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Overview
In this inventive novel, octogenarian book collector Mr. Mee discovers the Internet with life-changing results. Told from the points of view of the guileless Mr. Mee, two eighteenth century French philosophers, and a middle-aged university professor, Andrew Crumey's book concerns the creation and mysterious disappearance of Rosier's Encyclopedia, an explosive text written more than two hundred years ago that purportedly disproves the existence of the universe. At times funny, often thought-provoking, and completely engaging, Mr. Mee is Crumey's most rewarding novel to date.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780312282356 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Picador |
| Publication date: | 03/06/2002 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Sales rank: | 593,293 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.79(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
It's said of the Xanthic sect that they believed ire to be a form of life, since it has the ability to reproduce itself. They regarded the sun as being the original life—centre of the universe, and the colour yellow was held to be the primary hue from which all others could be derived by a process of `heating' or `cooling'. I expect you're wondering how I know all this, and why I'm telling you. Certainly, when I mentioned it to Mrs B some time ago, while she was dusting, that was her immediate reaction; and you know I take Mrs B's opinions on all matters to be a good indicator of public attitudes in general.
As I explained, while warning her to keep the duster away from a manuscript page I suspected still to be wet, I owe my discovery of the Xanthics (and hence of Rosier's Encyclopaedia) to the coincidence of a flat tyre and a shower of rain, both of which occurred within an hour of each other, just south of a small town whose name you'll probably know (Mrs B did), though it can only be of significance to the people who live there, or to the lorry drivers who have to pass through the place on their way to and from the huge potato crisp factory nearby. In an earlier letter I already mentioned to you the reasons for my journey; I shall now tell you the strange consequences which followed from its brief interruption.
Mrs B said to me, `Did ye no have a spare tyre in the boot?', and I said: Would you be careful with that one, Mrs B, it's a first edition.
`I don't know why you have to live with so many books on top of your head,' said Mrs B. As you are aware, this is one of her customary phrases, and I expect that you will ignore it just as I did.
`Aye,' said Mrs B, `there's some men's the kind who always have a spare wheel with an inflated tyre in the boot o' their cars, and there's others'll have left the flat one from the last time the wheel was changed because they were too busy thinking on other things, and you know which kind is you, Mr Mee.'
While Mrs B was giving me this lecture I saw that she was in danger of knocking over a particularly important stack which I had placed on the edge of the desk, so I thought it best to nod in agreement, in order that she'd return to her work before my library became too disrupted. I'm sure that you remember as well as I the damage once sustained by several precious volumes of Hogg, because of Mrs B's unfortunate generosity with regard to furniture polish.
No, I shall not even pause to invent some reasonable excuse for my not having a spare tyre in the boot, nor any means of carrying out the repair myself. Instead, I walked the two miles back into town (a long way for a man of eighty—six, I'm sure you'll agree) where I found a garage and was told that the boss would help me in an hour or so, after his lunch. `That's chust typical,' said Mrs B.
I, on the other hand, was more sanguine, and decided to savour the local sights in the meantime. That was when the rain started.
`And I can guess where you went to dry out,' said Mrs B, still waving her duster like a regimental banner. `There's some men'll find shelter in the nearest pub, and there's others'll go and find a wee second—hand bookshop full of horrible dirty dusty rubbish that good people canna tolerate in their houses any longer, and they'll come out when the rain stops with a heap o' trash they'll never read in ten lifetimes.'
Yes, this was how I found the Xanthics. Not in Rosier's Encyclopaedia (a work which still eludes my every enquiry), but rather in a book called Epistemology and Unreason which I lifted from the shelf thinking it to be a biography of J.F. Ferrier, an author whose unsolved disappearance from my collection some years ago was the result of one of Mrs B's notorious periods of rationalization.
I quickly judged the volume to be irrelevant, poorly bound and somewhat overpriced. But then I chanced upon the Xanthics; and their notion that fire is a form of life was one that seemed sufficiently memorable to make the book worth buying, in order that I might maintain some reference to a quotation I felt bound at some time to repeat.
`I tellt ye,' said Mrs B.
I shall not describe the mundane continuation of a story which involved the purchasing of the book and an altercation with a dishonest car mechanic. Instead I shall reproduce for you the rest of the passage which I was able to read later in the comfort of my home:
If life is defined by the property of self—reproduction, then fire lives in much the same way as a virus, contaminating some medium, igniting it, producing more flames; and the behaviour of fire, its motion and power, has meant that from the very earliest times people have easily regarded it as being infused with some divine spirit.
`I don't know why you waste your time on such stuff and nonsense,' said Mrs 8, lifting an early edition of Carlyle, displacing the bookmark I had carefully left within it, then returning the cleaned but useless volume to a new position where I'd be bound to forget both it, and the page number which interested me. All this, while I read aloud to her:
It may be objected that fire is not a substance but a process; yet all animals live by virtue of a similar process of oxidation, of combustion, for which their bodies serve merely as vehicle and furnace.
`Aye, that's canny.'
And to those who protest that fire, unlike living creatures, can arise without a parent (the striking of a match being something which the Xanthics would have found bewildering and miraculous), one might reply that the very first organism to have appeared on our own planet must likewise have been of a kind requiring no animate precursor.
`It was a clever man who wrote this book, and a fool that bought it. Have ye no got enough volumes already to be going on with?'
At what point did certain chemical processes of the primitive Earth become worthy of the term `life', a word which some would still hold back from fire? This is like a riddle known to Aristotle; a child passes through the years into old age, but when exactly does he become `old'; or if no such moment exists, then does the word have any meaning? Similarly, a single grain of sand cannot form a heap (soros in Greek), therefore no amount of sand can do so; hence the name `sorites' given to a class of problem which must, we see, include the emergence of life itself among its number.
`Aye, I like Aristotle well enough,' said Mrs B, who, as you know, has in the course of our many conversations developed a system of taste with respect to the various authors I have told her about, their works and personalities, which is, like all tastes and preferences, purely arbitrary. If she so much as sees a copy of The Wealth o f Nations on my desk she'll start berating it like a foul dog, while Hume almost brings out the romantic in her.
Sorites, Mrs B, I reminded her; when did a reptile become the first bird, when did grunts and squawks become the first language, when were words like ours first coined, and how were they ever understood?
`If ye don't mind, I'll chust pass the hoover across this carpet and be done.'
And finally, what of fire: is it alive or not? The choice is ours; the Xanthics chose a definition upon which an entire philosophy was constructed, a system of thought which held sway among its clandestine followers for centuries until a final purge whose last victim met his death with the words: `May my thoughts ignite yours; may my soul burn forever in your hearts.' In a certain sense, perhaps, there was no last Xanthic.
On re—reading this passage after Mrs B had left me in peace, I was struck by its vagueness. When exactly did the Xanthics flourish; and where? The only reference given was to a work I had never heard of: L'EncyclopMie de Jean—Bernard Rosier.
My curiosity lay dormant during the lunch which Mrs B prepared for us; one of her finest broths, from which I was moreover distracted by an account of her sister's recent health problems. But then it was time for Mrs B to leave, and for the puzzle to return to my attention, like those mushy balls of potato mixed with meat fibre which I'd found at the bottom of my bowl when all the liquid was removed, while Mrs B was talking about gallstones.
A close study of several other books in my possession shed no further light or. the Xanthics; and since the author of Epistemology and Unreason calls himself merely `Ian Muir', omitting any further details which might enable him to be singled out from the countless other good souls who share his versatile name, the problem of tracing him in order to question him about his sources seemed insurmountable. Such elusiveness, moreover, took on a distinctly suspicious character when I observed that the book lacked an ISBN; a momentary perusal of Harp's Guide easily satisfied me that 'Torus Academic', the alleged publisher, was merely an impressive badge behind which to conceal an act of vanity publishing. I therefore had every reason to suppose the whole thing to be a hoax; a dusty academic joke, or the opportunity to expound a pet theory. Only if I were to locate Rosier's Encyclopaedia would I be able to contradict my suspicions; and this, as I have mentioned, is something I have still been unable to do, despite much careful research in recent weeks, which has even prevented me from writing to you. What I have managed to unearth, on the other hand, is a mystery far more engrossing than the story of an obscure and vanished sect.
At first, however, I forgot all about Rosier, and the Xanthics. My search of available reference books having yielded nothing, I got on with my work (this happened some four months ago, at a time when, as you know, I was writing an important account of certain local memorials for The Scots Magazine). Perhaps it was simply due to the embarrassment of failure that I did not consider the incident worthy of discussion in our correspondence at the time.
But then, three weeks ago, I happened to be glancing through the index of a new book I saw on sale, dealing with the publishing industry in eighteenth—century France, when I noticed the name jean—Bernard Rosier. I bought the book at once.
`Dyod, no anither o' thon tamn things!' said Mrs B, angrily resorting to the most extreme form of her singular dialect when she saw what I'd brought home, then went to attend to some laundry. As you know, I have always been in agreement with Boswell's opinion on the harshness of our more northerly accents, which I cannot transcribe without the aid of a dictionary, and then only imperfectly.
The book, by a Professor Donald Macintyre, informed me that in 1759 Rosier was seeking to publish a philosophical treatise outlining a `new theory of physics'. Unpublished documents and `private communication' were cited in support of this fleeting and infinitely suggestive comment. Then Mrs B came back and said, rather more coherently but only a little less crossly, `You'll be wanting your dinner now, I suppose?'
Yes, already it was lunchtime again, when I would be treated to another of Mrs B's fine soups. Today it was the version which my studies suggest should properly be called a kail brose; and over which I said to her, after hurriedly sipping some water to soothe a lip scalded by salty and delicious fluid: Do you remember the Xanthics, Mrs B?
She'd calmed down by now. `Oh aye, I ken them well. They thought fire to be a form of life, did they not?'
Indeed they did, I said; and I told her about the happy coincidence which had brought the name of Rosier once more to my attention.
`A bit like that tyre you never carried in the boot o' your car. Aye, there's some men'll forget all about a name as soon as they've heard it, and there's others'll let it cling to their mind like a dried—up knapdarloch on a sheep's behind until the day it turns up in some book they pay a ridiculous amount for, when they've already got enough dirty dusty rubbish to be going on with.'
I was, I admit, not wholly attentive to Mrs B's wise and kindly observations, since I was wondering what could possibly be meant by Rosier's `new theory of physics'. Soon it was time for Mrs B to leave again, but she hesitated at the front door, after putting on her coat.
`Is something wrong, Mrs B?F
'I was chust wondering if four days is enough for you now.'
`What on earth do you mean? It's been four days for the last twenty—eight years; why ever should we change?'
Mrs B's eyes were inspecting a patch of carpet inside the door for some reason I couldn't understand. `I chust think you might not be looking after yourself so well on the other three. Four isn't really enough for you now, is it?'
I told her I'd give the matter my urgent attention and said goodbye. Then as soon as she'd gone I rechecked the scant details in Macintyre's book and resolved to renew my attempts to track down Rosier's Encyclopaedia.
A visit to the library later in the afternoon proved to be in vain, producing only another shower of that drizzly kind which doesn't merit an umbrella, but left me soaking wet by time I arrived at the enquiries desk where Margaret greeted me with her usual warmth. A thorough search of all available catalogues yielded no further information, and Margaret suggested I go and buy myself some Vicks before heading for home; but my skull by now was so full of class numbers that I quite forgot about my sinuses, and on my return I contented myself with a cure you know well, namely a `wee nip'. I then wrote a letter to Professor Macintyre asking him for help, addressed it care of his publisher, and sealed the envelope with a glowing sense of optimism to which the whisky may partly have contributed.
Well, you see, it was all becoming a very intricate story, and you shall understand the dreadful point of it eventually; but Mrs B was getting impatient.
`So you're writing to professors now?' she quizzed me next morning, when I gave her the letter to post. It was as if my correspondence with him (unlike my letters to you, whose stamps she's happily licked for many a long year) were somehow a challenge to her domestic position; to the extent that I reassured her I was not inviting the professor to come and `do' for me on those remaining three days which Mrs B was so concerned about. `Well I think you need one more day at least,' she said, `Or two mornings.' Then Mrs B entered into some kind of negotiation to which I wasn't a wholly comprehending party, since I was too busy wondering where Professor Macintyre might lead me next, in my search for Rosier, Xanthism, and goodness knows what else.
A week later, Mrs B was settling into her new regime, having annexed a day and a half from me by means of a stratagem almost Napoleonic in its swiftness and ingenuity. `It's frae that professor of yours,' she said, sternly handing me an envelope, before leaving the room with an inexplicable air of displeasure.
Professor Macintyre had kindly sent me a photocopied article which began with a translated extract of a letter, dated 3 June 1759, from jean—Bernard Rosier to the distinguished mathematician jean le Rond D'Alembert:
Sir, you may know that many years ago one of our countrymen was taken prisoner in a remote and barren region of Asia noted only for the savagery of its inhabitants. The man's captors, uncertain what to do with him, chose to settle the issue by means of a ring hidden beneath one of three wooden cups. If the prisoner could correctly guess which cup hid the gold band, he would be thrown out to face the dubious tenderness of the wolves; otherwise he was to be killed on the spot. By placing bets on the outcome, his cruel hosts could enjoy some brief diversion from the harsh austerity of their nomadic and brutal existence.
The leader of the tribe, having hidden his own ring, commanded that the unfortunate prisoner be brought forward to make his awful choice. After considerable hesitation, and perhaps a silent prayer, the wretch placed his trembling hand upon the middle cup. Bets were placed; then the leader, still wishing to prolong the painful moment of uncertainty which so delighted his audience, lifted the rightmost cup, beneath which no ring was found. The captive gave a gasp of hope, and amidst rising laughter from the crowd, the leader now reached for the left, saying that before turning it over he would allow his prisoner a final opportunity to change his choice. Imagine yourself to be in that poor man's position, Monsieur D'Alembert, and tell me, what would you now do?
I was still trying to understand the question when I was interrupted by the sudden, unheralded commencement of Mrs B's latest onslaught on my study. She came in pushing a roaring vacuum cleaner and evicted me from my chair like one whose simple shelter has been requisitioned by an invading army.
`Mrs B!' I shouted.
`I'll no be a minute,' she shouted back. The din could hardly have been worse if she'd brought an aeroplane into the room.
`Mrs B, will you please turn that thing off!' `I'm nearly done already.'
`Mrs B!' I went out of the study, towards the wall socket on the landing where the vacuum cleaner was connected, but Mrs B, ever a shrewd tactician, pre—empted me, dashing quicker than I could possibly manage at my age, and blocked my access to the socket. The vacuum, meanwhile, was left unattended in the study, where it bellowed redundantly upon a single patch, by now very clean, of my carpet.
`Ah'm no budging,' proclaimed the doughty Mrs B, who was standing against the wall in such a way as to make it impossible for me to pull out the plug. Instead I closed the study door, to the extent that the vacuum cable allowed, and this gave the two of us a degree of peace.
`Mrs B, I apologize,' I said, `but I was in the middle of trying to understand a very subtle problem.' Then I explained the story of the cups to her. Should our unfortunate captive change his choice?
Mrs B, no doubt moved by the man's plight, decided to give the matter some thought, though she wasn't shifting from the wall where she was pinned like a beetle. `It canna make a difference now which ane he chooses; the odds are equal.'
I agreed, and we went back into the study to read the rest of the letter once Mrs B had agreed to switch off the vacuum cleaner, at least temporarily.
If the leader, when he turned over the rightmost cup, made his choice at random, then the prisoner now has an even chance of holding the ring beneath his hand.
`I tellt ye.'
But the leader must have known where the ring was placed, and he may have decided to turn the rightmost cup precisely because he knew the ring was not beneath it. In that case the prisoner's chances, originally one in three, have not been improved by the leader's gesture; instead, it now becomes twice as likely that the remaining cup conceals the ring, so that the prisoner, if he loves life, would be well advised to change his choice!
`I canna agree wi' that,' said Mrs S. `The man's as big a fool as you, Mr Mee.' And yet, undeterred, I continued to read out Rosier's letter:
What the story illustrates, is that the cups can somehow tell whether the leader acts randomly, or out of choice. The probability that the prisoner holds the ring is either one half or one third, depending on whether the leader knows in advance which cup the ring lies beneath; an observation which startled me greatly when I arrived at it, and kept me awake for an entire night as I followed its many implications; for I was led to conclude that the acts of observation, of thought, of consciousness, are inextricably linked to the reality of the world. Nature, I realized, cannot be regarded as consisting simply of cold inanimate matter, proceeding according to laws which you, Monsieur D'Alembert, and your esteemed colleagues, would have us believe you can discover. To understand the world, we must comprehend the human mind and its interaction with all that it perceives and to which it thereby gives existence.
`Can I chust switch on the hoover again now?'
And just as the cup experiment, through many repetitions, provides a means of discovering the leader's strategy, so might we contemplate the possibility of constructing a greater kind of trial, a game against Nature in which would be demonstrated the presence or otherwise of some omniscient consciousness, some cosmic dealer of Fate's cards. Then the laws of physics would truly reveal the mind of God.
`I really have tae finish hoovering here.'
What of our prisoner? He accepted the leader's offer, placed his feeble hand upon the leftmost cup, and when it was turned and nothing was found beneath it, his throat was opened without further ceremony. The leader retrieved his bauble from beneath the middle cup, and all that remained of this sad event was a ballad which became popular in the region, and an account of the tragedy which I found in Theodore's Excursions. We could imagine a multitude of worlds, in a third of which the outcome was happier, and neither that book nor this letter might ever have been written.
Yes, Mrs B, I then said to her, you may now finish hoovering. And I left the heavy whirring behind me, above me, as I went downstairs, thinking of the prisoner's death, Rosier's theory; mysteries multiplying beyond my grasp.
I hadn't yet finished reading the photocopied article, however, which remained in my hand while I stood exiled in the kitchen, the vacuum cleaner trundling back and forth above me like an overweight insect slowly recovering from a newspaper's inadequate blow, its hellish racket soaring and throbbing as it probed the corners of the room.
D'Alembert's reply to Rosier has not been preserved; but we do have a subsequent letter in which Rosier claims to have begun constructing a new philosophy of the Universe based entirely on the laws of chance, which, once completed, would render archaic and redundant the contents of the celebrated Encyclopedie of which D'Alembert, together with Denis Diderot, had been editor. It is said that during the following years Rosier perfected his theory to such an extent, and felt so indignant at the indifference shown to him by the scientific establishment, that he personally undertook a complete rewriting of the Encyclopedie in the light of his doctrines, which seem to have been heavily tinged with Berkeleyan Idealism, and to have anticipated in some respects modern quantum theory. Of Rosier's Encyclopaedia, however, no known trace survives.
And yet, not only was I aware that the Encyclopaedia might indeed exist, but I also knew it to be the source of my elusive Xanthics; revealed now as the obsession, perhaps the invention, of an eighteenth—century mystic or charlatan. I put the photocopied article to one side — noticing that the `work surface', as such items of kitchen furniture seem to be called nowadays, still exhibited a clinging film of clean dampness, and the smell of synthetic pine — and read the remainder of Professor Macintyre's letter (the continuing explorations of the vacuum cleaner making it necessary for me to study some of the paragraphs more than once), in which he explained that unfortunately he didn't know the article's original source; for he himself possessed no more than an identical photocopy, lacking any title or author name, which he believed may have been passed on to him by a fellow delegate at one of the many academic conferences which the professor regularly attends.
The cleaning offensive eventually ceased upstairs, and I decided to return to my work. My article on local memorials having long been completed, to the satisfaction both of myself and of the august editors of The Scots Magazine, I was now engaged in a study of certain affinities between Stevenson and Hume, which are subtle but not inconsequential. I met Mrs B at the top of the stairs and found her to be lugging the now—placid vacuum cleaner. Aware of the reply I would be sure to receive, I have long desisted from offering help to her on such occasions.
The true meaning of Rosier's letter was still not apparent to me, nor could I understand why an impenetrably obscure riddle concerning a ring and three cups should have caused its author such excitement; but I was able to appreciate that his Encyclopaedia, if I could locate it, might amount to an entirely novel view of nature, based no doubt on wholly fallacious premises. I therefore decided to give the matter my most serious attention; but the following days yielded little progress in anything except my comparative analysis of Stevenson and Hume. Then Mrs B (we are now a mere week before the day on which I write, and therefore nearly at the terrible end of this letter, and hence at the beginning of whatever events must succeed it) had an idea. She said to me, `These dirty dusty things are only good for a museum. What you need is a computer.'
Mrs B informed me that her neighbour's children spend seven or eight hours of each day gazing at the flickering screen of one of these gadgets; and since I can happily spend a similar length of time allowing my eyes to be caressed by the lines of a book, some analogy suggested itself to her; and the obvious conclusion, according to her unique logic, was that I should trade one for the other, and pack away my library in favour of a machine which need not, she assured me, be too expensive, and would moreover be much easier to clean.
There the matter might have ended, were it not for the fact that later that day I made another visit to the library and mentioned my unprovable theories to Margaret, who showed little interest in the analogies between the Treatise of Human Nature and Dr Jekyll, but shared my excitement for the idea that there could exist somewhere, thanks to jean—Bernard Rosier, the authentic encyclopaedia of what would amount to an alternative universe.
`We must do a web search!' she said, almost breathless in anticipation of its possible results, and her enthusiasm made me eager to discover what on earth such a procedure might amount to. She then invited me to sit down before the screen of a `PC', several of which seem gradually to have intruded themselves upon the library during recent years, and none of which I had ever before concerned myself with, believing them to be some kind of advertising medium sponsored by the local tourist office. Margaret told me to enter a `keyword' into the `search engine', and so, using one finger, and with a degree of hesitation attributable not merely to age and a recent recurrence of my angina, I typed the word `Rosier'. She then did something which I couldn't quite follow, but which involves moving what I now know to be called a `mouse'.
The results, I admit, were impressive. My weeks had been filled with chance encounters, indices searched in vain, letters more optimistic than fruitful. The `search engine' (whose workings I shall not even guess at) was able to study, as far as I can make out, just about everything that's ever been written, in a matter of seconds, and then reported to Margaret and myself that it knew of 28,242 documents haunted by Rosier's hitherto elusive presence. I need only `click' on various parts of the screen, in order to `access' any one of these.
The very abundance was almost disappointing; a rare flower had been transformed, instantaneously, into a weed. How was I to make my way through so many items? I asked Margaret if it would be all right to try a few other names, just to get the feel of things, and she said I could play with the machine as long as I liked, then went back to her desk.
I resorted to the comfort of old acquaintances. The entry `David Hume' delivered 19,384 items (less, strangely, than Rosier), but the very first of these (a `website' to which I was directed) showed that the whole of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and a significant portion of the History of England were stored, miraculously, somewhere. within this ungainly machine which I'd always thought to be simply a device for finding out about local events and `heritage' walks. I recalled the not inconsiderable space which Hume and his commentators occupied in my own modest library, whose every item was an affront to Mrs S, and I began to wonder if she might not have had a point after all, when she suggested that `new technology' could save me a considerable amount of space and time; dimensions, the abolition of which is the primary occupation of modern civilization. When Margaret came back after half an hour I had already decided that I must purchase one of these contraptions for myself. Are they for sale, I asked her.
Margaret sent me off with directions to `Dixons', a highstreet retailer of machines which by now I was already calling `PCs', as if I'd known them all my life. There I encountered as my assistant, a tall thin lad called All, who guided me towards a thing with loudspeakers on each side and a television display showing various swimming fish. None of these adornments seemed particularly relevant to my intended perusal of Hume's Enquiry, or any other beloved works which it might please the computer to shelve within its inscrutable workings, and All seemed strangely perplexed when I explained what I was after. He said, `Is it word processing you want to do?'
I gather this is a term used now to denote what was known in our day as `writing', and I told him that this would account for ten per cent at most of my proposed activity, since I would use the machine primarily for reading, an archaic habit the correct name of which I didn't know, unfortunately, in the jargon of `new technology'; and so Ali had to call for some higher assistance. A young lady whose badge named her as Mrs J. Campbell, and whose outfit and demeanour marked her as All's superior, was able to act as a kind of interpreter. Eventually, after I gave her an account of my fruitful and tantalizing session in the library, she agreed with All that `web browsing' was my chosen aim. Yes, I said, that's the term I was looking for. Indeed, I must remind myself in future that you no longer `read' my letters, but `browse' them, like a sheep. Then they showed me a device which, for less than two and a half thousand pounds, would, they assured me, deliver every book I could ever want to study. As long as it has Hume and Stevenson in it, I said, patting the machine, and some volumes of Hogg which Mrs B once spoiled with the furniture polish, then I'll be quite happy. They then accepted both my cheque and my handshake, and we parted on very pleasant terms. Let me tell you, if ever you want to buy yourself a `PC', then be sure to go to Dixons. The service is excellent!
Delivery was fixed for the following day, and I decided not to say anything to Mrs B. Such small surprises are the way in which I can compensate her, every now and then, for all the trouble I cause to her domestic routine. But when the doorbell rang downstairs and Mrs B went to answer, it sounded as if she might even send the delivery man away.
`What's in that box you're heaving?' she challenged him. `I hope it's no a pile o' books, for we have enough of them already.'
I'd reached the door by now, and the delivery man was placing the first carton on the floor. `That's the monitor,' he said.
The small surprise I'd planned for Mrs B hadn't yet passed from its apprehensive phase to the pleasurable. She said to me, `What monitor is this, then? Are you collecting school books now?'
I told her to be patient, and when the last of the three boxes had arrived and the door was closed, I informed Mrs B that her advice to me had been heeded, and from this day hence there need no longer be strewn across my desk a dozen books left open at a time.
`Well, there's some men'll think o' buying a computer, and they'll read every magazine and ask every friend for advice and visit ten shops for the best price; and there's others'll chust walk blithely into the very first place they find and take whatever they're offered, at a ridiculous price, and you know exactly which kind is you, Mr Mee.'
Despite these instinctive reservations I nevertheless could see that she was delighted.
`And when will we be boxing up all those dirty dusty books o' yours, if you won't be needing them?'
Clearly, Mrs B was getting carried away somewhat. I said we could think about that another time, and then she helped me take the computer's bits and pieces to my study.
Our correspondence, my dear friend, has never fought shy of digression, never felt the need to hurtle towards some conclusion, as if the ending alone were important, and what comes before merely an inconvenient delay. So many people nowadays, don't you think, are obsessed with arriving; yet we know that the true and final destination of us all is one which needs no hurrying. Even so, there are times when I feel I must summarize a little, sparing you certain details which can only detain you from some more profitable activity; and this is how I feel in relation to the day and a half I now spent trying to make my computer work. I shall not labour you with my frustrations, as I read and re—read the instructions, written in seven languages including a form of English which might as well have been Dutch. In fact, at one stage I realized that it really was the Dutch section I'd chanced to begin reading, and it was making a certain amount of sense to me, but this was only because I'd recited the relevant English passage so many times (concerning the insertion of keyboard connector C into serial port B, being careful not to force or bend the connecting pins) that it had become as drained of meaning as those poems we used to memorize at school. The foreign version I'd stumbled into at least gave me new words to accompany the pictures, and a fresh angle on things. But even when all the bits were finally hooked together, this was only the start of the true anguish.
`There's some men'll struggle for days on end and get themselves in a fankle wi' things they canna understand, and there's others'll chust phone the customer support number it's got written here on the guarantee.'
You can see why it's best for me to summarize. Where had my thoughts on Stevenson all flown away to? What about Rosier? All I could think about was my `boot drive', and something called `system configuration' which seemed to exist in a realm devoid of colour, shape, or even extension; a place, somewhere inside my stubborn computer, which Kant would surely have found worthy of analysis. The voice at customer support was called Dave, and showed little interest in the possibility that I'd been sold a machine which did not, after all, contain a copy of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding within its suspiciously lightweight components. He offered to send an engineer at a cost which he described as being very reasonable, considering; and which, in any case, I was in no position to refuse. I won't tell you what Mrs B thought about the engineer's rate when he left me the bill, having completed the job in less than fifteen minutes.
But at least my computer was working now, and I have managed to transport us a day and a half nearer to the present, when this letter, arriving at the sorrowful moment in which I began to write it, must surely end.
I started to `get the hang of things', and soon felt like an expert `net surfer'. You see how quickly the new language can be assimilated, even by so stubborn a mind as mine! A pleasant afternoon spent reading an amusing story called The Counterfeiters (an `on—line' discovery which had distracted me from the Virginibus Puerisque I was seeking), made me quite forget all about the Rosier mystery. The session also left me with a strange tiredness of the eyes, and I noticed that for several hours afterwards, white pages or walls had a curiously pinkish hue. Mrs B came in the evening, quite unexpectedly, in order to drop off some groceries. She gave one of her little screams when she saw me, and said I should consult an oculist, as my eyes were in a state which, she declared, was `no fit fae seein' oot frae'. I thanked her for her solicitousness, and returned to my computer after she'd left.
Since you are unfamiliar with the `World Wide Web', I should explain, parenthetically, that it resembles a library to the extent that it contains a colossal number of `pages', any one of which can be displayed on the computer screen; however, these are filed without any order whatsoever, unsorted and uncatalogued, and their content is rather different from the sort of thing which Margaret would be acquainted with. A great many consist of pictures, and a great many of these, I have discovered, show young women wearing little or no clothing, and indulging in various activities which can be of no possible interest to you or me. In fact, I first chanced on such material during my renewed `Rosier' search, when I `clicked' on an item and found it to be a `live video link' from someone's bedroom. How such things are possible I have no idea; certainly, if I'd known that the machine they sold me in Dixons contained, in addition to the books I was looking for, the contents of numerous strangers' houses, then I might have asked them whether something cheaper wouldn't suffice, for my machine clearly holds far more than I can have any need for, especially at my age.
But let me return to the `site' I mentioned, which purports to be `live video'. This at least was the title I saw at the top of the `page' on my screen, which showed a still photograph of an empty bed with the covers turned back. I was greatly perplexed by this. You see, I've always understood `video' to mean those large cassettes which young people hire from disagreeable outlets such as `Vista Rental', which several years ago came to supplant the fruit shop in Victoria Road; and I've furthermore assumed that these cassettes contain only the vapid adventures which it pleases the public to gawp at, in the comfortable seclusion of their homes. Clearly, the word `video' was being re—defined by computer usage, just like everything else. A moment's reflection reassured me that there was no abuse of language, as long as the word remained anchored to the sense of the Latin videre, which governs seeing, regardless of whether the object in view is a feature film of exploding motor cars, or an unoccupied bed with its covers turned back.
The fascination of the `site' I had found would be unfathomable to you, were it not for what happened next; for while the picture remained on my screen, it suddenly began to `refresh' itself, another new word I've picked up; and here I do suspect some improper usage, since I take the origin to be French, and concerned with the restoration of health or vigour through renewed sustenance, a word having only an extended metaphorical connection with the spontaneous recreation of the picture on my screen, rolling down before me like the view revealed on an unfolding banner, and showing a woman lying wholly naked. One moment there was an empty bed, the next I saw the motionless image of a young woman, unclothed, but reading a book as she lay there, propping her head with one hand while the other held the volume open to her view, and I was deeply intrigued that such a phenomenon could be called a `live video link'. By live, I understood that the event I was witnessing was happening at that very moment; and as for `link', this can't possibly be Latin, French or Greek. I assume there must be a Norse connection here, which we might pursue further at some other time.
You see, there were so many intriguing aspects to this phenomenon, that I abandoned the young lady on her bed, even before the picture could `refresh' itself once again, and I resorted to my friendly `search engine' in order to seek more examples of `live video'. In this way I was led to discover a truly fascinating site which displays the current activity of a street in Aberdeen, viewed from a security camera positioned outside a bank. Who would have guessed that such a world of detail could be bought in a little box (well, three boxes), for less than two and a half thousand pounds?
And so once more I had been led along a new path; what began as a search for the Xanthic sect had by now become a tour (which lasted for most of the night) of every `video link' I could discover.
Might it be that I myself was the subject of such a `site'? Were unknown people watching my own room on their computers; was my machine the means by which such images could be relayed, portraying to their curious audience nothing except an elderly gentleman who has forsaken his books in their locked cases, in favour of the glowing screen which now compels his attention? I doubted it, but I have no real idea how these `links' are produced, and shall have to pay another visit to the good people at Dixons some time, since I am sure they will be able to enlighten me.
Let me only state that after an extended perusal of the nocturnal activities of that street in Aberdeen (three people eating chips provided the highlight of a fascinating half hour), I returned to the place I'd started from. There was, after all, some connection, as yet to be discovered, between the unclothed woman and the mysterious Rosier, the search for whose name had led me into her bedroom.
I found the woman now lying on her back, the book still raised to view. Her pose upon the bed was rather unladylike, resembling that of childbirth, I believe. I might also mention that my serendipitous discovery of so many unclothed women inhabiting the `Internet' has been an educating experience; as well as being quite comfortable `scrolling' or `zooming' the image before me, I was also confident that the somewhat hirsute condition of the amply exposed pubes of this unknown woman is a common feature, if not a universal one; a fact whose discovery had at last clarified for me an anecdote which long puzzled me, concerning Ruskin's wedding night in Perth.
Of chief interest to me, naturally, was the book which the young lady was reading. I had to wait several times while the image `refreshed' itself (regretting on each occasion the inappropriate use of this word), until at last the reflections posed by the room's lighting moved themselves sufficiently for me to be able to read, on the glossy cover of the book, the words `Ferrand and Minard'; which of course meant nothing to me. It seemed, in the unnatural state of superfluous enthusiasm which, I have learned, is the typical condition produced by interaction with computers, that it might be interesting for me to try and locate this book. Thus was I led even further from my original intentions (my essay on Stevenson, you'll have noticed, has gone right out of the window in the meantime), and since the reader's image, perhaps due to some random clicking on my part, apparently intended now to refresh itself no further, I decided I could try and decipher the book's author later, once my eyes had returned themselves to their normal size. I went to lie down.
When I awoke, I found myself in the morning of the day on which I write, for at last I am reaching the terrible point and purpose of this letter to you. I had been woken by a sound in my study; the hour was late, and I saw that for the first time in more than twenty years I had overslept. The new world which the computer had brought to me, I realized, was one of late nights, strained eyes, and a curious headache whose strongly localized nature made me wonder whether there might not after all have been some truth in phrenology, and whether I had overstimulated the portion of the cerebrum, hitherto unused by me, which is reserved solely for the enjoyment of `live video links'.
What had woken me was a disturbance in my study; a noise which, in the confusion of half—sleep, I took to be an animal let loose and crying out. I put on my dressing gown and hastened to the scene. Mrs B was there. She was staring at the screen of the computer, which still showed the young lady reading a book in an attitude which, as I mentioned, was not particularly ladylike, and hence, I quickly deduced, somewhat offensive to Mrs B, who would no doubt have preferred the anonymous woman to have crossed her legs.
I'm hoping to locate this book, I began to say, pointing towards the part of the image that showed Ferrand and Minard held aloft before the reader's face, and finding that my finger was instead resting on a few `pixels' (as Ali had called them in Dixons) representing a nipple. Mrs B said nothing. She looked at the screen, then at me, then at the screen again, but all this to—ing and fro—ing must have hurt her eyes, for she now closed them. A certain degree of visual strain is a hazard to beware of, I began to explain, not wishing Mrs B to end up with a headache like mine, but the good woman merely gave her head a shake, her eyes still clenched like little fists upon her face, as if she neither wished to see nor hear anything, particularly if it issued from my direction. This precaution against a mild fatigue of vision seemed somewhat excessive. At last she managed to release her face from the unnatural rictus which had seized it (they told me nothing about such side—effects at Dixonsj, and began to say, `There's some men'll keep their secret habits to themselves for twenty—eight years, and there's others . . .' But it was too much for her, and the screen had irritated her eyes to such an extent that they were by now watering quite profusely. She left the room, I began to follow, but before I could even begin to descend the stairs in pursuit, hoping to suggest a remedy for the ocular strain she'd suffered, she'd reached the front door and was putting on her coat. She left without a word.
That's what happened this morning. As you can imagine, the hours which have passed since then have been very painful, and not only to my head which continues to ache in the region I overstimulated last night. The time for lunch has passed, and there still has been no sign of Mrs B. How I long for one of her delicious broths! There is no sign of her, no indication of whether she intends to come and clean she who declared four days of such attention to be inadequate for a man of my advanced years!
This, then, is the misery which has been brought upon me by a computer bought to please my housekeeper, and a mysterious encyclopaedia which seems more untraceable than ever. When you read this, who knows what other disasters might already have occurred, in a life thrown suddenly from its tranquil course? And are you any good with a hoover?
Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
1. Identify the three separate narrative strands that run through Mr. Mee, describing the characters, settings, goals, and conflicts that comprise each strand. How do these three stands relate to one another? Also, in your judgment, has author Andrew Crumey successfully interwoven these strands? Explains why or why not.
2. First and foremost, this is a comic novel. Name and locate the various types of comedy—
satire, farce, slapstick, parody, and so on—that appear in these pages. Which did you consider the most effective, and which the least? Defend your answers with references from the book.
3. What did you, as a reader, come to learn—over the course of this novel, in each of the three different narratives—about Jean-Bernard Roseir and his elusive Encyclopedia?
Why do you suppose the character of Rosier is never encountered directly? What other such "ghosts" are important to the direction or design of this novel?
4. Of the main characters in this book—Mr. Mee, Ferrand, Minard, and Dr. Petrie—at least two of them are avid readers and one of them, Petrie, is an author. Explain Petrie's unorthodox notions, as culled from Proust and elsewhere, on the complex relation between autobiography and fiction. How does these ideas inform his doctoral thesis (and book) entitled Ferrand and Minard? And how do such ideas inform Mr. Mee more generally? Finally, consider Mr. Mee as a piece of writing that is itself about writing—
both art and craft, impulse and creation, expression and communication, lie and truth.
5. In Chapter 11, the jovial and cubby 18th-century Parisian copyist known as Minard encounters another character who is known as Minard. Hoe do you (as a reader) explain this occurrence? Where and why does this meeting happen? And how does this scene fit in with the novel's thematic blurring of literary, historical, and personal identities? Also,
why do Ferrand and Minard keep insisting that "these are not [their] real names"?
Discuss the nature of selfhood as it is illustrated in Mr. Mee.
6. While trying to seduce his beloved Louisa, in Chapter 12, Dr. Petrie talks to the pretty young co-ed about his personal life (his wife, her job, their lack of children, etc.). In doing so, he is reminded of a similarity to the family life of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Louisa reply is brief but telling: "Yes. Back to Rousseau." Why does she mean by making this remark? Does it seem justified to you—or sarcastic, impatient, or the like?
Fully explain your view in light of Dr. Petrie's behavior.
7. As a group, explore the novel's manifold philosophical aspects. The syllogisms of
Aristotle, the paradoxes of Zeno, probability theory, and quantum physics are but a few of the actual philosophical concepts at least touched on in these pages. Explain these ideas, ciring outside research as necessary, and point out where and why the surface in the novel. Can you identify other such "real" constructs? What about the make-believe theories and philosophies running throughout Mr. Mee? What are these, and where do they show up?
8. One of the major themes in this book is the human mind's ongoing struggle between information and wisdom. Identify those phenomena in Mr. Mee (fictional, historical,
technological, or otherwise) which might symbolize information, and those which might stand for wisdom. How is this struggle framed and presented within the novel? And how,
if at all, is it resolved?
9. Several of the chapters in Mr. Mee are rendered as letters. As readers we can identify the author of these letters, but rarely do we know who exactly is reading them. Where else is this awkward, lopsided, and mysterious relationship discernible in the novel? Also,
discuss this book's properties as a literary labyrinth or textual jigsaw puzzle. Compare it with any other works you have encountered in this genre (such as those by Eco, Kundera,
Stoppard, Borges, and so on).
10. Describer the Epilogue of Mr. Mee. Who is narrating this passage, and when and where does it take place? How is each of the novel's three narratives changed and/or concluded by this ending? And how does the "Théâtrophone"device described in the Epilogue relate to the novel's information-versus-wisdom theme (especially as discussed earlier, in
question #5)?