The Museum of Eterna's Novel

WITTY¹ LETTER THAT I WOULD LIKE ONE OF MY CHARACTERS, THE PRESIDENT, TO WRITE TO RICARDO NARDAL

I’ve said before that the most ridiculous situation for a novelist is to wind up taking on a character of genius, since an author must know how this genius will perform in terms of conduct and intellectual prowess. What ideas, deep thoughts, audacious doctrines, and discoveries can he attribute to his genius and will he describe these as concrete exhibitions of “brilliant ideas” if the author is not himself a genius? And if he is one and believes it, the fact of taking responsibility for a character who has said he is a genius from the beginning (and in the meantime it should be said that he’s blonde, tall, moody, moneyed, and very fastidious with his ties, toilette, and shoeshine, though neglectful to shine it in the heel, as happens to soldiers when they are called to a sudden review); here let’s add a brilliant exception, like this: “It occurs to us that there is an ‘Ethic of Polished Uppers,’ which is strictly applied only to what can be seen, but which isn’t only limited to the President. Let’s reassure him, despite his puerile ways and the fact that when he’s wrapped up in a correspondence he’s totally useless, left in the idiotic state of ‘writing a letter in response,’ wherein his talent in no way resembles genius. Why does correspondence, such an entertaining opportunity to show off one’s inventiveness or avow one’s passion, lead to such mental insipidity when writing ‘a letter in response?’ The ‘Divine Postman’ of our novel must have known that the thirty thousand letters that he burned out of laziness were correspondences whose destruction saved thirty thousand close friends from the perplexity of (‘what should I answer?’). And what follows here? Since we’ve interrupted what we were saying about how undertaking to create a character of genius is to declare oneself a genius author, which one never is; it’s better to take on only maybe-geniuses.

Very well. I would like the President to be capable of writing a “witty letter,” because an author who is not amusing must have someone he can ask to rescue the situation when the public is clamoring incessantly for even a spoonful of wit, with no substitutions, just to be able to continue the novel. Once he’s written the letter, I’d like for him to decide that it’s for Ricardo Nardal. If I see later that it isn’t for him and that the President didn’t employ a shred of wit in the entire novel, I’ll resort to a note at the end that says: “Warning to the reader that my genius protagonist, the President, appears in the novel during a brief personal interlude and that, unfortunately, this period coincided with an eclipse of his intelligence, a period in which a certain watering-down of his psyche prevailed; but his life has been much longer than this, so have no doubt that before and afterwards he will show himself to be what I would call witty.” Thus it couldn’t be proved that the author was lacking, despite the absence of any glimmer of wit in the President, or that the author was not himself personally a genius of novelistic execution of this category of character performance. With this, I give you the letter that I wanted the President to be capable of writing in order to demonstrate his genius.

Dear Ricardo Nardal:²

Before I was a protagonist in this novel, you will recall that I attended a banquet in your honor and that I dedicated my discovery of the four kinds of applause to you: applause for calling the ‘waiter,’ for shooing chickens in the yard, for hunting moths in flight, for opening the door, and for encouraging the first steps of a young son; but it happens that in the following ten years I have discovered two new kinds of applause that I cannot omit, and I don’t know what one is for — what a mysterious ring in the phrasing — it seems to me that before I can submit them to a public that is likely eager to know of them, I must assemble them together in your name for a certain ranking or a ranking impulse that I cannot define: indefinable!

Kinds of applause are valuable because they are scarce: only two are discovered every ten years. I list them here: the first is for an author or orator who applauds himself using these kinds of phrases after a finished paragraph: ‘ Very good, therefore, gentlemen, as you can see…’; ‘Perfectly, therefore..’; ‘having convinced you of the proceeding’; ‘And this, clearly. .’ The second kind of applause consists of the long musical finales of operas that themselves have a beginning, middle, and end and that can only be interpreted as applause that the opera attributes to itself. Those are all the applauses extant. You will say that there exists applause of approval, admiration. But this bears two errors: it comes at the end, and it could mean finally! that’s over; moreover, the supposed recipient of the applause always doubts whether they’re applauding where one is or it’s only one that applauds.

You may now consider that I’ve brought you the complete list of the seven modes of applause, four for others and three for oneself; it’s not a bad omen for humanity that there’s more altruistic kinds than egotistical kinds of at least one thing.

Happy labors, dear Nardal.

El Presidente.

Of the seven applauses in the world, which one will be for me? Since in my case I’ve arrived late as an author — which is early, if no one’s expecting you — I might, in my innocence of the grand psychological novel, undo myself in excuses to a public that might be better served by my not showing up at all.

1 Awaiting a throng of readers.

2 Originally Leopoldo Marechal.