doings

So a friend of mine has undertaken the duties of ghostwriting a novel. It is based upon her employer's inspiration that The DaVinci Code is selling well. The hero is to be a thinly disguised version of himself, a middle-aged businessman with a faltering grasp of English...the heroine, my friend slowly discovered, is to be a thinly disguised version of herself. I believe the two characters were supposed to become romantically entangled. He has offered her terrible terms for her labor, no wages. It could hardly be worse but she has agreed to share a percentage of his gross profits of the self-published book. Yes. He wishes to publish it himself under the auspices of a publishing company that other employees are pressed into creating between their usual duties. He offered to fly my friend, in his company, to France for research. He often offers plot devices- the clues lead to the hero finding a treasure walled up in the very building in which the man has operated a business all along! It was there all along. It should be no surprise that the hero and the titular author happen to run the same sort of business. There are terrorists and mystics and mystical terrorists and real-life historic characters. After a year of working on the book and having her chapters criticized for straying too far afield, my friend reached a crisis point. She pleaded to be informed how far she was veering from his point. "What is your point?" she asked him. "What is the book about?" He said he would get back to her.
Is it a treasure hunt? Hardy Boys? Is it a brash statement of world politics, an indictment of irreligious icon hunters? Was it to be a new understanding of terrorism, its motivations?
He called her.
"Supply-side economics," he said.

-=================
The allowances one man may make for himself he might also afford to others, but he will always see the others' own allowances as grossly liberal. One man wants his blasphemies to be overlooked, but his church-going observed, another believes that church-going is optional, but a civil tongue the key to Heaven. Each salvation is peculiar to its maker. Even literalists tailor the Gospel to the most personally congenial interpretation. No one who is truly devout will believe that they have disqualified themselves from Heaven.
The auction is equivalent to the Last Judgement for possessions. The gavel comes down and the piece, for so long loved amongst its owners, has been determined worthwhile or worthless. As the opinion of the auction buyers might reflect upon the owner's taste, it is advised to surrender one's estate only after death. Some liquidate early. They are not only dispossessed of the things that defined them, but come to learn that the value was entirely imaginary. Sometimes it works in reverse, but then they are so amazed that the things they believed were worthless are actually quite valuable that they leave the auction similarly abashed.
The objects bear marks of their owners long after the owners are gone. Things belonging to single women are dripped on, waxy spots on the tops of things, waxy splatter on the sides along with solid rivulets of wax.
One recent estate had parts of the owners head and its contents splattered on everything, as he has shot himself. He was heavily in debt, and his possessions were mostly top-of-the-line electronics and recreational gear. We cleaned what was visible, but so much went unnoticed until it was setup in preview and on the auction block. The employees were asked not to discuss the death of the client- that is general auction protocol, but there wasn't a soul in the employ of the auction house who did not relish whispering the shocking details.
Several weeks ago, just after the greatly successful liquidation of the suicide's estate we had a full, fast auction of flamboyant kitsch resigned to us by an elderly homosexual who was still alive. I heard that he would rush the packers with individual objects of his, claiming their great value, their great significance, their hight initial cost. We had over four hundred lots- more than a third was from the living homosexual's consignment. It was 80's ersatz deco, pieces from a time when a few small retailers rebelled against the solid oak and birch constructions that were prevalent. It was the least desirable furnishings we had ever run, to my knowledge. There were some auctions that involved a condo furnished with sponge painted, stuccoed pieces evoking classical forms- as adapted to strip mall Greek restaurants. That was bad.
But thees pieces like those were inherently valueless. I cannot imagine a context where they would presume to have a value. What caused this?
The late seventies and early eighties were an anchorless time, design-wise. The modern chairs were not comfortable, the novelty furniture... bean-bag chairs were juvenile. We were grown up- Wall Street, Working Girl. When the suburban companies like Levitz, my mother's employer Housley Brothers, The Oak Barn supplanted the department stores, manufacturing became less about brands pushed by the major retailers. Terms were given forcibly- 96 months to pay. Materials were cheap or disproportionately dear, but whether it was particle board or oak, gold or marble- furniture was massive and blunt. Large and lumpy. It was as though everything were modelled on a nude Gerald Ford.
Who can blame the despairing aesthete for lining his apartment with Erte posters, for slipcovering his plaid sleeper-sofa with paisley velvet and putting blood-green ostrich feathers in a vase?
Then what happened? Pop art semmed to make the specious claim that the innocuous brands that had become cultural touchstones were in fact the vacuous tenets of our belief systems- Marilyn, Holsteins, Thunderbirds. Manufacturers took the ball. In the early seventies, the country began its "Nostalgia" craze with a manner suggesting that no civilisation had ever idealised and imitated its past. Antique newsprint patterned everything. Popular entertainers would perform vaudeville standards dressed in Belle Nineties get-ups. As the middle class shook off the previous manifestation, the colonial furniture that had been de riguer since Henry Ford furnished his house, it looked to see where the contemporary furnishing had gotten itself.
It was a mess. The success of the shlock-deco revival was enough to urge North Carolina to put some bends in things.
When blame must be assigned, and it must, who can blame Saudi entrepreneurs for selling asymmetrical marble corner end tables? For manufacturing elongated evocations of Nefertiti? Anything flashy and fifties- diner red and chrome, anything with flamboyant lines, like the parenthetical benchs, sitting on points. Anything evocative of richness, decadence- the faux marble statues and marblized surfaces. Anything irreverent and kitschy, the plastic flamingoes, the cut-out painted waitress drink stand, or English butler. It was an untested market. The prices were malleable. Very expensive, but on sale for one-fiftieth of retail.
We thought Shelley Michelle would buy some of it. Shelley is a dealer in the antique mall. She is always in her booth or padding around the mall. Some colleagues tried to warm up to her, since she is always always around, by asking her out for drinks.
I could have told them that Shelley Michelle would spit out her drink if Bush were criticised. I can't say how I guessed it but....
He was. She did. Of course, it seems that the sheer volume of his actions have decided the only way not to criticise Bush is to not speak at all. But she was not having any of it. "America, Love it or Leave it, I always say- if you don't like it you can just get out!" she is said to have said. She is a sad-eyed woman of fifty or more, hair dyed gothic black, eyebrows dyed, thick mascara and a chin-line mask of foundation. She looks sticky beige. She has a sort of pekinese flatness to her face, and might be missing a tooth in the upper front part of her mouth. She can be seen straining to open her face, make herself an ingenue, bee-sting mouth and all, though she moves like a matron in an orphanage, and quietly stares like the long-tenured, unloved manager of a lingerie department in a Sioux City Macy's. There are raw spots from where she clawed her way up from wherever she began. She wears leopard prints over, under or around diaphonous black chemises. Her hair is always pulled back with a tied black scarf. She sells extravagant costume jewelry, flamboyant vintage clothing and allied objects. Profusion. Her space looks like a jewelry box crammed fast for a getaway.
She dresses like our boss, and like our boss is a good, stalwart republican.
As I always say, the road to Hell is paved with good republicans.