Fury

She had outgrown her creator—literally; she was life-size now, and several inches taller than Solanka—and was making her own way in the world. Like Hawkeye or Sherlock Holmes or Jeeves, she had transcended the work that created her, had attained the fiction’s version of freedom. She now endorsed products on television, opened supermarkets, gave after-di

She had become the Maya Angelou of the doll world, as relentless an autobiographer as that other caged bird, her life the model for millions of young people—its humble begi

The extraordinary thing about her fan base was its catholicity: boys dug her as much as girls, adults as much as children. She crossed all boundaries of language, race, and class. She became, variously, her admirers’ ideal lover or confidante or goal. Her first book of memoirs was originally placed by the Amazon people in the nonfiction lists. The decision to move it, and the subsequent volumes, across into the world of make-believe was resisted by both readers and staff. Little Brain, they argued, was no longer a simulacrum. She was a phenomenon. The fairy’s wand had touched her, and she was real.

All this Malik Solanka witnessed from a distance with growing horror. This creature of his own imagining, born of his best self and purest endeavor, was turning before his eyes into the kind of monster of tawdry celebrity he most profoundly abhorred. His original and now obliterated Little Brain had been genuinely smart, able to hold her own with Erasmus or Schopenhauer. She had been beautiful and sharp-tongued, but she had swum in the sea of ideas, living the life of the mind. This revised edition, over which he had long ago lost creative control, had the intellect of a slightly over-average chimpanzee. Day by day she became a creature of the entertainment microverse, her music videos—yes, she was a recording artist now!—out-raunching Mado

Astonishingly, the glamour-puss transformation lost latex-headed Little Brain no fans, but brought her a new legion of adult male admirers. She had become unstoppable, giving press conferences at which she spoke of setting up her own film production company, launching her own magazine in which beauty hints, lifestyle advice, and cutting-edge contemporary culture would all receive the special Little Brain treatment, and even going nationwide, in the U.S.A., on cable television. There would be a Broadway show—she was in discussion with all the major players in the musical game, dear Tim and dear Elton and dear Cameron and of course dear, dear Andrew—and a new, big-budget movie was also pla

The ballooning triumph of Little Brain inevitably occasioned much comment and analysis. Her admirers were jeered at for their lowbrow obsession, but at once eminent theater folk came forward to speak of the ancient tradition of mask theater, its origins in Greece and Japan.

“The actor in the mask is liberated from her normality, her everydayness. Her body acquires remarkable new freedoms. The mask dictates all this. The mask acts.” Professor Solanka remained aloof, refusing all invitations to discuss his out-of-control creation. The money, however, he was unable to refuse. Royalties continued to pour into his bank account. He was compromised by greed, and the compromise sealed his lips. Contractually bound not to attack the goose that laid the golden eggs, he had to bottle up his thoughts and, in keeping his own counsel, filled up with the bitter bile of his many discontents. With every new media initiative spearheaded by the character he had once delineated with such sprightliness and care, his impotent fury grew.

In Hello! magazine, Little Brain—for a reported seven-figure fee allowed readers an intimate look at her beautiful country home, which was, apparently, an old Queen A