. . . has to do with the rather bizarre notion that seized upon people's brains of an insatiable hunger that went well behind any possibility of material satisfaction; that one could-especially as an American-eat and eat and eat one's way past the physical and into the realms of spirit, into the Eternal Buffet presumed to exist in Heaven, and, even so, keep on eating until the very spiritual-metaphysical superstructures of Desire, Sin, Redemption, Virtue were entirely consumed with not an instant of satiety, satisfaction, fullness-of course, this last is hotly disputed by those who insist upon an ever more agonizing sense of bloating fullness as opposed to the more typical gnawing emptiness, but these rivals-Bloated Fullness vs. Gnawing Vacuity-continue to do battle, with one becoming the fashion of the moment over the other, and then Winner and Loser switching out roles like a gimmicky theatrical two-hander-and it's all named for a comic book character famed for his obsession with eating, a crown upon his head, a very King of Appetite, lately parodied as a self-consuming maw leaving only the mouth, and the mouth's hunger . . .
