The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [143]
—For whom did you write the reports?—
“They’re not addressed to anyone—nobody is gonna read them.”
—I read them, and Miss Anderson reads them.—
“I don’t believe it. Nobody reads them now—fifteen thousand, twenty-five thousand years from now or maybe longer, they will bring out the old reports and make corrections. They will need these reports to know what was going on here.”
—They are not supposed to be read now?—
“It’s a record—to be put away.”
What I have aimed in this writing is to obtain the values of the classics and of the authors. This is psychologically speaking, so I can also make a usability for the values of the world. These writings are not a history of literature by all means; they are simply a work for my usability—a work for the usability of the world, a work for the honest workers of the world, for I am God and I have engineered to beat the enemies for the betterment of the world.
Joseph has copied the titles of forty-six volumes of detective stories, giving resumés and quotations from nearly every volume. On the back of many of the pages of this forty-one-page report he has done extensive “doodling”—thousands of dots that fill up every bit of the paper, from top to bottom, and from margin to margin.
This report must be read on the whole in order to understand it. One must say that the copying of the detective books was so enticing for beating the enemies that I, the writer of this report, Joseph Cassel, continue to copy more books, to beat the enemies. …
And the next shelf, coming down, has foreign books of German and Latin and French. There are about 200 books in this book case.
This bookcase has 243 books. It is supposed to be of philosophy, religion, social sciences, etceteraes. It has some books on religion, all right, maybe one on philosophy, some on politics, the rest are of general subjects.
In this library, there are approximately 3,900 books.
In announcing our impending departure, we had been deliberately vague about what would happen after we were gone. We hoped to keep track, through other hospital personnel, of what the three men would do on their own initiative. As the time for our departure drew closer, a related, supplementary theme emerged in Joseph’s voluminous reports. He showed an increasing concern with the conduct of future meetings without us.
The meeting is being held, every day, with Miss Anderson in charge, and Dr. Rokeage comes at the meeting 2 times a week, but on Saturday and Sunday, Miss Anderson does not attend the meeting, thus I have to make a report on the day she does not show up. There are 3 patients who attend the meetings daily and they are R. I. Dung, Clyde Benson, and myself. The meeting is for the purpose of meeting, symbolically speaking, for the right meetings in the world.
But with us gone, Joseph wondered apprehensively, who would keep the meetings going, who would keep track of the lists, and write the reports? And, most important, who would get the credit for writing them? There were not only the long-dead enemies who had stolen his values but also two live ones to be reckoned with.
For quite a while I have written these reports and I have been the only one who has worked for the subjects. Thus the reports on the books are solely my work. But the two fellows I am working with are sickly and they have shoved to me bad illiterary effects—all kinds of bad effects. They attend the meetings with me every day, and one of them might have taken the list of classics, for all I know. Their names are R. I. Dung, and Clyde Benson. We sleep adjacent to each other and we eat together in the same room.
I, Joseph Cassel, also God, have for quite some time written the meeting reports. I have withal copied all of the books which are listed in the reports … I have done this alone. I have also instigated the meetings; I have to see that the meetings are held, especially when Miss Anderson and Dr. Rokeage are not showing up.
It must be known that the two other fellows, R. I. Dung and Clyde Benson have made reports,