Cyberpunk

‘Hmmm, why, I think I’ll just allude to Buster Keaton, that ought to make the eggheads cream their panties.’ Tell you the truth, I never saw Buster Keaton when I was coming up because I was too busy busting my chops trying to entertain you people. Never saw Buster Keaton until a couple of years ago and then when I did I didn’t see anything I thought was all that great.”
    “I didn’t mean to suggest that your work was in any way derivative—”
    “Keaton ever do a show about a crab living in a human family?”
    I was silent.
    “I’m asking you because I want to know. You seem familiar with Keaton’s work, so I’m putting the question to you in great sincerity. Anything with a crab?”
    “No.”
    “Right, that’s what I figured. My material is entirely my own. I came to it the same way maybe your precious Keaton or Vigoda came by their own—pure suffering, forged into something of value to others, like crushing a coal into a diamond, at great cost of effort and personal sacrifice, a process you wouldn’t know too much about since everything to you is just a big pile of slippery postmodern allusions and references with no soul to speak of, not even any notion that it might be missing one, that there might be something to mourn the loss of—a soul, I mean.”
    I knew it was not my place to defend myself, here—to point out that it was precisely that essence of existential suffering, or soul, if he preferred that term, which had drawn me to his work, made me seek for a description for how such an uncanny and timeless thing had broken out in the vacuous, tinselly environs of network situation comedy. Even as he berated me he was inviting me inside, it appeared to me. My task was to selflessly accept that invitation.
    “You say your material is entirely your own. That suffering and sacrifice you speak of lies so close to the surface of your humor. How close were the Foorcums to a portrait of your own family?”
    “What are you, like the one guy in the United States with no Google?”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “I’ve said a thousand times if I’ve said it once: I haven’t spoken about—or to—my family in over forty years. What makes you think I’m about to sing for you? What was your name, Lehman?”
    “Lethem.”
    “Mr. Lethem, with all respect, go fart on a Wheat Thin. What makes you think today’s the day some kid sashays in here and I’m just suddenly in the mood to break my silence for you on a whim, when I wouldn’t even sing for that fucker Larry King? Even if I wanted to, my lawyers wouldn’t let me. Every single person who ever knew me in that shitheel town has tried to sue me at some point, let alone the members of my beloved goddamn family. Rule one: We speak of the Foorcums as the Foorcums alone, or this is O-V-E-R.”
    “The Foorcums, then. Are you in touch with Richard Drimpet and Joan Cranewood-Freehan, who played your on-screen parents?”
    “These are your questions?” The crab scratched with a single leg against the tile in one direction repeatedly, away from his body, as if trying to strike a match or dislodge something stuck to a foot. His claws, though, lay totally inert, draped before him. “Drimpet and I were off speaking terms by season three, another item you could’ve peeled off a fan site. Joan used to call me from time to time. She tried to get me to do a guest appearance on that Snowbirds show, kept pestering me to come on. But what am I going to say to a bunch of old ladies in a mobile home, you know? ‘Follow the sun, chickadees! You haven’t got that long to live!’”
    “Was it difficult between you and Reg Loud? His embodiment of Feary Foorcum was so memorable, but the two of you were pitted against one another continuously throughout the show. And his behavior after the cancellation was rather bitter.” I hoped the crab could follow my leads without having to take offense. Reg Loud had, of course, been jailed for narcotics possession several times after his difficult child-stardom found its nadir in the years following Crab House Days . For the crab, I could only assume the ferocity of the character’s portrayal of his brother, combined with the young actor’s very public woes, resonated deeply with ancient, real-life traumas. I was still circling what seemed to me the main, and perhaps tenderest subject, of Delia Watertree, who’d played Pansy Foorcum.
    “Difficult? The opposite. Sometimes in this crazy fucked-up world of show business you