the theory and practice of postmodernism—a manifesto [excerpt]

         about two years ago elly and i decided we needed a new mattress 
or maybe elly decided it    because i didnt pay much attention to the 
  problem
               we had an old mattress wed had it for years and the salesman
 wed bought it from had assured us it would last us a lifetime    and it
was getting older and lumpy or lumpy in some places and hollowed out 
  in others and    i just assumed it was part of a normal process of aging
 it was getting older we were getting older and wed get used to it     but 
  eleanor has a bad back and she was getting desperate to get rid of 
this mattress     that had lived with us for such a long time and so
 lotally      that i thought i knew all its high points and low points     its
eminences and pitfalls    and i was sure    that at night my body
 worked its way carefully around the lumps    dodging the precipices
and moving to solider ground whenever it could
                                              but maybe eleanor
sleeps more heavily than i do    i have a feeling that i spent much of 
 my life at night avoiding the pitfalls of this mattress that i was used
to     and it was a skill id acquired over the ten or fifteen years of this
 mattress’ life     so I felt there was no reason to get rid of this mattress
that had been promised to us by a salesman who said it would last the
 rest of our lives     i figured we were going to live long lives i didnt  
think we were anywhere  close to dying     so neither was the mattress
  but eleanor kept waking up with backaches
          still i figured it was a good mattress and that elly just didnt have
 enough skill at avoiding the lumps      it never occurred to me that the 
mattress was at fault     so i didnt  do anything     and elly didnt do
  anything because shes not into consumer products and hates to go
 shopping    but by the end of a year elly convinced me     because she
  has a sensitive back and i dont     that she had a more accurate
  understanding of this business than i did      so I said sure eleanor  
         lets get a new mattress      were rebuilding the house       as long as
were going to have a new house      we may as well have a new mattress 
 but eleanor said how will i know its a good one     i dont want to get 
another mattress that gets hollowed and lumpy and gives me backaches
 when i wake up     how will i know how to get a good one
         i said well open the yellow pages and well look up mattresses and 
 therell be several places that sell them       and ill close my eyes and 
point a finger at one of these places      and it will be a place that has 
 lots of mattresses where we can make a choice as to what constitutes 
 a good one by lying on them