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he purpose of the morning edition is to provide the fodder for evening small talk. This latest innovation in modern man’s arsenal of banality is intended to lift from Adam’s brow the heavy burden of contemplation in a universe whose most conspicuous characteristic is complexity and whose most discernible riddle is consciousness. It should therefore come as no surprise that news of the disappearance of the abstruse academic, Professor Walter J. Manville, covered in the graying columns of grim Thursday, was buried beneath the pages of Friday’s prostitution plot. It was completely forgotten by sunny, shimmering Saturday, high seventy-five. Now, a sparse year later, he has been tacitly announced dead by the Discourse Department that quietly scrubbed its office clean of his memory and delivered his delinquent property to the doorstep of yours truly, his only professional successor and, consequently, his only academic adversary.

I am thus faced with the impossible task of edifying the legacy of the man who refused edification, who considered the written word to be the harbor of humanity’s ills, who thought himself the forbear of an ideology capable of transcending the biological confines of mortality, who abhorred obituaries, who seemed ghostlike even before he disappeared into the April dusk, who I am obliged to call the seasoned master of my juvenile discipline, who became my greatest adult rival, who was said to be, “the most divisive figure of contemporary thought,” and who had, by all recent accounts, gone insane: Manville.

Little is known about Manville’s early years, which is either an indication of the rigor the professor employed in suppressing the facts surrounding the origin of his enigmatic persona, or the aim of the Luftwaffe pilot responsible for bombing his childhood home. It was then that his birth records went up in flames, along with a spotted cat named “Pumpkin,” according to his neighbor Ms. Smits, interviewed for the documentary Manville. The film only succeeded in enshrouding the man in more mystery—not one photograph was shown of his physical person in all ninety minutes.

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ven less is known of his university education. Manville appeared as if from nowhere into the upper echelons of academia as a doctoral candidate, descending on the small village of Princeton where he was a regular at 112 Mercer Street after meeting its famous resident in a local ice cream parlor. Einstein must have seen himself in the broodingly brilliant young buck, as interested as he was in discovering the Theory of Everything. Of course, the main difference between the two was that Einstein failed where Manville succeeded. Newton’s successor comically failed to explain everything in an edible equation, tragically falling victim to the obscurity he sought to apprehend.

Was it then, after the April death of his predecessor that Manville first discovered The Disappearance of Walter J. Manville, Ph.D Rebecca Spalding Illustrated by Maryn Carlson In 2004, the NYT published Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74 shorts 5 the philosophy that would make him famous, an ideology that he claimed capable of transcending the confines of animal existence? It has been surmised, though scholars cannot be certain. Manville notoriously did not write a word throughout the entirety of his career, but elected only to speak in enigmatic fragments to the few followers he allowed in his presence (myself included), the most famous of which was, “I am that I am,” first uttered June 14, 1973.

Manville never made a single public appearance. Instead, he relied on myself and other disciples to disseminate his ideas to the uninitiated. Needless to say, this was an extremely difficult task. Mr. Manville did not believe in summaries, writing, or representation. But I will now attempt to summarize his doctrine for the sake of those insisting on the obituary’s obligation to offer a onesentence reduction of a lifetime’s body of thought. He cited that the true divinity of the human spirit grew stale within the limits of a lettered cage. Divinity was what Manville sought, after all. His followers insist his teachings are indeed the means of transcending the material world.

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he validity of Manville’s doctrine has been called into question since its appearance and, more recently, since his personal disappearance and presumed death. In the words of critic Barbara McCarthy, “it is twice as illogical to believe that an immortal could die as it is to believe a human could become immortal via a poppycock philosophy.” Many share her low estimation of the man, finding him to be the very embodiment of a school of thought that undermines the pillars of classical education. Mr. Manville once commented on the phenomenon, saying, “A prophet is not without honor but in his own time, among his own kin, in his own house.”

I was his most ardent follower until our famous falling out two years ago. It was then that I left my duties as his public liaison and personal confidante in order to publish my first book containing all his teachings, written down word for word. “The Betrayal of the Millennium,” read the headline of The Journal, known for making hyperbolic claims. They were, however, correct in saying that Manville was my greatest adversary. But what scholar must not do violence to what came before in order to erect his own philosophy? With no one to proselytize his doctrine, Manville languished in obscurity before his disappearance eleven months and fifteen days ago.

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efore I conclude, I feel it pressing to respond to the libelous claims that I created Walter J. Manville many years ago, and have since been disseminating the negative conception of human divinity central to his, and thus my own, philosophy—if I am to be presumed his Creator. Were it true, I would be the author of the secondgreatest fiction ever devised, a title I would not easily deny if it had any validity. Even more absurd are the claims that the man is not dead but has instead withdrawn from the world. To these believers I say that there is no doubt in my mind that the rotting body of Walter J. Manville will soon be found by law enforcement, perhaps behind a boulder in some distant cave where he sought refuge as a hermit in the last days of his earthly life.

R.C.S. April 7, 1985