Stanley Elkin - Boswell

Morty put all the candy on the napkin. “See?” he said excitedly. “‘Mallen’s Malties.’ ‘Beeman’s Pepsin Chewing Gum.’ ‘Hershey’s Chocolate.’”

“Morty,” I said, suddenly frightened, “are you a diabetic?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Don’t you understand?” he asked impatiently. “All the candies, all the gums have the name of the man who makes it prominently on the label. Showing the possessive! Hershey’s. Peter Paul’s. Beeman’s. Curtiss’. Brach’s. Wrigley’s. I looked at the products behind that counter there and it’s the same thing. Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. Why? It’s an important question. Think of other products. Is it Remington’s typewriter? Chevrolet’s automobile? Bayer’s aspirin? No! But you do find Pond’s cold cream. Cold cream yes, but typewriters no. What an insight! There’s Welch’s Grape Juice, but it’s Schlitz Beer! I’ve explained the culture!” Morty said, his eyes shining. “I was looking for the key. I knew there must be a key. There had to be a key. Margaret Mead said no, it was too complex to have one, but I knew she was wrong. ‘Go for the belly button of the culture,’ I said. ‘Something that’s there but no one bothers to think about.’”

“Morty, what is it?”

“All the bugs aren’t out yet,” he warned.

“Of course, but what is it?”

“It will have to be refined.”

“I know that. Certainly, but—”

“I’ll have to do a lot of legwork. Research. Dull stuff.”

“Well, that’s to be expected,” I said.

“I’ll have to get a complete list of brand names somewhere.”

“Brand names?”

“Do you suppose the Department of Commerce?”

“What is it, Morty?”

He looked at me suspiciously. “What’s your field?” he asked me suddenly.

“What?”

“What’s your field?”

“Morty, I haven’t got a field. I swear to you.”

“What’s your field?”

“Left.”

“You’re not an anthropologist?”

I shook my head.

“Are you in academics at all?”

“No, Morty.”

“All right,” he said a little uncertainly. “I suppose I can trust you. I have to tell somebody. As I say, though, it’s not perfected yet. There’s plenty of thinking still to be done.”

I nodded.

“Well,” he said, “when I first realized about the candy wrappers I thought it might have something to do with pride or craftsmanship or something. Most candy makers were probably small businessmen initially. Working in their own candy kitchens from private recipes, caramel up to their elbows. When they branched out maybe they just wanted to keep that homemade touch. So they put their signatures on the wrappers. That’s the term, ‘Signatures’! Maybe they thought it might even be good business. But that’s crap. Who buys candy? Kids buy candy. What the hell does a kid care if the stuff’s homemade? What does a kid know about good business? Then when I saw the cereal boxes, I realized it was bigger than that. Who eats cereal? Kids. Who eats soup? Again kids. Always kids. Kids! All right, let’s skip to the grape juice. Who drinks grape juice? Kids, right? But who drinks beer? Adults! Welch’s grape juice! Schlitz beer. The possessive disappears. The name is absorbed into the product, do you follow me? Pullman car, Maytag washer, Ford. It’s the conspiracy of anonymity, don’t you see? Just as long as Wrigley keeps that apostrophe ’s’ after his name, he remains an entity, a human being. We see him among the gum base, the cornstarch, the artificial, fruit flavoring. But who’s Morris that the Morris chair is named for? Who’s Macadam of the macadam road? Can you imagine such a person? Now, why should products that relate to children have this aura of individuality, and products that relate to adults have this aura of anonymity? Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Why?”

“I don’t know why,” Morty said, suddenly weary.

“Morty,” I said.

“It’s no good. I can’t even state the problem.”

“It is good, Dr. Perlmutter,” I said.

“It stinks.”

“Work on it, Morty.”

“Do you want this candy?” Morty asked. “I break out.” He shoved the candy across the table to me.

It was painful to see him subdued again. I wondered if he had a third and fourth wind. What he said about the names had excited me. After all, if I had a field, that was it — brand names. The grand brands of the great. I wished Morty would go on, but I saw that he wouldn’t. He was tired, bored. I decided to find out more about him.

We sat quietly for a few moments. When the waitress came over and took our orders I ordered a hamburger and potatoes. Morty wanted tea.

“Morty,” I asked after a while, “was that all true what you told Gibbenjoy? About the six wives and all the rest?”

“Certainly it’s true.”

“You’d have to be eighty-five years old,” I said admiringly.

“I’m fifty-six,” he answered sadly.

I was astonished. He seemed fifteen years younger.

The waitress brought our food. I was hungry and ate my hamburger quickly. I offered Morty some French fried potatoes, but he hook his head. He played with the little tag attached by a string to the tea bag inside the pot.

“Morton’s tea,” he said, showing me the tag.

“You could still work it out.”

He ignored me. “Well, maybe I saved myself in time on that one. It’s too bad it’s such horseshit. You see how it is? That’s the sort of thing I have to depend on. ‘The key to the culture.’ Right in the old home town, the old back yard, Grandma’s trunk in the attic. I’m too old for anything else now.”

“Too old, I said. “I thought you were about forty.

“Appearance and reality, sonny. The real key to the culture. Intrigue, secret letters, what the President really said, what really happened. Inside stuff!”

“That’s true,” I said. “That’s very true.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I believe,” I said, “that certain people are in control of everything that happens, and that unless we find out about them we can’t know about ourselves.”

“Infant,” he said, “I know about myself. I’m a dying Jewish anthropologist. Too old for the really important things in the field. It’s changing. There’s Coca-Cola in the jungle. It’s all different now. The new stuff is about the death of the old cultures. It’s a de-mystification process. There are medicine men at Oxford, chiefs in Harvard Law School. You get to a place you think is still raw and the UN has been there before you. They’re singing folk songs. They’re not wild. Do you understand that? They’re not wild any more, all those savages. They’re just like everybody else now, or soon will be.”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s terrible,” he said. “It’s awful.” He closed his eyes. “There ought to be killing. There ought to be blood. Murder. Atrocity. My beauties have their violence intact. It won’t be all that easy for the new men. They could have their tape recorders smashed.” He laughed softly.

“You talk as though you were retiring.”

“It’s too hard,” he said. “Tuberculosis is the anthropologist’s disease, did you know that?”

“Really?”

“Sure,” he said. “TB and the various jaundices. I’ve had them all. And six wives. Can you imagine that, a little shrimp like me? I’m a very licentious man,” he said softly. “I became interested in anthropology because of the color photographs of the bare-breasted native girls in The National Geographic.” He looked at me to see if I believed him. I did.