Free Glyph by Percival Everett Page B

will need many books.
    Steimmel took it and read, then said, “I’ll get you all the books you want. You can have all the books and all the paper and as many different-colored pens as you like.”
    “I think you should be careful the way you talk to him,” Boris sad.
    “Are you afraid of him, Boris?”
    “Frankly, Dr. Steimmel, I am.”
    “Don’t worry, Boris. I’ll protect you from the big bad baby.”
    excessive alliteration is a sign of an arrested imagination—or worse
    Boris read the note and laughed.
    Steimmel was halfway into the car. “What’s so funny?”
    “Nothing,” Boris said. “Nothing at all.”
causa sui
    “Truth and falsity. Sense and nonsense. Self and nonself. Reason and madness. Centrality and marginality. The only thing standing between any of these properties is a drawn line. But a line has no depth, no depth, and so is no boundary at all. Its ends are merely positions in space and as such mean only something to each other by some orientation that might be a line, straight or curved. And so, I know I occupy some point in space sane because I can see and orient myself in relation to another point insane and as I observe the line that gives them both meaning, I realize that the line does not separate them, but connects them. And I realize as well, my heart pounding that I can, since I have two points and a line, find other points beyond the point insane and that I really cannot tell which point is which since points in space have no dimension. Likewise, it is true as I look behind me at the endpoint sane that it is really no endpoint at all. So, the line goes that way behind me and this way in front of me and I can’t tell where on the line I am standing and so I bisect that line with another line and I say that insane is over there. But how do I know that it has not circled around behind me? How do I know that the point on the line insane has not planned it this way? Maybe I should walk forward so that it cannot sneak up behind me. Maybe I should run. Or maybe the point insane hasn’t moved at all and has planned it that way. Perhaps the point sane has abandoned me. Maybe the two points are working together. I am not paranoid. I am not paranoid. I just won’t move. That’s it. I will stay right where I am, fixed in space.” Emil Staiger sipped from the glass of water he clutched in sweating hands. “Do you know what I mean?”
    “I know exactly what you mean,” said J. Hillis Miller. “I used to have a car like that. Sometimes, when it was really cold, it would never start.”
    “I forgot to include real and unreal. And dead and alive. The bracketed and the unbracketed.” Staiger screamed as loud as he could and hurled his glass against the far wall, breaking and streaking the flocked wallpaper.
    “It was a Mercedes, that car.”
    “Tell me, Miller, all things considered, do you think anyone will remember who we were?”
    “Hell, no.”
subjective-collective
    Boris pulled into a parking slot in front of cottage 3A and turned off the engine. Before Steimmel could open her door and get out, a woman had run up and given a light tap on the window. Steimmel rolled down the glass and asked, “Who are you?”
    “I’m Anna Davis. We met at a symposium a couple of years ago. In Brussels. I do work with primates.”
    “The monkey lady,” Steimmel said.
    The appellation “monkey lady” did not seem to please the woman, but she went on without pause. “Yes, that’s me. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
    “Well, here I am.” Steimmel pushed open the door and got out. “Boris, this is the monkey lady I told you about. Dr. Davis, I’d like you to meet my associate, Mr. Mertz.”
    Davis looked into the backseat at me. “So, tell me about the human infant,” she said.
    “Maybe later,” Steimmel told her. “We’re in a hurry to set up.”
    “The chimpanzee I’m working with has mastered American sign language.” She stepped away and watched as Steimmel retrieved me