you tell me you can’t get your mind off your mind. Sounds like you oughta sack your therapist and write a sequel to Aliens with a Human Heart. Don’t you have any sense of social responsibility? Fifty-three million people are waiting for that sequel. Now, Charlie,’ said Arnie, all avuncular, ‘I know consciousness is a hot topic on the campuses. Did you read Mind Matters?’
‘I must have done,’ I said, feeling the memory of another dozen books slide down Lethe’s greasy banks.
‘How about Mind Your Language?’
‘I … I think so.’
‘That was a nice deal. The man who represented that book is a personal friend of mine. You wouldn’t believe what some of these academic boys get paid. But a novel, Charlie, a novel. You gonna put synapses in a novel?’
‘I don’t have to put them in, they’re in there already. My synapses are totally committed to this project,’ I gushed. ‘That’s the beautiful thing about it, talk about “the medium is the message”, this is the big one. Medium–message, form–content, they just kind of make out with each other the whole time.’
‘You’re writing a pornographic novel about consciousness?’
‘I could,’ I said obligingly. ‘I was going to set it at a conference.’
‘All they ever do at conferences is screw, right?’ said Arnie, chucking back a double espresso.
‘Lecture and screw.’
‘Drop the lectures; just go right into the passion,’ he advised.
‘They could have thoughts about the lectures while they were screwing and thoughts about the screwing during the lectures. It would be a metaphor for the total interpenetration…’
‘Total interpenetration, there’s a market for,’ said Arnie with a wink.
By now I was floundering. All I could remember from my reading was a couple of lines from Now and Zen.
‘Listen to the wind moving through the pines,’ I stammered.
‘What fuckin’ pines? This is Third Avenue. You having a psychotic episode? You think you’re in the Pokanos?’
‘The sound of the traffic, then,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘What d’ya mean, it doesn’t matter? You have any idea how much it costs to rent in this neighbourhood?’
‘In the sound of the wind moving through the traffic is all the teaching we’ll ever need…’
‘Right,’ said Arnie, cocking his ear towards the door. ‘It’s telling me I’m late for a meeting.’ He heaved himself up from the table and left with a marked lack of ceremony.
I think I blew the pitch.