Anthem by Noah Hawley
For Guinevere and Lev. Do your best please.
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Author’s Note
This book contains math. Not calculus or trigonometry—no dense columns of equations—but numbers arranged in order, divided or multiplied, added or subtracted. You will find the odd fraction, the occasional % or $. The math in question is employed—like all symbols in this book—to convey ideas. For example: A century is made up of 100 years. A year is made up of 365 days. There are 24 hours in a day. We use these numbers （24 x 365 x 100） to measure human history. And yet few of the bipedal animals we call human beings live for 100 years. Statistically, the life span for an average male living in the United States of America is 72.4 years. The average American female lives 76.6 years. In Congo, men can expect to live to 55.7. In China the typical woman will make it to 66.3. This is the math of our existence.
At the time of this writing, I, the author, am 53 years old, which means I was born in 1967, a little over half a century ago. A half century before my birth was the year 1917.
? century + ? century = 1 century.
That is an objective measure of time. But time is subjective, which is why, as I age, the year 1917 seems more and more like ancient history. A long, long time ago: before the treaty of Versailles and the end of the first World War, before Influenza killed 22 million people worldwide, before prohibition, before the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, before big band and swing music, before the Second World War and the Korean War, before the birth of rock and roll and the British Invasion, before Elvis, before the Cold War and the Kennedy Assassination, before Levittown and the rise of the middle class, before a chicken in every pot, before mechanization, before television, before penicillin.
53 + 53 = a different era, in other words.
Logic would dictate, then, that the year 1967 must—to most non-53-year-old human beings today—also feel like ancient history. Before peace with honor ended the Vietnam War, before the Summer of Love and the Manson murders, before Watergate, before the Great Recession of the 1970s, before the Reagan revolution and trickle-down economics, before the personal computer and the internet, before the first George Bush presidency and the second, before globalization, before the ATM, before the Clinton impeachment and the Obama presidency, before the cell phone, the tablet, before Siri and Alexa, before the global financial crash, before the gig economy, before the resurgence of nationalism, before the 45th president, before COVID-19, before Apple, before Google, before Amazon.
Before most things we consider to be modern. In summation— 1967 = ancient history.
Realizing this makes your author feel old, old, old. Or, as his mother might say— Boo phooey.
The phrase boo phooey comes from a children’s book the author’s mother used to read to him in his youth. The book was called The Thing in Dolores’ Piano. It was the story of young Dolores who played the piano so terribly that the Do note came out and begged her to stop. When she wouldn’t, the Do note locked the keyboard.
Dolores couldn’t play a single note.
But Dolores was eight and refused to surrender to the will of others. She followed the Do note back inside the piano, moving from room to room, encountering all the other notes （fa, so, la, ti）， demanding they release her piano to her so she could play. Each note refused. Dolores felt an unfamiliar emotion; despair. It was a feeling she rejected, as any strong-willed child would. Inside a pitch-black room, Dolores discovered something. A note so monstrous the other notes had locked it away. Aha, thought Dolores, who knew an advantage when she saw one. She threatened to let the monster out unless the other notes unlocked her keyboard, unless they surrendered to her will. The monster was horrible. The monster was terrifying. The other notes had no choice but to concede. They unlocked the piano. Dolores had won. She returned to the outside world and resumed her assault on music itself.
At which point a chorus of voices rose from the piano. They shouted as one. And what they shouted was— Boo phooey.
By which they meant, We don’t like the way this story has ended. You were a bad sport and a bully. You forced your will on us, and we don’t think that’s right. By which they meant, Life is unfair.
The author’s son says this a lot. He too is eight. That’s not fair, he says. By which he means, I didn’t get what I wanted. Or, My sister got to do something that I didn’t. This idea of fairness exists nowhere else in the animal kingdom. The dinosaurs went extinct, and none of them said boo phooey. The last dodo passed from the face of the Earth, and none of them said boo phooey. All around us, the honeybees are fading from existence, the frogs are vanishing. Neither species gives their fate a bitter thought.