The Infinite Matrix | Michael Swanwick & Francisco Goya | The Sleep Of

Reason 68

06.26.03

the sleep of reason

by Michael Swanwick

with illustrations by

Francisco JosÉ de Goya y Lucientes

Click image to enlarge

Digital image © copyright

Davison Art Center,

Wesleyan University

DAC permission required

for any other use.

68. [Plate 56]

The Great Wheel of the World

Life is like an enormous wheel, forever spinning. Here's how it works. A

young man is ambitious and clever and going nowhere. Then one day some

dark chthonic force grabs him by the ankles and shoves him to the top of

the pop charts. Everyone treats him like a king. There may be no solid

ground underfoot, but it certainly doesn't feel that way! It feels like

he's destined to live forever.

That's what happened to Richard. He'd fallen in love with theater - with

Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling and Beckett's Endgame - and decided

that was where his future lay. Or perhaps, since he could sing as well,

in Oklahoma or Thoroughly Modern Millie. He didn't care. Theater was

theater and that was that. Then, overnight, he became a celebrity. He was

famous.

For what? It hardly mattered. He didn't even know himself. He was too

dazzled by his good fortune to ask. Suddenly he was too big for Hollywood

Squares. Barbara Walters interviewed him. His agent told Saturday Night

Live to go fuck themselves. Richard was as hot as hot. Nothing was

forbidden him.

Twin fourteen-year-old hookers? For anyone else, it would be sick. For

you, sir, only your due. Heroin? As much as you want. Don't forget to

have your blood changed every six months. You want to get drunk and

wander into the lobby and piddle on the carpet? We'll keep it out of the

papers.

For a brief, blurred season, everything was bright lights, money, and

momentum. But then that same momentum plunged Richard downward with

sickening speed. He walked off the set midway through Jay Leno. His

accountant disappeared the same day he fired his agent, and he was

deluged with bills for things he had no memory of buying. Nobody would

return his calls. His movie deal collapsed. The public forgot him. His

dealer downgraded him to a cheaper line of skag.

Richard hit bottom fast. When the camera crew found him, only two years

later, he was living in a trailer camp and eating dog food out of the

can. He burst into tears at the thought of being seen like this. But so

burnt out, hopeless, and desperate for money was he, that for a pittance

Richard let them film his squalor and despair for a documentary on

washed-up has-beens.

Which, ironically enough, was how he became famous again.

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This is the 68th of 80 stories by Michael Swanwick written to accompany

Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos. For a listing of the most recently

available stories, go to The Sleep of Reason.

Eileen K. Gunn.

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