Free The Unbinding by Walter Kirn Page A

apparently, and the only one I’d ever heard of that struck me as worthwhile. I approved of voting and free speech, and I would have defended them, I suppose, if called to, but the right to claim space for one’s writings in a great building maintained by the taxpayers genuinely excited me.
    I went to work immediately, composing the story during the drives between the carnivals and fairs where I demonstrated Vita-Mix blenders. My hero, named Brock in honor of my old friend, was blessed with the power to walk through solid objects. An ordinary fantasy, perhaps, but ingenious in this case because Brock’s talent could be exercised only once before it vanished. So he had to choose carefully. He had to think. Should he use up his gift to save the anguished stranger who’d taken an overdose in a locked hotel room? Or should he wait to help an innocent child? But which child? And how innocent, exactly?
    You can imagine the suspense. What you can’t imagine, I’ll wager, is the ending. Brock died undecided. He never spent his magic, which was passed along to the last person he saw (a female cashier in a hospital cafeteria) in much the same manner that it was passed to him when an old postal clerk suffered a fatal stroke while helping him fill out a money order. Indeed, as the novel ultimately revealed, this gift of immateriality had never been exploited. Instead, it had driven all of its bearers mad.
    But all was not lost. In the epilogue I hinted that the cafeteria cashier would be one who at last employed the power, using it to intervene in a momentous planetary crisis whose nature I left unspecified but which I suggested related to the invention of a “cognibomb” that destroyed people’s minds but left their bodies intact.
    The day I finished the novel (on a typewriter bought for ten dollars from a junk store, since I couldn’t afford a computer at the time), I made five copies on acid-free stock, had them professionally bound in vinyl covers, and sent them off by certified mail to the Library of Congress. I didn’t keep one for myself because I assumed that, as a U.S. citizen, I’d always be able to visit the library and read my book. When a week passed, then two, and the package still hadn’t been signed for, I contacted an official at the library, who gave me so little satisfaction that I telephoned my congressman. I spoke to an aide who called herself Jeanine but wouldn’t give me her last name. She confirmed that my book deserved a catalog number and promised to get back to me. I waited. I phoned again ten days later and lost my temper.
    “Big libraries shouldn’t screw with people,” I said. “It only takes one kitchen match.”
    Jeanine then asked for my Social Security number. I hung up and never called again.
    The title of the book was
Portal People
, and it no longer exists in any form.
    But my dog does, somewhere, and I demand her back.
    Can you help me with any of this? Of course you can. You’ve struck the deals that give people long arms. But will you ever read this plea? I doubt it. As I said, I obtained your address thirdhand, through a woman I’d lied to and a man I’d met just once, neither of whose stability I can vouch for. I can’t afford to run background checks, as you can. I can’t pry solemn pledges from my associates by placing them under contract and on salary. I’m on my own here, drifting with the herd. All I can do is rely on foolish grace. I know that you have a new movie coming out in which you presumably save the world again. Wouldn’t it be a touching publicity stunt if you could also rescue a displaced animal?
    You don’t know most of us. I understand that. But we have faces , Mr. Cruise. And though they’re made up of the foreheads, cheeks, and chins that were left over after you chose your face, the day will come when our features are stripped away and dumped back into the hat for a new drawing. How will you fare then? Mathematics suggests not well. I suspect that