The Dude Testament

17. What would the Dude do?

When the complexities of life bear down upon the Dude, let’s be honest, he freaks out a little, reflexively losing his cultivated cool. Like us, he is no saint, is far from superhuman, and so is not likely to be deified the way other prophets of peace sometimes are. But unlike most of us, his un-Dudeness doesn’t last long. That’s because he employs a simple, timeworn but tested approach to dealing with difficulty. We have to check this with his accountant, of course, but it seems that he has no investments.

Because he has long been accustomed not to expect too much from the world of pain, the Dude is easily and rapidly able to overcome its slings and arrows (and later, scissors and coffee mugs). Shortly after giving an anxious report to the police, the Dude is invited to the house of Lebowski’s daughter Maude for a tete-a-teteregarding the kidnapping. And he’s pretty cool and collected by then, mixing cocktails, being fatuous, maybe even flirting with her a little. And then, on the ride home, the whole disaster is already fug gedaboudit. Commiserating with Maude’s Italian limo driver,[18] the Dude says “I was feeling really shitty earlier in the day; I’d lost a little money. I was down in the dumps… Fuck it!”