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been kind and generous in its treatment of Xenophon’s substantial oeuvre. But generosity and stamina make the work no more than average and so, average work holding little or no value and interest for me, I consider the man and what stands out is his dullness. At dullness he excels. The perfect dim star. The candle beside which others are called bright. There is no substitute for the Xenophons of the world, the plodding constants, the droning, fixed designations that allow comparison and measurement. My father was such a rule and perhaps the world will remember him as a philosopher and critic, but his dullness was so profound as to be blinding. Even in dullness there must be some moderation; call it the exercise of taste. But his dullness was in excess, honed to razor bluntness, a burning monotony, a dazzling torpidity. However, and even then at thirteen months I was tortured by the thought, I was his son and I had to wonder what kind of awful genetic inevitabilities awaited me later in life. This finally is the central terror. That cytosine, thymine, adenine, and guanine and their tautomers can combine variously with bad and predictable results is sobering at least. Conscious thinking, however, I decided, might well serve to undo some of nature’s doings, my having discovered the possible inevitabilities at an early enough age to employ a kind of adaptive economy. So, I had a headstart in warding off the genetic pitfalls of my ancestry, but I was physically exactly where I should have been, my brain and nervous system incapable of modulating the actions of my unformed muscles. Yes, somehow my fingers, hands, and wrists were advanced enough for the complex operation of writing, but I was pretty much helpless in all other matters physical and material and so, I was at the mercy of my parents to take care of the business of life-function maintenance. This was the second terror.
    Mo loved me. Of that fact I was certain and so I could trust her to see to my needs. And Inflato was afraid of me.
umstände
    The basic steps of the ontological argument for the existence of god are easily described:
    a) assume: a being such that none greater can be conceived does not exist.
    b) a being such that none greater can be conceived is not a being such that none greater can be conceived. 19
    c) therefore: a being such that none greater can be conceived exists.
    That’s it. I will not quarrel with the argument, offer objections to its form, premises, implicit assumptions, or its mission. I will only ask that you entertain further:
    a) assume: Ralph does not exist.
    b) Ralph is not Ralph.
    c) therefore: Ralph exists.
    This was what I wrote on a nice stiff sheet of pink paper while seated on a turquoise blanket on the floor of the psychologist’s office at the University Hospital. She had been pleasant and indulgent of my parents up until the time I used my father’s fountain pen to begin my message to her. Then she became nervous and animated and suggested numerous times that it was all a trick and that obviously I had superior, abnormally superior, motor skills, but insisted that I couldn’t possibly know what I was doing. And so I added in a crude, childlike scribble:
    what does shrinkie want ralph to do?
    The doctor, a very tall woman named Steimmel, looked at me and screamed something unintelligible, then looked at my parents and screamed again. She excused herself and returned just less than a minute later.
    “Well, Mr. and Mrs. Townsend, shall we sit down and talk?” Steimmel asked. “I’ll have one of the nurses watch Ralph.”
    My father glanced at me and I gave a quick shake of my head to show my disapproval. Inflato said, “I’d like Ralph to stay with us.”
    “Mr. Townsend, I think it’s better if—”
    “No, I want him here,” Inflato said.
    My mother questioned him by saying his name.
    “Ralph wants it,” he whispered loud enough for everyone to hear.
    “Ralph wants it?” Steimmel repeated his words.
    Mo looked