Here for It; Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays

by R. Eric Thomas

The big idea, as I saw it, was this: You don’t exist for a long time. Before you arrive, there are ages, eons—an eternity—without you. (Can you imagine? How boring!) And suddenly there you are. Alive. How you doing? How’s it feel? Immaculate? What if it feels bad? Don’t worry; it gets better, right? But what if it doesn’t get better, it just gets. It just keeps getting. What then? You still interested? You still trying to be good, still moisturizing your T-zone, still working through your stack of New Yorkers, still fighting systemic oppression, still speaking truth to power, still attempting to exist? Still? What if I told you, at another point—fixed, supposedly, but totally unknown—you suddenly, mysteriously, immaculately won’t be anymore? Again. Does that sound like something you want to do?

But then we turn the last page, and Grover realizes that the monster at the end of the book is himself. Stunning. He is the Keyser Söze of Muppets. And that’s the book.