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psyche was indeed being tapped out along the wires of physical pain, the message had to be more original than “ Don ’ t ever write that stuff again. ”
    Of course one could always interpret a difficulty like this as a test of character. But what was twenty years of writing fiction? He didn ’ t need his character tested. He already had enough obstinacy to last a lifetime. Artistic principles? Up to his ears in them. If the idea was to marshal still more grim determination in the face of prolonged literary labors, then his pain was sadly misinformed. He could accomplish that on his own. Doomed to it by the mere passage of mine. The resolute patience he already possessed made life more excruciating by the year. Another twenty like the last twenty and there ’ d be no frustration to challenge him.
    No, if the pain intended to accomplish something truly worthwhile, it would not be to strengthen his adamancy but to undo the stranglehold. Suppose there was the message flashing forth from a buried Nathan along the fibers of his nerves: Let the others write the books. Leave the fate of literature in their good hands and relinquish life alone in your room. It isn ’ t life and it isn ’ t you. It ’ s ten talons clawing at twenty-six letters. Some animal carrying on in the zoo like that and you ’ d think it was horrifying. “ But surely they could hang a tire for him to swing on—at least bring in a little mate to roll around with him on the floor. ” If you were to watch some certified madman groaning over a table in his little cell, o bserve him trying to make some thing sensible out of QWERTYUIOP , ASDFGHJKL , and ZXCVBNM , see him engrossed to the exclusion of ail else by three such nonsensical words, you ’ d be appalled, you ’ d clutch his keeper ’ s arm and ask, “ Is there nothing to be done? No anti-hallucinogen? No surgical procedure? ” But before the keeper could even reply, “ Nothing—it ’ s hopeless, ” the lunatic would be up on his feet, out of his mind, and shrieking at you through his bars: “ Stop this infernal interference! Stop this shouting in my ears! How do I complete my life ’ s great work with all these g aping visitors and their noise! ”
    Suppose pain had come, then, not to cut him down to size like Herbert ’ s “ Lord, ” or to teach him civility like Tom Sawyer ’ s Aunt Polly, or to make him into a Jew like Job, but to rescue Zuckerman from the wrong calling. What if pain was offering Zuckerman the best deal he ’ d ever had, a way out of what he should never have got into? The right to be stupid. The right to be lazy. The right to be no one and nothing. Instead of solitude, company; instead of silence, voices; instead of projects, escapades; instead of twenty, thirty, forty years more of relentless doubt-ridden concentration, a future of diversity, of idleness, of abandon. To leave what is given untransformed. To capitulate to QWERTYUIOP , ASDFGHJKL , and ZXCVBNM , to let those three words say it all.
    Pain to bring Nathan purposeless pleasure. Maybe a good dose of agony is what it took to debauch him. Drink? Dope? The intellectual sin of light amusement, of senselessness self-induced? Well, if he must. And so many women? Women arriving and departing in shifts, one barely more than a child, another the wife of his financial adviser? Usually it ’ s the accountant who cheats the client, not the other way around. But what could he do if pain required it? He himself had been removed from command, released from all scruple by the helpless need. Zuckerman was to shut up and do what he was told—leave off rationing out the hours, stop suppressing urges and super-supervising every affair, and from here on, drift, just drift, carried along by whatever gives succor, lying beneath and watching as solace is delivered from above. Surrender to surrender, it ’ s the time.
    Yet if that really was the psyche ’ s enjoinder, to what end? To no end? To the end of ends? To escape