The Nix(203)

He moves back to the advertisement. The new torpedo-shaped potato chips seem to come in their own special plastic serving cups with peel-away tops like yogurt. The way the couple stares at the chips in anticipation of eating them is so manic that it almost looks like terror.

The door opens and Periwinkle finally appears. He wears his usual tight gray suit and colorful tie—turquoise today. His hair is newly dyed and looks lacquered black. He sees Samuel looking at the potato-chip poster and says, “That advertisement tells you everything you need to know about twenty-first-century America.”

He swings himself into the desk chair and swivels it around until he faces Samuel. “Everything I need to know to do my job is right there,” he says, pointing at it. “If you can understand this ad’s insight, then you can conquer the world.”

“It’s a stupid potato chip,” Samuel says.

“Of course it’s a stupid potato chip. It’s that phrase I love: snack routine.”

Outside, the drumming swells and then dissipates by some improvisational musical logic.

“I guess I’m missing it,” Samuel says, “the genius.”

“Think about it. Why does one eat a snack? Why is a snack necessary? The answer—and we’ve done a million studies on this—is because our lives are filled with tedium and drudgery and endless toil and we need a tiny blip of pleasure to repel the gathering darkness. Thus, we give ourselves a treat.

“But here’s the thing,” Periwinkle continues, his eyes all aglow, “even the things we do to break the routine become routine. Even the things we do to escape the sadness of our lives have themselves become sad. What this ad acknowledges is that you’ve been eating all these snacks and yet you are not happy, and you’ve been watching all these shows and yet you still feel lonely, and you’ve been seeing all this news and yet the world makes no sense, and you’ve been playing all these games and yet the melancholy sinks deeper and deeper into you. How do you escape?”

“You buy a new chip.”

“You buy a missile-shaped chip! That’s the answer. What this ad does is admit something you already deeply suspect and existentially fear: that consumerism is a failure and you will never find any meaning there no matter how much money you spend. So the great challenge for people like me is to convince people like you that the problem is not systemic. It’s not that snacks leave you feeling empty, it’s that you haven’t found the right snack yet. It’s not that TV turns out to be a poor substitute for human connection, it’s that you haven’t found the right show yet. It’s not that politics are hopelessly bankrupt, it’s that you haven’t found the right politician yet. And this ad just comes right out and says it. I swear to god it’s like playing poker against someone who’s showing his cards and yet still bluffing by force of personality.”

“This isn’t exactly what I came here to talk about.”

“It’s a heroic job, when you think about it. What I do. It’s the only thing that America’s good at anymore. We don’t make the snacks. Our specialty is making new ways to think about snacks.”

“So it’s patriotic, then. You’re a patriot.”

“Have you ever heard of the Chauvet cave paintings?”

“No.”

“They’re in southern France. Oldest paintings ever found there. We’re talking like thirty thousand years old. Scenes typical of the Paleolithic—horses, cattle, mammoths, that kind of thing. No pictures of humans but one depiction of a vagina, for what that’s worth. The really interesting thing is what happened when they carbon-dated the place. They found pictures in the same room painted six thousand years apart. They looked identical.”

“Okay. So?”

“So think about that. For six thousand years there was no progress and no evidence of any impulse to change anything. People were fine with the way things were. In other words, this is not a people experiencing spiritual desolation. You and I need new diversions nightly. These people didn’t change a thing for sixty centuries. This is not a people tired of their snack routine.”

The drumming outside escalates for a moment and then fades back into a kind of ominous tolling.

“Melancholy,” Periwinkle says, “had to be invented. Civilization had this unintended side effect, which is melancholy. Tedium. Routine. Gloom. And when those things were birthed, so were people like me, to attend to them. So no, it’s not patriotism. It’s evolution.”

“Guy Periwinkle, pinnacle of evolution.”

“I understand you’re trying to be sarcastic there, but a word like pinnacle doesn’t make sense in an evolutionary context. Remember that evolution is value-free. It’s not what’s best, it’s just what survives. I assume you’re here to talk about your mother?”

“Yes.”

“And where is she these days?”

“Norway.”

Periwinkle stares at him for a moment, digesting this.

“Wow,” he says, eventually.

“Northern Norway,” Samuel says, “all the way at the top of it.”

“I’m speechless, for I think maybe the very first time.”

“She wants you to tell me the truth.”

“About what?”

“Everything.”