The Great American Novel Read Free Page B

“A Knight ther was,” as perfectly as I did in tenth grade. In fact, in the intervening million years—not since Chaucer penned it, but since I memorized it—I have conquered insomnia many a night reciting those dead words to myself, aloud if I happened to be alone, under my breath (as was the better part of wisdom) if some slit was snoring beside me. Only imagine one of them bimbos overhearing Smitty whaning-that-Aprille in the middle of the night! Waking to find herself in the dark with a guy who sounds five hundred years old! Especially if she happened to think of herself as “particular”! Why, say to one of those slits—in the original accent—“The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,” and she’d kick you right in the keester. “There are some things a girl won’t do, Mr. Word Smith, not even for dough! Good bye !” On the other hand, to do women justice, there is one I remember, a compassionate femme with knockers to match, who if you said to her, “So priketh hem nature in hir corages,” she’d tell you, “Sure I blow guys in garages. They’re human too, you know.”
    But this is not a book about tough cunts. Nat Hawthorne wrote that one long ago. This is a book about what America did to the Ruppert Mundys (and to me). As for The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, I admit that I have by now forgot what it all meant, if ever I knew. I’m not just talking about the parts that were verboten either. I take it from the copy that I have before me, borrowed on my card from the Valhalla Public Library, that those “parts” are still taboo for schoolkids. Must be—they are the only ratty-looking pages in an otherwise untouched book. Reading with the help of magnifying glass and footnotes, I see (at nearly ninety) that it is mostly stuff about farting. Little devils. They have even decorated the margin with symbols of their glee. Appears to be a drawing of a fart. Pretty good one too. Kids love farts, don’t they? Even today, with all the drugs and sex and violence you hear about on TV, they still get a kick, such as we used to, out of a fart. Maybe the world hasn’t changed so much after all. It would be nice to think there were still a few eternal verities around. I hate to think of the day when you say to an American kid, “Hey, want to smell a great fart?” and he looks at you as though you’re crazy. “A great what?” “Fart. Don’t you even know what a fart is?” “Sure it’s a game—you throw one at a target. You get points.” “That’s a dart, dope. A fart. A bunch of kids sit around in a crowded place and they fart. Break wind. Sure, you can make it into a game and give points. So much for a wet fart, so much for a series, and so on. And penalties if you draw mud, as we called it in those days. But the great thing was, you could do it just for the fun of it. By God, we could fart for hours when we were boys! Somebody’s front porch on a warm summer night, in the road, on our way to school. Why, we could sit around a blacksmith’s shop on a rainy day doing nothing but farting, and be perfectly content. No movies in those days. No television. No nothin’. I don’t believe the whole bunch of us taken together ever had more than a nickel at any time, and yet we were never bored, never had to go around looking for excitement or getting into trouble. Best thing was you could do it yourself too. Yessir, boy knew how to make use of his leisure time in those days.”
    Surprising, given the impact of the fart on the life of the American boy, how little you still hear about it; from all appearances it is still something they’d rather skip over in The Canterbury Tales at Valhalla High. On the other hand, that may be a blessing in disguise; this way at least no moneyman or politician has gotten it into his head yet to cash in on its nostalgic