Lacking Character by Curtis White

Author:Curtis White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2018-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

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Apparently the Queen Mother wasn’t in the mood for laughter because that is the end of the discarded scene. Personally, I’d like to think that she did laugh. Talking to God! Come on!

In any case, it’s interesting to see that even puppets can have their little anagnorises. And, in the end, admit it, who isn’t a puppet? Who isn’t in a play? It’s enough to give one hope.

I can, however, tell you this, for what it’s worth: I suspect that while Felicité and her Thing were talking, directly below their feet, sedimentary rock was compressed from the side through a shrinking of the crust of the Earth. The effect of this compression was that layers of rock were thrown suddenly into folds, sending waves of energy through the rock. This explains the “shaking” they reported.

Now, this was all Nature’s doing and none of my own. The problem is that by intruding in this way Nature threatened the scene with a rigid and lifeless academicism. Nature puts the inner vitality of the scene in jeopardy with a fusty old theatrical device: an earthquake. Another fucking deus ex machina. What next? Flashing lights and the shaking of foil in the wings? No wonder this scene found its way to the cutting room floor.

I would not bring this up if it were just this one instance. Unhappily, as the history of art has shown time and again, Nature makes a habit of ruining the artist’s best effort in just this way. Which leads me to wonder, is it your impression that Nature itself is merely an example of the imitative fallacy?*

* There is one other possibility. After I left the room to allow the reader to experience the scene’s full silliness, I passed the time hitting tennis balls against the wall in the next room. Perhaps that was it, and not an earthquake. If so, my apologies.

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