Two nights before the most important day of his life, Mitt Romney took a few moments from his busy schedule to speak to Full Stop via phone in an unprecedented attempt to court the literary community. What follows is a direct transcript of the brief interview we conducted. It was cut short when the lights in our office began to dim and flicker before extinguishing themselves.
FS: Good evening Mr. Governor.
MR: Good evening. [ed. note: The exhaustion in his voice is pronounced, his breathing is labored and in quieter moments rattles like piles of dry bones caught in the wind, all this due to an intense campaign for Ohio, no doubt.]
First of all, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions. I’m sure you’re slammed, so I’ll try and keep this brief. On your Facebook page you list Ender’s Game as one of your favorite books. What do you think is up with that part about the Giant’s Drink?? You know, where Ender sort of burrows into the dead giant’s eye?
Hush, child. [ed. note: Here his voice changes, but I’m not sure how to describe it. Maybe it rose an octave or it dropped one, I’m not sure. It reminded me of that aural illusion] I had a dream last night, do you know what it was about?1
No, what was it about?
Electric sheep, ha ha, no, no, that’s a joke our intern wrote here on this card…
Ha ha ha…
No, last night I dreamed that I was standing naked in the desert. Ann was there, also naked, and we were holding hands. We were both fifty feet tall at least, truly enormous! And we were sexless, also; smooth and pure and undifferentiated, without lust or reserve we were entirely present to each other, and to the great desert that was, I think, ours.
Together we looked out across this great expanse, glittering under the light of 538 moons setting in parallel at the horizon, each one reflecting the light of a sun rising at our backs, all glittering in correspondence, and saw a city in the distance, even greater than the desert…what do you think this means?
Each moon an electoral vote denied your father, each sun a vote for your ascendency?
Exactly, exactly.
Drawn by the reflection of the light, Ann and I proceed across the desert in search of our inheritance. Each step is a struggle and the expanse is not without temptation but after what feels like ten thousand years, Ann and I succeed and reach the city. We pass the gates without harm, then suddenly the walls begin to crumble as if they’re made of sand! As they disappear into the desert sand, the stars in the sky begin to flicker and fade. Soon all is wrapped in darkness except for a small light approaching from the distance…
We wait in silence, also for about ten thousand years or so, until the phantasm approaches and we view it in its fullness: a glowing, spectral stage, drawn by a team of beautiful dead Lippizaners. Perhaps, I thought to myself, these are the fabulous horses that so captivated General Patton with their splendid leaps, the beautiful dance of Pas de Trois… But my reverie was interrupted as the curtains on the stage drawn by the beautiful animals were drawn to reveal a strange picture.
No, to call it a picture might miss the mark. It was more than that, and also less, and it inspired such a terror as I have never experienced. It seemed to me a representation of the Abyss; totally void of all goodness and decency, it effected a silent scream of such power and debasement that it defiled not only our hearing but all of our senses, and in its absolute thoroughness suggested the existence of senses as yet unidentified but polluted all the same; entirely other worlds defined by the sins and excesses of our own!
I shook with fear and cursed the day I was born. But then the painting began to rotate at its midpoint and after a quarter turn it stopped. From this angle, the image changed entirely! Do you know what I saw?
No, no, what did you see?
The president and Jay-Z holding hands, walking on the beach, wearing sandals, and smoking weed. Ahh, I thought, we’ve got him. The curtains were redrawn and once again the land returned to darkness. I felt Ann’s hand squeeze my own and a smile spread across my face (at this point several miles wide). The Lippizaners pawed the desert sand and snorted in the void.
1 Like many in the literary community, we initially assumed Romney has never dreamed. However, after doing some research this morning, we discovered this quote beneath his senior picture in the Cranbook yearbook:
I steal into their dreams.I steal into their most shameful thoughts. I’m in every shiver, every spasm of their souls, I steal into their hearts, I scrutinize their most fundamental beliefs, I scan their irrational impulses, their unspeakable emotions, I sleep in their lungs during the summer and their muscles during the winter and all of this I do without the least effort, without intending to, without asking or seeking it out, without constraints, driven only by love and emotion.
Strangely enough, this quote also appears as dialogue in Roberto Bolaño’s masterpiece, 2666. As of this moment, Full Stop is unable to explain the connection.
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