The Monster at the End of This Essay
11
afterwards.. . . [TJhere is no human nature because there is no
God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. . . . This may
enable us to understand what is meant by such terms—perhaps
a little grandiloquent—as anguish, abandonment, and
despair. . .
As an existential story, the dread that founds Grover’s every action and thought
thus seems familiar to us—we who have passed through modernity. It is a
Sartrean nausea, an existential Angst that keeps us worrying about the end and
also worrying if there is any meaning to this nanative, any meaning other than
the end of the narrative itself This is, in the end, a book without a plot. Or more
precisely, the plot of the book is that Grover does not wish to let the book take
place. It is not a traditional story at the conclusion of which is a monster, but
instead is a story without a story where the end is the only thing we think about
throughout. After reading it, we worry about the meaning of it all: nothing really
happens in this book except for worrying about how it all is going to turn out,
and even that is not really up for grabs because the title of the book tells us
exactly how it must conclude.
The Sartrean would say that the reason we turn the page is because we
choose to do so. Yes, we torture Grover. Yes, we make a terrible mess each time
we move the narrative along. And yes we are coming closer with each turn of
the page to the monstrous conclusion. But if we are not to live in bad faith, we
must admit that we are choosing each time, that we are choosing to turn,
choosing to confront, choosing to construct ourselves as the-one-tuming. At first
gla nce this seems to contradict Jabes privileging of the stranger and the notion
of the force of the hook—the idea that the book’s bookness is what demands the
turning of the pages. But we must remember that from the perspective of
Grover, we are attempting to choose for him, to create him—or uncreate him—
with our own active choosing. He keeps demanding to stay where he is in the
story, but you and I, in turning the pages, universalize the turning of pages as a
choice for him. Following Sartre, this is part of what makes life so infused with
anxiety. If each action universalizes that action, universalizes the values that
underlie that action, then two things are clear. First, I have responsibility for
everything that everyone else is and does. But, second, it is also that case that
everyone else is choosing and thus trying to make me into something, to force
me into their choices. This is why other people are such a nuisance, such a
source of unease. To paraphrase Sartre loosely: Hell is other Muppets.
A good deal of time is spent in this narrative waiting—deciding
whether or not to go forward, anticipating the end result. That each decision is
both free and determined is clear. And as the end approaches, Grover struggles
to maintain his will in a world where the dread of choice is made apparent. From
this same existentialist standpoint, then, let us note the importance of this dread
and this waiting. Since The Monster at the End of This Book has no plot per se,
it is, inevitably, merely about waiting for the monster to show up at the end of
the book. Does he ever show up?