Researched, too well researched…

Jane

shut the heavy tome with a sigh,
falling back into the comfortable chair. Exhaustion

plagued her eyes,
leaking backwards into her brain, causing the room to unfocus. It

had
been almost two days now; she hadn?t been able to put it down.
It was gripping,

positively fascinating. Shed never come across
anything like it, at least not since

graduate school. Was it twelfth
century Italian? Jennifer, the student intern, was

supposed to see to
that, but she hadn?t answered her calls, hadn?t shown up to
work

for a week… Jane supposed she had dropped out like most
interns did, when they

realized that work out in the real world
without pay was no fun. ?fun?? she remembered

a
conversation with her aging mother, alone in a tiny cramped hospital
bed. ?why, i

cant seem to remember fun…? sure, she had
been senile, but, like certain children?s

truths, disturbingly
accurate.

The phone rang; it

was late. Who could
be calling at this hour? Her agent?s voice rang in her

ear,
wanting to know when he could expect another chapter. A violent
insomniac.

But, that was part of what made him one of the best.

?look, Jerry, i told you,

i?m going as fast as i can…?
she protested, listening to his squawking

insistence?s. It
wasn?t all his fault for being such a nag; the research seemed
to

have spread, taken on a life of its own. But the scholar in her
was louder than his

threats of abandonment: it wouldn?t let her
cut, it wouldn?t let her outline or

summarize. Perhaps it had
been stupid to attempt such a generalized topic. But

historical
revisionism was an important phenomena, she thought, possibly one of
the

most important for the twentieth century.

Reaching a

temporary truce, she hung up,
returning to the book. It was a kind of early medical

text, a
precursor to modern psychology. There were many occult references,
typical

of the time period. The interesting thing was that it dealt
with various forms of

psychosis. It was one thing for an
anthropologist to dig up old, dead bones but

another world entirely
for the anthropologist of culture. Psychology certainly had a

close
relationship with historical reclamation movements, especially in the
sixties

when leading feminists turned to Freud and Jung as
methodologists for a

quasi-empirical activist reclamation of a
historical minority. But the archaic

language of this text dealt with
astrological terms, and alchemical transformations…

it was
important not to interpret them too metaphorically. Rubbing her eyes,
she

glanced at the clock and yawned. Carefully storing the valuable
book in her locked

drawer, she turned the lights off. Her vision
played tricks on her, a ghost image of

the room floated in the
blackness. She blinked, annoyed, but it wouldn?t go away

until
she was in the bright hallway. She bid goodnight to the guard and
walked out

into the cool night air.

The light wind chilled her

as she
walked, looking for a taxi. She shivered, pulling her coat tighter
around

her. The words and images of the old Italian tome whirled in
her tired brain. She

frowned, annoyed. Why couldn?t she find a
taxi?? they were usually swarming around…

she checked her watch
again, she had forgotten how late it was.

Schnitzler ‘s Schnitzel

Publisher: Metapatter Press

Year Published: 1992

Bibliography Information and notes: “A fictional work detailing Austrian Author Arthur Schnitzle, whose work forms the basis for Stanely Kubricks last film, Eyes Wide Shut“