EMPM: Prologue

Working title for my novel that isn’t actually a novel and never will be:

The Electromagnetic Paper Machine (not to be confused with the title of a real novel by Ken Kesey, who also wrote about a mental hospital)

I wanted to write a novel like Kurt Vonnegut wrote novels. That is, good. I wanted it to be Timequake, Steppenwolf, and The Jungle in one go. I’ve never read The Jungle. I wanted it to be a coming-of-age story with relevant social commentary and almost religious power, a real screamer. Of course I was to come of age, but in my own defense I was an asshole in this novel, the novel I never wrote. You would have related to me just enough to not quit paying attention. Just like El Túnel but tricky though because the actual main character, the hero, was a mental patient. I can’t use his real name. I wish I could. It’s a good name for him, but to tell you would be both illegal and unethical. There was another hero, a beautiful girl who loved me. There were a lot of casualties. There was at least one genuine villain, the hospital.

I should say the corporation that runs the hospital.

Chiefest of my motives in this endeavor: publicly telling off that corporation, coming clean about mistakes of my early adulthood, and honoring people that deserve it. But I can’t write fiction. I can’t hide in the ambiguity of creative truth. I can’t immortalize my friends into epic characters (I do see you all as epic, by the way). As if that weren’t enough of a kick in the nuts, I can’t tell closely-guarded secrets and then act like I made them up. I’ll just have to find a therapist or a girlfriend who speaks either English or Spanish or both. Sucks for y’all because there were some steamy scenes in there.

I think the English teachers at my prep school are responsible for the desire to do all of this with a book. I see them now in my mind, in the teachers’ lounge, behind closed office doors. Norm Thompson and Terry Shelton are conspiring to create generations of kunstroman writers. It’s a simple formula, mathematical almost. Put boys together. Be firm but not strict. Subject them to endless coming-of-age stories while they themselves are coming of age. Of course Dr.’s Baer and Harkins are there, and Eric Berman too. In the offices or teachers’ lounge I mean. They are drinking cheap coffee with cream and sugar. Shelton is wearing a tweed jacket, half-sitting on a desk, explaining a small but important detail about Caddie Compson’s role in all this. I can hear the cadences of his voice. Berman is paying very close attention, his brow furrowed. Curt Schmitt is in on the plan but can’t make the meetings. He is too closely watched by the students, who believe he has magical powers. “Mr. Schmitt doesn’t walk. He floats.” I think all of the teachers, staff, and administration were in on it. Wayne Duff, John Hiltonsmith, Barry Ray, Loyal Murphy, Beba Heros. It’s just that Thompson and Shelton were the vanguard.

Then I went to a Midwestern liberal arts college. “Hemingway wrote about Wabash,” Curt Schmitt said as he handed me copied pages from In Our Time. Ezra Pound even taught there, but they fired him. He wasn’t traditional enough.

But my novel. My novel had a point too, a lesson. Nay, even a solution to the problems of ethical justification caused by Post-Modern thought! Right, Al. It’s the lesson from El Túnel: Que no seas insensato. Don’t be insensate. It sounds kind of dumb and vague and is also the most important lesson of my life thus far. In El Túnel, the protagonist, Juan Pablo Castel, meets a woman, María Ibarne, and begins a romance. She warns him that she can’t be fully his. He finds out she’s married to a blind man and having another affair. She’s not selfish though. She’s actually very compassionate. Her motives are unclear. What is clear is that she understands Castel better than anyone else. His angst over not being able to posses her completely grows. Towards the end, he vengefully tells her husband about the affairs. The husband already knew, and beats Castel about the head, scolding him, yelling “¡Insensato!” Insensate.

I probably make of this scene not what it was intended to mean. In fact, until recently I had forgotten an important detail about the plot order. Castel has already killed María when he informs her husband (of everything). At this moment in the novel, which has falsely resonated with me for a long time, Castel’s crime is not merely informing on his mistress, it’s murder. For my purposes that doesn’t matter. It means that I can’t really credit this lesson to El Túnel, but rather to a flaw in my memory. That’s fine.

No seas insensato. This is the lesson I would have had myself, the hospital, everyone but the heroes learn. The novel won’t be written, but I will tell you some of the stories that it was to tell. I hope the point becomes clearer as I go.