Wormholes and Cheese...a literary review....sort of.

Sunday evening, 10:47pm.

I have decided to do something literary. I have decided to review a book.

I begin.

Iput down my rum and tonic. (It was my third. They?ve been doubles. Stopjudging me.) I adjust my bathrobe, which, fortunately, I am wearing,and go to my bookshelf to select something profound. There are manybooks on my shelf that I have not yet read, so there are many booksthat make likely candidates for review, and many of them are profound.There?s also some pretty good porn and an old cheese sandwich that Imust have set down and forgotten about. I wonder how many otherforgotten cheese sandwiches there have been in my life. Life can be sodeep. And cheesy.

(Sigh)

Because of the late hour, andlet?s face it, the rum, I decide that I will employ limited criteriawhen selecting a book for review. Therefore: The book should have lotsof pictures and the book should be thin.

I pull out a book andflip through it. It has lots of pictures. It is thin. The title is ABrief History of Time by Professor Stephen Hawking.

It lookssimple. It seems to be about simple stuff. On the cover it mentionstime and space, two seemingly simple subjects that happen to be ofgreat interest to me. Over the years I have enjoyed many aspects oftime. I like wearing a watch and I like staring at clocks. Over theyears I?ve also enjoyed many aspects of space including the Moon, thestars, the comet Kohoutek, William Shatner, and, incredibly, the StarTrek television series and several of the Star Trek motion pictures,including the one with the whales.

I?ve also had a direct,hands on, space experience. In 1995 I rode the ?Space Mountain? thrillride at Disney World, not once, not twice, but thrice, although on thethird pass, I puked.

Whatever actual critiquing credibilitythese experiences have provided me is, I grant you, dubious. Never theless, I feel empowered. And according to some very intelligent soundingpeople I?ve met on the Internet, that is all that matters.

Nowfeeling empowered, I take the book off the shelf and begin to read.Some of the words are really big, and intimidating, but I press on.Don?t give up, I tell myself. Big words are just collections ofletters, assembled into complex patterns that your feeble intellectdon?t understand. Just skim over them and focus on the ones you does.

Thusliberated from the oppressive yoke of intellectual retention andcomprehension, the review process begins to accelerate intohyper-drive. Everything now seems profound. The air is ripe withopportunity, and something else. I catch a whiff of Gouda, and wonderif this is déjà vu, or if I am I traveling through a time warp in myliving room to a time of cheese sandwiches gone by. In this crazy mixedup world, anything is possible. Consider the current Presidentialadministration.

Twenty minutes later I am done reading. My headhurts. I am totally confused and thirsty. I am craving a cheesesandwich. I am but a mousy piece of lint in the navel of the universe,I tell myself, and I need frommage. But, alas, there is only rum.

Life,except for the rum, now hardly seems worth living. Never the less, I amdetermined to do something literary. So here it is. Here is my review.

Firstof all let me just start by saying that this book, A Brief History ofTime, has a very nice cover. It is shiny and clean and easy to readwith big letters and several nice colors. Most of the words are easy toread. I count seven that I can pronounce first time through. Myimmediate impression is that this book is my friend, and that PresidentBush and his wife Laura would be proud of me for reading it. I reach toscratch myself and realize my bathrobe is on backwards. After a briefbreak, I press on.

I decide not to press too hard, however. Thecover seems to be sufficiently challenging, so I decide to linger. Onefeature that stands out is the cover photo of the author, Prof. StephenHawking, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Arrowsmith front manrocker, Stephen Tyler. The photo is well composed and in focus. Mr.Hawking is pictured sitting in his chair, staring into the camera,looking very serious. He is floating through a field of stars andplanets. Ironically, much of the book?s subject matter is about outerspace, which some of you may already know, includes many stars andplanets. I am impressed. I am also suddenly craving a cheese sandwich.I go to the kitchen and make one. While I?m at it, I fix another drink.What the hell do you care? You?re not paying for this review, so stopjudging me.

Inside the book, there are pages. The first severalpages (comprised of the title page, the publisher?s page, and the tableof contents page) all move along briskly and are all fairly wellwritten, making for some delightful reading that even a child couldtackle. I know this for a fact because while I was in the kitchen I hadmy five year old read and summarize them for me to save some time.However, once Professor Hawking delves into the morass that is thesection that he has titled ?Forward?, the book really begins to bogdown. The professor, it turns out, tends to ramble. Also, at this pointProf. Hawking begins to self-indulgently spend sentence after sentenceengaging in shameless, self-important celebrity name-dropping. Byparagraph three he has mentioned Madonna, Shakespeare, and Carl Sagan.(Sadly, such self-serving practices are becoming all too common inmodern literary circles. Co-incidentally my good friend, DorisKearns-Goodwin, and I were discussing this very subject over wine andnibbles at Robert Pinsky?s house just the other day.)

When he?snot dropping names, he does address the topics of time and space, butonly in the most superficial of ways. For example, consider thefollowing passage:

?On the observational side, by far the mostimportant development has been the measurement of fluctuations in thecosmic microwave background radiation by COBE (the Cosmic BackgroundExplorer satellite) and other collaborations.?

Right. Like who doesn?t know THAT? (?Hello? ?Professor?? ?WIKIPEDIA???)

Bythe second page of this chapter my head is hurting so I take a breakand watch three back-to-back episodes of COPS! I love that show. Didyou know that all the bad people in America live in trailers?

Idecide by the end of Chapter 1 that I am not going to read anymore ofthese insane ramblings. I have literary responsibilities and I amfearful it would only encourage Professor Hawking and other ?smart?people like him. (By the way, it?s important here that you visualize mein your head, making those plucky air quote gestures as I say the word?smart?. It makes it more dramatic.)

Instead of reading anymore, I have put together a short list of questions that I think wouldbe more useful for the ?Professor? to answer. (Again, please imaginethe air quotes.)

Here they are:

Dear Professor Hawking. If you?re so smart, then answer the following questions?

QUESTION #1
What is God?s real name? It?s Frank, isn?t it?

QUESTION #2
What does God do on his days off?

QUESTION #3
Where does cheese come from?

QUESTION #4
Do bears shit in the woods, or do they break in to our houses when we?re at work and use the bathroom?

QUESTION #5
Was that you doing the synthesized vocals on Cher?s ?Do You Believe In Love??

QUESTION #6
Is there handicap parking in space?

QUESTION #7
Who was your favorite Beatle?

QUESTION #8
Do you like rum?

QUESTION #9
Do you ever pretended to be Stephen Tyler to score with the ladies?

QUESTION #10
If Superman and God got into a fistfight, who would end up in court?

QUESTION#10a
When space travel becomes available for ordinary people, will we have to ask for the key to use the restrooms in space stations?

QUESTION #11
How clean are wormholes, really? They sound pretty gross.

Inclosing, because I don?t like to ever discourage people from trying toexpress themselves through writing, I am going to recommend toProfessor Hawking that he give the writing thing another shot. He seemslike a fairly intelligent fellow, his spelling is good, and he seems tohave a healthy imagination. I am certain that with a few stylisticadjustments, perhaps by including some references to alien abductionsand maybe a really hot sex scene that involves a robot, even this bookcould be further developed into something truly worthwhile?perhaps ascreenplay vehicle for Keanu Reeves, the Olsen twins, Helen Mirrin,Snoop Dog, or possibly even Erik Estrada, if we can find him.

Meanwhile,as for you, the consumer/reader/outer space traveller, I would avoidthis book like a stray tissue in a Provincetown men?s room and spendyour money on something more comprehensible, like a good cheesesandwich, or The DaVinci Code, or perhaps the latest installment ofHarry Potter, which despite a story line built around witchcraft,invisible cloaks, giant trolls, magic spells, secret potions and crossdimensional post pubescent lust, still involves stars and planets andis an infinitely more plausible cosmic literary vehicle that does notrequire that any of us enter a worm?s hole.

At least I think so. I haven?t actually read this one either.

My suggestion?
Less time, less space, more cheese.

The End.



© 2007 J. Mark Rast