The American Shore: Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction by Thomas M. Disch—"Angouleme"

2. The Refused Text

2 The Refused Text We shall flex the text with a number of carets, marginally cardinalled for later reference. At the base of the print-line they should not be obtrusive ; the average reader seldom looks at more than the top half of the print—it contains quite enough information to read with. The only ambiguities are v/y, :/;, and o/Q; contextual order is usually strong enough to prevent confusion. our lexias will sometimes not constitute “complete units of meaning ” in the standard grammatic sense; but they will roughly enclose lengths of language that more or less strongly support our subsequent co-textual statements. Thomas M. Disch’s ANGOULEMEˆ There were ˆ seven Alexandrians involved in the Battery plot—Jack, who was the youngest and from the Bronx, Celeste DiCecca, Sniffles and MaryJane, Tancred Miller, Amparo (of course), and of course, the leader and mastermind, Bill Harper, better known as Little Mister Kissy Lips. Who was passionately, hopelessly in love with Amparo. Who was nearly thirteen (she would be, fully, by September this year), and breasts just beginning. Very very beautiful skin, like ˆ lucite. Amparo Martinez. ˆ Their first, nothing operation was in the east 60’s, a broker or something like that. All they netted was ˆ cufflinks, a watch, a leather satchel that wasn’t leather after all, some buttons, and the usual lot of useless credit cards. ˆ He stayed calm through the whole thing, even with Sniffles slicing off buttons, and soothing. None of them had the nerve to ask, though they all wondered, how often he’d been through this scene before. What they were about wasn’t an innovation. it was partly that, the need to innovate, that led them to think up the plot. ˆ The only really memorable part of the holdup was the name laminated on the cards, which was, weirdly enough, Lowen, Richard W. An omen (the connection being that they were all at the Alexander Lowen School), but of what? ˆ Little Mister Kissy Lips kept the cufflinks for himself, gave the buttons to Amparo (who gave them to her uncle), and donated the rest (the watch was a piece of crap) to the Conservation booth outside the Plaza right where he lived. ˆ His father was a teevee executive. in, as he would quip, both senses. ˆ They had got married young, his mama and papa, and divorced soon after but not before he’d come to fill out their quota. Papa, the executive , remarried, a man this time and somewhat more happily. Anyhow it lasted long enough that the offspring, the leader and mastermind, had to learn to adjust to the situation, it being permanent. ˆ Mama simply went down to the everglades and disappeared, sploosh. ˆ 1 2 3, 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 8 the american shore 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 in short, he was well to do. Which is how, more than by overwhelming talent, he got into the Lowen School in the first place. ˆ He had the right kind of body though, so with half a desire there was no reason in the city of New York he couldn’t grow up to be a professional dancer, even a choreographer. He’d have the connections for it, as Papa was fond of pointing out. For the time being, however, his bent was literary and religious rather than balletic. ˆ He loved, and what seventh grader doesn’t, the abstracter foxtrots and more metaphysical twists of a Dostoevsky, a Gide, a Mailer. ˆ He longed for the experience of some vivider pain than the mere daily hollowness knotted into his tight young belly, and no weekly stomp-and-holler of group therapy with other jejune elevenyear -olds was going to get him his stripes in the major leagues of suffering , crime, and resurrection. only a bonafide crime would do that, and of all the crimes available ˆ murder certainly carried the most prestige, as no less an authority than Loretta Couplard was ready to attest, Loretta Couplard being not only the director and co-owner of the Lowen School ˆ but the author, as well, of two nationally televised scripts, both about famous murders of the 20th Century. ˆ They’d even done a unit in social studies on the topic: A History of Crime in Urban America. ˆ The first of Loretta’s murders was a comedy involving Pauline Campbell , R.N., of Ann Arbor...