Clavicular His Framemogging

Six literary vignettes on the most important event of the Twenty-First Century

ANTHONY POWELL

The encounter, from what I could later glean, had taken place in the porter’s lodge at approximately half past eleven, that hour when college life achieves a certain intensity of purposeful idleness. Clavicular had been examining the notice board with that air of detached curiosity he affected when hoping to appear occupied, when the door swung open to admit Truscott-Mayne, president of the Bollinger Society and possessor of what might be called, in the athletic argot of the period, “a build.”

One observed these things about him immediately: the breadth of shoulder that seemed to have been acquired through some Darwinian process specific to rowing Blues and rugger forwards, the neck that merged with the jawline in a manner suggesting Roman statuary rather than the narrower, more tentative architectures common to our century. Truscott-Mayne moved through the space as though the very doorframes had been constructed with his proportions in mind, while Clavicular (thin as a Victorian consumptive, with shoulders that appeared to have been assembled as an afterthought) seemed suddenly to occupy an unfortunate position in what one might call the hierarchy of human geometry.

The porter greeted Truscott-Mayne with that peculiar deference reserved for those whose physical presence confirms their social position. Clavicular, clutching a notice about a lecture on Mesopotamian pottery grasped at random, visibly diminished, not through any action of his own, but through the simple fact of proximity. It was, one supposed, a question of framing; some men provide the picture, others merely the rather inadequate molding around it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The frat leader came through the bar door. He was big across the shoulders and his neck was thick. Clavicular was standing by the counter.

“Hello,” the frat leader said.

“Hello,” said Clavicular.

The frat leader’s shoulders filled the doorway. He wore a polo shirt that fit tight across his chest. Clavicular was thin. You could see it when they stood together.

“You rushing?” the frat leader asked.

“No,” Clavicular said.

“That’s good,” the frat leader said. He smiled. His teeth were very white.

The girl came over to talk to the frat leader. She knew him from football. Clavicular held his beer. The beer felt nastier now.

The frat leader put his hand on the bar when he talked. His arm was thick. Clavicular’s arms were thin. It was the way things were. Some men were built one way and some another.

“See you around,” the frat leader said.

“Yes,” said Clavicular.

The frat leader went out. The room seemed smaller after he left. Clavicular looked at his reflection in the glass. He was still thin. That would not change. He put down his beer and went out into the heat.

H P LOVECRAFT

It was in a shadow-haunted inn almost in the grounds of Miskatonic University that the thing called the Frat Leader manifested. I say “thing” advisedly, for no mere man could possess such grotesque and blasphemous proportions: shoulders of a breadth that suggested some unwholesome admixture of human stock with that of creatures best left unnameable, a neck of such Cyclopean thickness as to mock the very laws of anatomy as set forth by rational science.

Clavicular, possessed of the narrow and scholarly frame common to those who traffic overmuch in forbidden lore (he clutched even then a volume concerning the encodement of Enochian), stood transfixed in horror as the Frat Leader, that high priest of some primitive cult of physicality, approached with the terrible inevitability of cosmic doom.

The very geometry of the space seemed to warp and shift in that creature’s presence. Where Clavicular occupied his meager coordinates with the apologetic diffidence of one who knows himself an interloper in the material realm, the Frat Leader commanded dimensions with the authority of elder gods. The framemogging (for so this soul-blasting phenomenon must be termed) was absolute and annihilating.

JAMES JOYCE

In Arizoneal Collegium where the frameomogger and the framemoggee do their sempiternal dancle, comes Clavicular (thin as a wishbone, narrow as tomorrow) all aclatter with his bonebasket rattling, when who should shoulderbroad the doorwide but that greekgodded fratfeller, all chestexpanse and neckthick, leader of the Bacchusboys and lord of the musclebound territorium.

And didn’t the very architeckture genuflex its welcome to such latitudinal magnificence while poor Clavicular (son of Narrowpath, grandson of Meagre) shrank to a mere pencilline in the marginalia of existence. For what is frameomoggling but the original sintext, one man’s shoulderspan making mockery of another’s shouldersham, the broad eclipsing the borrown in that ancient geometrick hierarchy as old as Cain and Abel, Jack and the Beanstock’s giant, the frog and the ox in their fabulist contenderings?

Frameomoggia! Frameomoggia! The eternal recurrence of unequal architectonics!​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

THOMAS CARLYLE

What shall we say of this Framemogging, this most modern of Phenomena, whereby one man’s corporeal Dimensions do eclipse and render insignificant another’s? Behold it enacted in our own time, in that Sun-scorched Territory they call Arizona State, where the ancient Hierarchies of Flesh reassert themselves with all the inexorable Force of Destiny itself!

Here stands Clavicular - poor, attenuated Clavicular! - a Pilgrim to the Castle Heartiste, narrow as a Medieval Ascetic, his Frame suggesting not so much a Human Body as an Apology for one. And here, with all the Inevitability of Historical Process, comes the Frat-Leader (Mark well that Title! President of Fraternal Societies, no less!), a Specimen of such Shoulder-breadth and Neck-thickness as might have caused even the Roman Caesars to pause in Admiration.

Is this not the eternal Struggle made visible? The broad-shouldered Doer, that Man of Action and Physical Prowess, set against the thin-wristed Maximiser of Looks, he who concerns himself only with acting the Jester whilst Life’s great Pageant marches past! Mine Host himself - that humble Observer of Humanity’s daily Theatre - renders unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, which is to say, Deference.

HUBERT SELBY JR

clavicular was standin there by the bar sayin some shit about jestermaxxin or whatever the fuck to some girls who didn/t know whether to laugh or to rapim in the mouth and he was thinkin maybe hed go to the club, maybe not, didn/t really matter one way or the other and he was skinny, real skinny

the kind of skinny where people look at you and wonder if you/re sick or somethin, shoulders like a wire hanger

and then the frat leader came through the door and jesus christ the guy was built like a fuckin refrigerator, shoulders out to here, neck thick as a tree trunk, one a those guys who takes up all the space in a room without even tryin, just stands there and everythin else gets smaller

and clavicular felt it, that thing, that framemoggin thing, felt himself shrink down to nothin, just a line nexta this guy who was drawin in all the light and air and attention, the barman practically bowin down, yes sir, no sir, how are you today sir

and clavicular just stood there holdin his beer and he knew, he fuckin knew what he was, what he/d always been, the frame not the picture, the space around the important thing, and it wasnt even that the frat leader did anythin mean or said anythin, he just existed and that was enough

that was more than enough

and clavicular walked out into the night with his narrow shoulders and he thought maybe he wouldn/t go to the club after all, maybe hed just go home

maybe​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​