The Drivler is an interesting figure. He cuts a swath, as one might say. He is not me. I think that's important. Not that I'm above coming up with alter egos and making websites for those alter egos, it's just that I didn't. The Drivler was, however, the best man at my wedding and I figure that gives me some leeway so as to describe what happenned to him.
Let me start by saying that Driv is one of the smartest people I've ever met. That's true. But he's also sort of the craziest. You'd never know. He's managed to erect a personality, a mask if you will, that covers up those crazy moments so that when he's at his worst, there would be no way to tell unless, like me, you were allowed brief glimpses behind the charade into the boiling ego of what-have-you. I'd say self doubt, but that so barely cuts it.
In any case, this drive to failure and self criticism was driven to excess by the once a semester requirement that he write a twenty page paper, and it was this pressure that finally did his academic career in. He simply could not write the paper. No idea was ingenious enough, it all smacked of banality, there was nothing to it, etc..
Tangentially, one summer, Herr Drivler announced that he would be reading Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. But of course, before he read that work, he ought to familiarize himself with Goethe's Faust. And before reading that, well...Marlowe. But of course, Marlowe didn't come up with the tale. There were older more provential sources, and the Drivler planned on reading those first, along, of course, with all the biblical sources necessary to fully understand the cultural, spiritual, and material meanings behind a deal with the devil.
He never got to Mann's Doctor Faustus as far as I know, and if he did, I am willing to bet that he did not skip a single intermediary step.
That's what the Drivler did. He could quote from Seneca. Who the hell quotes from Seneca? But somehow, the choice of the "right" quote was killing him.
So, he dropped out. He got a job. He worked as a temp among people with third grade educations. He slipped out of the system as quickly and quietly as he could.
Now, what does he do? He schedules trucking routes for a furniture delivery place and no one there has any idea what lurks within their midst. He is probably the smartest person in the town where he works, if not the entire state, but that doesn't really matter. He fills out charts, he schedules routes, he takes phone calls and fills out paperwork.
Look, I'm not Ginsberg here. This is not a "I've seen the greatest minds of my generation..." sort of moment. If the Drivler hadn't slipped out, I am sure that he would not be here today. It's as simple as that, but still, there's something about it that I, to this day, can't get my mind around. I want to be happy for him, and I am, but there's something distresing about the fact that he's filling out TPS reports.
Or maybe it's the fact that even after a year of having his brain leeched out in such work, he's still getting more out of what he reads than I do.
Oh yeah, and he's become daoist...or maybe he was daoist and now he's just willing to take the laughter. I'm not really sure.
