John Barth - Letters

R.N.

H: Jerome Bray to his parents.An ultimatum.

Comalot, R.D. 2

Lily Dale, N.Y., U.S.A. 14752

8/26/69

Mr. & Mrs. Gerald Bray a.k.a. Gadflay III & Betsy Bonaparte Bray

c/o Monsieur Casteene

Castines 100, Ontario, Canada, &/or lloodsworth I., Md., U.S.A.

Ma y Da (y M.C. 2):

Having a wonderful RESET Wish you were Here is our (final) report of business finished et unfinished ha ha since ours to you of 6/17 when in despair over LILYVAC’s printout and Merope/Margana y Fael’s defection we appealed to you for clear programming through 8/15/69 midpoint of our life and Phi-point 6 1 8 etc. of our 5-Year Plan (i.e. Mating Season between Years T & E of NOTES a.k.a. NOVEL): i.e. How translate all those numbers into letters? And whom hump from 7/4-8/14/69 inclusive?

No reply! We begin to wonder! Où et who êtes vous etc.? Et why have you forsaken us? Vous whom all our Leben we’ve thought our allies & protectors; whom our lifework has been but une long letter to, and who we have believed responded s’il vous plaît e.g. via LILYVAC’s leafy anagram! Now Hear This is our final RESET Arabs use rockets on Israeli positions British capture Penobscot Bay ditto Castine Me stop

Madre perdida, Père perdu: Our ally Comrade M. Casteene of Casteenes RESET Son of Ranger & Mme Burlingame and thus not unrelated à nous advises us to make this last attempt to report through LILYVAC through him to you our victorious Mating Season ’69 and revised new project based on Post-Perseid Illuminations see below and exhort you to affirm those latter pronto as we are gearing up for the Fall Work Period and will commence our 7-Year Plan on Tuesday 9/23 St. Thecla’s Day Autumnal Equinox R.S.V.P. or else.

Hum! In absence of Margana y Fael et faute de mieux we fetched to Comalot on 7/5 1 Pocahontas a.k.a. Marsha Blank for standby fertilization & general chores. From 7/12 to 7/21 the Mating Flight kept us in Maryland where under pretext of collaborating mil der Prinz-Mensch gang we carried forward the Season’s activities you would be surprised e reconnoitered Merope/Margana for evidence of rehabilitability no dice.

Back to Lily Dale 7/22 ☌☿☉ we found that in unser absence anti-Bonapartists had raided Comalot, abducted Marsha le Fay, and left the goats and LILYVAC to tend themselves! Quoi to do, Ma, Pa? Giles our prix buck passed on! Les nans reduced to browsing on LILYVAC’s language circuits! Mating Season in full flight and no Io for us to gad, no Blank to fill! Veh vas us! How we implored you und so weiter no reply. We were obliged to make do with nannies blah and go to work on LILYVAC’s nibbled circuits as if the Flight were flown and Fall upon us no help from ustedes no word no patter no pater no mate no mater no matter you shall RESET New ¶

Til LIL enfin got our program recycled enough to tell us in pained English not only that we were despite all appearances OK but that Marsha’s Blank was filled per program, ha ha, not to worry, the best yet is to come: by Phi-day 8/14 we would have the Queen a.k.a. Regina de Nominatrix maintenant we had a new y powerful ally M. Casteene who would monitor both females till the time was ripeness is all we had to do was make contact with him in Buffalo 8/1 Lammas Day Nixon in Pakistan ☽ on Equator More to come.

That night under pretext of collaborating mit der Prinz-Mensch RESET We exchanged credentials in Delaware Park a quick reciprocal demonstration of mimicries our own powers were of course at their peak by reason of the Season we embraced each other with the fervor of true comrades and he revealed himself as our long-lost elder foster brother von Backwater Wildlife Refuge! Son of Ranger & Mme Burlingame! Your elder nephew, sort of, Da, und playmate of your youth!

See chart! Next page!

Much more to come, quelle nuit, we’d never compromised a Rosengarten. We retested Merope too, not quite ripe, and M. le Baron C. explained that Marsha was in care of our colleague Horner at the Remobilization Farm. That we required her there for the present while he moved our operatives to Bloodsworth Island in the Chesapeake. That she would recome to us and LILYVAC without fail for her Final Fix at the Phi-point of the RESET That her agency now was but to deliver Queen Bea to us & LIL in time for mating kein sweat if we played our cards right and laid on the Honey Dust. That he looked forward to inspecting LILYVAC and discussing further our production of said H.D., the progress of our 5-Year Plan, and the revolutionary new medium Numerature, all which he would do at commencement of our Fall Work Period meanwhile he was off to Bermuda on a mating flight of his own au revoir mon (foster) frère.

On Tuesday 8/5 we duly invited Regina de Nominatrix a.k.a. Bibi etc. via LILYVAC & Marsha Blank to Comalot for 1 shining RESET On 8/13 Sharon Tate et alii buried she came i.e. Marsha fetched her here per program Dialogue Just Honey-Dust me 1st is all I ask Rexy-boy Bea murmured We did Me too Jer said Marsha you ever promised me a RESET We did Good night sweet ladies Time to fly now We did & did & did & did & did & did & RESET Done! PUNKT!

As meteors sprayed from Perseus like pollen or golden marks of punctuation, near midnight Th 8/14 Krafft-Ebing 1840 we completed the innumeration of Regina de Nominatrix, and at LILYVAC’s suggestion, for we were spent, and sore, and weary, we took a hit of Honey Dust ourself. Happy birthday sexy Rexy, Marsha mumbled; sorry about old Giles. O fie, said we, O phi, and then the hit hit: eureka, mirabile dictu, etc.!

The Post-Perseid Illuminations! That coincidence (of the mezzo del cammin de nostra vita and the Phi-point both of Year 1969 and of our original 5-Year Plan) was no coincidence! That fiasco that was NOT (i.e. the 1st ⅗ths of NOTES) was not! Achtung, Ma, Da! Inasmuch as that aforesaid conjunction of mid- and Phi-points was the turning point of notre vie and of LILYVAC’s program, could it be, aha, that the Golden Age originally projected to arrive in Spring 1971 (i.e. end of Year S, 5th of NOTES) would not actually commence till the Phi-point of our vita i.e. age 44.64 i.e. 618 etc. of my 3-score years and 12 i.e. 4/5/77? Hum!

What say, folks? we asked you. No reply! We began to RESET LILYVAC then vouchsafed 2 seminal suggestions by dawn’s early Licht. A (1) That perhaps a new plan was called for, evolving from NOTES like the Adult from the Pupil and commencing at the latter’s Phi-point i.e. A.S.A.P.; this to be not a 5- but a 7-Yearer culminating 7/4/76, on which fit date the 2nd Revolution would commence, to be followed per schedule by the New Golden Age. And a (2) That LILYVAC therefore needed entire reprogramming with 7’s in place of 5’s, even as foreshadowed by Merope/Margana last Passover 4/3 i.e. the eve of the eve of 4/5/69 or 7 years exactly ere the eve of the dawn of the N.G.A. When we did all those 7’s? See our lettre of 5/13 to Comrade Mack in LILYVAC’s memory bank if you have the key we’ll see! I.e., exactly the reprogramming scheduled for the upcoming Year E of NOTES (which see too in my letter to Todd Andrews of 7/4/67) but necessarily there unspecified. Ergo, Ma; also, Da: all has proceeded on schedule, but on a schedule only now coming clear! ¿No? Nicht wahr? R.S.V.P. instanter!

Queen B. then securely stashed and Dusted and Mating Season done, we returned Agent Blank to Canada and celebrated there our 36th by (disguised) participation in der Mensch-Prinz son-et-lumière memorial to the fallen American & Canadian Soldiers at Old Fort Erie. Wherein, as our voice sprach also from the rising cloud of the Great Magazine Explosion and we showered the scene with numbers like meteors spraying out like RESET We came to our final Post-Perseid Illumination: that nous-mème need not nor would not bring to its climax and dénouement that toilsome new 7-Year Plan! That having so scored this Mating Season, there remained for us only to complete LILYVAC’s reprogramming, whereafter LIL itself — with but the most routine attendance by some trusted agent like our dear Merope of old (who shares Bea’s precious erstwhile amber name) — could correct e refine its own program and accomplish both this 2nd plan and the 2nd Revolution!