Lost in the Cosmos

ever.
    Wednesday. The ex-Premier of France, General de Gaulle, has died and the President of the United States attends his funeral. He looks very solemn and dignified sitting in Notre Dame cathedral. Later he confides to an aide that he enjoys state funerals more than anything he does in Washington or even Camp David because he can relax and let his mind go blank and yet be admired for paying his respects and taking so much trouble when all he has to do is look solemn. And also because there is de Gaulle dead as a duck and here I am alive and kicking.
    Questions: Imagine yourself in a place most familiar to you and therefore most nugatory; e.g., standing on the platform of the commuter station at 8:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning waiting for the 8:05 to New York. Or walking across your front yard in Montclair for the eight thousandth time to pick up the morning paper.
    Now imagine that in these circumstances you receive a piece of news, either by way of a newspaper headline, by word of mouth from a neighbor, or perhaps by overhearing a radio bulletin from a black youth carrying a Sony CF-520.
    In each instance of news, check the correct answer. Hint: Use as your guide your altered perception of your surroundings and any change in mood—e.g., whether, as a result of hearing the news, your front yard becomes visible for the first time since you moved in, or whether it becomes more nugatory than usual; whether your usual morning depression deepens or lifts.
    There are four possible answers: (a) The news is unrelievedly bad. (b) The news is putatively bad, that is, news which by all criteria should be bad but in which you nevertheless take a certain comfort. (c) The news is unrelievedly good. (d) The news is putatively good, that is, news which by all criteria ought to be good but which you find secretly depressing.
    (1) News bulletin: A UFO has landed in Nebraska and vaporized Omaha. This news is for you
    (a) Unrelievedly bad: After all, there is nothing good about the loss of several hundred thousand people.
    (b) Putatively bad but secretly not so bad: I don’t know anybody in Omaha and there is something extremely interesting about an authenticated UFO visitation—which I had never really credited until now.
    ( CHECK ONE )

    (2) While you stand at the paper-tube reading the morning headlines, a highly localized yet extremely violent tornado descends upon your house, carrying it aloft and away like Judy Garland’s house in The Wizard of Oz. Your wife is in the house. Nothing is ever heard again of the house or your wife.
    This event is
    (a) Unrelievedly bad news: You love your wife. She is a good woman, your companion and helpmate for these twenty years. Your house, moreover, is underinsured.
    (b) Putatively bad news: All the above is true enough, yet if the entire truth be known, your wife is also a shrew; you are sick to death of her, the house, your job, and your life. Since your wife has vanished through no fault of yours, cannot indeed have suffered much, whatever her fate, could indeed have been set down in a new place and a new life of her own like Judy, you are free to begin a new life without guilt.
    ( CHECK ONE )

    (3) You are a woman whose husband has taken early retirement. He is a decent fellow, a combat veteran of Korea, and has been a good provider for thirty years. Money is no problem. Now, even though he is seriously overweight, all he does is sit around your pleasant Lake Wales house polishing off six-packs and watching golf, the NBA and NFL on TV. For months he goes without touching you and hardly speaking. Or he’ll have spells of satyriasis when he’ll want to have beery sex twice a night. What do you want? (What do women want?) You want to take a cathedral tour of Europe, or a leisurely barge voyage through the canals of France, stopping off at quaint French villages, or a cuisine tour through the vineyards and kitchens of the Loire Valley. Or visit the Galapagos Islands with your local Audubon Society. He won’t go. Why do I want to look at a bunch of turtles? What does he want? He wants to go to Vegas to catch Wayne Newton and Liberace, or to Augusta to follow Nicklaus. You won’t go. Yet you don’t feel free to go off without him—you have duties as a housewife.
    So one day you pick up a brochure from a travel agency in Orlando about a thatched-roof-cottage tour of England and a hot-air balloon ride down the Loire Valley and get in your car and start home. From the radio comes news of