Western and this car is the horse. “The voices are telling me not to park in the garage tonight,” he intones after an earth tremor that shakes the Hamblin right down to the beams of the underground garage. He’s not worrying about the building falling on him, he’s worrying about it falling on the car. The “voices” are always talking to Ventura, telling him what’s transpiring in far reaches of the universe. “The voices,” I say, “are telling you that you worry too much about your car.”
“That’s not what they’re telling me.”
“That’s what they’re telling me.”
“My voices are talking to you about my car?”
“Yes.”
“No they aren’t.”
“Yes. They’ve told me to tell you that they’re tired of hearing about your fucking car.”
“They’re not saying that. Maybe they’re talking about your car.”
“My voices don’t talk to me about my car. My voices have more important things to talk to me about than my car.”
“Your voices don’t talk to you at all,” Ventura retorts. “You haven’t been on speaking terms with your voices since you were toilet-trained.” The voices are a big thing with Ventura. When he founded the newspaper he found himself in the inky placenta of its birth, as both a man and writer; the two have become intertwined ever since. He likes to think of himself as some kind of living local legend, which is total megalomania of course—except maybe not total because, on some level, though I’d never tell him this and would probably have to kill anyone who did, he is a bit of a legend. He’s one of the few people about whom you could coin the word Venturaesque —though I always thought Venturian had a nicer ring to it—and make it sound … well, I was going to say legendary, but that would be positively Venturaesque. “See this?” he says, pointing at something on the refrigerator.
It’s a clipping of an article he saw on page twenty-six in this mornings paper, a couple of hundred words about some volcano that went off in Bora Bora and displaced the shoreline three thirty-seconds of a millimeter, according to some scientific study. But what those scientists aren’t telling us, Ventura explains, his mouth just beginning to turn up in its familiar crazed grin, is that a three-thirty-second millimeter rise in the ocean tides off Bora Bora throws the entire seismic gyrations of the Pacific Rim completely out of whack, and … and by the time Ventura’s done he’s got the earth splitting open and everyone tumbling into fiery crevices and swallowed up in craters the size of Long Beach—people, animals, buildings, bad movie producers who cheated him out of twenty-five hundred dollars years ago, everything except his damn car which is a totem of the cosmos and our only chance at salvation. What is Venturaesque about this planetary exegesis is not the inevitable apocalypse of Ventura’s speculations but the absolute glee with which he recounts it; in his heart Ventura believes the human race is too arrogant and fucked up to go on surviving with impunity. He can’t wait for all of us to be put in our place, wherever that happens to be.
In the end, however, no matter how many years go by or where they take us, my friendship with Ventura remains in its place, where we were at the beginning. When I was a nobody in this town, a writer barely on anyone’s consciousness, Ventura, the most famous critic in the city, reviewed my first book. It was not only one of the smartest reviews I ever got, which anyone would have expected, it was also the most generous, at a time when he hadn’t a thing in the world to gain by building up a potential rival. His intellectual integrity simply demanded that he do it. He has renewed the generosity over and over, time and again, and I don’t know anyone—once you get past all the mystic tough-guy posturing—better-hearted, or anyone—once he’s cornered with no escape—who will laugh harder at the puncturing of his
“That’s not what they’re telling me.”
“That’s what they’re telling me.”
“My voices are talking to you about my car?”
“Yes.”
“No they aren’t.”
“Yes. They’ve told me to tell you that they’re tired of hearing about your fucking car.”
“They’re not saying that. Maybe they’re talking about your car.”
“My voices don’t talk to me about my car. My voices have more important things to talk to me about than my car.”
“Your voices don’t talk to you at all,” Ventura retorts. “You haven’t been on speaking terms with your voices since you were toilet-trained.” The voices are a big thing with Ventura. When he founded the newspaper he found himself in the inky placenta of its birth, as both a man and writer; the two have become intertwined ever since. He likes to think of himself as some kind of living local legend, which is total megalomania of course—except maybe not total because, on some level, though I’d never tell him this and would probably have to kill anyone who did, he is a bit of a legend. He’s one of the few people about whom you could coin the word Venturaesque —though I always thought Venturian had a nicer ring to it—and make it sound … well, I was going to say legendary, but that would be positively Venturaesque. “See this?” he says, pointing at something on the refrigerator.
It’s a clipping of an article he saw on page twenty-six in this mornings paper, a couple of hundred words about some volcano that went off in Bora Bora and displaced the shoreline three thirty-seconds of a millimeter, according to some scientific study. But what those scientists aren’t telling us, Ventura explains, his mouth just beginning to turn up in its familiar crazed grin, is that a three-thirty-second millimeter rise in the ocean tides off Bora Bora throws the entire seismic gyrations of the Pacific Rim completely out of whack, and … and by the time Ventura’s done he’s got the earth splitting open and everyone tumbling into fiery crevices and swallowed up in craters the size of Long Beach—people, animals, buildings, bad movie producers who cheated him out of twenty-five hundred dollars years ago, everything except his damn car which is a totem of the cosmos and our only chance at salvation. What is Venturaesque about this planetary exegesis is not the inevitable apocalypse of Ventura’s speculations but the absolute glee with which he recounts it; in his heart Ventura believes the human race is too arrogant and fucked up to go on surviving with impunity. He can’t wait for all of us to be put in our place, wherever that happens to be.
In the end, however, no matter how many years go by or where they take us, my friendship with Ventura remains in its place, where we were at the beginning. When I was a nobody in this town, a writer barely on anyone’s consciousness, Ventura, the most famous critic in the city, reviewed my first book. It was not only one of the smartest reviews I ever got, which anyone would have expected, it was also the most generous, at a time when he hadn’t a thing in the world to gain by building up a potential rival. His intellectual integrity simply demanded that he do it. He has renewed the generosity over and over, time and again, and I don’t know anyone—once you get past all the mystic tough-guy posturing—better-hearted, or anyone—once he’s cornered with no escape—who will laugh harder at the puncturing of his
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