One of my comically unsuccessful marketing ploys was to send copies of my book to a few influential people not particularly known for an interest in poetry. One such was Stephen Jay Gould, most of whose writing on biology I greatly enjoyed–although he was too much of an egalitarian to believe in the neurological evolution of our species that has resulted in some people’s being innately superior mentally to others. I got a short letter back from him 13 July thanking me for my “kind letter” (I used a few compliments on him–sincere ones!) and book, and clarifying his use of the word, “consciousness,” I having said something about his notion that consciousness had arisen due to natural selection and wanting to know exactly what he meant by the term. (Basically, the ability to reflect on things, be “conscious” of something, rather than be that in which the external universe makes itself known which I term “the urwareness,” which precedes the cerebral ability to reflect on any part of existence and seems to me to precede what we call life. Gould’s letter was nice but also a fairly certainly a shut-off letter, one that showed no desire for any continuation of our correspondence.
Nonetheless, I sent him one of my shadow cartoon post cards (showing a non-conformist among conformists, the former’s shadow being cast in the opposite directions of those of the latter) with a brief message on it about “consciousness.” I didn’t want him to feel any pressure to reply to it out of mere politeness, and didn’t think he would. He did not. I would have liked to have been able to discuss things with someone like him, or his fellow Harvardian Howard Gardner, expecially if I’d gotten on a friendly enough basis with him to argue biology and politics, but people like that seem rarely to find their statooznikal inferiors worthy interacting with. Gould, by the way, also interested me inasmuch as he was born, like I, in 1941. Ditto George Will, whom I’ve also written (but do not believe I sent a copy of my book to). I feel I have much in common with both, and am fascinatingly opposite them both in many ways. I feel that if I’d had just a tick less creative intelligence, I would have been as “successful” as each of them.