The Complete History if Adam Panflick is a work in progress. Eight books of ten to fifteen chapters each have been completed, covering 19th Century and early 20th century suppositions up through the tumultuous 1960s. These are Kindle books. I create them solo. Inevitably, they lack the final polish one might expect in a completed work. But they also are free of the constraints of editorial interference. The following is an excerpt from Chapter One of Book Three. It is set in Manhattan in the early 1940s. It is self-explanatory.
Book Three — Chapter One Parousia is a
Bust, Adam Is Scarred for Life , Manhattan
Were this a symphony, I think it would
have two themes when it reached the period covered by the present book. It
would have a dogged theme, almost Stakhanovite, a Moldau shorn of trills and
evocations of sweetness, fluidity and light. That would be Mildred and Melchezedek
forging ahead in the realm of acquisitions, building and generally doing their
thing, if one may borrow a phrase from a later generation. Then there would be
something from Beethoven, dark, ominous, yet beautiful in its pathos and
infused by moments of hope and peace. Dark and ominous would apply to Parousia Academy
While this does not explain all of
Adam’s difficulties, Parousia was nothing like Quincy Quincy Quincy Quincy Quincy Quincy
I will not burden you with an extended
narrative. Let it simply be said that Parousia and Adam did not agree. And his
response was not optimal. He did not respond much at all. He was an
Oblomov-like presence whose preference needed no voice. Under the eyes of
various teachers, his penmanship declined from adequate to abysmal. His
aptitude for mathematics went from barely present to nonexistent. It was many
decades before Adam conceded that mathematics is finite, a language only and
therefore something to be played with. He never ceased to believe that two and
two do not always equal four.
Some may think Adam had a learning
disorder. But I conclude that he was in fact a stellar learner. He simply could
not concentrate on processes and procedures that made no immediate sense to
him. He would commence an exercise involving the use of his pencil to write
words and become engrossed in eating the pencil point. He would be asked to listen
to a disquisition and end up looking at the teachers’ facial expressions.
Instead of listening to what was being said, he would listen to sounds of
heating systems, distant horns, far off voices. Instead of looking at the
blackboard, he would bring up images of Sinicock or the long road up the hill
to the Panflick’s half-built home in Pickinsboro. Instead of looking at the
open book underneath his nose, his inner eye would settle on the corner of the
maid’s room where he lived, with its little sink and single window looking out
into a gray gloom.
