stand down

"The Power and the Glory", Graham Greene, 1940

A life without the ability to believe wholly without worry, imagine. Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory" is a stark tale of a priest living in "mortal sin", a so-called "whisky priest", addicted to the brandy, abandoned his child (he weren't supposed to have in the first place), still seeking to deliver mass and do his duty...but on the run from the authorities in a dystopian fascist state where religion -- tolerance -- free speech -- is outlawed in the name of a, perhaps, more truthful world.

As one who considers himself an atheist 67 years after Greene obtained his copyright, I probably approach this book with significantly different mindstate, one who doesn't yearn for religion to be outlawed, but perhaps to be minimized, I sit between the ideals of the whisky priest and the atheist lieutenant antagonist who goes to all ends to destroy, in a most vulgar manner, this pathetic sinful man, yet still priest. I connect to hardly anyone -- perhaps Coral Fellows, the girl who sheltered the whisky priest, naively tells him about morse code, she being outside the conflict of religion v. atheism, yes, but not outside the simple right v. wrong, deciding not to act with the state but with her own moral judgement, acting on Kohlberg's highest level. Coral -- a secondary character but the most important character, in my view, outside the priest, lieutenant, and the seeming Judas in the half-caste -- seems to be the only one capable of such action in the book, a break from the mold of New World v. Old World into simply doing what she believes. She's too idealistic for this book, so when the whisky priest escapes prison unwittingly for being picked up for smuggling whisky and seeks the help and asylum she had once promised him, she is gone, her family is gone, leaving behind only a pathetic starving dog the priest effectivly robs for its last meat.

He is the last priest, it would seem, and his journeys only cast more furor in his pursuer, kidnapping and killing people in every village the priest receives help in. He is given martyr status where he himself knows he is undeserving -- the bloodthirst of the search for him, the hunger of the religion-deprived people to feel his mercy at confession, it all gives his otherwise sin-filled and pathetic life meaning and holiness. The foolish ruling class always gives unearthly meaning to those they persecute. The priest even pondered his piety a great sin at several points throughout the book. Unworthiness haunted him, but he still trudged on to do what he knew he must, and that was to deliver in the sacrements. I've read armchair interpretation that Graham Greene held these sacrements sanct and wanted to juxtapose the purity of such to this decisively impure man who was to deliver them; John Updike's introduction also talks ot an author coming to a state of conflict over his own religious conviction. I can see the truth in both strains on interpretation. The triumph of this book is its ability to show all unworthy men in the face of this odd hope religion lends through its pure points, and of course, from the stance of the atheist, I have my ideological quandaries with the text, seeing Greene deny all of the philosophical doublespeak of religion, but I'll save that for another high horse. Religion is a power wielded by common, sinful, desolate man. Greene shows what boundaries cannot hold it in, a powerful message.

The scenes he paints are probably his strongest point as a writer, at least from a reader's standpoint. Nothing is more vivid then when the Indian woman lays down the child among the picture of crosses tied jagged and at varying heights, a burial ground, and a point I never thought of but Updike states in his opening, the entrance to a godly state, outside of Mexico (he was coming upon the border -- and freedom -- though a freedom he knew would haunt him forever). Also the scene where the priest is finally betrayed, where he sits across the lieutenant and they begin hashing out their difference in a battle of wits of educated, staunchly idealistic men, in a small abandoned hut and makeshift seating, in the middle of nowhere, anywhere, it is perfect for the scale of destitute shown in this time and place where God has been driven out. And even the lieutenant is in internal agony as the last priest is killed -- the enemy defined him and now the enemy is no more. An interesting commentary on impressing your beliefs all over, for what happens when you are successful?

Without reflection and going over little bits and pieces of interpretation, I find myself strapped by my own state as non-believer when it comes to "The Power and the Glory" and Graham Greene's thought process as a believer, but as a novelist, and as a brilliant word painter of scenes. So while I have a hard time empathizing with either protagonist or antagonist, on an intellectual level I can see where both come from and the frightening possibilities of the fascist way, putting specific ideals on every single person. While religion exists far too purely, rarely and dismissively questioned (only one very secondary character seems to dig into the priest at all, but is painted only as a nuisance to be disregarded), I also know the frightening possibilities associated with such a view of religion, one where we assume ignorantly that its administering is possible as nothing but a pure act without ulterior motive, be it to get money or make the people subservient. But we know, because he has said it, that Greene was writing to separate the man from the act. In that, "The Power and the Glory" is an excellent novel regardless of where it comes from or how disagreeable the sentiments can be at times because it is written with such conviction, no matter how naive it may sometimes seem in a current America where religion is used as a shield, or worse, a sword, but not merely a way of hope and a path of good living. Perhaps in that dystopian Mexico, that by killing priests and making the act of sacrements taboo and unlawful, then and only then religion can be made into such a pure act, in the face of imminent destruction. A scary, morbid thought. It is good to see a man flesh-out the potential of such a way of life, of religion. Good and bad..."The Power and the Glory" got me thinking, and it won't stop after I hit Publish Post. I read it in three days, lazy bum days, too. I'll reduce it and close it out common-man glib style: It must've been a good book.


"'I'm not telling them fairy stories I don't believe myself. I don't know a thing about the mercy of God: I don't know how awful the human heart looks to Him. But I do know this--that if there's ever been a single man in this state damned, then I'll be damned too.' He said slowly, 'I wouldn't want it to be any different. I just want justice, that's all'"

inimitable he

"Visions of Gerard", Jack Kerouac, 1958

Of all the misadventured wild looking for IT of Mr. Kerouac's life, "Visions of Gerard" is that Duluoz Legend book that takes us on a trip in the memory, created visions n little tidbits of actual emotion drawn from the little kid remembrance of Gerard, Jack Kerouac's older brother who died at the age of nine. Kerouac admits his idealism and old-soul wisdom came from this oldest soul of a little boy who hated mousetraps and digging out the eyes of killers in the newspaper (among other things), who went to confession to purge every little bad detail admitting his sins puresouled, who yelled from his deathbed for his sister Ti Nin and little Ti Jean to go out and play and enjoy the day as his nine year old body expired.

The 130 pages are divided up into small vignettes expressing the soul of Gerard as Kerouac pieced together from distant feelings and memories, and I'm guessing from old stories his mother would tell him. The first half contains many recollections of Gerard, summed in, "My own brother, a spot of sainthood in the endless globular Universes and Chillicosm." Right down to when he first became sick and told the nuns at school of his visions of Heaven, you'd be surprised he wasn't isolated by his earnest wisdom but he drove awe into the hearts of the adults he touched, and no one more so than Jack Kerouac. The second half contains some of the more stark and stumbling images as we see Ti Jean's father, Emil, milling about town hit hard woebegone as his son lays on his death bed begging to see the birds which come to his window, HIS birds he wishes so badly to come to him and sit around him (not understanding their fear, having no fear even in certain death). When the death comes we are hit with the immense sorrow of child death despite Gerard's intense wishes to be gone to Heaven (even when he was well he cried of why people can not have what they want--he wanting Heaven).

Naturally, all this naturally, but the revelations of imminent death, the world being death, the somber realizations are what "Visions of Gerard" are about past the shots of heart-breaking idealism. For Ti Jean, Jack Kerouac, this was his first experience in death and we see him confused over the moping, crying, knowing Ti Gerard was in Heaven, as the adults cry and moan, as mom screams, "They took him off to Heaven!--They didnt leave him with me!--Gerard, my little Gerard!" It's a sobering view from a child of 3 now grown into a soon-to-be legendary poet and novelist. Death has always been a played-with subject of the Duluoz Legend, but in this book it takes center stage with all its promise and dire promise brought out, danced around. Yet we still have the words of what can be DONE before the death takes over, the impenetrable heart of perhaps Kerouac's own personal savior, Gerard Duluoz, someone who taught Ti Jean to be kind as he stabbed out the newspaper eyes of the murderer woman--"We smooth the ruffled paper, stroke the paper lady's eyes, brood over our sin, rectify hells, fruition good Karma for ourselves, repent, go to confession--" This sort of innocent heart, not sentimental or nostalgic, just understand of the sanctity surrounding him, he died for certain with no hopes like adult hopes but with some sort of alien heart for the good of all men.

This all not to say how Kerouac's words dance dance dance the page amazingly and elegantly the story of his brother. His progressive style of punctuation and short episodes lead to a clear, penetrating look at Gerard and his family structure. As Gerard returns form confession, Kerouac remembers his exact place and time, you have to be jealous over his ability to describe unabated, "I'm sitting stupidly at a bed-end in a dark room realizing my Gerard is home, my mouth's been open in awe an hour you might think the way it's sorta slobbered and run down my cheeks, I look down to discover my hands upturned and loose on my knees, the utter disjointed inexistence of my bliss." All over the return of the boy who'd bring him intense love for the world, word, and the heart to tell it. Then this leads to the internal understanding, "None of the elements of this dream can be separated from any other part, it is all one pure suchness." Simple, elegant. The book is--not crammed 'tis still airy--but laden with such description and wisdom, vivid, illuminating, gut-wrenching in a butterfly sort of way.

"Visions of Gerard" will raise many questions in the mind, the BIG QUESTIONS, as we see a saintly boy expire n go to where he always begged to go, as he posed the simple boy questions of why are men so mean(?) and so on. This is key in the Duluoz Legend as Kerouac runs all over creation searching for IT (which I always say was ENCRUSTED in his trips to begin with), though it appears IT was something Gerard had internally, and Kerouac, in this book, looked to dig it out of him before telling the story of his inevitable end to his rheumatic heart. It's heartfelt, in a way tender, never bitter, pure Kerouac in simply another way, pictures painted bright golden then stark never-seeing nights (behold the scene Gerard runs out to get his mother aspirin in the blistering windy cold winter night and revelates that God did not make the world for men in its pure darkness with a light only showing the darkness but not illuminating). The making of a literary icon in the visions of his brother who perhaps was greater than He.


"In bed that night he lies awake, Gerard, listening to the moan of wind, the flap of shutters--From where he lies he can just see one cold sparkle star--The fences have no hope."

please don't ask for a direct interpretation...

"Naked Lunch: The Restored Text", William S. Burroughs, original text: 1959 and restored text: 2001

Well, let us be thankful for the Restored Text version of this book, a little less than 200 pages of prose insanity and another hundred pages of outtakes and explanations, mainly from Burroughs himself. This book, one of the three staples of the Beat Generation (with Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" and Jack Kerouac's "On the Road"), is drug meditation, one from an admitted long-time use of opium and its derivatives, written while in the midst of addiction with extreme and bothersome imagery and cautiounary tales woven in. On first read, it's difficult to completely take in, I was left wondering where it was all going, however, as you catch the pace and rhythm of the text it flows disturbing but vivid, so much to visualize and synthesize it will undoubtedly warrant future looks simply out of intrigue.

Here we get pictures of Mexico City, Tangier, and "Interzone", a fictional psychedelic Orwellian society of dire proportions. Within the vignettes (I'll call them for lack of better term) and using Burrough's famous "cut-up" style, he pieces together visions and warnings. The warnings jump right out at you as we see our protagonist, a head man of Islam, Inc., meeting the infamous Dr. Benway in Freeland Republic, where free love and bathing are what it's all about, and how stability is maintained is through prolonged mistreatment (sound familiar, hmm?). Elsewhere say, "AJ's Annual Party", we get the pornographic, anti-death penalty episode where a threesome of young'ns have vivid intercourse ("Mark and Johnny sit facing each other in a vibrating chair, Johnny impaled on Mark's cock") then hang one another ("Mark reaches up with one lithe movement and snaps Johnny's neck...sound like a stick broken in wet towels"). In the midst of these themes are the overriding theme, that of the horror and stillness of addiction as Burroughs experienced it, and extreme. The visions, visuals are so dense your eyes may run over them while your brain is phasing out and surely you miss something every time you sit to read (I know I did). One of the more memorable episodes on addiction comes in "The Black Meat", where we see some other creatures known as The Reptiles and Mugwumps, disgusting slithering brutish blood-curdling, The Reptiles sucking off the Mugwumps in bars, for they have, in their members, the juice to prolong Reptiles lives. Everything's manipulation, cold, cruel, obscene, the life of a junky. Other sections that seemingly split-off the narrative seem to always in with the elipsis, and give scatter shots of biting outer-reality, including the famous story of a man's asshole taking over for his mouth, and eventually his whole psyche (yet still a biting criticism on the state of bureaucracy).

Which brings us to the cultural effects of "Naked Lunch", but I won't spend much time with that. I simply find it fanscinating and unsurprising that someone like Frank Zappa was highly influenced, doing his own recording of that talking asshole episode. This book is psychedelic, fargone, gritty, it's not hard to see how it had its impact on the counter-culture of the 60. It embraces the unembraceable. It talks homosexuality, sexuality of youth, addiction to hard drugs, whatever may seem vulgar Burroughs made matter-of-fact at least in the world of Naked Lunch. The book is highly sexual, no matter how stomach churning it may be for those living under Heterosexual American Dream Fantasy rocks, vivid, and disturbing in how it treats some of the subject matter, and that's intentional, Burroughs even admits that it was bothersome to write. But it continues to have great effect as perhaps the most taboo and vivid of all the Beat writings (and that'd be saying something, indeed).

It is convenient to have read this the first time with the restored text including several additional writings from Burroughs and explanations of how this version was pieced together by editors James Grauerholz and Barry Miles, gentlemen with obvious affection toward "Naked Lunch". From this we can get Burroughs's own point of view on the story, definitely helpful in determining his purpose for writing the book so as to know it's not just random imagery and gross-out stuff, but of substance (not that you can't tell that with just the text alone if you are savy, but it does help clarify some, especially the brutality of some chapters as cries against the death penalty and other barbarism in 20th C. America). I may not have been able to figure much of the book out the way I had without these sections immediately, I probably would have set out on further research (though I probably need to do that anyhow). The cut scenes, or outtakes, are interesting, however, not exactly essential, but that's perhaps why they were CUT. Most illuminating is a medical article on addiction and a variety of drugs used in the underground and their effects, as well as the effects of various treatments, and second most illuminating being an afterward written by Burroughs describing the mindset behind "Naked Lunch" and clarifying some of its themes.

Initially, I found reading "Naked Lunch" to be completely frustrating, I couldn't wait to be done. But as I went through the extra text and connected it to what I was reading, beginning to understand the midstate of this junkie (though how I could truly understand, I know), I could see the purpose of the text, the images, the obscenity, and now it's not hard to see the fervor behind it. It's raw, impassioned, maniacal, intriguing...all right then I've got nothing more. Ah, "Naked Lunch".


"'Well, son, did you get a piece of ass?'

'Yeah. This gash comes to the door, and I say I want a piece of ass and lay the double sawski on her. We go to her tap, and she remove the dry goods. So I switch my blade and cut a big hunk off her ass, she raised a beef like I am reduce to pull off one show and beat her brains out. Then I hump her for kicks.'"

all of us on mountains

"Desolation Angels", Jack Kerouac, 1965

On top of a peak in solitude, this is a new voice of Jack Kerouac, yet the same old one, working things out constantly. Thing is, Jack Kerouac spent a whole lot of time not on the road but we never hear about it because when he wasn't on the road, rather, in more or less solitude at his mother's he was writing about the wild times, the pursuits. Now we catch him in Book One (Desolation Angels) in 70 pages of solitude like a reborn Buddhist mulling over his philosophies before emerging back into adult life to be, again, Jack Duluoz, Beat poet rising into star status, these adventures taking place just before the publishing of "On the Road" before all things would change.

Still, what kind of rebirth is it? He comes back down off that mountain (from doing fire watches and keeping entertained with card baseball games) where he curses the sky and Mt Hozomeen for his solitude yet has the chance to meditate on his Buddhist leanings and seemingly feels refreshed, apparently knowing much more about life, and intermittently will curse his rebirth all together, wishing for nothing but pencils, paper, and nobody. Still, has he learned a thing, going back into New York, finding a few lovers randomly women taking care of him in absence of his mother, searching for that ultimate truth in the road trying to live and damnit doing it on his own whatever pursuits. Has he learned a thing?

Appearing yet again are the likes of Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso (all pseudonymed-up) with all their quirks, but Cassady much more lovingly human than the caricature hero of "On the Road"'s Dean Moriarty, while Corso is as mad and poetic ever painting murals for the mafia, speaking truth and cursing destitution, with Ginsberg and his lover sitting around naked at parties doing whatever taboo can be to shake people out of their comfort zone (whaddya expect from the man who, at this time, just published the titanic poem, "Howl"?). We get glimpses of their mangled fraternity, emerging flame, careless lumping into sameness catagories while Kerouac's prose sorts them out quite clearly as a diversity of souls all digging each other out of curiousity and sheer madness, but what else should friendship be based on? Cassady teaches Corso how to bet on horses, Ginsberg pisses Corso off by stripping down at a quiet gathering in San Fran, William S Burroughs appears in Tangiers typing away madly at "Naked Lunch" whilst dreaming of his Ginsberg and ever getting shot-up on M, Kerouac rides around to Mexico City, Africa, Europe, and so on with a growing stash of manuscripts artistically flourishing (for he never considered "On the Road" a magnum opus and had "Tristessa" under his arm nearly losing it on the train), Great Jack's last adventure was even to move his mother out to Berkley for their perfect home in the effeminate progressive art communities but the old matriarch couldn't take the madness, scared her boy would be destroyed by it all, begging for him to find a home, another theme constantly creeping through all the Duluoz Legend and especially "Desolation Angels" (there is no home in desolation?), the concept of home through all the searching home is not lost but yearned for more, especially as he takes that boat back to America from England, yet nothing is ever settled even as he finds his Joyce Johnson, or Alyce, the one who takes care of him so well...he even concedes that sex is not the furthest he can love a woman or somesuch (I think I'll find it and quote it here -- second thought maybe not I got a better Hozomeen quote). Yes, so much goes on here, the wild shit, the soul searching (and yes, the cover is right, religion comes up so often with so many Buddhist and Christian and spiritual references you must read it all in context to even grasp the meaning), and the longest Kerouac book in 409 pages and over 150 small vignettes/episodes, two books (Desolation Angels and Passing Through, which was really an overview of happenings after "Desolation in Isolation" and "Desolation in the World") you must do as you always would first time in a Kerouac maze, read read read don't stop read read and synthesize what's great let other words drift off, catch more the second time around.

Yes, you'll learn.

"Hozomeen, rock, never eats, never stores up debris, never sighs, never dreams of distant cities, never waits for Fall, never lies, maybe though he dies-"