But seriousness had amounted to Jason Plover’s trademark. He had been a tall, heavyset man fond of wearing a thick tweed overcoat, which made his figure resemble a rolled-up mattress. When he walked he like to set his entire foot flat upon the ground before lifting it for the next step. His heavy tread was well known in the English department at Tufts, where he had taught for fifteen years. He had vast black eyebrows that he could wield as a samurai wields his sword. One position showed scorn, another superiority, and a third deep thought. There are many writers in the Boston area. Toss a stone in a public place and you are likely to hit one. But for seriousness–sheer, bullying, heavy-lidded, I’m-the-most-important-poet-on-God’s-green-acre seriousness–Jason Plover had the rest of the writers beat.
Now all was changed.
The headline in the Boston Herald read Plummeting Porker Pulverizes Poet.
[...]
There was something about these stories that made time seem causal, and Harriet realized she was attempting to repair her sense of causality. Her husband’s death appeared to lie outside causality. The malignant Demiurge who hangs life’s carrot before our eyes had been having his or her little joke. What do we do with an extremely serious poet? We kill him with a falling pig. Those people who had laughed at the manner of her husband’s death: shouldn’t they have been terrified? Didn’t Jason’s death indicate an awful truth about the cosmos–that if it has a divine direction, then its prime mover is whimsy?
[...]
She thought of her husband’s seriousness, how he wore it like a garment. Most often his laughter had been ironic or sarcastic or superior. His laughter had been judgmental and, as a result, all his laughter had been serious. Was it possible to laugh without any element of judgment? Jason Plover’s life had been an edifice built to demonstrate the solemnity of his endeavor. Poor Jason, killed by a falling pig; his death had overturned the premises of his life.
[...]
Harriet Spense considered how Franklin yearned for the fame that had resulted in her husband’s ultimate trivialization. She found herself laughing. She put her hands on her knees, leaned her head back, and gasped for breath. It was neither a guffar nor the hysterical shriek of nervousness. It was the laugh of someone whose solemnity has been overthrown, the laugh that erases every other concern. Our plans, our memories, our fears are all replaced by a peculiar yet distinctive hooting. To some it sounds like a mob of crows; to others, a donkeys bray. In fact, it is the sound of the world disappearing as all the content is sucked from our heads, to be replaced–briefly; oh, too briefly–by a happy vacancy. And doesn’t this sustain us? Doesn’t it provide the strength to let us bear up our burden and continue our mortal journey?