So Crazy It Just Might Work

As recently as yesterday I had disdain for activism. In a classroom discussion a girl stated she protested against Proposition 8 to "stand up for those who can't."

At this I cracked "For who? Gay quadriplegics?" The class laughed as I stayed fixed in my stance that no one could do anything. Ever.

Then I had an idea.

Now, I think activism could actually work. If it does it'll be the coolest fucking thing of all time.

Commence the letter writing campaign now. Of course it begins with this...

*****

Dear Mr. Roth,

I am not familiar enough with your work to label myself a fan but my appreciation grows as I delve further and further into your canon. I am currently reading The Plot Against America and enjoy the book on multiple levels. The close perspective and family orient lend a new understanding of persecution while the book’s status as the highest possible brow of fan fiction transports me to the alternate universe you created. Reading your work, the created world sprawls to the edges of the imagination. It is so wonderfully accessible that I expect the book to modify itself to meet my own frame of reference. I turn each page expecting a cameo from Henry Ford, a famed anti-Semite from my hometown of Dearborn, Michigan.
Your career embodies my highest aspirations and I consider it an honor to even read your work (let alone write you a letter) but this note is not intended as flattery or some outreach for advice. I send this along as a very strange but immensely serious request for you Mr. Roth.
I am in my last semester of studies at the University of Southern California and having finished my major, find myself swaddled in the doldrums of a required course load. Scholastic endeavors are spent discussing the Ming Dynasty, mapping river basins and stumbling through an advanced French Class. My prior French classes came during freshman year and I am consequentially overmatched. Hours are dedicated to grammar but as the semester winds to a close “D’s” still show on the tops of my quizzes and I cannot speak without embarrassing myself. Last week, I tried to explain that my voodoo-practicing grandmother sacrificed chickens but the sentiment came out as “mon grand-mère a chié un poulet” or “my grandmother shat a chicken.”
Stemming from my idiocy I have taken on the role of class pet. I ran into a classmate at the bookstore and they expressed surprise that I knew where a bookstore was. I have a fairly laissez-faire existence but find it disturbing how easily some classify me as a moron. I carry a chip on my shoulder that carries into other aspects of my life. I realize these people are mere trivialities on life’s winding road-fit to be forgotten come January-but such a realization is difficult to put into practice. As such, I feel sort of like a lump much of the time.
We are reading Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” and one of our assignments was to come up with titles for the chapters. I can read French fairly well but when called upon my mind blanked. The emergency French vocabulary stored in my subconscious for future use consists primarily of food items. In my panicked state I resorted to the involuntarily and blurted out “Les Crevette Ambitieuse” or “the ambitious shrimp”.
This prompted a slew of giggles around the room. One girl even asked “What kind of drugs are you on today Joel?” I wasn’t on any that day. They wrote this off as another one of my follies but in their laughter came the realization that I was correct or at the very least the inkling that I was onto something.
Camus’ novella hinges on man’s acceptance of universal indifference and the solace found in the joy of survival: eating, breathing, swimming. Simplification, if properly applied can easily turn into satisfaction. These realizations are easy to come by. Each night I go to sleep with a smile after flirting with similar epiphanies but humans are not so simple. The curse of such an intricate thought process begets constant assessment that manifests as desire. Stripping down the ego and world to such starkness is as unnatural to humans as ambition to a shrimp.
No other creature combats it’s nature like humans do. I’ve never heard of a Dog trying to be more confident or a Whale struggling with the courage to chat up a potential mate. I often ponder the differences between a planned life and one comprised only of reaction. The thought of a shrimp forging into the world in hopes of finding treasure or maybe even love struck me as ironically funny but absurdly beautiful with such efficacy that feeling still lingers days later.
I thought of the shrimp leaving home, running from predators, and escaping from fisherman’s nets with great amusement. In doing so. I saw several parallels with my own life as I try to make my way into manhood and figure out what it is I do.
The spirit swam through me. Eager to explain the idea to classmates I expounded my theory with the vigor usually reserved for wonderful conversations or breathtaking touchdowns. I knew my classmates and I were different, cutting a wide swath of varying ideals but this could be the onus for an interesting conversation. The sort of discourse one idealistically expects from Academia before stepping foot on a college campus. I breathlessly explained my idea but it failed to resonate with my classmates. I checked the room for approving glances or perhaps a well-thought out rebuttal but found only eye rolls.
“Are you done disrupting?” asked a fellow classmate, a sorority girl I once saw vomiting off a balcony into some bushes.
At this point my intentions become muddled. I don’t recall the thoughts governing my actions but this is what played out.
“I don’t think I’m disrupting at all. You guys have obviously never read any Philip Roth. (I dropped your name because a professor once told me no college student knows who Philip Roth is.) As a former Pulitzer Prize winner, Roth is renowned as one of the greatest living American authors. He’s done many works but has happened to expound on a similar issue. I borrowed the title “Les Crevette Ambiteuse” from a short story of his about a shrimp seeking to maximize its potential. The story is festooned with cartoonish characters befitting a kid’s book but below the surface, it explores human nature in a fashion quite similar to The Stranger. If you read it you’d probably understand.”
This was the biggest crock of bullshit I’ve ever said but the class took it hook, line and sinker. For the first time all semester they treated me like a human being, asking a series of follow up questions that effectively turned our class into a Philosophical exploration. We were a Plato and togas away from Ancient Greece. The rest of the hour flew by as we openly shared ideas and beliefs.
As I exited class my professor and a fellow student stopped me. “Hey Joel, what was the name of that author?”
“Oh. Philip Roth.”
“Philip Ross?”
“No. Philip Roth. R-O-T-H.”
“Thanks. Where did you say you read the story?”
“I think it’s in one of his collections.”
“Great. I’ll try to find it. It sounds very interesting.”
Following the inevitably of this note I must pose the question: Would you be willing to write this story? Does the tale of a shrimp burdened by ambition burn somewhere within?
I realize this is an uncomfortable position for you to be in. Artists thrive on the freedom of creativity and trying to harness the forces of inspiration for an assignment-let alone one from a foolhardy twenty-two-year-old-can negate the process. I have no idea what you are working on, what your schedule is like, but something caused me to associate the story with you. It might not seem like your work but if you believe in destiny I must wonder if you would in turn be willing to write the tale of explore the scope of a shellfish addled with such an innately American personification? I speak up from the cellar but consider it a challenge. Hell, it could even be fun. Just as it is refreshing to skip school and go to the beach you might find something beautiful in crustacean affairs.
I realize you have no incentive to do this aside from the satisfaction of following the music of chance…and if you so choose, the eventual publishing and success of such a work. After all you’re Philip Roth. THE Philip Roth. As a tangent: that’s probably a trip isn’t it? Such a story might mean nothing to you but it could make a large difference to me.
I use charm to get through many of my classes. Showing up with a smile, having a good attitude, and expressing personal interest in my peers goes farther than any amount of studying. I have done my very best to maintain goodwill with my classmates and professor but all will be destroyed if I am found out as a fraud. There is even a slim chance I will fail. The guilt trip is unintentional but beneficial. I am putting myself through school at one of the most expensive universities in the country. Failing another class would doom me to another semester entailing extensive costs both personal and professional. Another semester would set me back twenty-five thousand dollars and the five-month wait would further retard my entry into adulthood. The purgatory of not really being anything would stop me from writing, demure me from athletics, and cause me to lose further interest in the things I love. My life would become a Petri dish for immaturity, immaturity festering and growing with each passing day.
Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. If you elect to embark I wish you the best of luck. If not, I completely understand. You might even consider such a task as not just a waste of talent but a disregard so vile and encompassing it qualifies as intellectual pollution. To this I say you’re probably correct.
On the other hand, shrimp are very interesting creatures.
All the best,


Joel Walkowski


P.S. If you write the story and chance to visit Southern California I promise the best seafood dinner money can buy. If by some cosmic curse you are allergic to shellfish or don’t like seafood (seafood makes my Dad vomit so he doesn’t much enjoy it. He still likes to go fishing though) we can go to In And Out Burger. Animal style double doubles are as a thing of beauty.