How I Became Stupid by Martin Page

Author:Martin Page
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

The day after the consultation at Edgar’s office, on Thursday, July 27, Antoine started taking the medication that was supposed to protect him from his own mind: Happyzac. The dose was one pill a day. Antoine took the initiative of doubling it. He wanted a quick and noticeable effect, not a gentle balm for some superficial result. The effects would start to show after a few days, just the time Antoine needed to organize his new life with all his ingenuity still at his disposal.

First stage: he sent a letter of resignation to the University of Paris V René-Descartes. For two years he had been giving a weekly ninety-minute class on The Divine Claudius’s Apocolocyntosis (his metamorphosis into a pumpkin, that is), a satirical play by Seneca. He also occasionally supplied teaching in the subjects he knew reasonably well: biology, lepidopterology, Aramaic rhetoric, and film. He had enough specialized knowledge on a good many subjects to stand in for a sick lecturer at a moment’s notice, but not the in-depth knowledge that represented a mastery of any one subject so that he might have hoped for a permanent position.

Second stage: he got rid of everything that ran the risk of stimulating his mind. He put his books in cardboard boxes: the hundreds of novels, works of theory, dictionaries and encyclopedias, his CDs, a good thousand pounds of notes taken in classes, of contacts, of scientific, historic, and literary reviews. . . . He took the film posters down from the walls of his single room, along with the portraits of his heroes and reproductions of paintings by Rembrandt, Schiele, Edward Hopper, and Miyazaki. Aas, Charlotte, Vlad, and Ganja helped him carry the boxes to Rodolphe’s apartment. The latter was delighted to house these cultural treasures—as Antoine had promised it wouldn’t be temporary.

Third stage: with his studio empty, Antoine wondered how he’d managed to put so much stuff in such a small space. He now had to fill it with inoffensive things that would leave his mind in peace. After a few self-interested visits to the apartments of a number of neighbors whom he deemed to have excellent immune defenses against intelligence, he made notes on what constituted a perfect decor for his new life. A neighboring couple—comprised of a teacher named Alain and a journalist named Isabelle—struck him as being an edifying example of a life entirely devoted to a renunciation of intelligence. He had been watching them for a long time and, deep down, he admired them: they were so wholly involved in life, and had so absolutely every last nuance of a dazzling stupidity, a pure idiocy, full of innocence, happy and replete, a lack of awareness that was pleasant both for them and for those around them, not in the least bit nasty or dangerous. With a kindly sincerity that was quite charmingly ridiculous, Alain and Isabelle advised him on how to fill his studio. He picked up an old television, which he installed in the middle of the room as the sovereign symbol of his resolution.

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