Platoboy and the Solipsist Contemplate the Novels of Henry James

Dramatis Personae
Platoboy: an enthusiastic believer in Enlightenment values.
Solipsist: a sardonic, captious, humorous nihilist.

Solipsist: Hey Platoboy! What is your favorite Henry James novel?

Platoboy: The Art of the Deal, Solly. Thanks for asking.

Solipsist: Henry James didn’t write The Art of the Deal. The Orangeman did.

Platoboy: Get out of here! The Orangeman? Is there anything he can’t do?

Solipsist: Nope. There is nothing he can’t do.

Platoboy: Can he build a tower?

Solipsist: Absolutely!

Platoboy: Can he build a really tall tower?

Solipsist: Fuggin’-ay-right, Bubba!

Platoboy: Can he build a tower so tall that he can’t remember how many stories it has?

Solipsist: Darn tootin’ he can.

Platoboy: Hah! Don’t you see, Solly that Plato’s table-turning argument has demonstrated that the Orangeman has limitations? There is, in fact, something he can’t do.

Solipsist: Get out of here! There is nothing Orange can’t do!

Platoboy: But you just said that he could build a tower so tall that he couldn’t remember how many stories it had.

Solipsist: Nonsense, P.B. Orange can remember everything that ever happened.

Platoboy: But you just said…

Solipsist: [looking toward the heavens] Oh, Platoboy! Is it possible that this shepherd standing here with his flock has not noticed that God is dead?

Platoboy: Are you claiming, P.B., that the Orangeman is Nietzsche?

Solipsist: Of course not. Nietzsche is dead.

Platoboy: But you just said that God is dead.

Solipsist: No. God said that Nietzsche was dead after all that Zarathustra mess.

Platoboy: But what has any of this got to do with Orange?

Solipsist: Orange is God.

Platoboy: Well, that settles it. Either God is dead, according to Nietzsche; or God is Orange, according to the Solipsist.

Solipsist: That’s why I asked you about your favorite Henry James Novel.

Platoboy: Solly? What in the contumacious hell are you talking about?

Solipsist: As H.G. Wells so sagely said, “Orange reminds me of a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost, and not only on that occasion but as a natural mode of progression, to deny an election which has got into a corner of its cage.”

Platoboy: Oh God, Solly! I begged you to get some counseling. Have you been picking up peas again?

Solipsist: God is dead, P.B., peas or no peas.