The dog who didn’t speak much (1/3)

A copyright scene investigation

To Louise, my Milky Way.

There’s one thing about this story that makes it true. You’re reading it, so it becomes true as you go. That’s funny and worrying for me. I’m a Copyright Scene Investigator, not a truth seeker. Bear in mind that this inquiry into the lore of writing is totally unfinished business. Every clue is pinned on the wall for everyone to see, from day one up till now. I can’t say if I or anyone else will ever close this case for good, so I can’t talk about it in the past tense yet. I’m simply trying to untangle a small piece of this mess today, something I can write hastily for future readers.

Before we go on, I should express my warmest thanks to the devoted and talented eyewitnesses still contributing to this day to our ongoing investigation. Without their relentless support, buoyant imagination, and unquenchable thirst for poetic justice, I would still be wondering if we’re always alone in our own mind.

Let’s start with me. It’s 1984 and I’m completing the final year of the playwriting program at the National Theatre School of Canada, in Montreal. Fiction is part of my everyday life. I won’t lie to you, I don’t know all its secrets, just enough to say that our brain feeds on stories like no other animal and that most of us are neglecting this basic, natural fact. Writing and writers make us see, feel, and do incredible things. It’s a dangerous game, though. Not for us. For them. There’s nothing that writers fear more than copyright infringement.

There are two sides to infringement. Being infringed upon is certainly bad enough for authors and publishers. Infringing on someone else’s work is terrifying because it can happen unconsciously, by a trick of the brain which gives you the impression that your inner voice sounds like it’s really yours. I call this the inspiration fallacy. Every year, countless authors still make this terrible mistake, so much so that insurance weeklies would go belly up fast if law journals could print the zaniest confessions that copyright attorneys are privileged to hear from the mouth of sobbing writers.

I’m toying with the idea of writing something awful about this common creative disorder but, as a penniless playwright, I find myself with even less opportunities before me. So, I apply for the position of archivist in a Montreal law firm. In the basement, no less. In the 80’s, people are printing faxes on thermal paper–a bad idea. After a few years, the ink starts to fade. I’m here to salvage everything from oblivion before it’s too late, so I make photocopies. I know, it’s totally useless, but I need the paycheck and I can read all day long.

So, here I am turning the last page of “The Hotel New Hampshire” (1981) by John Irving. You know the guy? He lives on Earth. You can meet him anytime down there. The novel is about the Berrys, an odd family, who buy a circus bear, then open a hotel in an old school. They go to Vienna for a while, then back to the States and the kids go through very distressing moments in their lives: rape, mourning, depression, suicide, incest, bombing, and the plot spills with fun and wit at every twist and turn.

That’s when I hear someone knocking at my door, the door that says Archives Room in the basement, and a girl’s voice asks for me by name.

“And you are?”

“Franny Berry.”

Absolutely no one ever comes down to the basement for me, ever, so she must be real, in a sense. As in, this is happening to me, no doubt, even if I don’t remember feeling overly creative a moment ago. I’m curious to see what comes next, so she steps through the door.

Simply put, Miss Berry is a nice-looking slender girl. What’s so special about her is that these few words strike a universal chord in everyone. She’s different and the same every time and everywhere. And as fast as a best-selling character can take off, she slips herself into my mind and finds that place I love most, deep within, and sits on my best armchair.

If this is not clearly infringing on my personal life, I don’t know what it is. Then, just to make sure that I know how smart she is, she blows up my cover.

“Your door sign, Copyright Scene Investigations, is this a real business or what?”

“I don’t do CSI for the taxman, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I need to find out where I come from. Can you do this for me?”

“Have you lost your copyright notice? It’s in there.”

“No, I’m afraid… I feel like my memory has been altered. My life looks like a huge déjà vu, all the time. I’ve seen shrinks, orphanages, the Missing Persons Bureau but nobody takes me seriously. I have no lineage, no ancestry, no credit history. For all they know, I don’t even exist. Who do they think they are? My name is Franny. I know who I am. I just don’t know where I come from.”

“No pun intended, you’re quite a character.”

“Shh, be careful. People who laugh at me risk falling out of windows.”

“Do you see any window down here? Now, tell me everything from the beginning.”

“Where to start? I’ve been read so many millions of times. This novel makes me dizzy, like spinning crazy. I turn in circles with Frank, John, Lilly and Egg, and no one seems to be bothered, except me.”

“Is there anything odd or peculiar to report, then?”

“Yes, like I said, I have this strong feeling that I don’t really belong to this family, the Berrys. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, for the most part, but it’s… as if I know that they are not my first family. I’ve been adopted or exchanged with a lost twin somewhere in this world. I’m not sure anymore. See what I mean?”

“Miss Berry, I can assure you, this is exactly what your character makes me feel throughout the book. A sensation of loss, the quest for identity… You know, it’s that kind of literature.”

“What kind?”

“Coming-of-age stuff… No offence, I like it. It shapes minds, societies, sometimes history.”

“Tell me, what do you think about our dog, the Labrador? My brother Frank thinks he’s a taxidermist and he goes out of his way to stuff the dog after it dies. What is this supposed to mean? Frank knows nothing about taxidermy, never stuffs anything else but one dog in the whole story, my dog. It comes totally out of the blue and if I ask him, he says it’s all he could do. He makes him do it, I tell you.”

“Who?”

“Irving, who else?”

“As a rule, I never let writers mess with my copyright investigations, and I urge you to do the same.”

“Don’t worry. No one knows I’m here.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure, miss.”

“And there’s this wrestling coach, the guru, Iowa Bob he’s called. My father tells us that he’s our grandfather, but how do I know for sure? He has a grip on us. Why is he there in the first place? Can’t we live without a soothsayer like him? I tell you, he knows nothing about the future. He’s from the past.”

“I see. What else can you say about the cast?”

“Frank is the eldest. He likes uniforms. John is the second-born. He’s the narrator, between Frank and me. I’m the third child and I’m always fighting with Frank because he’s a jerk. Don’t start me on him. Then there’s Lilly. She wants to be a writer, but she has trouble growing up, literally. I mean, physically. And the last in line is my little brother Egg. He dies with my mother in a plane crash in the middle of the story. And there’s a curse on us, you know. We’re all gifted kids, incredibly wise kids.”

Then she whispers in my ear.

“Do you plan to stay in this room all your life?”

What can I say? She can read my mind as easily as she would scan millions of readers to find a clue about her past. Why she couldn’t find any is beyond understanding. People don’t know, won’t tell, or can’t remember where Franny comes from. To add to her misfortune, she’s stuck in her young age forever. What does she bring to the table? Hurt feelings, a dog and a guru. How can I build a formal case of copyright infringement upon this? Based on the evidence at hand, which is flat none, the trail is dead cold.

“You can’t deny that I’m troubled,” she says.

To ease my mind, and hers, I put a call for witness testimony in the lonely-hearts column of the newspaper. For a few bucks a week, my message “Single White Female in Search of Same Sex Character for Potential Infringement” reads like “S.W.F. ISO S.S.C. for P.I.” If anyone can decipher the ad, we’re in business!

Three weeks later, the trail is still covered with thick ice. All I can do is resume my day job and do nothing, hoping that Lady Luck is working for me. And sure enough, she is, dear Miss Serendipity, in her mysterious ways. I find this voice message on my tape answering machine.

“A little birdie tells me that your time has come to read a novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Now, get your ass to the mail room, buddy… Beep!”

So, I do, and here’s the package in my hands. It’s a brown envelope with no return address. I open it and find a book with a note.

“My name is Angela Hoenikker. You are the first human being about to live this experience. Don’t spoil your luck, buddy.”

The book is a torn paperback edition of “Cat’s Cradle” (1963) priced at 15 cents. Kurt would love this! Such a good price means that it has been read hundreds of times before falling into my hands. And now, here’s this young Miss Angela and once again she despises her brother Franklin. He loves uniforms. There’s also Newt, their young brother who stops growing. He’s a painter. Oh, and they have a dog, too, a black Labrador. Interesting… Let me see… Where’s John? Well, well, John is the narrator, not a family member but he’s there in the cast anyway.

So, what happens to this bunch? According to John, they’re all bright and smart kids, the sons and daughter of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the many fathers of the atomic bomb during World War II. And because he can’t stop fathering things after the war, Dr. Hoenikker discovers one day that water molecules can take a new crystalline form at room temperature. He calls it Ice-9, and this ushers the world into the Cold War era.

See, a tiny piece of ordinary ice crystal can turn a glass of super-cooled water into a chunk of ice almost instantly. Ice-9 can do that at room temperature, meaning that everything water-based, like earthlings such as you and me, would freeze instantly on simple contact.

Science can be so chill sometimes.

And guess what? The Labrador is its first victim. The poor thing licks a speck of Ice-9 on the kitchen floor and–click–it’s frozen stiff like a Polaroid. The Berry’s dog was stuffed. This one is stiff. Both as still as gloomy bookends glaring at eternity.

So, Angela is right, the Berrys share a strong family resemblance with the Hoenikkers. How does she know this? It’s a mystery. I’m so stunned that I dive into a second reading of “The Hotel New Hampshire” with my new “Cat’s Cradle” goggles. Everything takes on a new meaning. There’s more to it than I can tell here. Try it at home someday. I mean it. Everybody can personally experience how Irving rewrites Vonnegut’s book and makes a totally new story from the same key elements.

The novels end quite differently, though. In “Cat’s Cradle”, Angela’s world is destroyed when a chunk of Ice-9 reaches the ocean and everything on Earth freezes to death. In “The Hotel New Hampshire”, Franny takes a winter walk on the seafront and everything seems fine with her, until the next reader takes her back for a ride.

A 3-part series:

Part 1/3: A copyright scene investigation

Part 2/3: More family games for rainy days

Part 3/3: The Salinger code