Requiem for the West

By Robert Trainor

An apocalyptic poem entitled "Requiem for the West" is at the center of this tale, which has equal elements of pervasive mockery, offbeat romance, doomsday premonitions, and Dilbert-like farce.

Larry Zane is a professor of English who is appointed to a committee that is running a poetry contest where the hundred-thousand-dollar first prize will be given to the poem that most resembles "The Raven," by Edgar Allan Poe. Also on the committee are Jaden Graves, the chain-smoking President of the college, Julian Mendoza, the sexual-predator Provost, and Mariah Rhodes, an attractive woman lawyer.

Meanwhile, as the committee becomes lost in waves of cigarette smoke, sexual innuendos, and contemptuous insults, Larry becomes disillusioned with the relationship that he has with his longtime girlfriend, Sierra Raines. Sierra is a haphephobic—the dictionary word for a person who is antagonistic to being touched. No hand-holding, no kissing, and certainly none of THAT. And so, with his romantic life going nowhere, Larry finds Mariah to be irresistible, while Sierra, with her love of art, music, and intelligent conversation, begins to fade away like an outdated fad.

And then, in Chapter Thirteen, "Requiem for the West" arrives—a seven-hundred-word alliterative poem that makes Poe look like the author of "Reflections of an Eternal Optimist." The committee can hardly be blamed for excessively bad behavior after attempting to come to terms with the fireball conclusion of "Requiem." Poetry isn't supposed to be like this! No one wants to read a crescendo of catchy alliterations that have them, quite literally, being fried to a crisp.

As the committee totally disappears in a cloud of cigarette smoke and a monster coughing attack…as Larry agonizes over his conflicted feelings for Sierra and Mariah…as the world staggers through one crisis after another…as the nuclear weapons pile up like thunderclouds on a hot summer day…

Finally, by the end of this tumultuous tour through Dilbert and Doomsday, Larry is led down the path that he has always been seeking, while Sierra…well, that's another story. But for the author of "Requiem," the vision is, as Poe once wrote after he had fallen into one of his many horrific depressions, "the destruction of all things by fire."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Trainor
• Release date: Feb 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224954155

Robert Trainor

Over the past twelve years (since I retired at the age of 59), I've written nineteen novels, four novellas, four non-fiction books, and seven anthologies, all of which you can find in the Kindle Store. Instead of writing a biography of myself, which seems rather irrelevant, I would prefer to write a biography of my books. Here, in the order in which they were written, is a brief sketch of the plots, themes, and subject matter of these books.1/ The Voice of the Victim describes a series of murders in a small city. I've always felt a great deal of empathy for the victims of violent crimes, especially those who are murdered by guns. What, I wondered, would these people say to us if they could speak? When reading this book, it is important to remember that my intention, from first page to last page, was to present the voice of the victim. And, to me, this voice is not a straight-line accusation of weapons and murderers but tends to veer to a pervasive mockery and total indictment of modern culture. This novel is much different than anything else I have written, and there will be many who will object to what the "voice" is saying.2/ Some Things Are Sweeter than God is somewhat along the lines of a classic murder mystery but is certainly not one of those books where the conclusion is some wild revelation that no sensible reader could ever discern beforehand. The protagonist is a forty-year-old woman lawyer who, in her role as a public defender, is required to represent a man who is accused of brutally murdering his ex-girlfriend.3/ The Road Map to the Universe is a well-constructed novel--at one time, I was a tournament chess player, and this book required a great deal of planning and analysis. Essentially, it's a highly unusual murder mystery, but the perceptive reader may be able to identify a standard plot theme lurking in the background. The Road Map also examines an interesting philosophical question: In a universe of four billion galaxies, what relevance, if any, does the human being have?4/ The Great Barrington Train Wreck, a truly offbeat social commentary, includes a unique type of murder mystery and is one of my favorite novels. Although I almost never include anything from my own life experience in my books, I was, just like the protagonist in the Train Wreck, homeless for many years. So I'm familiar with the lingo and attitude that some of the homeless have. This is a catchy, captivating book where the plot seems to materialize out of thin air until it becomes the elephant in the room. Also, to my mind, this tale could describe what happens to Holden Caulfield, the anti-hero of the Catcher in the Rye, as he approaches forty. It's not all peaches and cream! Especially when he falls in love with the daughter of a millionaire, and even more especially when he ends up on death row.5/ Your Kiss Is Like the Sweetest Fire describes a teenage romance between Jaime and Renee, who were adopted at a young age into the same family. It seems illogical to me, but in almost all states, the law views a sexual relationship between adopted siblings who live in the same family as a crime of incest--exactly as if they were related by blood. So Jaime and Renee have this difficulty to contend with, and also, their mother and father are both rather repulsive characters who are totally incapable of helping them. Wait until you meet Renee--I love her.6/ Requiem for the West is partially based on an apocalyptic poem that I wrote during the 1990's. Ten thousand hours is a lot of time to spend on a seven-hundred-word poem! Requiem is also an examination of some apparently abstract themes that seem highly relevant to me: 1/ The pervasive role of explicit sexuality in our culture and the very different ways that people react to it; 2/ The often farcical, Dilbert-like nature of the modern workplace, in this case a college; and 3/ Is doomsday just around the corner? The 1960-2000 version of myself considered a nuclear apocalypse to be inevitable, but nowadays, I'm ambivalent.7/ Frontier Justice was easy to write because once Adriana Jones arrived on page 10, she took over the book, and all I had to do was keep up with her as she overpowered every obstacle that crossed her path. I hadn't intended for that to happen, but that's the way life goes sometimes. Do I agree with, support, condone, or advocate Adriana's way of doing things? Difficult questions. Adriana is my creation, so I have to take some responsibility for her, I suppose, but I look at it this way: To be true to a character, one has to let the person speak and act in a way that is appropriate to his or her personality. I just can't legislate them into political correctness! Adriana didn't just overpower the other characters in Frontier Justice--she also overpowered me. I really like this book--I wish, as a writer, I could think of more characters who are as dynamic as Adriana.8/ A Tale from the Blackwater River is a novella that is meant to be a satire on a certain kind of story that is showing up far too frequently nowadays, but on another level, it's just kind of a humorous tale that was a lot of fun to write. This book is written in the first person by a forty-two-year-old woman named Alanda Streets. I almost published it under the pen name Alanda Streets because I thought some people might say that no woman would ever write a story like A Tale from the Blackwater River, but for those who feel that way, I hope you will ask yourself this question: If the name Alanda Streets had been on the cover of the book, instead of mine, would you have felt that a woman couldn't have written it?9/ The Blackwater Journal is another Alanda Streets novel--this time, she is only sixteen. I couldn't seem to get away from Alanda--she does have a spunky survivor's attitude towards life that appeals to me. In this book, she has to call on all her resources when her evil father imprisons her in a room and tells her that she has only a week left to live. As the days pass by, the terror mounts on her own personal death row. Does Alanda escape? Maybe so, maybe no.10/ Love Letters (Soaked in Blood) is another murder mystery that has a humorous undertone, which many will probably miss. The problem with writing a murder mystery is that anything that can be thought of has already been done about a thousand times. The only original idea left would be to have the most obvious suspect turn out to be the murderer. Think of it--that's probably never been done! And so...maybe you can guess the rest.11/ The Book of the Dead is about a man who goes to his 25th reunion and meets his high school sweetheart. The two of them embark on an impulsive twenty-four hour car ride that will take them through three southern states and bring them face-to-face with death. This is a tale where the boundaries of ordinary reality are stretched out a little bit! I'll leave it to you to decide whether The Book of the Dead is a fantasy or a reality.12/ Destroyed by Malice sees the return of a character who played a minor role in The Voice of the Victim. He's the world famous novelist Barker Drule, but unfortunately, he (and his wife) exit the book on page 1 when they are gunned down in their driveway. It isn't long before detective Jeff Willard is convinced that the murderer is a member of the Drule family. Perhaps it's Lenore, the older daughter, who was, years ago, secretly raped by her father; perhaps it's the beautiful Raylene, who wrote a novel about a rape victim that her father managed to have the publishing industry blackball; perhaps it's Ricky, the cocaine-addicted son who is desperate to get his hands on his father's money; and perhaps it's Dalton Drule, Barker's irascible eighty-two-year-old father who just happens to own the gun that was used to murder his son. In the end, when the truth finally comes out, there will be very few left to tell the tale.13/ How to Write an Imaginative Novel takes you through the whole process of writing a novel and then uploading it to Kindle. Among the many things covered are: Where will you find a plot? What is the best way to find names for your characters? How important is it to punctuate your book correctly? Is there a quick way to learn punctuation and sentence structure? What is the best way to write dialogue? What kind of things should one avoid in a novel? What is the significance of the first draft and why is it so important? How does one begin a book so that it immediately commands the reader's attention? How does one revise and edit a novel? Is it possible to create the cover for your book without spending any money? How does one convert a book to the correct format so that it can be uploaded to Kindle? And finally, how does one upload a book to Kindle?14/ I Ching 2015 contains a complete translation (minus the Confucian commentaries) of this ancient Chinese classic. Also included are detailed instructions on how to consult the I Ching using either yarrow stalks, coins, or dice. (For those who have been using coins, one should be aware that a significant error has crept into the method that many people use to cast an omen. This error, which involves using either three or four similar coins will seriously affect the accuracy of the omens you receive.) Additionally, there is extensive advice on how to interpret an omen. By using the correct method of interpretation, you will be surprised at how much clearer omens become. As part of this advice, I have posed a number of questions to the I Ching and have then interpreted the omen I received. Finally, for each hexagram, as well as many of the lines in each hexagram, I have included my own observations as to the essential meaning of these hexagrams and lines.15/ Blood and Blackmail is an elegant murder mystery with an unusual plot twist that took me some time to piece together. For those readers who enjoy the challenge of solving a crime before the final chapter arrives, this novel should provide you with a truly interesting puzzle. I doubt many people, if any, are going to see the underlying deception that runs throughout this tale because...if I say anything else, I might help the reader unravel this mystery, and I certainly wouldn't want to do that!16/ Fairy Tales by Martians takes a humorous look at the theory of evolution. Science, of course, claims that the human being originated from an amoeba that eventually became a tadpole that eventually became a frog and so on and so forth. However, I just can't conceive of the fact that ten million years ago, two frogs mated in a swamp and because of that event, I eventually arrived on the scene. What kind of a genealogy chart is that? Neither does the seven-day religious version of events appeal to me, so what I'm left with is a very cynical view of both the religious and scientific theories concerning the origins of our existence.17/ The Book of Dreams repeats a very old idea that has been used in many a novel. But here, in this murder mystery, the idea is taken to another level entirely and contains a twist that not many will see coming. The clues are there, starting with the poem in the Preface.18/ The Dark Side of the Moon is a tale about an attractive high school teacher who falls in love with one of her students. However, Carolyn Black is nervous that her sexual liaison with the student will ruin her career. Eventually, she tries to break off their relationship, but when he threatens to commit suicide, Carolyn is faced with an excruciating dilemma.19/ The Murder of Nora Winters was inspired by John Dickson Carr who wrote a number of locked-room mysteries. In this type of mystery, the murder victim is found in a room that does not allow the killer any means of exit. The doors and windows are all bolted from the inside, and it's considered very poor form for the author to create a room where there are sliding walls or secret panels. The solution to the murder of Nora Winters is, I think, relatively simple, but I've woven in enough deceit and misdirection to confuse all but the most astute readers.20/ The Vanishing Victim is a tale of a psychiatrist and a troubled woman who comes to him for counseling. What she reveals to him proves to be a confession to a brutal crime, but he is unable, because of the doctor/patient privilege, from revealing this crime to anyone, including the police. But even more troubling is that the woman's confession, although it contains a number of factual inaccuracies, turns out to have a terrifying reality of its own.21/ The Fatality Game follows a series of innocuous crimes in a rich neighborhood that seem to be more pranks than anything else. But when a woman is murdered in her bed, Detective Cody Barnes realizes that there is something evil lurking under the placid veneer of swanky mansions that are inhabited by millionaires. And when Cody becomes romantically involved with one of the earlier victims, the beautiful Lucinda Kane, the case begins to take on a life of its own that will eventually lead to the deaths of three more people.22/ How to Write an Intelligent Murder Mystery describes some of the adventures I encountered while I was writing murder mysteries (of my twenty-one novels, thirteen are murder mysteries.) This is a somewhat unusual instructional book that attempts to relate the problems encountered in the writing of a murder mystery to the more general problem of writing fiction in today's market where any new novel is almost instantaneously buried under an avalanche of new novels.23/ The Real Meaning of Life is definitely one of my favorite books. It's written in the first person by Patrick Devlan, a twenty-seven-year-old guy who writes murder mysteries. But his father, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, wants Patrick to write something that will take his readers to a "better place." Patrick decides to follow his father's advice, but a few days later, his roommate's pregnant girlfriend is murdered, and Patrick becomes entangled in a real-life murder mystery. Eventually, after his roommate is convicted of the crime and sent to death row, Patrick is faced with a dilemma that will lead him to the discovery of the real meaning of life.24/ Flight 9525 is a non-fiction book that attempts to answer the question as to why there is so much suffering in the world. For the most part, this book bypasses the usual political, psychological, and social reasons for suffering and examines the following: If God is real, then why do human beings suffer? Why would an all-merciful, all-loving, and all-powerful Being permit its creations to suffer? The usual explanations, such as the hypothesis that God granted man free will, don't answer the question at all. In fact, this is a question that's never been answered satisfactorily.25/ The Scriptwriter is the tale of a man who becomes entangled with three different women. There's the incredibly beautiful woman, the incredibly rich woman, and the incredibly homeless woman. Which one will he choose? Events, mishaps, and character flaws lead him to an interesting decision.26/ The Murder of Marabeth Waters contains a considerable amount of subtle black humor and describes the investigation that ensues after a prostitute is found strangled to death. Detective Devin Driver is quickly able to focus on a suspect; not only did this man send a threatening note to Marabeth, but also, her blood is found in his car. As it turns out, the real murderer lurks elsewhere, and unfortunately, Devin isn't a particularly perceptive detective, so it isn't surprising when the wrong person is convicted of the crime. However, even if Devin had been Sherlock Holmes on steroids, he undoubtedly wouldn't have solved this murder.27/ The Trial of Shada King--a district attorney in Hartford, Connecticut, is charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of the man who had raped her ten days before the shooting. Shada claims that she acted in self-defense, and since she was wearing a recording device at the time of the shooting, her claim of self-defense seems to be valid. But why was she wearing the recording device? The prosecuting attorney is convinced the crime scene was an elaborate stage production that was intended to deceive those who would be listening to the tape and that the victim was murdered in retaliation for the rape.28-34/ Finally, I have seven anthologies on Kindle that combine complete versions of many of the books listed above: Four Novels, 5 Novels, Four Murder Mysteries, The Blackwater Novels, Dark Tales, Six Novels, and Five Murder Mysteries. The purpose of the anthologies is that it gives the reader a chance to buy, for instance, five novels of mine at the rock-bottom price of $2.99.I spend a great deal of time revising my books. After finishing the first draft, I go through the book at least eight more times--first page to last page. Each journey through the book is slow and painstaking--no less than three hours and no more than thirty-five pages a day. From my experience, the kind of errors that pop up on some of the later readings can be rather surprising, if not downright alarming! I particularly look for inaccurate punctuation, lackluster sentence structure, and inaccurate or repetitive vocabulary. I also do not permit confusing sentences to stand--I can't imagine that any reader will want to read a sentence twice because I couldn't find a way to explain myself clearly.Finally, I would ask you all to keep an open mind about novels by an author who has no brand name. I am quite unusual because I do not advertise myself in any way, shape, or form (outside, I guess, of this little biography). My books are well-written, entertaining, and thought provoking, but they are often truly original, and I worry about the page-six syndrome. That's the point where some readers abandon a book by an unknown author because of a single sentence, idea, or attitude that seems amateurish to them. Have faith that there are some genuine diamonds in the Kindle arena and have faith that your instinct to buy one of my books was a good instinct. If you read any of my books to the finish, I think you'll feel that your time was not wasted because these novels are not cheap imitations--they are real creations.

Book preview

PREFACE

In April of 2012, I was appointed to a committee that was offering a one-hundred-thousand-dollar prize to the poem that most resembled Edgar Allan Poe’s, The Raven. Eventually, after an enormous amount of petty bickering, the committee awarded the prize to That Old Evening Sun, a short poem that was, in my opinion, much inferior to Requiem for the West. I understand that for most people, Requiem will seem overly apocalyptic, but regardless of its extremely negative viewpoint, I feel this seven-hundred-word poem deserves recognition for its artistic merit. Many have complained about Requiem because of its prodigious use of alliteration—to my knowledge, nothing similar has ever been attempted—but I think the criticisms are superficial and are mainly an attempt to distract readers from what the writer is trying to convey.

Although my quirky romance with a woman named Sierra Raines may seem extraneous to the poetry contest, I feel confident that most readers will understand why Sierra plays such a large role in this book. Her feelings about sexuality and touching are obviously very unusual, but I think Sierra, with her keen intellect and delicate sensitivities, deserves to be heard.

Finally, for ethical reasons, I have changed the names of everyone involved, and I have also gone to great lengths to camouflage the city, and even the state, in which these events took place. I still retain a great respect for a woman who will never speak to me again, and I have no desire to embarrass her in any way.

CHAPTER ONE: SENSORY AMPLIFICATION AND BOILING DRIVEL

I was grading exams in my office when I received an unexpected visit from the President of the University, Jaden Graves. He was a well-respected man in the scientific community, but that respect didn’t extend to the University where he was viewed as a person who was out of touch with the needs of modern students. 

Mr. Zane, he said, as he took a seat in front of my desk, we have just received a proposal that could result in a very sizable donation to the University. Apparently, as strange as it sounds, an elderly woman with a large fortune is willing to write out a ten-million-dollar check to us, provided that we hold a poetry contest. Jaden pulled out a cigarette from his suitcoat pocket and lit it with a small lighter. After inhaling deeply and letting out a long plume of smoke, he gazed around my office with a quizzical stare. I don’t see an ashtray, he said, as he flicked an ash onto the tiled floor. I thought everyone knew I smoked.

The University, like every other public place, had long since banned cigarettes, but I had heard many accounts of Jaden’s prolific smoking habit—luckily, a colleague of mine had given me an ashtray and advised me to stash it in one of my desk drawers.

Very good, said Jaden as I placed the ashtray in front of him. That’s quite considerate of you. I know smoking isn’t an approved habit, but given the nature of my duties and responsibilities, I think I’m entitled to a small indiscretion. It’s not like I’m smoking cannabis—these days, it seems like everyone is finding another way to sneak it into the system. I see that you’re looking confused, Mr. Zane. Is the word cannabis a little too advanced for you?

Jaden had mistaken my annoyance with his nicotine habit as confusion. Jaden, I’m aware that cannabis is the scientific word for marijuana.

After taking a long drag on his cigarette, Jaden said, Just to get you up to speed, Mr. Zane, I’m currently working on a six-hundred-page book that details the effects of cannabis on our culture, and even though I obviously won’t be able to compete with the waves of erotic books that are spilling out like slime from a cesspool and flooding the earth with their foul stench of mediocrity, I expect that my book will be the first to accurately describe the next wave.

The next wave?

Please don’t interrupt me when I’m talking, Mr. Zane—it’s difficult enough to explain things to people without having to deal with uninformed questions from people who don’t have any knowledge of current theory. Wave is a scientific term, so I’m not surprised that you, as an English professor, have no conception of what I’m talking about. Let me attempt to enlighten you: In the course of history, there are waves, waves of thought; for instance, back in the Dark Ages, everyone was caught up in the religious wave. Such a sad state of affairs—worshipping some oddball figure who was nailed to a cross because that’s what they did to misfits in those days. Why would anybody worship such a person? Any ideas?

I think...wasn’t it because he thought he was God or came from God?

Pathetic, isn’t it? said Jaden. I think it’s safe to say that the God idea, which is nothing but a monstrous delusion of grandeur, was behind the first thought wave. Jaden finished his cigarette, extracted another one from his pocket, and after lighting it, he continued on. However, after the Dark Ages, science came along to pull us out of the quicksand of superstition, and for the next five hundred years, everything proceeded fairly smoothly, but then, in the 1960’s, cannabis arrived on the scene and began to change the brain waves of people. You know what’s amazing, Mr. Zane?

I couldn’t imagine.

One can still attend a cocktail party for the so-called intellectuals and talk about God as long as you link Him, Her, or It to quantum physics and string theory, but if you try to discuss brain patterns—or waves, as I like to call them—people stare at you like you just arrived in a straightjacket from a mental asylum. Here, Jaden tapped his forehead and said, It’s fairly obvious that the reason people can’t catch on to new ideas is because they’re so slow upstairs, which isn’t surprising since everyone is so obsessed with what goes on downstairs. Regrettably, very few people are aware of how serious this downstairs problem has become and what the ramifications are. To give you but one example: Someone, I have no idea who, recently described to me the surge in the e-book market, and when I looked into it in my usual precise and analytical way, I found that many of these books could be obtained for free.

Before continuing, Jaden stubbed out his cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and re-inhaled some of the smoke that was percolating through the room. What a marvelous aroma! he said, as if he were savoring the work of a great chef. So, he said, novice that I am, I downloaded a reading device onto my computer, and then... Jaden leaned over my desk, and in a harsh whisper, he said, I’d tell you the names of the two internet sites I visited, but nowadays, with everything being bugged and spies everywhere, I wouldn’t want to face an accusation of libel. Suffice it to say that each of the sites I Googled have over a million e-books, and after I typed in Free Books, what do you suppose I was greeted with?

I knew the answer to this one. Erotica?

Jaden leaned back in his chair and said, I don’t think we should use such a sophisticated word to describe the type of literature that I was confronted with. It was as if I had walked into a giant book store that specialized in triple-X pornographic books. Thousands and thousands of books with lurid and disgusting titles; not only that, the book covers were even worse—photographs that showed blindfolded women in handcuffs and all that sort of evil nonsense. If I had wanted to, I could have downloaded literally thousands of these books for free. And then what? Am I supposed to read them?

Speaking in a way that minimized the harsh guttural tone of his voice, Jaden said, I can understand a little bit of what this is all about because my personal secretary, Ms. Lansing, is rather provocative sexually, and sometimes, I have interesting thoughts about her, but obviously it would be professionally suicidal for me to be caught in a compromising position with her. I do know, however, from my communications with the president of a large university on the east coast, that he has built a private room off his office where he takes care of his secretary and various other female luminaries who walk into his office. If he hasn’t already, he could write a few books for the internet’s rapidly burgeoning catalogue, although I suppose he would have to use a pen name. Do you mind if I have another cigarette?

Go right ahead, Jaden.

Jaden puffed on his third cigarette reflectively before he continued. So, to continue with the point that I’m trying to make—after the delusion of grandeur called God, came science, which apparently dispelled all the illusions, but now, unfortunately, we seem to have encountered a third wave. I’m still working on positively identifying it, but I can say that over the past two months, I have made very substantial progress. I realize, Mr. Zane, that you couldn’t possibly be interested in these things because so much of what goes on nowadays involves ideas that are too complex for people like you to understand, but it won’t hurt you to try and grasp some cutting-edge ideas. And so, for lack of better terms, I am entitling the second wave as Logical Illumination and the new wave as Sensory Amplification.

With his dark beady eyes, Jaden looked at me speculatively and said, Am I boring you, Mr. Zane?

Not at all—it’s true that I don’t have the scientific background that you do, but I’ve always been interested in ideas. Even though, of course, they’re too complex for me to understand.

Good for you, Mr. Zane! I don’t think people realize that I have seven degrees, so I’m not just some bureaucratic bumbler that they tossed into the President’s office to extract some money out of the alumni with a bunch of bizarre financial sob stories. Although these degrees are of little use to me in my present position, I am more than qualified to speak on quantum mechanics, particle accelerators, uranium enrichment, and plutonium extraction.

Jaden squashed the remainder of his cigarette in the ashtray and said, I say, old boy, do you think you could toss the contents of the ashtray out the window? Although I enjoy the smell of cigarette smoke, dead butts are a little much. Go ahead, he said as he handed me the ashtray, it doesn’t make any difference—our overpaid and underworked maintenance department is in desperate need of constructive employment.

As I went to the open window, Jaden laughed sarcastically and said, Don’t worry about dumping them on some student’s uppity head—it’ll be just what they deserve for shelling out forty grand a year to attend this lunatic asylum.

After following Jaden’s directive, I returned to my seat behind the desk and said, Didn’t you say something about a poetry contest?

Indeed, I did, but before I discuss the details of that with you, I need to mention a conversation I had with Marcus Prolman about a month ago. I assume you know who he is?

No, unfortunately I don’t.

For the love of the light bulb, Mr. Zane, where have you been all these years? About thirty years ago, he was the head of the English Department here, and currently, he’s a Professor Emeritus, for whatever that’s worth. He had dropped by my office to share some old war stories, not that I was interested, so I brought up an idea that’s been floating around in my mind for the last couple of years. Why not eliminate the English Department? Just ax the whole stupid thing out of existence. What’s the point? Wait— he said, as he put up his hand to interrupt me. "I know what you’re going to say about a well-rounded education and all the rest of that rot, but let’s face facts—there is probably no more irrelevant course than English. Who needs it? To be accepted here at the University, one obviously has to be verbally and technically proficient in English, so there’s no sense putting the freshman through another rehashing of all the arcane technicalities that English professors like you continually dote on. It’s just totally absurd. On two counts: First of all, the people who are subjected to English courses aren’t learning anything new. Granted—maybe they’ll find out where to put the question mark inside a double quotation or whether to use who or whom, but how relevant is that to anything? That brings me to my second point—the only conceivable use for the grammatical regimen is that it might enable one to write a slightly more refined book, but when people are reading pornography morning, noon, and night, it doesn’t much matter where the punctuation marks go anymore.

"Now here’s the interesting thing, Mr. Zane—even Marcus Prolman is fed up, and believe me, although he’s eighty-eight, he’s still fairly sharp, especially if you compare him to my mother. Marcus was telling me that a hundred years ago, there was about one author for a thousand readers, but nowadays, the ratio is approximately one to twenty. There’s an intelligent use of time—spend hundreds of hours writing a book that will be read by twenty people.

However, when I brought up the subject of pornography disguised as erotica, particularly the lurid trashiness of the e-book world, I thought poor old Marcus was going to have a stroke. What he told me was that at least fifty percent of the fiction books that are being written nowadays belong in whorehouses so that customers who have to wait for their favorite trollop can have something relevant to read. Relevant to all their sensory amplifications. I don’t suppose that you’d admit to reading any of these books, would you?

Actually, I did—as an experiment.

An experiment, said Jaden, with his humorless laugh. We all know what that means. So what were the results of your little experiment?

Ignoring Jaden’s taunt, I said, I’d have to agree with you. The thing that really surprised me was not so much that the writing talent was about at the tenth-grade level but that the stories, while quite graphic, weren’t really very erotic—in fact, I wouldn’t call them erotic at all. And the thing that makes all this even more appalling is that some of these books had been downloaded by a thousand people and had a couple of hundred five-star reviews.

After lighting up another cigarette, Jaden said, The one I attempted to read, although I only reached page three, seemed like a fifteen-year-old who was trying to use as many dirty words as possible.

Exactly, I said. I guess, being in my late forties, I kind of...I suppose I shouldn’t admit to it, but a little setting of the seduction scene, a little tension between desire and responsibility, a little hesitation before the final plunge might make for...

For what, Mr. Zane?

To be honest with you, Jaden, I find it embarrassing to read these books because they’re nothing but the diaries of someone’s sexual fantasies, and really, if you look at it honestly, sexual fantasies are usually rather gross and depressing.

This all goes to prove my point that the next wave is clearly one of Sensory Amplification, said Jaden. "I bet half the students here are wandering around under the influence of cannabis as they lust after their latest sexual fantasy. And then, if the object of the fantasy is unavailable for fornication, they download a book from the porn store, and then, once they’ve finally managed to satisfy those urges, it’s on to the bottle.

So as long as we’re talking about all this, Mr. Zane, what excuse can you come up with for the continuance of the English Department? Other than, of course, that you’ve fallen in love with your paycheck. Just think—if you were to be terminated, what would you do for a living? Go teach an English course somewhere else? But the positions are all filled, and even if a vacancy arises, there’ll be a thousand applications, so there’s no hope in that direction. Or maybe, if some business becomes desperate, you could be hired to write a manual for a computer, but no company with half a brain bothers to ship manuals with computers anymore. Everybody knows that the plug to their gizmo goes into the wall socket and that if any problems arise, you just bring up Google, type the problem into the search page, and you’ll have six hundred and forty million hits.

Jaden finally ran out of steam and looked at me quizzically. So? he said.

What would I do if I were terminated?

No, Mr. Zane, we all know the answer to that question. In the event that we eliminated your position, the only reasonable option for you would be to collect unemployment and then hope that the government extended your unemployment benefits for another fifteen years until you reached the age where you could collect Social Security. My real question is this: Why should we keep the English Department in existence?

To be honest, I couldn’t think of a reason, except for the obvious one of financial self-preservation, so I stalled for time and said, Jaden, although you make some good points, I’m not sure I agree with the merits of your argument.

And which merits don’t you agree with, Mr. Zane?

Well...for one thing, I don’t see how the University could be accredited if we eliminated the English Department.

Simple—we’d just change the name of the place to the National Academy of Science. I’m going to do that anyway because I think it will draw in more intelligent students—I can’t see any reason why the University should continue to admit these dreamy, obnoxious adolescents who major in English, especially after I’ve learned that many of them will just end up writing another porn book for the vast electronic bookshelf. Any other reason we should keep you around?

Some legitimate ideas were beginning to occur to me—for instance, the study of novels like The Idiot by Dostoyevsky or The Genius by Dreiser can lead a person down many interesting pathways that they would never have encountered otherwise. But I knew that Jaden, as a scientist, would scoff at this assertion, so I remained silent.

You see, he said, with a note of triumph. Marcus Prolman thinks we ought to shut the whole department down, and even somebody like you, whose financial welfare depends on it, can’t think of any reason to save yourself. However, the trimming of the gross absurdity known as the English Department will have to be delayed until after the poetry contest because the ten-million-dollar donation to the University is not something that I can afford to overlook.

Jaden pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, and after glancing through it, he said, OK, this offer comes from a Mrs. Witshire, who seems to have appointed herself to be the God of the poetry contest. By the way, Mr. Zane, what is your specialty?

American novels, short stories, and poetry, with an emphasis on Poe.

The little bald fruitcake who wrote ‘The Raven’?

He might be a fruitcake to you, Jaden, but many consider him to be one of the best writers who ever lived.

Jaden laughed contemptuously. That’s not saying much because, as we all know, writing is the refuge of those who don’t have the capacity for real work and are scrounging around for a way to make some money off gullible people. Now, since certain conditions in Mrs. Wiltshire’s contract—

Didn’t you say her name was Witshire?

What difference does it make? Wiltshire, Witshire—I really don’t have the time to pay attention to the spelling of names. My point is that because Mrs. Wiltshire mentioned Poe in her contract, I felt it necessary to talk to Marcus about him. And you know what he told me?

No idea.

"Basically, this Poe character was a mental case with some very nasty frosting spread all over the top of his little bald head. Apparently, all he did, in between bouts of addiction to alcohol and cocaine, was write horror stories and demented tales about dying people. Who wants to read something like that? Prolman told me that Poe has a certain fascination to the so-called serious writers because he writes phenomenal sentences and paragraphs. How’s that for a claim to fame? I write phenomenal sentences! And then—this is, of course, according to Prolman—Poe was a genius at setting the mood with layers of dark images. When Prolman got that far, I had to tell him to stop because I realized he probably had a touch of Alzheimer’s and was just another professorial dodo bird salivating over a bunch of verbal hogwash.

"But here’s the thing we have to pay