The Old Man And The Wormhole: A Review
The Old Man And The Wormhole: A Review
This story represents the basic existential angst that infiltrates the late 20th century American conscience. Note the theme of the threatening stranger who goes unrecognized by the innocent old man, obviously an analogue for Uncle Sam, the perennial archetypal figure so beloved of editorial cartoonists and poster collectors. He invites the "wormhole", which is here strangely personalized, although it is a science fiction concept. A wormhole is a "hole" in the structure of the universe, which the old man invites inside, and then it proceeds to, as the author puts it, "beat him senseless."
On one level of course this is an Aesop-type tale, telling us, "Beware of strangers." But on another level, it could well represent a warning to the voters who elected Republicans to the House and Senate, a message of distrust; the Republicans, of course, being the wormhole, and as we pointed out before, the old man representing the United States via the imagery of Uncle Sam. The old man's offer of baking chocolate, which is basically inedible, points up the utter impossibility of communication with Congress. Congress does not want baking chocolate; they want, instead, to beat America senseless.
Yes, "The Old Man And The Wormhole" is a tale cruelly told, but someone needed to have told it. It is Kafkaesque in its inimitably challenging angst. By God, when I read something like this, something stirs in my soul and shouts, "LITERATURE IS NOT YET DEAD IN THIS COUNTRY!!"2
The Old Man and the Wormhole is an exemplary surrealist work. As such, it can be examined from multiple angles. One way to look at this is as a surrealist piece which contains its own review. The original story about the old man and the wormhole is full of bizarre events, irrelevant dialogue, and questionable imagery. Why would the old man mistake an eyeball for a hat? Alternately, why would the wormhole claim that his hat was really his left eyeball? How has a wormhole come to be walking in the woods and speaking to an old man? Why the offer of baking chocolate? "Happy Dog Potatohead" supplies a rather astute analysis of these questions, providing several possible answers that shape the allegory from a nonsensical blathering into an understandable tale with a direction and a moral. Of course, as even he himself points out, his is not the only...