Ricardo’s back and apparently in a talkative mood. I want him to remain at this website for a little while, but he said that there’s a website for Jellyfish Have Eyes (jellyfishhaveeyes.com) where he plans to settle in. That’s his real home. However, he’s happy to speak out in both websites for now so that he can direct readers to the novel.

Last week I was thinking about writers as midwives and partial parents to their characters in books and then, suddenly, Ricardo pops up. I knew that he was restless and frustrated about the trial, especially about the arrogant prosecutor, but…

“Stop!”

“You again? What’s your problem now, Ricardo?”

“Don’t give away the story.”

Ricardo’s right. If he’s going to lead a double-life, one foot in the novel and the other in my life, I’ll need to balance on a tightrope separating fiction and reality, and not be a spoiler for those who haven’t read Jellyfish Have Eyes yet. However, I want to arouse curiosity to dip into my novel and see what it’s all about. I know that it’s self-promoting, but someone’s got to do it.

“Don’t worry, Ricardo. I’ll be careful. But what do you want outside of the novel? You’re custom made for the book. You should be happy there. It’s home.”

“Look, Joram – I’m going to call you by your first name as long as I’m with you in real life – I’m tired of being trapped in that claustrophobic novel, home or not. If I didn’t have a foot in reality from the beginning I would be lame. Oops, sorry about the unintentional pun. If Baxter can jump from the movie screen of The Purple Rose of Cairo, then I can step in and out of Jellyfish Have Eyes. But that doesn’t mean that you or I should spill out my life in the novel. I get lonely and want people to visit me – to buy the printed book or the e-book – and keep me company for a while. Many people have told me that I’m a page-turner – I mean my book is, no, I mean your book is. But, I want people to know how much trouble you made for me. Don’t worry; I forgive you. It’s your first novel, after all, and I’m flattered to have been featured, but…it isn’t fair that you reduced me to ink on pages without a chance for anybody to see the real me. And Benjamin, Randolph Likens (the bastard), Carl Jenkins, Sophia (she never got proper credit for her efforts), and the others, will probably want to chime in, especially after I show them that it’s possible to bail out from fiction to reality, although I’m not so sure there’s always that much difference between the two.”

It’s like I said in my website blog last week: characters are dead in their books and alive outside of them: dead and alive. Apparently Ricardo’s not going to accept remaining dead in the novel without experiencing life outside of it. All I can do is let him be and hope he doesn’t bore me too much.

“Damn right that I’m getting out of Jellyfish now and then! And do you know the first thing that struck me when I escaped last night? Of course you don’t. I saw you glued to the tube listening to those crazies in the debate of the Republican candidates for president. Oh, my god. There’s more than one novel lurking in that debate, a tragicomedy of sorts. I’ll be short. Remember when Trump (by the way, I don’t appreciate that you said I reminded you of him in your last blog) announced that there’s an epidemic of autism. An epidemic! And then he said that a friend of his had a two-year-old kid who was vaccinated, got very sick, and a couple of weeks later became autistic, as if that anecdote proved that high doses of vaccinations cause autism. Trump to the rescue: “Spread out vaccinations over a longer period of time,” he said. I wonder how infants would like having many painful shots instead of one. The wise doctor, Ben Carson, who wants to be the first president to cure our ills with a scalpel in one hand and a stethoscope in the other, told us that there was no evidence that vaccinations cause autism, so there, Mr. Trump. But Carson implied that Trump’s right to spread out the doses for vaccinations. Why? Because Trump said so? I listened to the debate, spellbound, recognizing the seed that kept on growing until 2047, when it became a real problem for me in Jellyfish.”

“I agree, Ricardo. It’s ridiculous having a real estate developer running for president telling the nation about medicine. Is that a new branch of medicolitics, or something of the sort?”

“Don’t ridicule it, Joram. Think of the trouble I had when powerful political voices coupled with the media set the rules for medical research, made research a legal issue, and insisted on being our social conscience. I know the novel takes place a long time from now in the mid-21st century, but the trouble had to start sometime. How about now, or even earlier? Something must have alerted you to write Jellyfish Have Eyes. The novel may be fiction – just fantasy – but maybe there’s a germ of truth there to worry about now. Maybe it’s good that I jumped back for a quick look-see to assess whether what I endured in Jellyfish had some basis.”

“So, you were convinced by the loud Trumpet, I mean Trump?”

“Not at all. I spent a couple of days at NIH in Bethesda last month checking things out and then hopped back in my warm, safe book. By the way, I certainly was disappointed to see NIH locked up like a fortress. It took me over 20 minutes to get screened before I was allowed to enter. I guess the terrorists created havoc: it’s sad. In any case, browsing the Washington Post I read an article by Carolyn Johnson on August 18 where she questions the efficacy of health-research spending. As you know, that was a crucial issue for me in the novel. I don’t have the time or energy to tell you everything brought up in this article, but here are a few quotes for you to think about:”

“…crude health measures didn’t keep pace with the research investment. Funding increased fourfold since 1965, but the number of drugs only doubled.”

 “She’s smart enough to recognize how difficult it is to measure research progress, so she didn’t make a big deal about this. But she goes on and quotes NIH Director Francis Collins, who said:”

“NIH agrees that it is critical to assess whether progress in biomedical research is achieving its ultimately desired outcome – better health for the nation and the world.”

I think Ricardo may be overreacting to this article. It seems reasonable to me. After all, taxpayers give money to NIH to keep them healthy and to find treatments for their illnesses. Maybe Ricardo’s problem in the novel was being so opinionated and always thinking he was right. Maybe he just irritated everyone.

“I can read your thoughts, Joram. You’re like an open book. Hah! I’m not overreacting, and my problems weren’t just because I was a pain in the ass. I also don’t disagree with much of the article in the Post. I’m talking about the tone. It’s only 2015 here, remember? I’m visiting from 2061. How about this quote:”

“Some critics say that the underlying premise – that more research money means more breakthroughs and better health – needs to be more scientifically examined.”

Ricardo may be on to something here, but still…it’s always good to re-exam things, and how money is spent is very important.

“Here’s one more quote from a professor of science and society in Arizona State University that ends the article:”

“We’re still in the grip of this silly belief if you pour more money into knowledge creation, you’ll get more benefit. Let’s have a conversation about the kinds of institutions we really need.”

I see what troubles Ricardo, and he has seen the results of this type of thinking on basic scientists. It troubles me too. What “kinds” of institutions did the Arizona professor have in mind? Is basic science – “knowledge creation” – an institution, and if so, who runs it, or is “knowledge creation” one way to call basic research? I see academic freedom waving a red flag.

“Well, Joram, I don’t want to be an alarmist, and I know that Jellyfish is fiction, and the Washington Post article is not unreasonable. Certainly, it doesn’t say what should or shouldn’t do done. It questions. I don’t know. I’m reading between the lines, and I get depressed, like I was when I wrote Lillian, may she rest in peace, in the novel. Do you remember: it was the letter you deleted – trashed. That’s the price of rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. There’s a point at which revising doesn’t improve the book, but just makes it different, and there’s often a loss as well. It’s a good thing that I don’t throw anything away. Here’s an excerpt I salvaged from the archives of deleted passages from an earlier draft of Jellyfish Have Eyes.

“I am old now, bent, tired, discouraged. I have given up, Lillian. Do you remember when we were young, the dreams we had, the enthusiasm? You were never as optimistic as I was, but that’s only because you had the good sense to understand that nobody really cares about what happens to one.

“As you know, it drove me crazy to spend so much valuable time writing memos and justifying the absurdly obvious to people who really didn’t care about much more than making sure the endless list of rules were obeyed. Can you imagine, they even wanted to administer creativity? The government was always asking me to prove my innocence, even though I never did anything wrong that I know of.

“I wish you could have been with me the night that I entered the mind of a jellyfish for a few brief minutes. I experienced what no person ever experienced before. Jellyfish live in such a mysterious world. I am convinced that they think and feel and communicate with each other. They have no need for us. It’s only we that can learn from them. They are superior creatures. It has been a privilege to be able to study them, even a little bit.

“I simply do not understand how the Relevancers gained such power and became so influential. They seem to say all the right things, certainly nothing that one could object to, yet they did me in. I cannot imagine that an outsider would know what I am talking about. In any case I am too bitter at this point to be objective. I can’t figure out whether the Relevancers commanded such authority with the approval, ignorance or indifference of society. I am afraid that it is indifference, probably the most dangerous situation.

“Is science really different from art? How? I have so many questions, the kind that you always tolerated when I brought them up, but never took too seriously. You should have taken them seriously, Lillian, very seriously indeed. It turns out that how people think about things is even more important than what they actually do.

“Remember that letter, Joram? It makes me nostalgic to think about it again. Maybe deleting it was a good idea. There’s so much packed in such a small space.”

“Of course I remember the letter. You couldn’t have written it without me.”

That’s all I’ll tell Ricardo today. I sense recalling the letter has made him drift back into the novel, back to his problems and heartaches. But, he’s correct that the letter packs in a lot that needs discussion: Relevancers; the mind of a jellyfish; the connection between art and science; administering creativity; the thrill of basic research; thinking more important than doing. I’ll wait to discuss these and other things until Ricardo comes back again, or maybe Benjamin or someone else will step out of the novel. There’s a lot to chew on here, and hopefully some of you kind readers might chip in with valuable comments as well. That would definitely add a lot for us to consider.