In a Hole in the House of the Famous Poet

Abstract

If we take away structure and debase language—as advertising and fashion do (it is their modus operandi)—we take our caveman who got all the way to Gutenberg and computers, incredibly and almost fantastically adept at using tools to discover finer, smaller, vastly more related connections and interactions as the world of which he may be aware (but in his drunken laziness is not) and begin to reduce his horizons of time from the universe back down and down and down until not only are children lecturing their parents about the benefits of cereal that may— may!—reduce cholesterol not because the smarmy little brat loves papa but because the smarmy little brat “feels” that he or she knows some-thing, or the unbelievably entitled, but smug little girl in the rear seat of daddy’s Lexus looks at dad whose back-up camera has just detected an autistic child with PTSD, ADD, and PDDD (Parental Distraction and Disobedience Disorder) as though to say, “That was close! Can you believe Tommy did that?” and the image—and McLuhan was right after all—is not only of a smart-assed little back seat girl but of a family off happily on a journey, seeking Wildebeest fur in the Wilds of the Eastwood Towne (with an “e”) Center (I surprised it’s not “Centre,” as though British malls were not the grottos they are).