I have been back in Portland for a few weeks now, so I thought it would be appropriate to bring you all up to speed. As many of you know, I have been hired to teach at a language school in Royan, France. I have a twelve-month contract which starts on September 1st. Before coming back to Portland, I went down to Royan to meet the staff and tour the facility, and am very much looking forward to working there. Royan is located in the southwest of France right on the mouth of the Gironde Estuary. If you want to read more about the city you might go to the wikipedia page by following this convenient link: Brian will be here.
Meanwhile, you will be happy to learn that while back in the United States I have not been wasting my time. In fact I have taken the initiative to conceive of and carry out a certain experiment with the goal of pushing the putative bounds of literature. How did I attempt this? by recruiting a crack team of apes and turning them loose on a room full of typewriters.
I find it difficult to fully express the pride I felt observing them hard at work, hearing the click-clack of inspiration, smelling the full pungent odor of abstract thought and creation. And I! I stood in front and encouraged.
“Ho there Max! how gifted you are with metaphor! Bravo Linus! Such an aptly turned phrase!”
I stood at their head, a conductor at the head of his orchestra. I drew forth and tempered their creation.
And finally, after days of relentless labor and at the limits of exhaustion, our task came to an end. Holding the finished work in my hand, holding the pages of the fruits of our labor, I began to read. What wonder! What riches! What literature! It engulfed me, wrapped me up in its beauty; I laughed and cried, rejoiced and mourned in obedience to the prose. And when I had finished, with glistening eyes I slowly looked up at my companions.
“My friends, our great enterprise has come to its term, but it is happily crowned with success. Gentlemen, my felicitations.”
At this the apes, deeply moved by my words, began to crowd around me, laying their hands upon me and some even trying to embrace me. This was something I had not expected. I bore it well for a short moment, but then I started to feel a profound revulsion deep within. The hair! the hair! I happened to catch the eyes of several of them as we were so close, and I saw there naught but savagery and void. At a certain moment I could no longer contain the horror. All of a sudden I flung myself backward in the throng, fell forward onto my knees, threw my head back and shrieked.
“Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty apes!”
