Diligencias que realiza el perito

memoirs will facilitate "The correction o f pride by laughter" (Bellow 1969: 177). In reality, however, Mosby's pride is confirmed by his narrative treatment o f Lustgarten, while Shawmut's callous indiscretion is compounded by his letter.

Shawmut claims to view himself as an innately comic figure ("I am a high- waisted and long-legged man, who is susceptible to paradoxical, ludicrous images o f h im self), yet throughout his narration his sense o f himself as a serious intellect is pervasive (Bellow 1984: 7). The letter is really a self-addressed epistle, and it is not so much a retraction or confession o f misdeeds, as a celebration of, and encomium on, his own wit. Near the end o f the letter, Shawmut reveals that, "Wandering about

Vancouver this summer, I have considered whether to edit an anthology o f sharp sayings. Make my fate pay off. But I am too demoralized to do it" (Bellow 1984: 57). Yet that is effectively what he has done in the letter. That, and bemoan the "fate" that has befallen him in old age: "It isn't easy to write with arthritic fingers" (Bellow 1984: 9). Only a tiny proportion o f the letter has any direct bearing on Miss Rose - a fact o f which Shawmut is residually aware, to judge by the frequency o f comments such as "Please forgive this. Miss Rose. It seems to me that w e will need the broadest posssible human background for this inquiry, which may so much affect your emotions

and mine" and "We need to get closer to the subject. I have to apologise to you, but there is also a mystery here ... that cries out for investigation" (Bellow 1984; 13, 23-4).

The quasi-scientific tone o f these apologetic asides ("inquiry"; "investigation" etc.) illustrates just how seriously Shawmut takes himself, how serious an object o f inquiry he believes himself to be. His pretence o f intellectual humility ("It made me scream with laughter to be called 'Dr. Shawmut' ") is given the lie by his obvious pride in his celebrity status (Bellow 1984: 7). He breaks o ff from informing Miss Rose that his "specialty" at college was music history to say

As if this were news to you; my book on Pergoiesi is in all libraries. Impossible that you shouldn't have come across it. Besides, I've done those musicology programs on public television, which were quite popular.

(Bellow 1984: 6).

The nod towards humility here Ç'quite popular") only reinforces the overriding sense o f vanity. Similarly, he concludes his diatribe against his old contemporary Eddie Walish (who reminds Shawmut o f his remark to Miss Rose in the course o f a long letter, full o f college reminiscences, that Shawmut reads as a personal attack) by observing that "My success in musicology may have been too much for him" (Bellow

1984: 10).

Mosby likewise prides himself on his intellectual achievements and feels ill- treated by fate, the victim o f conspiracies and vendettas fuelled by jealousy.

He had expected a high post-war appointment, for which, as director o f counter­ espionage in Latin America, he was ideally qualified. But Dean Acheson

personally disliked him. Nor did Dulles approve. Mosby, a fanatic about ideas, displeased the institutional gentry.

(Bellow 1969: 159-60).

Like Shawmut, who makes much o f his social outsiderdom at college ("Fresh from Chicago ... I had never seen birches, roadside ferns, deep pinewoods, little white steeples. What could I be but out o f place?"), Mosby casts himself in the role o f the

rebel, the upstart, whose precocious talents and radical views frighten the

establishment (Bellow 1984; 6-7). Mosby's narrative is written in the third person - "Mosby speaking o f himself in the third person as Henry Adams had done in The Education o f Henry Adams'' (Bellow 1969: 165) - but he reserves clinical detachment for his evaluation o f others. The third person is used not to expose, but to conceal; not to strip away self-importance, but to confer dignity. Dignity is Mosby's watchword: even when in fear for his life, gasping for air in the underground vault o f an old church, he finds time, before fleeing back above ground, to bid a decorous farewell to his fellow tourists: "Ladies, I find it very hard to breathe" (Bellow 1969: 184).

He finds Lustgarten's efforts at projecting a dignified persona absurd, however, musing that "a man like Lustgarten would never, except with supernatural aid, exist in a suitable form" [my italics] (Bellow 1969: 175). For Mosby, a human being is either suitable or unsuitable, either necessary or superfluous. Because Lustgarten's existence serves no obvious purpose in Mosby's system o f values, he becomes a figure o f fun, an anachronism, an item with no currency: "Poorly imagined, unoriginal, the rerun o f old ideas [my italics] and so inefficient. Lustgarten didn't have to happen. And so he was fijnny" (Bellow 1969: 183).

Mosby (whose fanaticism about ideas alienates him fi"om the prosaic politicians) is offended most by Lustgarten's intellectual recidivism: Lustgarten is redundant, an outdated model o f humanity. The imagery here - o f man engineered according to a specific design or blueprint - recurs when Mosby comes to consider himself for the final time:

also a separate creation, a finished product. . . he was complete. He had completed himself in this cogitating, unlaughing, stone, iron, nonsensical form [my italics],

(Bellow 1969: 184)

At the end o f his story (and also o f his life? whether Mosby escapes from the tomb at the end is not clear, but his death is clearly imminent, his life "complete"), Mosby recognises his own absurdity and associates it with his solemnity: to be

"unlaughing" in your cogitations is to be "nonsensical"; to take yourself seriously is to construct a fixed, immutable, sovereign self. Mosby has triumphed in his comical struggle for survival in a world o f ideas, but only by deleting comedy from the equation - by taking the ideas entirely seriously. Mosby's is a pyrrhic victory: he has constructed a self that he can explain, but the explanation is nonsensical, because the self it describes is complete, solid, uni vocal: exempt from comedy. What might have been a humbling moment o f self-revelation is vitiated by Mosby's characteristic abrogation o f God-like powers (he is self-created). Even in the act o f self-criticism, Mosby testifies to his own autonomy. Like many o f Bellow's heroes, his compulsive introspection and acute self-conscioi]|iess (o f which the writing o f one's memoirs is perhaps the ultimate manifestation) derives as much from self-satisfaction as from the impulse to re-evaluate his personal worth.

Shawmut, at the end o f his self-regarding narrative, renounces his life o f "monkey business", claiming to be "ready to listen to words o f ultimate seriousness" (Bellow 1984: 59). He believes that his letter has led him to make "important discoveries about m y self and resulted in a "communion" (Bellow 1984: 57). Yet these "discoveries" proceed from and themselves display Shawmut's abiding self- deception and compulsive sophistry. In what sense has there been a "communion"? N ot with Miss Rose, to whom the letter has not yet been sent (let alone elicited a response) and who will, in any case, receive an edited, bowdlerised version: Shawmut writes, "/ w ill say it a ll a n d revise, sen d M iss Rose only the suitable parts" (Bellow

1984: 4). Nor has there been any self-communion, for Shawmut ends his letter as spiritually impoverished - as self-ignorant and self-satisfied - as he is when he starts it.

Shawmut acknowledges that "Where there are musical questions, I always try to answer them earnestly. People have told me that I am comically woodenheaded in this respect, a straight man" (Bellow 1984: 55) because he is quite happy to be seen as the straight man whose seriousness is an index o f his academic authority (better this than to be seen as the "fiinny man" in the sense that Lustgarten is in "Mosby's Memoirs").

However, he fails to recognise the essential truth about himself that this reveals; that in matters touching himself, his dignity, his self-image (to which his musical expertise is essential), he is always "comically woodenheaded", always "the straight man". His problem is not, as he likes to think, that he cannot restrain his "mischievous impulses" - contain his comic excesses - but rather that he has no sense o f humour at all (Bellow

1984: 59). His putdowns are not so much manifestations o f irrepressible wit as attempts to assert his own dignity at the expense o f others'. Shawmut's laughter is o f the Hobbesian sort: an assertion o f the superiority o f the self through the

degradadation o f the other. Miss Rose's crime was to make a flippant remark, to fail to take Shawmut entirely seriously. Shawmut's guilt lies not only in making his cruel riposte, but in seeking to explain himself in terms that render him the victim o f a metaphysical curse.

I never intentionally insulted anyone. I sometimes think that I don't have to say a word for people to be insulted by me, that my existence itself insults them. ... In various ways I have been trying to say this to you, using words like seizure, rapture, demonic possession, frenzy. Fatum, divine madness, or even solar storm - on a microcosmic scale.

(Bellow 1984: 56-7).

In fact, Shawmut's jokes are entirely deliberate and their impropriety merely accentuates the pleasure that he takes in them, in the way that Hazlitt describes: what we have here (to adapt Coleridge's judgement on lago's second soliloquy) is the explanation-hunting o f an inexplicable malignity (as well as an ostentatious display o f learning). Like Shakespeare's villain, Shawmut will adduce any number o f reasons for his behaviour other than his own petty-minded gall. Unlike lago, however, who recognises the ultimate responsibility o f the individual for his own actions (" 'tis in ourselves, that w e are thus, or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners"), Shawmut prefers to see himself as the victim o f circumstances beyond his control {Othello. I iii 319-21).

course o f his life; "All the influences were lined up waiting for me. I was bom, and there they were to form me ..." (Bellow 1954a. 43). Throughout, he portrays himself as conducting a heroic struggle against the efforts o f others to mould him acccording to their values, a struggle in which he represents the comic spirit, ever-questioning, ever-questing. Like Shawmut, he emphasises the intrinsically comical aspect o f his appearance, describing himself as a child as "overgrown and long-legged in my short pants, large-headed, with black mass o f hair and cleft chin - a source o f jokes" (Bellow

1954a. 30). Others view him as a buffoon ("Poor March, anything can make him laugh", Clem remarks), but, Augie gives us to understand, his laughter is not a sign o f dim-wittedness, but rather o f a sceptical intelligence (Bellow 1954a: 47). When Einhom tells Augie "You've got opposition in you. You don't slide through everything. You just make it look so", Augie comments that "This is the first time that anyone had told anything like the truth about m y self and indeed this becomes the keynote in his explanations o f himself (Bellow 1954a: 117). He is forever asserting his independence, telling us that "I was never as much imposed on by Einhom as he wanted me to be", "I was not going to be built into Mrs.Renling's world", "I was eternally looking for a way out", and he ends by reviling the gurus who have tried to recmit him to their version o f reality (Bellow 1954a: 76, 151, 347).

I'm good and tired o f all these big personalities, destiny molders, and heavy-water brains, MachiavelUs and wizard evil-doers, big-wheels and imposers-upon,

absolutists.

(Bellow 1954a: 524)

Yet the very profusion o f nouns here indicates a continued fascination with, and reverence for, such figures. Indeed, his "opposition" notwithstanding, Augie is dominated throughout the novel by a succession o f "reality-instructors", and ends it under the sway (philosophically, as well as financially) o f just such a one, in the form o f Mintouchian. Like Mosby, Augie would like us to believe that his laughter acts as a corrective to his pride, an antidote to self-importance.

I wasn't proud o f myself, believe me, and my stubbornness about a "higher", independent fate. I was no wizard, for sure, nor gazetted as anything illustrious, nor billed to stand up to Apollyon with his horrible scales and bear's feet, nor slated to find the answers to all my shames like Jean-Jacques on the way to Vincennes sinking down with emotion o f the conception that evil society is to blame for all that happened to warm, impulsive, loving me. There was no such first-rate thing that I could boast and who was I, not to make up my mind and be so obstinate? The one thing I could say was that though I wanted this

independent fate, it wasn't merely for my own sake that I wanted it.

Oh, but why get too earnest? Seriousness is only for a few, a gift o f grace, and though all have it rough only the favorites can speak o f it plain and sober.

(Bellow 1954a: 424)

Characteristically, Augie has recourse to mythologising rhetoric to explain his insistence on what he calls elsewhere "a fate good enough" (Bellow 1954a: 318). He manages to place himself in exalted company, fictional and historical (Bunyan's Christian, and Rousseau, respectively) by telling us at great length that he does not belong in such company (a form of occupatio o f which Augie is particularly fond). His method o f allusion, too (referring to Rousseau by his first name only and to Christian through mention o f one o f his most famous combatants), in spite o f its affected air o f insouciance, strives, through its obliquity, for an intellectual elitism: Augie is flattering himself and the reader, effectively saying "You and I, members o f the intellegentsia as w e are, can dispense with the slavish formalities o f identifying all references". In trying to disavow any pretensions to "seriousness", he reveals that it is this quality, rather than the comic spirit which he professes as his guiding doctrine, that he truly reverences. Indeed, the awed, religiose tones with which he speaks o f it ("a gift o f grace", given only to the "favourites", or, he might have said, elect) and o f his

"pilgrimage" through life (Bellow 1954a: 424) anticipate Shawmut's resolution to "listen to words o f ultimate seriousness" and enact that very seriousness that they describe.

Augie has often been claimed as a spiritual cousin o f Huck Finn - for his robust sense o f humour, his jovial gainsaying o f social pressures, his cheerful resilience, his

restless, inquiring energy. Yet, while Bellow's novel undoubtedly contains allusions to Twain's novel (most obviously in the "Adventures" o f the title and Augie's repeated use o f the phrase "I lit out"), Augie has rather less in common with Huck than is often implied (Bellow 1954a: 274, 305). Whereas, at the end o f Twain's novel, Huck famously lights out for the territory, still refusing the blandishments o f "sivilisation," Augie ends the novel as an embittered, exiled black-marketeer, working for a man whom he doesn't respect (Mintouchian), married to a woman whom he doesn't love (Stella) and living on memories o f a lost youth. Because these memories are colourful ones, and because w e are not made aware o f the circumstances under which Augie is telling his tale until late in that tale, it is all too easy to accept Augie's own evaluation o f his life, as he summarises it in the final words o f the novel.

Look at me, going everywhere! Why I am a sort o f Columbus o f those near at hand and believe you can come at them in this immediate terra incognita that spreads out in every gaze. I may well be a flop at this line o f endeavour.

Columbus too thought he was a flop, probably, when they brought him back in chains. Which didn't prove there was no America.

(Bellow 1954a: 536).

This passage is commonly quoted by critics who take it at face value, as an affirmation o f Augie's pioneering spirit and irrepressible jo ie de vivre. Which is undoubtedly how Augie intends us to take it. The comparison with Columbus is perhaps more pertinent than Augie realises, however; the explorer ended his days disillusioned, his dreams o f glory frustrated. Whatever else the analogy may signify, it represents the final example o f a tendency to self-mythologisation on the part o f Augie that is more reminsicent o f Tom Sawyer than Huck Finn, and more reminiscent o f Don Quixote (to whose adventures the title o f Bellow's novel might also allude) than either o f them.

Like the hero o f Cervantes' novel, Augie is bewitched by books to such an extent that he continually figures his life as a mythical narrative and explains himself in terms o f the heroic figures who populate his imagination. Early on in the novel, Augie asks

that we

don't think that, if handled right, a Cato could have been made o f me, or a young Lincoln who tramped four miles in a frontier zero gale to refund three cents to a customer. I don't want to pass for such legendary presidential stuff.

(Bellow 1954a: 23)

Much later he tells Clem Tambow that "I don't consider m yself any Prospero" - an allusion, perhaps, to Pruffock's "I am no Prince Hamlet" (Bellow 1954a: 456). Elsewhere, however, Augie compares himself (either overtly or by implication) to Robinson Crusoe, Achilles, Christ, Leicester (Elizabeth I's favourite and alleged lover), and Henry Ware (Bellow 1954a: 84, 103, 160, 315, 512). The cumulative effect o f repeated invocations o f heroic figures o f this kidney, is precisely to suggest that Augie does want us to place him in their ranks.

Discussing his mother's subservience to Grandma Lausch, Augie remarks that she "occupied a place, I suppose, among women conquered by a superior force o f love, like those women Zeus got the better o f in animal form and who next had to take