July 19, 2011

Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter and for the physics commentary in a comic dimension. Few situations are as awkward and embarrassing as failure to respond with laughter when regaled with a joke. With respect to the file that you forwarded, I believe I understand, and I acknowledge the humor. Having discharged the social obligation, if only with a smile rather than with a roar, I am left with various thoughts, which you say are of interest to you.

I am struck with the frivolously specious simplicity of the dogma that the comic strip implicitly endorses and by the spurious perplexity that this dogma is represented as provoking, a parody of the mindlessness with which "science" is taught and promulgated and "understood".  From time to time it occurs to me that perhaps the comic strip is the graphic art uniquely apposite to our culture, and balloons frivolously emblazoned with comic sentiments are the literature emblematic of our age.  Maybe Gary Trudeau is our Shakespeare incognito. Arguably the comic strip is the literary genus appropriate to our age because it's not just our politics, not only our religion, it's also our "science" which seems to me intrinsically comical.  If so, a comic parody of our conceptual world would be not a joke, but "truth" in the most profound sense.

My thoughts and memories will accompany you on your trip to Canaan.  I wish for you clear skies, cool breezes, and fond remembrances, untinged with disappointments and regrets. Please give my regards to whoever, if anyone, who might ask about me. As always, my (genuine) best wishes to yourself and Ned. 

Nathaniel's advertisement, which I attach, speaks for itself.
 
Jochen

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