The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [253]
If only we could! If only we could spare ourselves from all our suffering, from all our knowledge of death. If only we could spare the earth all our desecration. And, yes, I know we would also discard a lot of beauty and music and greatness and joy and blah blah blah and so on. Beware! That’s how you get hooked! That’s what seduces you!—what seduced me! Beware, you little fish!
Who, though—who among the host of devils could fault that sea creature of many years ago for gazing out through the mediary muck of its existence upon that muddy bank and open air and sunshine, and innocently wondering what beauty and music and greatness and joy might lie in wait up there? There, there would this monster make a man.
So go ahead, you stupid fish, you silent-minded monster. Crawl up out of the water. See what is up there. There may be some profit in it, after all. As I, Bruno, would like to say to the whole world, to scream and rattle up and down the Great Chain of Being from the simplest life-forms all the way to the upper links where the angels crowd around the heavenly throne with wings beating and mouths open wide in glorious song, but especially, especially to humankind, to this animal, man, who thinks he is the measure of all things: you taught me language, and my profit on it is, I know how to curse.
Acknowledgments
The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore would not exist without the gracious support of its allies. To my agent, Brian DeFiore, thank you for recognizing the potential of this freak show of a novel, and for your spectacular job of shaping it up and selling it; and enormous thanks to my editor, Cary Goldstein, for his tremendous enthusiasm for this book and his careful, incisive edits.
Thank you to the University of Iowa Provost’s Fellowship and the Michener-Copernicus Society of America, and thanks to the fantastic teachers who helped me evolve as a writer: Brian Morton, Paul Lisicky, Brooke Stevens, Ethan Canin, and especially Edward Carey and Lan Samantha Chang, who held this book when it was just a baby.
Particular thanks to Jonathan Ames—the first person to read this whole thing straight through in the scattershot and inchoate state it was in at the time—for being an early advocate of Bruno’s, and for his continued friendship and support further along.
Infinite love and thanks to my parents, Charley and Leigh—who raised me in a house full of books, and who for better or worse made me who I am—and to my brothers, James and John.
Special shout-outs to Jim Mattson, Nimo Johnson, Kate “Hunter Hero” Sachs, Sergei Tsimberov, Roman Skaskiw, Kevin Holden, Andre Perry, Diana Thow, Cara Ellis, Andres Restrepo, John Benjamin, Sam Cooper, Graham Webster, Colin Heintze, Sarah Heyward, Jenny Zhang, Anthony Swofford, Sam Seigle, Gwenda-lin Grewal, and überthanks to Chris Wiley for his unflagging friendship, his apartment, a humdinger of a celebratory dinner, and countless other good turns.
Anna North, I cannot ever thank you enough.
Rock over London, rock on, Chicago.
Thanks to the Great Ape Trust and William Fields for his generous help with my research, and, with Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Duane Rumbaugh, for continuing the fascinating and important pursuit of ape language research.
And thanks to Jane Goodall, who, when I was a teenager, I heard say, “All living things on this planet are far, far closer together than they are apart.”
Great apes are in serious danger. It will be an unforgivable shame on our species if we allow this vital window into understanding ourselves to close forever. To learn about nonfictional ape language research and to support great ape habitat conservation, I urge you to visit www.greatapetrust.org.
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