WHY ZAZZO DID NOT COLLECT HIS NOBEL PRIZE IN PERSON
The confusion surrounding Professor Zazzo Thim’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech has become a part of literary folklore, a footnote to a long and distinguished career. Literary types around the world have long debated the exact meaning of Thim’s words, delivered, as they were to the assembled guests and members of European royalty, by a smelly old vagrant. Some have hypothesised that Thim was making a stand against homelessness, and juxtaposing the finery and splendour of his palatial surroundings with the sad plight of many homeless people.
Others assert that Thim had, temporarily at least, lost his mind. Some even believe that the vagrant was Thiim in disguise, that he had conducted the whole ceremony in costume as part of some unspecified bet. Yet only now, three years later, have certain facts come to light which might explain this unusual and totemic episode.
Professor Zazzo Thim leans back in his leather armchair and gazes up at the ceiling,
‘Regrets?’ he asks. ‘Of course I have regrets. I have been so misunderstood, misquoted, my sanity questioned, my motives prodded from several angles by the more reactionary tabloids.
‘All I was trying to do was get someone to come out and re-tune my VCR. Everything which happened afterwards was merely a consequence of this’.
We were seated in the marble library of a respected college in Basingstoke. The whole building stood with a stateliness, a cold, sober evocation of words and their power. How ethereally the sun reflected from the marble pillars which held up a surrounding balcony. Our leather armchairs had been placed either side of a small table lit by a brass lamp. When Thim leaned forwards to hear my next words, his face was elongated and distorted in their mirrored surface.
‘I see’, I told him. ‘The whole vagrant episode was nothing but a protest, a cry of help, that you had not received the customer care you think you deserved. It was a private protest, meaningless to the outside world but damning in its tenacity’.
The old man shook his head as if he were trying to rid it of a rogue thought. ‘No, no, no! My dear boy, not at all.
I frowned, and leaned forwards to meet him halfway across the table.
‘But a man of your considerable intelligence…’
‘I see this’, said Thiim, ‘As evidence of the polarisation at work today not only in culture, but also in ordinary society. There are those who probe too deeply, and miss the most minor significancies. They search for hidden truths ignoring the fact that nothing at all is ever so hidden. They use long words and act perspicaciously. That’s one side of the equation’.
‘And the other?’ I asked.
‘The other side is that most people really are as thick as two short planks. So I’m caught in the middle. What is meaning, if most people are too blind to see it? What use is intellectual thought if one half are searching for false meaning and the other are ignoring the work altogether? It was this whole – as you call it – ‘vagrant’ episode which finally convinced me that – really – we humans are basically really quite stupid.’
I was silent for a while. Zazzo Thim looked deep into my eyes, his forehead wrinkled, a tiredness playing about his features which, over the last couple of years, had become more pronounced. Then he sat back again, threw his long scarf over his shoulder, and looked down at his lap, as if he were embarrassed at having spoken so passionately. It seemed his voice was still echoing around the quiet library.
‘About the vagrant’, I whispered.
‘Yes?’ he sighed
There has been much discussion, and even web-sites devoted to the whole affair, most of which are ludicrous, and one which uses the entire episode as a premise just to show ladies with big jugs. Yet only one – http://www.thiim-machine.com – goes as far as to suggest why you might possibly have entrusted a vagrant with the most important, the most prestigious speech of your entire life.
I remained quiet.
‘Go on, he whispered.
‘It suggests you simply mistook him for the Prime Minister of Sweden’.
Thiim stared at me, quite blankly, for a couple of seconds.
‘A preposterous error’, he said. ‘And yet again emblematic of this dual culture I have just been telling you about. How many people have been satisfied by that explanation, eh? How many people have gone away from that website secure in the knowledge that I cannot differentiate between the Prime Minister of Sweden and a vagrant? What view must they now hold of me? Every time I have appeared in writings and literary reviews they must have seen my name and thought -a-ha! The man who thought a smelly old vagrant was the Prime Minister of Sweden’.
I could tell that Thiim was getting agitated, so I furnished him with more pronouncements from various web-sites.
‘www.waytogozazzo!.com suggests that you may have seen in the prize ceremony all of the ills of modern society and that you simply decided right then and there to go home’.
‘Rubbish’, he said
‘www.time and thim wait for nobody.com assert that you attended the ceremony dressed in drag only to view the embarrassment your stunt would cause.’
‘Preposterous.’
‘www.thiimtime -time team. com go as far as suggesting that the ceremony went well, and that nothing happened, and that the whole thing was performed again with the vagrant just to portray you in a bad light because you happened to sneeze on the Queen of Sweden, and she took great offence’.
‘That website’, he said, ‘Is run by a bunch of snivelling former students of mine who wish only to advance their public profiles at the expense of my own personality’.
‘www. zazzo thim is a right idiot who speaks out of his bottom and wouldn’t know the meaning of literature if it slapped him round the face.com suggest you were in league with foreign terrorists and hoped to assassinate everyone in the room with a bomb hidden in your false beard.’
Thiim let out another sigh and leaned towards me. ‘How many times do I have to tell you?, he asked. ‘I was trying to get someone to come out and look at my VCR. It played perfectly well and recorded everything I wanted, but there was interference from my digital box and I couldn’t watch Channel Four. That’s all! How many times do I have to tell you? That’s the plain and simple truth.
‘Look, he said, forming a pyramid with his hands on the desk in between us. I was walking to the prize ceremony. As you know, walk everywhere, because try to shun cars as often as I can. I’d called the helpline number the VCR company had given me on numerous occasions, but I had not got through. But now, armed with a free phonecard issued by the Swedish government, I was able to make that all-important phone call with no expense to myself.
‘The most important day of your life’, I whispered, ‘And you were phoning a VCR company to report a fault?’
‘Indeed. So I stopped at a phone box outside the palace and dialled. The first thing that happened was that I was told to choose between three numbers, or hold for customer services. I held on for customer service, but I was put into a waiting system, although a friendly voice assured me that my call was important. These touches’, the Professor said, ‘Can be very reassuring’.
‘Then what?’ I asked.
‘I think they played some Mozart….’
‘But the speech! The speech!’
‘Hold on, dear boy. Customer service came on the line and I was urged to press one for a technician, or two for some other query. I pressed two. Then I was urged to press one to report a missing component, or two for another query. So I pressed two. Then I was asked to press one for information on Plaxhorn Credit Services, or two for another query.’
‘So you pressed ‘two’?’ I ventured
‘Indeed. Then Mozart came back on again. By now, as you can imagine, I was starting to get a bit jittery. Anyway, one this time was a problem with VCR installation, so I pressed one. Then I was asked to choose between picture break-up or bad sound quality, so I chose picture break-up. Then it was interference from cable or interference from digital, so I chose the latter.
‘The next choice was between interference from digital during broadcast, or interference from digital during recording, so once again, I chose the latter. The next option was interference during digital during recording on afternoons, or interference during digital during recording on evenings, so I chose the former. The next option was interference during digital during recording during evenings on the main television set, or on a secondary set, so I chose the former. The next option was interference during digital during recording during evenings on the main set while using an electrical appliance, or interference during digital during recording during evenings on the main set while not using an electrical appliance. So I chose the latter.
‘The next option….’
I stifled a yawn.
‘The next option was interference during digital during recording during evenings on the main set while not using an electrical appliance while standing over the set, or interterence during digital during recording during the evening on the main set without an electrical appliance while sitting near the set, so i chose the latter. And then, finally, a voice came on which said: Press the red button on the rear of the unit, then the green, then the yellow, then the red again, and the whole problem should clear up.’
‘A-ha!’, I said.
‘But I didn’t quite catch what he said, so I started the whole process again. First I got customer service, and I was asked to choose between…’
‘OK!’ I said, ‘OK, I get the picture. So what happened about the speech?’
‘Oh, that’, Thiim said. ‘You have to understand, by this time the problem at hand consumed me whole. I wanted nothing more from life than to successfully complete telephone call and solve the interference problem. I was enraged, and yet, strangely entranced by the whole affair. It was as if I had a new meaning in my life, a purpose I could grab with both hands which would , if adhered to, at least make my life a fraction better than it had before. And the speech? The speech was meaningless. I thrust it in the hands of a passing vagrant and carried on with the phone call! The Professor sighed, and looked, quite sadly, to his left, as if looking at the past. The vagrant, I hear, spoke quite eloquently on a number of matters. Still’, he said, ‘Even to this day, the sound of Mozart can bring me out in a rash.’
So there it is. The most perplexing, the most unusual event in the history of literature – at least, in the last few years – and it was all caused by slight interference on a television set. No tricks, no philosophising, no great depths of psychological thought, no grand conspiracies, just an inability to tape channel four while the digital set is turned on. My shoulders, I am sure, visibly slumped.
I bade the Professor a good day and walked outside into the wide world. It was sunny, and I blinked two or three times, as if awakening from a dream. The town was quiet, almost idyllic in the summer sun, and as I walked among the crowds away from the library I felt I had, at least for a few minutes, a better understanding of human nature.
Robert Garnham 