Welcome back, you sadly arranged stink bouquet of idle skinheads lollygagging around the 7-11 with slimy toothpicks nervously twitching in your dirty beaks. Your great and ineffaceable Mr. Intrepid, Ipsissimus of the Column Fractures one through five has returned to tend the nest of golden textual eggs that will one day hatch and produce the finest designer monsters to ever grace the storefronts of wan-smiling commercial failure. You may remember me from our last little travel engagement in Romania when I completed my ontological status as an ass. If you remember me as the guy who diddled your sister and frantically emptied the contents of your liquor cabinet and medicine chest into a canvas bag, not long after making a crudely cryptic 70s-style wall image of Jesus in BBQ sauce on your living room wall before dashing off into the hoary night, I assure you that was not me. The resemblance between that guy and myself may be uncanny, but we live in the composite age of the Xerox. But, as the Vatican would have it, BBQ is all we have left after Jeebus; pass the chow-chow.
As if to populate my hours with meaningful activities, I attempted to construct a garbage golem that I could subsequently sic on my enemies. This proved a rather disastrous and messy failure, despite the fact that I possess this land's most impressive collection of rabbinical recipe books. Instead of malingering in the failure of that enterprise, I decided on the low-level slow to boil conflict stand-by of writing another book. Bear traps come in many forms. It has come down to the ridiculous teeth-gnashing brokerage trip of titling this little monster, and with a mind all tight on cheap whiskey, these were the gems that did not make the crystalline cut: The 16-Ton Czarist Cuttlefish that Terrorized Tokyo; Organ-Grinder: or, tales of a lab-released monkey; Sparks from the Microwaved Mind. My editor seems to have severe and fatal allergies to giving me any license, budging nary an inch on any matter that comes up for dispute resolution. Arguing with my editor is an exercise in trying to hash out a deal with bureaucrats outside their usual ballast of procedures and protocols. Persuasion is one of my finer attributes, if I can speak of having anything fine, but with editors it is always a task of long negotiations and tabling that has all the resounding effect of a UN resolution. I don't wish to forward the impression that I am a Difficult Man to work with; in fact, I am quite an amenable beast, but only with reasonable people. Or, perhaps, editor and author are playing their parts with decorum to their very end, roles as antagonizing mongoose-snake types. Guess which one I am.
The last book, Tales…, was received with all the mock glory of a marathon runner in a crowd of confused chimps in screeching moon lust. Some derisive and pejorative shit was flinged my way by acerbic critics whose only excitement in life is taste-testing Chablis. I was accused of, in no particular order, distortion, disengagement, cultural insensitivity, vulgarity, and sensationalism. On the other side of this worn coin of criticism were those who sugar-lumped praise into the spiked tea of my gender-bending textuality. Not that I want to sit here and arrogantly adjust my oversized crotch-cup for all the pitiful applause this may warrant, so let's just skip the metrics of praise and go for the throat of the next attempt at constructing some skimpy, top-heavy empire.
As you learned people already know, a picaro is the type of character in Golden Age Spanish literature who has a series of misadventures and remains resolutely unchanged by any of it, learning nothing, and ending up exactly where he started (very much like some American presidencies). It's like a Seinfeld episode, but perhaps without the slap bass to indicate a scene shift or a cue for canned laughter. It is the narrative law of the status quo ante, and it should sound very much like your sex life. As a well-decorated and Internet-accredited picaro el grande, I have taken upon myself to spill forth a series of more recent episodes that may crack the brain trust or suppurate in the loose confines of your bookshelves that are already sagging with Jackie Collins' collected works, Tommy Lasorda diet tips, and luridly illustrated books on Siberian wildlife. I make no claims to having created "literature" by any stretch of its senses and meanings. That occupation is part of my other gig, another mode; this is more my means of cutting loose from all those reams of crafting overly subtle allegories and titillating young psychogogues with mildly surprising metaphorical twists. In fact, this book and the Tales…text are designed to be highly disposable narratives. You devour them hard and fast like a bag of Doritos over jugs of beer and then forget about it. Never mind that these books will never be taken seriously or embraced by the slow and plodding canon of English Literature; I like my freedom, which means that I can vomit forth irresponsible narrative without bloodying up my literary conscience, whatever such a thing looks or tastes like. In sum, this book will not dish up Profound Meaning, nor will it advance Great Theoretical Insights, Political Astuteness, Eloquent Reportage, Dynamically Fresh Takes on the Human Condition, or all the rest of the frou-frou ballyhoo that makes Milan Kundera a stellar poster boy for brave new fiction. Not that I want to thump on Kundera…He has his shtick that should be rightly regarded for what it is, and he does it rather well. I, on the other hand, cannot seem to properly integrate my functions like a multi-purpose computer, but rather stand as a Cuisinart of values and genres. So it goes. At least the flesh is willing even if it is weak. Well, as they say in the streets, are you spiritually enabled enough for the power of sale, and is not "reasonable confusion" this year's new green at the Gap?
I might as well put myself out there, push my neck as far out as possible. Yep, I've discovered that I have some very old conservative values in my roster of moral goodies. My outlook on culture seems to confirm this since I am schooled in a discipline that makes no money. If that were not enough, I like fine scotches. I sometimes dig the feel of a good suit. I sometimes believe that culture would do well to culture itself, and this through rigorous classical education. Of course, I was perhaps born an old conservative in liberal-all-too-liberal conditions, and I know we are a dying breed; those people who can quote Lucretius, move slowly, and drink expensive wines on Chippendale furniture are giving way to the NeoCons who don't need no "stinkin' larnin'". The new conservative is the dumb rich kid who can tell trapped underlings to crunch numbers for the cash nexus while they go to Yale to play golf with the dons. To moneyed goons like that who hold too many positions of power these days, Heraclitus is what the doctor says you have after an expensive and indiscreet bout of sex tourism in Indonesia, and Parmenides is a beach resort in Greece. Well, no sense characterizing the new "iconservative" as just the old dumb having climbed the ladder of wealth without our notice. It is better to look at the ideological poles in terms of their humour quotient. Old conservatives, as a dying breed of cultured beasts, have the unavoidable task of representing the last French horn blast of satirical jibes since that which has lost its reign and is soon to perish has the calm deadpan sensibilities to issue a few clever jabs at the real. The alternative is to get one's humour from the leftists who are, to be frank, horribly unfunny. I don't think die-hard leftists are capable of humour…Their jokes against empire and the like are double-dipped in sneering cynicism, a thinly coated presentation of the stark and grim truth of our globalitarian world. I think some call it black humour, but I look at it differently: burdening a joke with too much gravity that leaves your listeners to become enraged, depressed or suicidal. These jokes also tend to have the ideological subtlety of a clumsily secreted extramarital affair or a monster truck rally. Obsessive leftists don't know how to laugh; they're too busy trying to fight a phantom State monster that was outmoded long ago by a headless series of cyborgian corporations. They are far too serious. They are too morbid. They don't think their ideas of revolution and resistance are a laughing matter as these are to the rest of us. Could it be said that leftists have killed humour just as the NeoCons will laugh at their own shoelaces?
Old conservatives, on the other hand, have already been put to pasture. What else can they do now as black cows in the black night but crack jokes? We get ineffectually and pleasantly drunk and trade Wildean quips. We finally appreciate the innate humour of existence, and realize that not all the culture and money in the world is going to spare us. We are the last decadents.
Well, perhaps not me since I have all the trappings of a good old conservative except the keystone: wealth. But that's just a minor oversight on the part of the cosmos. I've been assured that the check is in the interstellar mail.
I've been keeping abreast of what passes for wit and wisdom in the leftist camp. Characterizing CEOs as soulless robots and corrupt politicians as greedy ravagers of the environment in a big manila envelope of imminent apocalypse may be risible to you, but I suspect it is that kind of bitter little laugh you issue when you've been audited, your wife has left you for your best friend, the dog has died, the banks are gutting your finances, your mother disowns you, and you utter that kind of resigned sort of "I'm fucked every which way from Friday so might as well just laugh" laugh. There are exceptions, sort of, and I think The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central exists as the last bulwark of leftist-oriented humour…but even this humour is deployed in a kind of nod to "old conservative humour" a la Mencken and O'Rourke. Stewart and his team of comedy writers know how to wield satire—something lost on G8 Summit barricade busters (who may not already realize that the resistance has already been pre-marketed by the same evil barons they pump their fists at, and that such barricades will one day sell as nostalgic antiques on eBay). The leftist humour reminds me of reading comics given the authoritative OK by the Maoist regime: every joke threaded with a moral-ideological lesson. Now that we have had our ha-ha, let's get serious again in an act of "Self-Criticism" and read more of Mao's wise writings and ratchet ourselves up further to be the ideal robots of revolution. Yawn.
You may think that making fun of the President of the United States is reliably inexhaustible content for leftist humour, earmarked for their sole usage…But what may not be realized is that ridiculing the US President is a pastime that transcends the ideological boundaries, and some of the most bitingly risible quips and criticisms of a president come from the old cultured conservative class. But, you may object, what of the late and great Hunter S. Thompson, the punchy leftist political fiend who thumped on everyone from Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan to Bush Sr.? Well, what of Hunter Thompson? Sure, he had his leftist leanings, but he was also a scotch-drinking, gun-toting, and well-read man living the old conservative dream of residing in Thoreau-esque quasi-isolation and racing expensive motorcycles, cars, and boats. He was a gas-guzzler and a hedonist; hardly a Prius-driving, dreadlocked, dumpster-diving Marxist with confused Che Guevara hash bongs. We can say, perhaps, that he was the "old left", which shares its ontological space with the "old conservative" in many ways. And he was funny. Naomi Klein and Jenny Holzer, whatever their ideological persuasion or if they have humourous intent, are not nearly as capable of making my belly shake. Leftist humour is categorically confused: it conflates jokes with dogmatic, preachy moralism, and I can't remember the last time I found a sermon very funny—at least not intentionally so. Fascists are incapable of humour as well, and I don't think there was a lot of laughter in Hitler's Reich or in Stalin's many gulags (although I just read an article that states Stalin was easily confused by cutlery at diplomatic dinner functions). Many political systems are inherently unfunny, and I am going to go out on a limb here to state that this is perhaps why they collapse.
Leftists ought to avoid reinventing the pundit, for that crooked old wheel keeps on spinning and I can assure you that none of us with minds find punditry all that funny unless it is a satire; otherwise, it is about as funny as the raging street-schizo howling three inches from your face.
Perhaps I have to make a clean breast of where my ideological allegiances really lie. No, I don't vote conservative because they no longer politically exist—NeoCons who mix Jesus with high finance are a patently different breed altogether. It may because I am into my 30s, which may mean (as the old 1960s diktat goes) that I can no longer be trusted. The alternative is to trust everyone under 30, which may mean considering hiring a hormonally confused adolescent to be your stockbroker, and an Ugg-booted valley girl to act as your career counselor. Being in my 30s means I have a whole new level of concerns that seemed spectrally distant in my 20s. My license for irresponsibility has now expired, and so I must now find licit and discreetly shrewd ways of being irresponsible, which may mean altering cultural preferences from cheap whiskey to Glenfiddich, and calling being drunk at noon a "working lunch". One has also to get limber with the 30s jargon, replacing being "broke" with "experiencing financial liquidity issues", dumping a girlfriend as "being a clingy whore" with "being an insurmountable life obstacle", "getting drunk with my buddies" with "sharing conviviality with my colleagues", getting "fired from my crummy job" with "negotiating a shift in career trajectory", and "blowing my cash on junk" with "self-rewarding luxury item purchase." Rather than getting uppity and enraged at the state, you become mildly socio-politically concerned. And, instead of eating over the toilet, you discover the use of plates, forks, and tables.
You may think that entering your 30s is a kind of death. Sure, all the naïve idealism that freely confused itself with a blind libido so that you experienced the same physiological reaction to a mass protest as you would scoring with Sexy Samantha after a few bottles of cheap sherry has perhaps been extinguished. Perhaps you no longer have posters of Bob Marley on your wall and you finally stopped relating every event in the world to your shabby readings of Marx. Words like the exploitation of labour, radical feminism, keg party, and social injustice may have been dropped from your vocabulary to be replaced by ergonomic work envelope, insurance premiums, home equity, and mutual funds. Your social group may be now composed of people who bathe regularly, who do not gather together to chip in pocket change for a 6-pack of cheap domestic beer, and who realize that the same dysfunction that ended relationships is what actually makes them amicably workable. You also start to realize that Fun is in direct inverse proportion to Health, but your now more mature mind has constructed more convincing justifications to continue your injurious—albeit modified—habits. Don't worry…the upside is that all the negative traits of your 20s are now magically perceived as character.
Well, let's get to this, shall we? Pass the peanuts.
Kane X. Faucher is a doctoral candidate at the University of Western Ontario's Centre for the Study of Theory & Criticism in London, Canada. He has published in several academic and literary journals both online and in print. He also has published three novels, Urdoxa (2004), Codex Obscura (2005), and Fort & Da (2006). His web page is at http://www.geocities.com/codex1977.