Part 2 (1/2)

”There's Rex Luscus,” Chib says. ”He's being interviewed outside the Folk Center. Quite a crowd.”

THE PELLUCIDAR BREAKTHROUGH.

Luscus' middle name should have been Upmans.h.i.+p. A man of great erudition, with privileged access to the Library of Greater LA computer, and of Ulyssean sneakiness, he is always scoring over his colleagues.

He it was who founded the Go-Go School of Criticism.

Primalux Ruskinson, his great compet.i.tor, did some extensive research when Luscus announced the t.i.tle of his new philosophy. Ruskinson triumphantly announced that Luscus had taken the phrase from obsolete slang, current in the mid-twentieth century.

Luscus, in the fido interview next day, said that Ruskinson was a rather shallow scholar, which was to be expected.

_Go-go_ was taken from the Hottentot language. In Hottentot, _go-go_ meant to examine, that is, to keep looking until something about the object in this case, the artist and his works has been observed.

The critics got in line to sign up at the new school. Ruskinson thought of committing suicide, but instead accused Luscus of having blown his way up the ladder of success.

Luscus replied on fido that his personal life was his own, and Ruskinson was in danger of being sued for violation of privacy. However, he deserved no more effort than a man striking at a mosquito.

”What the h.e.l.l's a mosquito?” say millions of viewers. ”Wish the bighead would talk language we could understand.”

Luscus' voice fades off for a minute while the interpreters explain, having just been slipped a note from a monitor who's run off the word through the station's encyclopedia.

Luscus rode on the novelty of the Go-Go School for two years.

Then he re-established his prestige, which had been slipping somewhat, with his philosophy of the Totipotent Man.

This was so popular that the Bureau of Cultural Development and Recreation requisitioned a daily one-hour slot for a year-and-a-half in the initial program of totipotentializing.

Grandpa Winnegan's penned comment in his_ Private e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns_: What about The Totipotent Man, that apotheosis of individuality and complete psychosomatic development, the democratic ubermensch, as recommended by Rex Luscus, the s.e.xually one-sided? Poor old Uncle Sam! Trying to force the proteus of his citizens into a single stabilized shape so he can control them. And at the same time trying to encourage each and every to bring to flower his inherent capabilities -- if any! The poor old long-legged, chin-whiskered, milk-hearted, flint-brained schizophrenic! Verily, the left hand knows not what the right hand is doing. As a matter of fact, the right hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

”What about the totipotent man?” Luscus replied to the chairman during the fourth session of the _Luscan Lecture Series_. ”How does he conflict with the contemporary Zeitgeist? He doesn't. The totipotent man is the imperative of our times. He must come into being before the Golden World can be realized. How can you have a Utopia without Utopians, a Golden World with men of bra.s.s?”

It was during this Memorable Day that Luscus gave his talk on The Pellucidar Breakthrough and thereby made Chibiabos Winnegan famous. And more than incidentally gave Luscus his biggest score over his compet.i.tors.

”Pellucidar? Pellucidar?” Ruskinson mutters. ”Oh, G.o.d, what's Tinker Bell doing now?”

”It'll take me some time to explain why I use this phrase to describe Winnegan's stroke of genius,” Luscus continues. ”First, let me seem to detour

FROM THE ARCTIC TO ILLINOIS.

”Now, Confucius once said that a bear could not fart at the North Pole without causing a big wind in Chicago.

”By this he meant that all events, therefore, all men, are interconnected in an unbreakable web. What one man does, no matter how seemingly insignificant, vibrates through the strands and affects every man.”

Ho Chung Ko, before his fido on the 30th level of Lhasa, Tibet, says to his wife, ”That white p.r.i.c.k has got it all wrong. Confucius didn't say that. Lenin preserve us! I'm going to call him up and give him h.e.l.l.”

His wife says, ”Let's change the channel. Pai Ting Place is on now, and . . .”

Ngombe, 10th level, Nairobi: ”The critics here are a bunch of black b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Now you take Luscus; he could see my genius in a second. I'm going to apply for emigration in the morning.”

Wife: ”You might at least ask me if I want to go! What about the kids . . . mother . . . friends . . . dog . . . ?” and so on into the lionless night of self-luminous Africa.

”. . . ex-president Radinoff,” Luscus continues, ”once said that this is the 'Age of the Plugged-In Man.' Some rather vulgar remarks have been made about this, to me, insighted phrase. But Radinoff did not mean that human society is a daisy chain. He meant that the current of modern society flows through the circuit of which we are all part. This is the Age of Complete Interconnection. No wires can hang loose; otherwise we all short-circuit. Yet, it is undeniable that life without individuality is not worth living. Every man must be a _hapax legomenon_ . . .”

Ruskinson jumps up from his chair and screams, ”I know that phrase! I got you this time, Luscus!

He is so excited he falls over in a faint, symptom of a widespread hereditary defect. When he recovers, the lecture is over. He springs to the recorder to run off what he missed. But Luscus has carefully avoided defining The Pellucidar Breakthrough. He will explain it at another lecture.

Grandpa, back at the scope, whistles. ”I feel like an astronomer. The planets are in orbit around our house, the sun. There's Accipiter, the closest, Mercury, although he's not the G.o.d of thieves but their nemesis. Next, Benedictine, your sad-sack Venus. Hard, hard, hard! The sperm would batter their heads flat against that stony ovum. You sure she's pregnant?

”Your Mama's out there, dressed fit to kill and I wish someone would. Mother Earth headed for the perigee of the gummint store to waste your substance.”

Grandpa braces himself as if on a rolling deck, the blue-black veins on his legs thick as strangling vines on an ancient oak. ”Brief departure from the role of Herr Doktor Sternscheissdreckschnuppe, the great astronomer, to that of der Unterseeboot Kapitan von Schooten die Fischen in der Barrel. Ach! I zee yet das tramp Schteamer, Deine Mama, yawing, pitching, rolling in the seas of alcohol. Compa.s.s lost; rhumb dumb. Three sheets to the wind. Paddlewheels spinning in the air. The black gang sweating their b.a.l.l.s off, stoking the furnaces of frustration. Propellers tangled in the nets of neurosis. And the Great White Whale a glimmer in the black depths but coming up fast, intent on broaching her bottom, too big to miss. Poor d.a.m.ned vessel, I weep for her. I also vomit with disgust.

”Fire one! Fire two! Baroom! Mama rolls over, a jagged hole in her hull but not the one you're thinking of. Down she goes, nose first, as befits a devoted f.e.l.l.a.t.i.oneer, her huge aft rising into the air. Blub, blub! Full fathom five!

”And so back from undersea to outer s.p.a.ce. Your sylvan Mars, Red Hawk, has just stepped out of the tavern. And Luscus, Jupiter, the one-eyed All-Father of Art, if you'll pardon my mixing of Nordic and Latin mythologies, is surrounded by his swarm of satellites.”

EXCRETION IS THE BITTER PART OF VALOR.

Luscus says to the fido interviewers. ”By this I mean that Winnegan, like every artist, great or not, produces art that is, first, secretion, unique to himself, then excretion. Excretion in the original sense of 'sifting out.' Creative excretion or discrete excretion. I know that my distinguished colleagues will make fun of this a.n.a.logy, so I hereby challenge them to a fido debate whenever it can be arranged.

”The valor comes from the courage of the artist in showing his inner products to the public. The bitter part comes from the fact that the artist may be rejected or misunderstood in his time. Also from the terrible war that takes place in the artist with the disconnected or chaotic elements, often contradictory, which he must unite and then mold into a unique ent.i.ty. Hence my 'discrete excretion' phrase.

Fido interviewer: ”Are we to understand that everything is a big pile of s.h.i.+t but that art makes a strange sea-change, forms it into something golden and illuminating?”

”Not exactly. But you're close. I'll elaborate and expound at a later date. At present, I want to talk about Winnegan. Now, the lesser artists give only the surface of things; they are photographers. But the great ones give the interiority of objects and beings. Winnegan, however, is the first to reveal more than one interiority in a single work of art. His invention of the alto-relief multilevel technique enables him to epiphanize -- show forth -- subterranean layer upon layer.”

Primalux Ruskinson, loudly, ”The Great Onion Peeler of Painting!”

Luscus, calmly after the laughter has died: ”In one sense, that is well put. Great art, like an onion, brings tears to the eyes. However, the light on Winnegan's paintings is not just a reflection; it is sucked in, digested, and then fractured forth. Each of the broken beams makes visible, not various aspects of the figures beneath, but whole figures. Worlds, I might say.

”I call this The Pellucidar Breakthrough. Pellucidar is the hollow interior of our planet, as depicted in a now forgotten fantasy-romance of the twentieth-century writer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of the immortal Tarzan.”

Ruskinson moans and feels faint again. ”Pellucid! Pellucidar! Luscus, you punning exhumist b.a.s.t.a.r.d!”