The Broom of the System Read Online Free PDF Page A

rather interesting one today.”
    “Go for it.”
    “Depressing, though.”
    “I want to hear it.”
    “Concerned a man who suffered from second-order vanity.”
    “Second-order vanity?”
    “Yes.”
    “What’s that?”
    “You don’t know what second-order vanity is?”
    “No.”
    “How interesting.”
    “So what is it?”
    “Well, a second-order vain person is first of all a vain person. He’s vain about his intelligence, and wants people to think he’s smart. Or his appearance, and wants people to think he’s attractive. Or, say, his sense of humor, and wants people to think he’s amusing and witty. Or his talent, and wants people to think he’s talented. Et cetera. You know what a vain person is.”
    “Right.”
    “A vain person is concerned that people not perceive him as stupid, or dull, or ugly, et cetera et cetera.”
    “Gotcha.”
    “Now a second-order vain person is a vain person who’s also vain about appearing to have an utter lack of vanity. Who’s enormously afraid that other people will perceive him as vain. A second-order vain person will sit up late learning jokes in order to appear funny and charming, but will deny that he sits up late learning jokes. Or he’ll perhaps even try to give the impression that he doesn’t regard himself as funny at all.”
    “....”
    “A second-order vain person will be washing his hands in a public restroom, and will be unable to resist the temptation to admire himself in the mirror, to scrutinize himself, but he’ll pretend he’s fixing a contact lens or getting something out of his eye while he does so, so that people won’t perceive him as the sort of person who admires himself in mirrors, but rather as the sort of person who uses mirrors only to attend to reasonable, un-vain business.”
    “Oh.”
    “This story that came today concerned a man who was second-order vain about his appearance. Vain as hell about his appearance, obsessed with his body, but also obsessed with the desire that no one know of his obsession. He goes to simply enormous lengths to hide his vanity from his girlfriend. Did I mention he lives with a girl, an apparently ravingly beautiful and also very nice girl?”
    “No.”
    “Well he does, who loves him like mad, and he loves her. And they’re getting along fine, although the man is of course under quite a bit of strain, obsessed and also obsessed with hiding his obsession.”
    “Gee.”
    “Indeed. And one day in the bathtub the man notices something strange on his leg, a kind of a raised gray spot, and he goes to a doctor and is diagnosed as being in the first stages of a certain nonfatal but quite disfiguring disease, that will eventually leave this apparently very handsome man not a little disfigured.”
    “....”
    “Unless, that is, he consents to undergo a tremendously complicated and expensive treatment procedure, for which he has to fly all the way to Switzerland, and spend just about his whole life savings, which savings are in a joint bank account and require his lovely girlfriend’s cosignature to withdraw.”
    “Wow.”
    “....”
    “Still, though, if he’s all that vain and anxious not to be disfigured.”
    “Well, but you forget he’s also extremely anxious not to be perceived as the sort of man who’s anxious not to be disfigured. The thought of his girlfriend knowing that he is the sort of man who would spend his life savings and fly all the way to Switzerland just to keep from being disfigured horrifies him.”
    “What is this disease? Is this supposed to be leprosy?”
    “Something like leprosy, was my impression. Maybe not as bad. I think leprosy can kill you. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that the idea of his girlfriend finding out he is vain so horrifies the man that he delays and delays making the decision to fly to Switzerland for the treatment, and in the meantime the spot is growing and the skin on his leg is getting grayer, and flaking off in sheets, and the bones