The Nix(206)

“It savages her intimately, publicly. I believe that was your pitch. The Packer Attacker. Good title. Catchy without being smug. But I’m especially fond of the subtitle.”

“Which is?”

“The Untold Inside Story of America’s Most Famous Radical Leftist, by the Son She Abandoned.”

“I don’t think I can put my name on that.”

“Most books of nonfiction are sold on the strength of their subtitles. You may not know that.”

“I can’t do it, not in good conscience. It wouldn’t feel right, putting my name on that book.”

“And what, ruin the reputation I invented for you?”

“Is she really America’s most famous radical leftist?”

“We’re selling it as a memoir. The genre allows a little wiggle room.”

“It’s just that the book now seems to me, you know, false.”

“This is of course your choice. But if you don’t put your name on that book, then we proceed with the court action against you, and your mother remains a fugitive. Notice that I’m not telling you what to do here, just illuminating two paths, one of which I hope is the obvious choice if you are not totally insane.”

“But the book isn’t true.”

“And that should matter to us why, exactly?”

“I feel like it would keep me up at night. I feel like we should resist printing outright false things.”

“What’s true? What’s false? In case you haven’t noticed, the world has pretty much given up on the old Enlightenment idea of piecing together the truth based on observed data. Reality is too complicated and scary for that. Instead, it’s way easier to ignore all data that doesn’t fit your preconceptions and believe all data that does. I believe what I believe, and you believe what you believe, and we’ll agree to disagree. It’s liberal tolerance meets dark ages denialism. It’s very hip right now.”

“This sounds awful.”

“We are more politically fanatical than ever before, more religiously zealous, more rigid in our thinking, less capable of empathy. The way we see the world is totalizing and unbreakable. We are completely avoiding the problems that diversity and worldwide communication imply. Thus, nobody cares about antique ideas like true or false.”

“I’ll need to give this some thought.”

“Maybe literally the last thing you should be doing right now is thinking.”

“I’ll let you know,” Samuel says, standing now.

“The very worst thing you could be doing right now is examining the situation and trying to decide what is right.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Listen, Samuel, really, voice of experience here? It’s a terrible burden, being idealistic. It discolors everything you’ll do later. It will haunt you constantly for all time as you become the inevitably cynical person the world requires you to be. Just give up on it now, the idealism, doing the right thing. Then you’ll have nothing to regret later.”

“Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”





4


OUTSIDE PERIWINKLE’S BUILDING, the sidewalks howl. The new concern for those currently occupying Zuccotti Park is that the police are threatening to enforce city ordinances that prohibit occupying parks. Police stand at the edges of the park and watch as protestors gather in a general assembly and talk openly about the pros and cons of obeying the police. So it’s a tense day. Plus there’s the thing about the drumming: People are complaining about it, the ceaseless drumming way into the night, neighbors mostly, families who live in the area and have kids with early bedtimes, and local businesses who up till now have been pretty cool about letting protestors use their bathrooms but are about to become way less cool unless the drumming stops pronto. On one end of the park is the drum circle, on the other end is the multimedia tent and speaker’s platform and library and general assembly in what seems to be the superego to the drummers’ id. Someone is discussing the matter of the drumming right now, a young man in a vintage-looking sport coat who says a few words and stops while those words are shouted by people closest to him, which are then again shouted by those in the next zone back, and so on in a great wave, a sound that begins quietly and then is quickly amplified and amplified again, like an echo traveling back in time. This is necessary because the protestors do not have microphones. The city has banned sound-amplification devices, citing public nuisance laws. Why they have not yet arrested the drummers is anyone’s guess.

The speaker is currently saying he totally supports the drummers and thinks the protest should be an inclusive, big-tent, come-one-come-all type of affair and he understands that people express themselves politically in different ways and that not everybody feels comfortable up here talking rationally and democratically into the “people’s microphone” and some people prefer their message take on a more let’s say abstract quality than the policy proposals and talking-points papers and multistep manifestos this group has heroically written through a painstakingly slow consensus-approach apparatus and under incredible duress that includes constant police surveillance and media scrutiny and also talking above the sounds of the drum circle, he might add, but that’s all fine and they should embrace diversity in all its forms and be thankful that so many different kinds of people have joined their protest but he’s submitting a proposal that the collective occupying group ask the drummers if they’d knock it off at like maybe nine or thereabouts, nightly, please, because people have to sleep and everyone’s on their last nerve out here and it’s hard enough sleeping in tents on the concrete without the goddamn drumming all goddamn night. He submits this to the general assembly for consensus. Many hands are thrust into the air, fingers atwirl. In the absence of outright opposition, the motion seems to pass, until someone suggests they haven’t heard from the drummers yet and we have to hear from the drummers because even though we might disagree with the drummers it’s important to get everyone’s perspective here and everyone’s point of view and not be like fascist about it and quote-unquote jam it down their throats or something. Groans from many quarters. Nevertheless, an emissary is sent to the drum circle in search of a representative.