“There! I've read everything, but everything, of importance about Flupke. Which is good, because I don't think I could possibly read another two words. Not another syllable. Because, while it is all essential and useful for my scholarly work, some of it is undoubtedly kind of tedious. Some of the stuff is ... interesting, certainly ... but do I really need to be aware of the brand of lubricant used on U-Bahn trains of the Nord-Süd line in 1932-36, even if it is mentioned, possibly, in the master's 'Heirloom'? And the information that his cousin's pet anteater was named 'Tom'. Aha. It all makes sense now, doesn't it. Well. I don't know why I read that. But I can't very well not read it. I am committed. But I am tired now. It is time for me to don my 'size medium pyjamas', as Flupke so drily writes in Kapok, and go to bed. Or, 'go to bed', as he cleverly put it in his verse-drama of the same name. Yes ... ” And so the scholar retired for the night, done with his files and notes. There was a list of citations to go over in the morning, mainly to ascertain that he had already considered them or was familiar with their content, but for the time being he had a handle on everything written so far about F. B. Flupke, novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, essayist, feuilletonist, copyist, plagiarist, liar, thimblerigger, tictac man, contortionist, tout, hemppicker, shithead. Huh?

In his dream the scholar saw a marvelously unspecified bird flutter out of the woods and alight on his knee, flicking its head sideways to offer the whisp of paper clamped in its beak. He took the paper and the bird hopped to a safe distance, anxious to see what would happen next. The scholar looked at the note. It read, “Please send me some chocolate-covered biscuits. And not the cheap kind -- F. B. Flupke.” And the scholar woke up suddenly and said:

“Fuck me sideways. You great, fetid bag of shit. Just another festering hole in the universe. I mean, the man was obviously a towering asshole of unprocessed opinions and thoughtless piss-taking, a feckless, tiresome jerkoff, a poseur and a cunt. His manner was abominable. His beard was not normal facial hair, but a matted growth of dried spittle and dust, caused by talking all the time and spitting every which way. His voice alone was a pain in the nuts, quite apart from the insolent twaddle it conveyed. That's the opinion I've now come to, anyway.” And he went back to sleep.

It is strange how long it can take someone to discover his true vocation.

Labels: Flupke, Literature