Brook Ziporyn

Omnipotence for the Millions Brook Ziporyn

Omnipotence for the Millions is best described as a weeping man's bedroom farce, a tale of infuriatingly ineluctable agape and abortive misanthropy, of a love-hate triangle of rivalrous comrades and wives, of human intersubjectivity conceived as a world wherein everyone is constantly enacting exasperatingly ambiguous atrocities on everyone else and everyone's kind of pissed off about it probably but nobody's quite sure. It is the story of a certain Mr. Smithers and his close associate and rival Mr. Smith, and their unfortunate intertwining in the fast-paced back-slappingly fulfilling industry of late night self-help infomercial production. Smithers mercy-begging detestation of his putative buddy is, it would seem, no match for the latter's obliviously cheerful ability to just not get it. At various points Smithers is called upon to serve not only as Smith's best friend, his employer, his wifes lover, his business partner and his archrival, but also as his teacher (in a formal classroom setting) and as his valet. The two men, like all two men, are tacitly struggling for the same quantum of virtual space--job, money, status, women, existential authenticity, all of which are in limited supply. And yet, by dint of some sadistically neutral cosmic conspiracy, they're forced to stand around talking to each other all the time. The subject of this book, broadly speaking, is that old-time sideshow favorite formerly known as The Human Condition, in this case construed as an elaboration of what's so bad about ever having to be in the same room with anyone else.