Children deliquescing into toddler soup, violent sexual dismemberment, four-page folio spreads of third-degree burn victims, the Poop Boys Macarena, Ludwig Wittgenstein receiving enough self-abuse to bring him within an inch of his life, Princess Di’s moribund breasts. All topics that the modern man embraces. All topics that the World Acadamie of Lit-rat-ture deemed inappropriate. Inappropriate enough to mandate that Chapter 2 of Ludwig be immediately ripped off the presses. However, the subaltern-slut-shaming resources of the prude-stream-media elite were neither vast nor comprehensive enough to prevent the errant chapter from making its way into literary history.
Truthfully, Chapter 2 shouldn’t have been included in Ludwig. It was written by the terrible early-millenial hack Micah, a rising-action enthusiast. He was known only in the smallest of literary circles — dots really — and, even there, as a minor man of letters. His correspondence between other lesser tradesmen formed what almost no sources at all call the Eigenfolio. However, at least one person jokingly called it that once, and no one else ever bothered to talk about it since.
See, Micah had never read or even heard about Ludwig. Even so, Chapter 2 manages, quite remarkably, to fill in some discontinuities between the first and third chapters. Though memorable characters such as Professor Lady and Penny sparkle in the opening pages of the novel, they disappear without explanation almost immediately. Micah’s unintentional contribution makes this transition clear.
“You give them the world and what do they give you back? Attitude, attitude and lip. Like one of those Hot Topics stores I’ve been reading about on the storefronts in the malls. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten so rough with him in front of his prom date.”
“Aw, Penny, it’s just a phase the Totality of Things is going through. All truly comprehensive ideas have to either weather obscurity or abuse. You don’t want him to be a loner do you?”
“Thanks sug’. When you put it that way …”
Penny never got to finish that sentence or any other. A souped-up Ford Fairlane crashed through the front door of Penny and Lady’s quaint, post-war Brownstone.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad freeDialectically, the Totality of Things emerged out of the drivers-side door, leveled a shotgun at his father and set the house on fire. “Hasta la vista, you abusive old prick.” Fireworks flattened the two-bedroom apartment that had, pre-fireworks, been decorated aggressively with lamps. The police never even bothered to investigate.
“Looks pretty standard. Two tweakers, crime of passion. He discovers her alone, realizes she don’t got the ‘tatties’ to cheat on him anymore, drives his antique car into the house once and for all. End his farce of a marriage to this woman who was, decidedly, too mousy for other men. Seen it a hundred times before. A real rash of them after that, ‘If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life …’ song. You wake up one day and say, ‘Hell, my life will never be like one of those CSI shows where I kill my wife after discovering she’s sought comfort in the arms of another man.’ Yeah, it sucks. But this seems … excessive. Alright, bag ’em and board ’em.”
Equally useful to the Ludwig saga was the prescient genesis of the Sanders Jackson/ Barry Pussywillow storyline. Often ridiculed as an “unnecessary and thoroughly disconnected” addendum to this story, Barry and Sanders are given huge intercalary scenes of dialogue that break up the primary narrative. Two completely static characters, Pussywillow and Jackson spend countless hours watching ESPN Classic. They bicker and bet on games that have already happened. Sanders “has trouble following the plot.” Neither Ludwig nor the Totality of Things is ever mentioned. A certain school of commentators regard Barry and Sanders as the Greek chorus of the novel, but that conclusion, like most others about Ludwig, is entirely unsupported by textual details. This makes the gloss all the more appealing. While traditionally believed that the duo rudely enter Ludwig in the third chapter, Micah tells us otherwise.
“Gah, these marathons. Why would you want to do this twice?”
“It’s not all about the novelty of accomplishment. It becomes about self-betterment.”
“Sure, sure. It’s just I already know who’s gonna win and they are so long. And it’s just running. Over and over. No v-cuts, no pivots, no tight pocket packed with backers.”
“Oh you mean watching …”
“Well, of course.”
“There are tons of channels. We have a satellite and I taped some antennae on it to make the reception even better. It might be time for us to give up ESPN Classic.”
“Huh. Why would I want to do that? I like to watch classic games, matches, bouts and heats. Why would I want to watch a game that might not be classic? Even classic games aren’t classic until some time after.”
“Ahh yes the waiting drives you mad.”
“And if there’s a better game, or a beloved racecar driver hits a wall that day —“
“Not classic at all.”
It hadn’t always been like this. Barry and Sanders were on their way to the minors. It wasn’t the big show, it was off-broadway. But it didn’t matter to them. They were two ne’er-do-wells from Schenectady. Both of their mothers carried their pregnancies to term antagonistically. Indeed, their husbands had to physically restrain them from taking revenge on their reproductive capabilities’ unfortunate successes. Either way, they were eventually born, grew into gangly teens, spent their proms cutting slate and, now, against several odds, were on the line to be recruited by the Batavia Muckdogs. Pussywillow was pitching and Jackson, a home-run slugger, was playing right field. A pair of sexless scouts doodled in their notebooks. They weren’t going to come back. Inexplicably, Barry Pussywillow went out on the diamond and threw 80 balls in a row before taking off his uniform and quitting baseball on the spot. Sanders caught him near the bullpen and beat the shit out of him with the business end of his bat. The scouts were unamused and crossed Barry and Sanders off their list. Next to Barry, “May have just quit baseball forever.” Next to Sanders, “Lacks creativity in the batter’s box.” At least that’s what we believe it said. The other scout had defaced the sheet so it read, “Lacks creativity in his wife’s box.” It was a sore subject as his wife had left him years earlier on account of his being sexless. She was unsure if this made her a homosexual and she was very devoted to being normal.
After that game, Barry and Sanders realized their fates were inextricably connected so they abandoned their meager dreams and moved into a single-room occupancy in upstate New York.
The rest of Ludwig Chapter 2 is an indecipherable mess of scatological curiosity, violence and ho-hum blood-and-sex. “It’s unclear what Micah is going for. No real way to tell. Most of the sentences kind of just trail off,” wrote The New York Times Book Review.
No, Micah didn’t write Chapter 2 of the Cambridge Ludwig. Micah merely copied Chapter 2 from one piece of paper to another. He had been reading Borges and got it into his head that you could rewrite a piece, word-for-word, and make it better. It took him weeks to finish, which surprised us. There were maybe twelve-hundred words in Chapter 2. But he kept “refining” it, making it “just right.” He was trying to develop a non-regional dialect so he would say “Ahm reefahning eet” and “Joost root.” I think he gave that up soon after he finished the work.
We were all stunned, shocked really by how true to the original text it was. I mean, in a sense, it was the original text. But seen through Micah’s mildly insightful … he had good handwriting. See, the original Chapter 2 was unreadable chicken-scratch. We didn’t know if Micah had gotten it right; no one had ever really read it. For a while, it was standard reading in U of College’s Lit. 204: The Diluvian Novel. None of the students read it, but, since the teachers hadn’t either, it all came out in the wash during exams.
- What are the leitmotives of Ludwig Chapter 2?
A. The persistence of words, characters, human feelings. (Correct)
- How did the bad guy lose in Ludwig Chapter 2?
A. Every beginning has an end except for, say, the natural numbers and there’s nothing numerical about antagonists. (Correct)
Do I think Micah deserves credit for the work? No, no that’s not what I would say. I mean, come on. We were all strung out on nail polish remover, fighting back the desire to just end it. But every time we’d try, there’d be another letter. It’s just crazy how in a twelve-hundred word document, there are five, six times that many letters. Micah, in his stupid Eigenfolio, always called himself a man of letters, but none of us knew it would take him down this path.
After he finished the piece, he got really paranoid. He just couldn’t seem to get the Totality of Things down. It’s this really great character. I always imagined an old James Dean, Jimmy Dean even, playing the Totality of Things. Micah insisted I was being too literal. At first he had all kinds of workarounds for the Totality of Things being a part of itself. “Eet’s lack ahn Ouroboross,” he’d squeak, “Nooo, eets Marahlahn Mahnraw geeveng harsalf fuhck.” I didn’t think it was any of those things. It was Brando on the Waterfront, it was Rocky in the ring with Thunderlips, it was James Franco at the Oscars.
Yeah, we were way off base and the whole thing got out of control. Micah started getting into speculative geometry. Hell, he started getting into topology. It was a dark time. For the record, I don’t know how what he did with that girl. It’s always experimental isn’t it. Ha ha. God, the tears, though. I mean it was like the finale of the Biggest Loser, the climax of Monogamy Sluts 2: Knocked Up and Married, a good episode of The Peanuts. Tears. Tears and blood. “Stooop crahhhin, stooop eeet noooo.” Jesus.
But, I mean, you know it was stupid. “Thing” wasn’t technical enough — and that’s always the problem with these language problems. “If a question in principle can never be answered, then, one feels that language has gone wrong; language has parted its moorings, and the question has no meaning.” Fucking Quine man. But yeah, the Totality of Things wasn’t itself a “thing” so no shit, case closed, question closed. No eldritch math-ex-nihilo needed. Whatever, it’s water under the bridge.