The Decline of the West
I
I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man. I am an Englishman. O dear. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t begin with that; a moment ago, before I started writing, I was scanning the long list of possible openings long since accruing in my notebook, and many worthies, many able and adept locutions, presented themselves for use; but then, very quickly and without really thinking about it, I decided I would go with, I am a sick man…etc. It sounds rather too clever, I fear, too cute. And I am anything but cute. I am…well, spiteful. Bitter. Rankled. Possessed of a brawny and rambunctious choler. English. And it is altogether appropriate, I suppose, to begin with this fact—of my Englishness, that is—because this is what people over here notice about me first: my resonant, patrician, thoroughbred English bass. It prompts in these New Yorkers an attitude of automatic reverence. It speaks to some dim, recessed nub in the national unconscious that continues to recognize the true accent of authority. I like the roles we fall into, the faded but still legible script on the palimpsest of history. A colonial master, inspecting the natives, distressed somewhat by the vulgarity of their habits, but amused nevertheless. From barbarism to decadence without any civilization in between. That’s about right. Yes, Americans amuse me, if nothing else. Their guileless harping on about Liberty and the Land of the Free, all this cant about the divinely sanctioned Pursuit of Happiness. Meanwhile the pyramids continue to be built. Meanwhile the five-year plans go off like clockwork. It is difficult to purchase a bagel in this city without recognizing one’s place in a great chain of oppression and deceit. Behind the glass counter, with its gaudy display of cream cheese, there toils an army of colorful immigrants, garbed in the belittling uniforms of late capitalism. I imagine what must be the intricate misery of their lives, awaking at dawn in a housing project out on the infernal fringes of the metropolis, riding the subway for an hour, stuffing sandwich after sandwich, then returning for the night to their remote cells. And the White Man is scandalized if these underlings are the least bit curt, the least bit inattentive to their manically punctilious appetites. I ordered low-fat cream cheese. I said easy on the mayo. I said hold the goddamned mustard. Meanwhile outlaws fill the mountain caves…
Page(s) 33-34
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