Game in literature

Castalia House has published a new novel today, entitled An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity. It's a good book, a funny book, and one well worth reading, but that's not what is of particular interest to me here. What I found noteworthy, in one particular section, was the way that the author, J. Mulrooney, expertly illustrates the hapless ways of the terminally clueless Delta.

The character referenced, Cooper, is not a complete loser. He's not a Gamma, he's not delusional about himself, but he is overly romantic, inclined to pursue more attractive women than his looks and status would tend to merit, and is almost completely unable to correctly read women or see them for who they truly are.

The following passage from the novel is an almost flawless portrayal of the massive difference between ALPHA interactions with women and BETA interactions with them. Dean is the Alpha, Julius is the Beta, Cooper is the Delta, and Thisbe is a very pretty woman in her early thirties who has been in a long-term relationship with Julius, but was Alpha-widowed by Dean.

The issue, Cooper gathered, was that Julius loved Thisbe but Dean was taking Thisbe away. Dean had taken Thisbe away from Julius before. Thisbe belonged with Julius, not with Dean. Thisbe thought she loved Dean, but really she loved Julius. Julius had picked up the pieces of Thisbe’s heart the last time Dean had broken them. Dean was not going to do this again.

This surprised Cooper, who was convinced that Thisbe was rather attracted to him. Just this morning he had been thinking of asking her for a date in the next week or two. He was confused. It was hard to believe that anything Julius was saying could possibly be about the same Thisbe. He became a little indignant. Thisbe shouldn’t have played with his emotions like that, leading him on as she had. It wasn’t right. How could she have had two boyfriends the entire time he had known her?

Cooper had much to think about. Besides his arrest and his run-in with the lawyer, he had been shocked at the things Dean and Julius had said about Thisbe. He had reserved a sentimental and romantic space for her in his mind that was, for the most part, as yet untainted with the cruder sort of sexual fantasy. Now it appeared that, all the time he had been dreaming of holding Thisbe’s hand while walking in the park, she had been trying out the newly expanded revised and updated with all new material edition of the Kama Sutra with both her boss and her boyfriend. Something like that might put things in a different light.

Yet it didn’t. Cooper shook himself, shrugging off his worse instincts in favor of his better. Thisbe was still Thisbe. If she had been foolish, if she had spent her time and her body on men who would never love her as he did, so what? Picking up the formula of a prayer he had learned long ago as a boy, he said to himself that it was not his place to question, but to love. This thought pleased him, and he repeated it: Not to question, but to love.

This is quintessentially Delta. Not to question, but to love. Not to judge, but to accept. The past is never prelude, because the pedestal is intact.