John Barth - Where Three Roads Meet

With the smile of one who knows something his questioners don't (or who would be seen as such), Izzy set down the manuscript, pocketed that pen, and turned up his palms. The sun, which would have long since set had Author not apparently lost track of time, resumed its setting. O.-F. Fred turned his What Now? visage from one to the other of his cycle-mates — of whom only determined and resourceful Georgina, it would appear, had the presence of mind to reach over the front seatback at this point, fetch up the script, move its top page (the most recently read, which at the time had ended with her saying, " End of speech, it says here," but now extended through the present paragraph) to the bottom, as she and Izzy in turn had done with the pages they'd read before it, and thereby expose to view the "new" page beneath, subheaded "4. The Fourth Wheel." From which, she being after all our Reader, in the belated sunset's long last light, she read aloud what follows this colon:

4. THE FOURTH WHEEL

Author speaking, more-than-patient Reader, in order to declare — at the risk of seeming uncooperative or coy — that it matters not a whit to "Fred" 's story who its author is, as long as the job gets done. Which is (as "Izzy" pointed out a while back at some length indeed) to "craft" the thing, as they say nowadays: to put it through its dramaturgical paces, goose it along through serial/incremental complications to its climax and denouement, possibly enlightening but at least entertaining you: "holding [your] attention," says the dictionary, between your presumably more mattersome affairs. Whether I've so done and am so doing isn't for me to judge — except when I role-shift from Author to Reader-of-what-I've-authored, *about which I confess my feelings to be mixed. Who wouldn't rather read a straight-on story -story, involving colorful characters doing interesting things in a "dramatic" situation, instead of yet another peekaboo story-about-storying? Why not one in which "Fred," for example — whether or not he may be said to represent the timeless, ubiquitous Myth of the Wandering Hero — is first and foremost a palpable presence on the page? A prevailingly likable, though curmudgeonish, once-upon-a-time super-achiever, say, now on his next-to-last legs: an ex-hard-driving CEO, maybe, or even — why not? — an ex-president of the USA (quite a few of those around nowadays), who did world-altering things while in office and is chafing so at the relative impotency of retirement (especially as he abhors and fears his incumbent successor) that he concocts a last-hurrah scheme, crazy-sounding but just possibly bring-offable, to (etc.)? This with the aid of "Izzy," as his career-long adviser and former White House chief of staff likes to be called: a now-also-geriatric master manipulator who, in their joint prime, virtually told "Fred" what to say and do (or, rather, how most effectively to say and do it, Fred himself being nobody's puppet), and who not only, like his boss/colleague/advisee, much misses his role in the wings and prompter's booth of power, but finds Fred's proposed spin on what was actually Izzy's last-hurrah plan so almost certainly disastrous that he resolves for the nation's and the world's sake to quietly derail while appearing to copilot it, excuse the split infinitive and mixed metaphor?

Et cetera? And as for "Georgina"…but forget it, Reader: The above-sketched is Another Story, which you're free to shift roles and take a shot at authoring yourself, so to speak, if something like that's what you'd rather read than this. Having borne with me, however, while I fetched that trio and their formerly three-wheeled whatchacallum from the Place Where Three Roads Meet or Diverge, depending, through the three episodes leading to their apparent present impasse, permit me to declare (what Iz seems to have been quite aware of and Georgina to have come to realize) that while their Dramatic Vehicle has been stalled for many a script page now, "Fred" himself (I mean this I've-Been-Told Story's story) has been moving right along.

It is, in fact, all but told. For was it not you yourself — I mean, of course, Georgina the Mere but Sharp-Eyed Reader — who pointed out that her sudden appearance (in Part Three: The Third Person) in order to question the relevance of " — 's Story" was itself a complication of Fred's story? And that her subsequently invoking the distinction between Action and Plot, together with her observation that merely chugging westward was not equivalent to Getting Somewhere, was the next complication after that, leading as it did to the Herocycle's immediate out-sputtering and the threesome's (apparent) ongoing impasse, et cetera, et cetera, right through Izzy's revelation of — rather, his leading Georgina to discover for herself — the ever-incrementing nature of their script, even unto the still-moving point of Author's pen? As tidy a series of Complications as ever rode the up escalator toward Finale! There remains only the business of Climax, Denouement, and Wrap-Up to complete the classical curve of dramatic action and Author's self-imposed assignment — a task just at this point interrupted, he imagines, by impassioned female grunts and groans from the rear seat of the Dramatic Vehicle: "Yes. Yes! Yes! " Their source is our Regina (the former Georgina, her name here and now changed by authorial fiat, she being the very Queen of Readers), so excited by the realization that their impasse has been only apparent — that in dramaturgical fact they've been not merely expending Energy but accomplishing Work — that to her happy embarrassment she finds herself climaxing indeed: " Yes! "

Izzy winks at Fred and with a gesture invites the old warhorse into the back seat with their so-aroused mare. But Author objects to Story's ever taking the back seat in its own Dramatic Vehicle: Instead, with a few strokes of his pen he transports transported Regina into the buggy's front seat with Fred and shifts Izzy-the-Sometime-Teller into the rear beside his authorial self.

" Yesyesyes! " moans Regina (an ejaculation not easily moaned, but she manages it), and makes to place Fred's gnarled but still handy right hand where her gnarl-free left has been busying itself. Waggish Izzy nudges Author and (behind his own right hand) suggests, "Her mons veneris for his Mysterious Hilltop Consummation? Let's do it!"

But Author decides to have Fred content himself with declaring to his ardent seat-mate that while her invitation to literal intercourse between Story and Reader flatters and honors him, he in turn honors and respects both her and his patient family back yonder, who have put up with and loyally supported him through the mattersome chapters of his Regnancy, Fall from Favor, and Departure from the City — yea, even unto his fast-approaching Mysterious End. Too grateful is he to all hands to dishonor them and himself as well with Protagonistic infidelity at this late stage of their joint story (as an early Complication, he allows, it might have been interesting indeed — but that would've been Another Story).

" Ah! Ah! Ah." So moved is Regina by Fred's profession of love for and loyalty to his household (R. is, after all, along with her other adjectives, the Faithful Reader), she finds herself once more auto-orgasming: Climax enough, Author here submits, for this story's story. Sometime-Teller Izzy, while skeptical of that submission, obligingly offers the so-moved Third Person, over the seatback, his own hand for her possible employment. Regina gives him a not-unfriendly mind-your-own-business look — as much as to say, "It's stories that turn me on, buster, not their tellers or authors" — and returns her admiring attention to our Hero.

Whom, however, she discovers to be no longer in the seat beside her; nor has he shifted to the rear with his Enablers. The Mythmobile's driver's door is open; the driver himself, it would appear, has vanished into the circumambient dark. Her hand still in place but no longer busy, "Fred?" the lady calls plaintively. "Freddie?"