Abbott Awaits Read Free Page B

beaver, an anus, someone peeing on someone else. This thought, like so much of American life, renders him titillated and despondent. Abbott is not a prude about porn. Or, to put it another way, he is a prude about porn. He just wonders if the consumption of pornography can legitimately be considered a component of human flourishing. All that loneliness and credit-card debt. The thesis of Stephen Jay Gould’s
Wonderful Life
is that humans are an entity, not a tendency. “We are a thing, an item of history,” Gould writes, “not an embodiment of general principles.” After a thorough analysis of the 530-million-year-old fossil record in a limestone quarry called the BurgessShale—and of the mass extinctions of species that occurred after the quarry was formed—Gould concludes that the evolution of human life was spectacularly unlikely, a lottery win. “Replay the tape a million times from a Burgess beginning,” Gould argues, “and I doubt that anything like
Homo sapiens
would ever evolve again.” With great mental exertion and a decent night’s sleep and no ambient noise, Abbott can hold this concept precariously in his mind, like an acrobat balancing a chair holding a sequined assistant. But when he tries, in his mind, to add the proliferation of Internet pornography to Gould’s thesis on historical contingency, the strain becomes too much and he nearly blacks out in titillation and despondency. What an awful miracle. Abbott knows from Keats that the fancy thing to do is to reside in Paradox
without any irritable reaching
. But he also knows that he is, above all else, an irritable reacher, and about as capable of reform as a trembling dog. (There is rain on the roof, song on the monitor. He could just type in
wild sluts
, get it over with.)

9 Abbott’s Imaginary Letter to an Imaginary Nationally Syndicated Childhood and Parenting Expert
    Here’s one for the Puzzled Parents mailbag. Most mornings, Abbott explains, he gets up early with his young daughter while his wife, a pregnant insomniac, tries to sleep in. He prepares breakfast for his child and then sits with her at the table while she eats. Well, it
is
nice time together, but the truth is that Abbott on most mornings is listless and taciturn. Sometimes—understand that it is very early and there is no nanny and he’s so
tired
and it seems increasingly unlikely that he will ever be consulted for a fascinating story on public radio—he has his head in his hands. The girl eats and chatters across the table while Abbott grinds his eyeballs with his palms. But occasionally, and for reasons he doesn’t understand, Abbott is fun and funny at breakfast. He makes faces and voices, he hides behind cereal boxes, he pretends to spit out bad-tasting food, he flaps his arms and flies around the table. Hold on, he’s getting to his question. Abbott’s daughter loves it when this strange father appears, though she can never depend on his appearance. Abbott is troubled by his inconsistency. He knows that a parent’s consistency is vital, that childrenthrive when they feel a sense of steadiness and reliability at home. His question, then, is whether he should desist with the infrequent jollity and just be consistently sullen and unresponsive at breakfast. He is Yours Sincerely, Piqued in the Valley.

10 Abbott and the Jacobite Revolts
    Abbott sits on the edge of his daughter’s bed after she wakes from a long nap. The girl is happy and full of song. “My body,” she sings, clapping her hands. Her fingers are splayed and so extended as to bend slightly back, so that only her palms touch when she claps. “My body, my body,” she sings. She looks to Abbott both tiny and enormous lying beneath her sheet. She is flushed and sweaty. “Dad,” she says. “My body, my body.” Abbott does not know where she learned this song. “It does sound like
body
,” he says.