cerebus the one man political machine

"High Society", Dave Sim, 1986

I thought that Cerebus was supposed to gain MORE cohesion as the series went on. Instead, with "High Society", only the second book (reprinting issues 26-50), Sim's giganto comic series only clusterfucks more often, and more the aggravation of the reader, myself.

I was entertained by the first 25 issues. They were funny, a little punchy with the upper-class and the ridiculousness of religion. Then Sim really started to get serious with these topics in "High Society"...I think. If you can truly explain to me the difference between the Cirinists and the traditional Tarim followers and Suentus Po's people, then please. Tell me their ideology, because so far it makes no sense to me at all. So whilst "High Society" is devoted to Cerebus's rise through the aristocracy and political ranks to be the new Prime Minister of Iest (and while that should have provided a vehicle for some intensely good satire of bureaucracy and government inefficiency), he seems to mix it all in with low humor, stupid comic book parodies, and a lack of knowledge on what makes government tick these days. So there are senseless invasions, bad economies, dumb bureaucrats, and that is synthesizing, because when you read "High Society", it's all over the place.

What is Astoria's biggest motivation? Is it really women's suffrage? For God's sake how boring.

Why are the Hsiffies invading Iest?

Whatever happened to Bran Mac Muffin and the Pigts?

Why does Cerebus want Jaka around? Why does Jaka love Cerebus? Their story makes NO SENSE AT ALL.

How are Astoria and the Roach still linked? Why is he Cerebus's bodyguard?

What happened to Elrod?

If you go issue to issue and just laugh at all the absurdity, OK, fine. It has that value. But I don't need that value. Cerebus is hailed as this great literary work. If they mean its verbose and intentionally complex, yessir, I'd agree. But if it's truly making a statement on something, then exactly what is that? That government is fucked? Hell I don't even know what "New Republicanism" is! If it's making fun of something, I can't see what.

So here's what I like about it: Cerebus is pretty funny, and his dealings with the bureaucracy are interesting in showing how spur of the moment events so drastically change the fickle politicians' mind. That's about it. For the most part, I was hoping that the author would care to TELL A STORY. Explain things. Kurt Vonnegut chided authors, in one of his articles, who wanted to use fancy language but couldn't take the reader along with them through a story. That is "High Society". It could've been really good.

when i say "cere", you say "bus", cere!, bus!, cere!, bus!

"Cerebus", Dave Sim, 1987

So Michael Chabon writes a coming of age story surrounding comics, I click links on Wikipedia, end up seeing the "Graphic Novel" is becoming considered the newest form of "literature", real art, become intrigued, see "Cerebus" cited, see "Cerebus" is some 6,000 page narrative the author calls the longest in human history, see it contains political and religious satire, sounds good, sounds grand, buy volume one, here's what I think:

The first of ump-teen Cerebus collections is noted for its crude art and silly humor. But more than once do I see foreshadowing of what is promised to me by so many admirers and critics: the dark comedy and satire! It's first realized when a group called the "Pigts" take Cerebus the Aardvark in, believing he is a god. "Tarim, Ashtoth, these were gods...They brought war, pain, they killed without reason or apology...", Cerebus ponders before the statue of the idol so closely resembling himself. Then he tears it apart, and on his adventures go.

Cerebus's adventures lead him all over the map. As he goes, we find him switching allegiances on a dime (once protecting the bureaucratic leader Lord Julius (famed for his likeness to Carlo Marx), next trying to take over his city of Palnu with a group of barbarians), running into comic book spoofs I had to research to understand (Red Sonja and Elric from the Conan series, The Cockroach spoofing Batman and Captain America this time around), all the while searching for gold and ale.

What's the point? Fun, I suppose. Apparently the long-term narrative had not yet been decided on, so Sims had no intention of this thing being a 300 issue massive work yet. Still, it's hard not to laugh at the ridiculous chants of The Cockroach as Bruce Wayne, moaning day and night and killing without cause for his parents, or the snappy one-liners of Lord Julius the bureaucrat (ex, after the torturing, something GWB should know a thing or two about: "Isn't that just like a prisoner...? You invest a good hour and a half breaking them on the rack. And they up and die on you."). Then my favorite had to be Cerebus's view on chivalry from a small school in the wetlands..."Of course he's had many adventures...Why he's probably saved simply thousands of women from death...Haven't you?", to this Cerebus replies, "Actually NO. Cerebus did use one for a shield once, though." This, of course, brings up the accusations of Sims as a misogynist, but I think, perhaps, it points at the knowing of smart men, that too many women just want to be saved by men regardless of their feminism. And that is not good, it's terribly unfortunate, especially if you want to be saved by Cerebus! Anyhow, it's funny, the comics becoming more witty, more inventive as the issues go by (especially in the psychedelic "Mind Game", where Cerebus is in a parallel consciousness manipulating religious fanatics, a wonderful comment on how two opposing, fundamentalist factions can be so easily manipulated by their beliefs, like a Sunni/Shiite conflict). And knowing Lord Julius as well as the Cockroach are mainstays, but that the story develops into a more cohesive plot -- more fun and additional commentary to come!

Good thing I just retrieved "High Society" from the post office yesterday. I'm reading about three books at once right now, but I think I can find time for the little aardvark amongst the amazing tales of The Lost Boys and the occasional Portable Atheist reading. Won't be an issue.

Notes: I just read, while looking for my footer images, about where Sim REALLY started to be called a "misogynist" -- issue 186, something they referred to as READS. Sounds fascinating, especially where Sim begins to argue against the current Marxist-feminist society. I'm sure my views are caught in the middle somewhere, but I respect this man's art now, so I'll stay tuned for where he will take it. Also, publications continue to talk about the first issues as just some funny animal book, but I feel like that died much earlier than they give it credit for, especially when we meet Lord Julius and talk about bureaucracy, aristocracy, etc. Should dovetail seamlessly with a novel called "High Society", now shouldn't it?

maggie cassidy

"Maggie Cassidy", Jack Kerouac, 1959.



Look at that cover. You'd think Jack was writing about encounters with escorts in France, not an adolescent heart-breaking love affair that the author looks back upon with sadness of days/pages turned. How awful.

So first I must say what "Maggie Cassidy" is not:

1) A book about horny.

Now I will move on to say my piece/peace.

Like The National Matt Berninger, Kerouac is having a secret meeting in the basement of his brain. Suppressed emotion of anguish in young love lost. It is seriously never like that I again, I do believe it.

From meeting Maggie Cassidy at a New Year's dance in high school, to having her over to big NYC for a prom at his new prep school, then the bitter and self-eating ending that shows you can overwhelm with emotion sans extreme sexual commentary. Yessir, this one hurts. Maybe myself moreso, moreso right now, because I feel stung by so many women whom I could've married. But I didn't want to. Or maybe I did, but I didn't really know. He didn't either. We're so lost in late teens, early twenties.

Every stupid review I write of Jack Kerouac talks some of automatic writing. It shouldn't, it is his known style for many a books, but this one is so completely successful in the vain of "Tristessa" in that of so many fragments of thought it creates this dancing poetry in novel form. On page 184, near the end, he concocts a speech from Maggie that is half a page, tons of "-", and from it emerges a sentiment that'd haunt Kerouac throughout his search for that ultimate big feeling, "You'll burn yourself out like a moth jumping in a locomotive boiler looking for light". She continues after a minor pause, deriding Jacky for his new big city being.

I see her like so many girls of my own life. With family I met in passing. With cities I met in passing. With a culture I know too well, couldn't be. It's so confusing to say what could have been, especially when what would ensue develops the intellect and awares us of what is.

In the end, the horny prevails, but not the horny, the dastardly and the sinister. Here's the last paragraph, but since nobody reads this, I can't ruin it:

"She laughed in his face, he slammed the door shut, put out lights, drove her home, drove the car back skitteringly crazily in the slush, sick, cursing." Post-revenge-fuck tortures, n that's it.

This from the book that took so many nostalgic and sentimental looks at old home town in a lost era. Kerouac's frequently bitter endings reveal such disappointment he had of his life -- starting in a good hometown Lowell, Mass then to Columbia, before life a military man and wanderer. The roamer, the writer, the antsy part-time recluse. Who started "Maggie Cassidy" with these wickedly sublime visions of winter back East, with the gang, with an easy life of the high school athlete and his little women, and fun.

Like so many of his books with the tinge of bitter ending accompanying this relentless for people and life, the evocative quality runs into your belly only when the pages begin to run out. Then you really can see the images of the indoor track and the little Lowell boy beating the great track star in the 30; the big father entertaining the guests in the back of the house during son's bday party with a dirty joke; the beautiful young lady of us falling into our pseudonym's arms and begging begging begging scared to be loved. Upon reflection, you realize how perfect awesome his writing was.

Now for the only "Maggie Cassidy" cover I know...

two big trees grow in (maybe not brooklyn, but) new york city

"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", Michael Chabon, 2000

Been a while since I finished, but reading and thinking about reading has taken a back seat to gearing up for work, taking care of new kittens, and writing devastating socio-love poetry. Now I digress to write a quick word on this fantastic coming of age novel.

"The Amazing Adventures" should be what "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" has become in annals of American Literature: a novel that peaks in the most human ways to the monstrous desire in all of us to spawn something great in this world. Where Francie had to overcome incredibly poverty and a sad family life in the poorest neighborhoods of Depression-era Brooklyn, we have Josef Kavalier escaping (in the most honest of definitions) from the Holocaust and Sam from sexual repression. Where Francie leaves us with a sense of undeniable hope, however, Chabon strikes the aching truth of a halfway ambiguous close (though Josef, whom it could be argued is Character 1A to Sams 1B, comes out OK nearly on the level of Francie). In the end, however, "The Amazing Adventures" strikes many of the same coming of age nerves that "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" does, with struggles, set-backs, and indeed, amazing adventures.

The Pulitzer Prize winning novel is so sprawling, and so magical in each part, from the young men becoming comic book pioneers, to Joe's torn love affair and need to exact revenge on Hitler, to his eventual return to the city to see the child and lover he left (whom, in an interesting twist, Sam is taking care of in his absence), it's hard to describe the episodes. With every turn, though, Chabon aims for the fantastic image, the plain face of anguish and the awe of dangerous adventures (emotionally and actually/physically). It's prime for a film if the writer(s) can adapt this huge 600-plus page and-worth-every-word book into the lavish and enticing scenes Chabon conveys with his words. With its emotionally taut scenes, brilliant internal and external conflicts (Sam v. His Homosexuality; Josef v. Third Reich; Josef's love for Rosa Saks v. His Need for Revenge; Sam v. Comic Industry; on and on), it's got the perfect story arch for many academy awards noms.

N that's what I think. Now maybe I should get to reading "Maggie Cassidy".

jack in the pocket

"Scattered Poems", Jack Kerouac, 1970/1

After you become accustomed to the wide-eyed humanity of Kerouac's best prose, his poetry surprises you. Not that his playfulness, his off-the-cuff style is shocking, but the lack of linearity in most of it, the quick visions, word sketches, this thing he calls "spontaneous prose"; it comes to remind one of a mix of the detailed visions and scattered mind-noise combined from "Visions of Cody", his most non-linear work of literature. I'll be honest: I never thought it'd happen, but I just about wrote-off "Scattered Poems".

See, it's dumb to have expectations of a great artist. They are great because expectations can be mightily fleeced, and holy man, I was turned-around upon first discovery of this collection, my first exposure to Kerouac poetry. A collection of poems from a variety of publishing sources brought into a (very large) pocket size, "Scattered Poems" is a nice sampling of his verse, or anti-verse as I'm sure he'd have it. Or a-verse. So after reading about his escapades with Dean Moriarty across America, and his meditations of love and drug abuse in the heart-breaking "Tristessa", I get a poem, I shit you not, from page two of this collection called "Fie My Fum", which goes "Pull my daisy; Tip my cup; Cut my thoughts; For coconuts". Look, I understand Kerouac's intro, that the new "SF Renaissance" in poetry is made of "CHILDREN" and that "they SING, they SWING", but it was surprising to see something quite at this level of naivete so early in a collection from a very famous and influential man.

I've opened to it, though. Not necessarily "Fie My Fum", mind you; it's silliness and I appreciate it as such, but as art it doesn't strike me. But the pictures from "The Trashing Doves" in the back of the Chinese store in the midst of skid row do strike me with the ease of a master painter; every little detail culls this gloriously real image from the mundane until it zooms outward showing the neighborhood, the world around. And it is heart-breaking little pictures that make these poems interesting, timeless, their look at the small detail plainly spoken, but aptly spoken, what Kerouac means when he talks of "what is". Of course his emotion penetrates the image subtly, lovingly, yet at the same time, he manages to battle off sentimentality with meditations, again, on what is. Here's the first half of "POEM"...

I demand that the human race
ceases multiplying its kind
and bow out
I advise it

And as punishment & reward
for making this plea I know
I'll be reborn
the last human
Everybody else dead and I'm
an old woman roaming the earth
groaning in caves
sleeping on mats

Imaginative as it is, he still chronicles what is, the core of the vision. They all aren't bleak as this, however, still to the point of his mind pictures expressed in few words, appropriately chosen, to make his bid to your heart and mind.

You won't confuse this with the complex poets of the ages who have worked in complex rhyme schemes, timely wordplay, etc., but Kerouac's imprint on poetry was playful, child-like, and at the same time, philosophical toward the world and the life he so loved with the highest anxieties and wonder. If anything, it's shown me how to release my own pretensions as I create my verse. Whilst "Mexico City Blues" is oft pointed to as Kerouac's best verse (and it does bridge "Scattered Poems" high-level spontaneity with the more meaty themes of his best lit), "Scattered Poems" isn't to be completely shoved off, for it gives great insight into his frequently cited "spontaneous" methods, as well as his pure, unabridged mind.

no priest attended him

"The Sorrows of Young Werther", Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, 1774

Werther is a new kind of tragic hero to me: One with a distinct weakness, though said weakness does not cause his downfall at the hands of the State or the Enemy, but at his own hands. "The Sorrows of Young Werther" seems to be highly notable for its controversial views on suicide (especially in the 1700s), and also for its cult following as an overwhelming number of people latched onto this tragic hero like few before him.

On all accounts, this story is a confessional where Werther's plight is discovered via letters to a close friend. As we read, he reveals himself as tender, intelligent, but moreso than intelligent, _passionate_ and sensitive toward nature. This is what draws in the dreamer, as they identify with good Werther. To go further, it is not uncommon for such a dreamer to identify with suicide; I find through all these literary studies as well as life studies that fantasies of death or sabotage of self can overwhelm one who has difficulty reconciling their true identity with the walking dead of most of the self-unrealized humans who surround them. In short, loneliness can eat the dreamer.

Werther's downfall is romantic passion. It is a bit pathetic to me that he'd kill himself over a girl, but his passion for this woman, Lotte, is part of his idealistic allure. Furthermore, that the torture of the one "thing" you want more than anything you've had or could have which is completely unattainable would drive someone to suicide really isn't that far fetched, is something we can empathize with, regardless if it might be pathetic. In a way, what makes us pathetic also puts us beyond that of the mere animal. Werther's passion over Lotte is based on Goethe's own unattainable apple of the eye; however, the downfall of Werther is based on a total other human being, and while these writings are every bit as sensitive and insightful on the human condition of the dreamer or intellectual non-conformist, it's clear that Goethe couldn't all together come to terms with suicide enough to do it himself. While far from promoting such actions, however, he was bold enough to put forth the act of suicide as a human reality and honestly explore how one could commit such an act. He's perhaps much like Kierkgaard in "Fear and Trembling", who cannot all together understand how Moses is able to have such faith in the absurd (by agreeing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, believing he will do this and see his son again in the material world), but can discuss it creatively and fluently. It opens discussion, in the case of "The Sorrows of Younger Werther", into a topic previously considered to be taboo.

Besides its philosophical discussion on suicide, Goethe offers many other insights on humanity through the filter of the sensitive artist. Let's see (looks through the pages), It is as if a curtain had been drawn from before my soul, and this scence of infinite life had been transformed before my eyes in the abyss of the grave, forever open wide. Can you say that anything _is_, when in fact it is all transient? and all passes by as fast as any storm, seldom enduring in the full force of existence, but ah! torn away by the torrent, submereged beneath the waves and dashed against the rocks? It is moments such as this existential bit (which goes on but I do not want to quote the whole paragraph), which make the book even more enriching in philosophy, and paint the whole picture of Werther's beautiful mind. Goethe goes deep into the crevices of this character's consciousness and has him confessing not just his love for Lotte, but his entire being.

I actually think writing about this book gave me a deeper appreciation for it than when I initially finished it. To truly enjoy, you must meditate on its controversy at the time of publish, the poetry of its language, the way it pins-down the dreamer and shows the suicide in all of us who know what we're a part of. I'm not sure if it'll spark more reading into Goethe, but it may. For now, I have this, and I'm sure extra readings will even further bring out the details of good Werther's thinking and feeling.

a quick word on mars

"The Martian Chronicles", Ray Bradbury, 1950

Immediately, this one struck me like my first reading of "Fahrenheit 451", a book I was so enthused about I was determined to teach it to my seventh grade students this past year despite the level of difficulty it posed to them thematically as well as semantically. "The Martian Chronicles" comes at you in waves, describing the first expeditions coming into contact with a species of Martians that have seemingly evolved parallel to the Earthlings. Then we have the Earthlings overcoming the Martians, unwittingly, to eventually colonizing the planet of Mars. Then the great war breaks out, human beings come to the brink of extinction, and return to Mars to, perhaps if they're lucky, start over.

It's been a week since I've read it, considering how I've been behind on releasing my random ponderings here, I don't intend to say too much. So here's two bits and I'm gone:

1) The majesty of the Martians mirrors our own majesty, but considering we did not know them long enough to examine their faults, their abrupt end was indeed melancholy. The invasion of Earthling germs was nothing they could come back from, and it left me wishing to know more about them, but was also a witty and scientifically possible end to them. And considering the reaction of the Earthlings when it came to the abrupt downfall of the native species -- the collective unconcern -- the greed and tyrannical qualities of homo sapien were fully exposed. Thus the majesty of homo sapien is ripped through, especially as the book develops and their technology and greed drive them near their own extinction.

2) It is easy to make connections from "The Martian Chronicles" to the soon-to-be-published "Fahrenheit 451". For one, both have their main plot severely effected by looming nuclear war. Another: the "Usher II" episode, which shows a brand of Thought Police being exported to Mars, explicitly follows the function of the firemen in "Fahrenheit 451", as these "police" come to burn the house dedicated to literature and imagination. Further, Bradbury believes heavily in the positive traits in humanity, but worries they will be overtaken by the greed or ignorance (or a combination) of the majority. In "451", Faber and Montag represent the virtues of intellect and curiosity in the face of a world on the brink of nuclear disaster; in "Chronicles", compassion for loved ones and family are exposed in the face of not only the conquest of another planet, but yes, nuclear disaster.

I loved this book, and I love Ray Bradbury. He rocks!

what kind of idea are YOU?

"The Satanic Verses", Salman Rushdie, 1988

I have been toiling over this book over and over in my poor journal that wasn't meant for such toiling over books books books. But I've been moving, haven't had internet, so this blog -- which is essentially a dumping station for my literary impressions knowing the best ideas come into my head and rarely in type -- wasn't available. Now that it is, I have already started my plans to do a second reading with running commentary, which will undoubtedly take the form of more questions than answers, and through these questions I find the truth of the book, or at least personal truths, if not a few universal. Questions like:

-Is Gibreel's situation similar to Mahounds, in that Mahound was going through the same schizophrenia in believing he was talking to an angel as Gibreel was in believing he was a holy entity talking to angels and the undead and even God? Then the secondary question: is this a commentary in believing in one's own "hype"?

-Who is Ayesha in this story? Is Gibreel Ayesha, are their deaths parallel? Knowing there was nowhere else to go, that the road ended at the Arabian Sea, did Ayesah commit suicide and take all others with her? If that's the case, how is this similar to Gibreel outside of his own suicide? What does he take with him? Anything?

You know, basic questions, easy to answer (hardy har har).

To break down my basic interpretation it goes in these parts:

1) This book is not about religion, it's about man the highest, and the transformation of two men in opposite directions in an incredibly poetic and symbolic way. Instead of Bible, it is grand Fiction that reveals subtle and hard to define truths, but truths nonetheless.

2) This book is about the non-distinction of good and evil as inherent in man, and that neither exists explicitly but are non-interpretive and complex pieces of what a human is. Shaitan and Allah live in us all, and reveal their parts in mysterious ways.

3) This book is about the migrant and his struggles to navigate between two distinct and opposing ways.

4) This book transcends the migrant in exhibiting how one -- anyone anywhere anysituation -- must navigate the big BE, IT, ALL, the WORLD; it is about ambiguities, contradictions, as our hero is the one to transform into Shaitan and our tragic piss the archangel Gabriel! How can this be?! Go back to number two, see that the Shaitan is only thus because the context has brought out the scum in him, and conversely the angel in the actor. It is about the hopeless absurdity of life, and the hope in that.

And it's about none of those things and many other things. I'm sure it's about religion, too, breaking it down to its flaws and manmade ways. But I'm going to do running commentary on my second reading so I'll talk about much more later. All I can say now is that "The Satanic Verses" captured me in all its post-modern openness and liberation-ary prose as one that is automatically going into my favorites.

bukowski and the hot water life

"Hot Water Music", Charles Bukowski, 1983.

It's mind-boggling to me, first of all, how one author can be so prolific. Bukowski wrote, I mean he must've done it all the time, a chronicler of all he saw, and a lot of what he saw was the gutter (from what I know). I put off "Hot Water Music" for a good while, but this reading was exactly what the doctor ordered in my current ordeal with my job status and the ugliness of this world. It is what it is, that's the way Bukowski seems to put it through this mass collection of short stories/vignettes.

One to the next, I would almost forget what I had read previously and need to refresh my memory. Ahh yes, Hot Lady, that's the one where the woman sets herself on fire to prove you could do it and not scream, Joan of Arc style. What's it mean? That people are crazy, it must mean that with the nonchalant, OH WELL ending (very common in these stories). And what else? Some Hangover, that's the one, yes, about a man getting extremely drunk then molesting two of the neighbors girls in his closet. ("She told you what?" "That you took her and Cathy into the closet and took their panties off and sniffed their peepees.") The man was a drunk, and somehow, someway, the neighbors decided to _help_ him, not call the cops. The moral? Hell, that one's tough...the terrible is terrible in isolation, but in totality it's the fucked crooked way of life. Terrible is subjective. And so on. These stories, especially exemplified by Some Hangover, could probably cause discomfort (as could lots of Bukowski from what I understand) if not taken at the bent he was trying to go for, exposure of a dirty world.

It's hard to isolate my favorites, so now I scroll through. Scrum Grief was a hilarious rub on modern poetry. Victor Valoff, the poet, was performing, and recurring Bukowski alter-ego Henry Chinaski, is sitting in with his girl and gets nauseous over the lines like, "East of the Suez of my heart / begins a buzzing buzzing buzzing / sombre still, still sombre", and so on repetitious, saying very little with a lot of words, the opposite of what poetry is supposed to be if you think about it. The Man Who Loved Elevators is a dark tale of a maybe or maybe not rapist (OK a probably rapist) who could only get excited about fucking women he didn't know on elevators. That one hit me because of the savagery of his final act, against an unwilling woman (the past one was all for it), and his inability to become intimate in bed, properly, the tale of a man too scared of the moment, his inhibitions only becoming, absurdly, sprung on elevators. It's sort of a crooked tale of sexual alienation. Beer at the Corner bar, shows a man being angrily brow-beaten by a corner bar crowd for his beliefs ("Hey, here's a guy who says he didn't feel a fucking thing when he read about those 50 little orphan girls burning to death in Boston!"). It's a staunchly Nihilistic bent, playing these sort of beliefs against a sentimental mainstream society. I liked Home Run, just for the bartender getting his skull cracked by the baseball bat, the bartender who is this sort of "in" world screwing over the bum drunk in the bar over, then getting his later on. I'd've had joy writing that one. Those might've been my favorite, who knows? There was only 30 some.

I guess I underplayed the comedy of these stories, too. The reactions to the absurd tales are hilarious. "So I've got this vase. It's a perfect fit for me. I put it into this vase and started thinking of Bernadette. I was going good when the damn thing broke. I had used it several times before but I suppose this time I was terribly excited. She's a sexy-looking woman..." Then the doctor, "Never never stick that thing into anything made of glass." That's just funny to me. Poor guy wanted to get his rocks off, but whoa, what a way to go about it. Had to get stitches. Anyhow, those are the types of situations Bukowski likes to write his characters into in "Hot Water Music". And what does the man do after he gets stitched up? Went grocery shopping. Another day.

So that's my first grand Bukowski experience. The guy is a master storyteller, especially with the brevity of these episodes (4-6 pages for most of 'em) he can really paint a situation, color it with dirty raw life and humor, and seemingly say fuck it, you do what you want with it.

kerouac being kerouac

"Mexico City Blues", Jack Kerouac, 1959.

This is strictly Jack as Jack; his Bhuddochristian beliefs, his love for bop, his retrospectives on his brother Gerard and father, and of course, the automatism taking over for the scattered and lovely imagery he delivers here. Of the poems I've read, this book encompasses what Kerouac was as a poet, the nonsense, the automatic, the golden heart.

You could say the nonsensical gives contrast to the (even sometimes solid) imagery Kerouac delivers. I'll go with that. The topics ebb and flow, choruses follow each other up or drift happily into new territory without warning, and that spontaneity is exciting and interesting. The transition from college to hospital to pondering severe drug addiction in the vain of William Burroughs is a dangerous ride, and you keep your eyes open at all times as Kerouac delivers, "Doctor gave me a mainline shot / Of H grain - Jesus I / thought the whole building / was falling on me / went on my knees, awake, / lines come under my eye / I looked like a madman." These are, on the surface, simple lines, but they paint bleak and real pictures.

We all know from reading his take on writing (especially if you have The Portable Jack Kerouac) that he hated the bullshit. Hated it! The idea of "blowing" like a jazz poet was the ideal behind this book, and if that meant some nonsense, it'd be soul nonsense, mind-chatter. But genuine. So do I crucify him for his naivete, lines like, "Moll the mingling, mixup / All your mixupery, / And mail it one envelopey: / Propey, Slopey, Kree. / Motey, slottey, notty, / ..." and so on, you get it. So do I? Well, no, probably not, but I have to say it makes for a cumbersome read at times. I understand what he's doing but my attention is pulled away, and only in retrospect can I appreciate the let-looseness. But I must admit, it pulls me away from my sometimes-dependence on linearity. It's hard to go back and forth, from Kerouac and even what I've read of Joyce and their values versus those of, say, Norman Mailer or Charles Bukowski, who were by no means conventional, but also not of the mind to placate the nonsensical regions of the mind nor spirit. They are all great, though.

So before I go, I wish to put out there, in the air, that it is a pleasure to be able to read all these works. To come closer to humanity before I perish. This is the portal, the gateway, to the heart. All I do in this blog is ramble, ramble, 30 minutes of free-flowing thought, starting points to contemplation on great literature. Not reviews nor opinions, really, just starting points of thought that will branch out on every work until the day I die, and hopefully intermingle with other people's thoughts, if I knew anyone who gave a damn. I don't know if I'll keep this things going, I am very self-conscious about it. Not because people can stumble upon it (no one reads this thing, nor do I care if they do or don't), but because I don't think it brings out the best of my analysis. We'll see.

my kafka morning and afternoon

"The Metamorphosis", Franz Kafka, 1915.

La da da da. This work, this Kafka, so many people imitated, tried to grip the inner us, the being of alienation, and I won't say they failed, no, many do just fine, but now that I have dipped into the Kafka experience, I can see how he is such a beacon to existential literature. "The Metamorphosis" is one of the most gripping, true stories I have read.

The Bantam Classics edition comes equipped with so much extra, especially in the ways of critical essays, you could take a small college course on "The Metamorphosis" in these 188 pages. I read one, but really, I just wanted to read the story. And now I want to give my reaction.

UNFRIEND: So, Gregor Samsa turns into vermin, a beetle...what did you think about his transformation?

ME: Well, I had a notion, through the little I've read of the story beforehand, that "The Metamorphosis" was about alienation. However, after reading through Kafka's background, it really hits you how his day job really detracted from his true passion, writing, and how his inner-self was at such odds with everything around him, his perception of what it means to be alienated is astounding. Turning into the beetle, the true self, and being disgusting to all around you, even to your self, that's profound.

UNFRIEND: If that was his true self, though, why was he so disgusted?

ME: I suppose he was unprepared for truth of his situation. Of what lingered in him. I have long thought that if we were exposed to ourselves, we would be horrified. In one of my unfinished novels, a young man is nakedly exposed to visions, regular visions of horrible, routine things he did, and proclaimed in glee, only after having gotten used to all he'd done and his ability to change, "I AM awful!"

UNFRIEND: How do you think he adapted to his metamorphosis?

ME: Again, he was completely unprepared. As time went on he learned to function as a beetle, but his mind was still so preoccupied with his family suffering, for him not being able to provide any longer. Of course, that was untrue when he saw his mother, father, and sister start to earn, and in the end he discovers how obsolete his existence was in regards to their comfort. It really makes you question a person's relative importance in that way. It also brings into question the value of altruism -- are good deeds really just someone else's perception of doing something good, when in reality, it could be done by the actual person being helped, and in turn is the do-gooder nothing of the sort, just a guy or girl to get over on, to be pimped?

UNFRIEND: How did you _feel_ reading "The Metamorphosis"? Did it evoke a special emotional reaction within you?

ME: Yes, a feeling of sadness and of some bitter confirmation. The images of Gregor having to hide under a sheet when his mother and sister were around, ones that loved him and did their best for a good while to take care of him despite his transformation, those images will haunt me forever because there are so many times I want to crawl under the same sheet, my true feelings and thoughts end up there, I cannot show everyone what I am. When I show my dad my poetry, he says he feels dumb and doesn't get it. Neither does my mom. Nor my psychologist. Very few do. But we can talk about basketball. That's my relation to the vast majority of the world, perhaps the whole thing, it's a struggle to let out the true realizations of the mind in the face of a wholly non-understanding world. However, as he hears his sister playing violin, he is snapped into a transcendent state that music can bring, and he forms a plan to take back his family, but even with that he fails and the apple episode with his father ensues. Because even though he can feel the music's spirit, he cannot erase what he is. A dreamer, perhaps. An ugly, creepy, out-of-the-order dreamer.

UNFRIEND: Why do you think Gregor's family turned on him?

ME: They were working to restore order to the house, and in such an equation he is not part. They were, after all, going through no metamorphosis themselves. His metamorphosis inconvenienced them to an extent, but they adjusted to keep their planet in orbit and not challenge the unknown, and he could not be part of such an equation. There was bound to be a time either they changed or he had to go...when in reality the inevitability was to be...he had to go.

UNFRIEND: Do you buy his metamorphosis and death as liberation, as suggested by one of the critical essays in the Bantam Classics version of the story?

ME: I don't sense liberation within the transformation. It is hard for me to wrap my mind around his being liberated because as an insect he has a stronger reaction to his sister's violin playing, to music. But perhaps. Perhaps it opens his mind to the poetry of those strings, however, can that save him from being alienated from his family, especially his father who plays this particularly unforgiving role? That is a contentious point. If we assert that his role within the family was obsolete anyway, that his relationships to his family were, in the sense of his role in the family, superficial, then perhaps the music was the pinnacle of his be. But there was still love flowing from his mother and sister to him, at some point, that he could not properly reciprocate, and that was torture he never overcame to his death. His dying was, perhaps, the liberation unwittingly, playing his final role in the sick little dance of his household, allowing his family members to continue in their illusion of who they are, and allowing him to rest in peace.

UNFRIEND: All right, I'm out of questions, any parting thoughts on "The Metamorphosis"?

ME: I question whether Kafka intended all this psychological role play in "The Metamorphosis", or was he just feeling so damn separated from the ordinary way of things that this was how he described such a feeling. I don't think fiction can be merely autobiographical, fiction writers' minds roam n wander oh so much and are illuminated with new ideas in the most abstract inexplicable ways, but with that in mind, perhaps Gregor Samsa in his transformation, is the angst of being in a world that can't conceive of you as you are. That alone is bold, profound, and the way Kafka presents it is mesmerizing. I loved this story from the get-go, when I could conceive of Samsa as this feeling of great angst through alienation and lack of empathy, by a world that wants business as usual and cover-ups of the gut-truth, I fell in love with Kafka for the first time.

when your therapist gives you a book to read, you read it

"Exit Ghost", Phillip Roth, 2007.

I have about as much respect for my therapist as I do for any living person, so when this one in a million Phoenix intellectuals gave me "Exit Ghost" by Phillip Roth to read, I said, OK. No prob. Gotta be something to it. All righty.

So why give this to me? I believe she thought I'd love the style, the introspection offered by serial character Nathan Zuckerman, now a 71 year old semi-recluse finding his New York all over again 11 years after leaving. Perhaps she thought he could impart wisdom on me, also, give the trials and tribulations he finds. And to show me life doesn't end after you turn 30(?). OK, I'm probably reaching now.

Roth's Zuckerman is a direct type of guy who digs into his gut to pick out exactly how he's feeling, and while it's not always profound, it is striking in its honesty while being philosophically intriguing...in this aspect: The concept of the young replacing the old, the old's animosity toward the young and the young's animosity toward the old, and the ultimate despair of the old who know they are to be replaced anyhow (the old represented as Zuckerman, Lonoff, the young represented in a slew of characters, most deviously Kliman, the upper 20s Harvard grad who is running head first into becoming Zuckerman's hero's (EI Lonoff's) biographer). We see Nathan, back in New York to resolve a problem of incontinence, be coaxed back to civilization in NYC, and before you know it he's made an agreement with a married couple to trade places for a year. Bitingly (as I get back to the youth replacing the elderly diatribe) we see Nathan fall head over heels for the young married woman he is to trade places with, Jamie Logan. Though he is old (more than twice her age), impotent, and 11 years removed from his life in the city, he cannot help but to be drawn in by her beauty (showing the old man to shell still vibrant desires) to the point he is tortured into writing a play using "He" and "She" to bring to life their intimate relationship that never existed in but one simple conversation. As this goes on, he is trying to fend off Kliman (who he insecurely asserts is Jaime's lover, to make his angst all the more potent) and his insistence in EI Lonoff's big secret (incest), trying to run him off biographing his reclusive hero and shaming his name (as Zuckerman sees it), and in the meantime he lets loose many a thoughts on this new world from his opinions on cell phones (take away from all contemplation) to elections (couldn't care less anymore). We see a turning of the page with Zuckerman's leaving back to the country, ready to call all off, a page turned on his time and as we get to know him psychologically we see all the hurt that can contain. It's not the change he's scared of...it's the recklessness in which it is performed. The gall of a 28 year old trying to understand and chronicle someone not even alive during his lifetime (no matter his intentions, which are not terrible really)...this young world thinks it knows everything! And yet Zuckerman found himself identifying with the head-first approach of Kliman, the youthful vigor and excitement, recognized it from his younger life. So yes, the page turned, and it is a bit bitter, but there is nothing one can do. We are all young once, right? We all learn. I'm trying, too...maybe that's what my therapist was trying to get to me.

"Exit Ghost" was an enjoyable enough read. The prose are quite direct -- Roth refuses to sugar coat the failure of the mind and body in the aging protagonist, but also allows Zuckerman to retain his immense dignity, and know when to pull himself back and out of the fray of the young and restless. Should I admire Zuckerman? He surely stands his ground, does what he believes in, in protecting the frail former lover of Lonoff (Amy Bellette), as well as what he believed about Lonoff, from Kliman. Should I loathe him? He could be so condescending, bitter, and utterly morose in his contemplations, so out of touch with the world to try to judge it so harshly. But I shouldn't do any of those things. I think I _get_ him. I wonder if Roth'd kick a 26 year old for saying that, but I dug his words, I dug his sticking to his guns and his ability to admit to the aging process and instead of woe-is-me-ing he keeps his notebooks so he shan't forget, he tries to stop up his wang best he can. He tries to improve, too, he admits the biggest lessons come late, he's open to the surprise of falling deeply for this Jaime, yet another muse in a world that can seem so devoid these days. He's not a crotchety asshole -- though I bet if you met him for just a moment in time he could come off like one -- but a seasoned old man who is wary of the bullshit. And he writes and writes before more escapes him, trying to hold it all in. I _get_ that. You can't tell me I don't.

Escaping the walls, somehow

"An American Dream", Norman Mailer, 1964.

Apparently, hiding beneath all of the vanity, fashion, good put-ons, there is something lingering within us that is urging us to strike, kill, and we resist, well, all of us but the insane, innit right?

I have been so ridden with anxiety lately, this has been a hard one to take, so I took and took and took anyway, escaped in some other guy's problems. That guy being Stephen Rojack, ex military, ex congressman, high society intellectual with a television show, a solid university job, and as he built this grandest of block houses, the child made it go KABLOOM, like we'd all like to do. He sends his wife plummeting to her death, fucks her maid after he does it, rationalizes his way out of suspicion, and lingers in this inextricably alive feeling when caught between his conscience and his raw passion to destroy and rebuild, returning something to himself that he felt wilt away in his life of accomplishment. He finds a new love, beats the shit out of her ex (a famous singer), runs around town drinking and trying to figure things out, and what he comes to in an abstract way is the plain cruelty of the high-brow, and the plain cruelty of having cruelty masked in the lavishness.

I'm not so used to stories being told this way, as I am much more interested in bums, low-class intellectuals who have their books and their willingness to suspend morals in search of the IT (like Kerouac would say). But a-ha! Where Mailer's upper-class drama of the callings of the moon and other psychologically acute madness depart greatly from what I'm used to, it is this suspension of morals, the willingness to delve into the uncomfortable passions of the human spirit, the Evil (as he explores such a dichotomy of God v. Devil, through Rojack the philosopher, the existentialist, figuring them to be much more evenly matched than the puritan types might have you assume), which show a close relationship to the beats, the progressives, the generation of rebellion against the obviousness of how things are and will always be. The heat, as he breaks his wife's collar bone and throws her to the street then immediately goes to screw Ruta in the vagina, in the ass, this raw carnal action both disturbing, engrossing, and erotic, this is a heat that dwells in us and leaves our registers as exhaust while we focus on how to live well-adjusted, and Rojack throws it to the wind so he can enter the realm of chaos, exhilaration, fear, and the living.

The way in which Mailer presents this is fairly formalistic, and his words dance fashionably across the page, sometimes distracting through all the philosophy, though sometimes he takes a deep breath and goes and goes which is wild and appropriate for the racing mind of this tory. I take issue with the form, at times, to an extent, but I remember then that Norman Mailer was no low-class beatnik roaming the world, and his approach is a product of who it seems he is. Also, the thrills of the escape from the police, the escape from Shago and his blade, these were cheap thrills woven into the plot that draw parallels to Shakespeare's perverse jokes for the lower-income crowd, and can be dismissed as such, but also appreciated as such. Still, through its presentation, there is a Nihilist behind this novel, a man who thrives in the absurdity and the cruelty of the world, and isn't afraid to expose it in a most severe and witty manner.

I can certainly relate to Rojack. I have definitely felt the sting of feeling your whole life was this set-up pit of mediocrity, some gains and some failures, but all failures in that life hasn't been experienced as sharp as one would like it, and while I have never felt the most savage of acts was necessary to turn me back to life, it is this extreme case represented in "An American Dream" that causes one to look around and see the dastardly life surrounding...and perhaps do something.


"In some, madness must come in with breath, mill through the blood, and be breathed out again. In some it goes up to the mind. Some take the madness and stop it with discipline. Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is the growth of madness denied."

One flew east, one flew west...

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next", Ken Kesey, 1963.

I don't feel like doing this regular today. That's not how it's done in the underground, the counter-culture, when men are trying to find their way around the walls, and end up going through them because we've had, straight-up, enough. Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is the frustration of going up against the authorities to be turned down, churned into the family of The Normals, fuck it.

Chief Bromden has been moppin' and playin' dumb on that loony ward for ages, who knows how long? Perhaps since man created government, or since man stopped making the God of Norms, the God of Norms started making him, or since we believed the hype about any type of God in the first place and forgot who we were. I'm sure it'd be better to rundown the ensemble of nutbags, so on, so forth, but this story was all about Bromden to me, the grand sad Indian narrator mopping around, remembering the origin of LIFE in AMERICA, and RP McMurphy bringing him back to it with the swagger of a young Jay-Z moving in. The hustler, jolted these kids to life, these brainwashed rejects and made them feel that life didn't have them by the balls, but they could squeeze its genitals whenever they damn well pleased. The nemesis was, of course, Nurse Ratched, the one to fear, the one who used EST and lobotomy as punishment. She was THE MAN crushing cats for nothing, because she could, to keep order, but mostly because she could, you could never assume her agenda revolved around anything wholesome though she leaned on wholesome intentions in the face of equal authorities, and like that, she pulled the wool over the eyes of everyone like grand old God and Norms and The Bullshit. So the showdown was on, but it wasn't just Bromden's soul at stake, you had to feel it was yours and mine and everyone we love and those who are lost who we, of course, don't love. Liberation, in short. So as McMurphy plays within the nurse's norms for the most part, follows ward policy for the most part, doesn't do enough to get himself buried but enough to annoy her, we are cheering for him and ourselves...but what do we say when he does go over edge, when the line he cannot cross become too tempting because he's too righteous, too mad, to toe it, then ends up on a hospital bed with Nurse Ratched's grand solution, becomes a Lobotomy Vegetable and gets smothered out by merciful Bromden...but Bromden picks up that damn immovable object and crashes it through the window, gone and out, the cycle of broken, "I been away a long time" last line, tears, satisfaction, was McMurphy the martyr, HOW DO YOU FEEL? He felt as big as a mountain. HOW DO YOU FEEL?

ALL THIS BOOK MEANS TO ME: That not a soul can touch you unless you let it, let yourself believe you are crazy, that you are not worthy, that there is a way of doing things and either you do it or you are a freak and un un un un un un worthy, right? Fuck them. That the powers are not so secretive but in front of us with a straight face and all the cards in their deck yet we have something in us that trumps it all so they can take our money and run the casino dry and we can take that empty beer bottle and go for their throat though we may be the ones who have the bottle turned on us we've just distracted the authorities for another one of us and we nip and fight like Winston did in "1984" but less foolishly with less to lose just our lives and we will do that anyway screw it. That you can be caught up in your own gloom or you can raise hell.

"There's no more fog any place." BROMDEN.

visions, blabs, tapes, all sorts of neal cassady

"Visions of Cody", Jack Kerouac, 1960

"Visions of Cody" has been a major reading project, unexpected, somewhere just shy of taking on "Ulysses", which I found 500 pages in I was not equal to without literary help. Thankfully, having read many Kerouac novels before embarking on this journey, I was able to understand the references to fictionalized history of Neal Cassady (now known as Cody Pomeray), and also the free-flying techniques of "automaticity", or pure mind noise in memories Kerouac strived to employ in his more non-linear bits, so I was OK. So it took me the better part of six weeks to mull over "Visions of Cody", a lot of three-page-and-quit sessions taking in little bits of scenery (San Fran, Denver), a lot of departures (reading also "Fear and Trembling", "St. Lucy's Home...", parts of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", Kerouac's own "Scattered Poems", got a great start on my own "Beautiful People Collection), admitted frustration over the mind-chatter employed and sometimes vain and irritating tape bits, engulfing in beauty in its bits of love for the protagonist, the friend, and I'm out the other end today. A long road, but not as long as some -- and ultimately, as goes with Kerouac, rewarding.

It took off like a rocket. Beat-up movie theatres, skid row descriptions, Ginsberg was indeed proud of the unsentimental, gritty, urban, Joyce in the gutter type prose. The background, Cody's ascension to the main scatterbrained man of the Denver underground, the emergences of King Beat, is amazing, Herculean, as he foot races, tackles, shows-off his machismo and mile-per-minute mind.

We are then put right in the living room of the Pomerays as Jack comes to visit, listening to the mad banter of Cody and Jack as they got high, listened to bop, played their instruments, and philosophized in the immediacy of every moment. The cliche of the day is "Live every moment as if it's your last", and you can't help but to feel, in the vibrations of these crazy, sometimes nonsensical, sometimes profound, bits of uncensored talk, that these two were even micromanaging their moments!

The follow-up is Imitation of the Tape, and I can't pretend I totally get it besides, in Allen Ginsberg's notes, "By now the author K.'d obviously gave up entirely on American Lit., on Town & City, on On the Road, on Himself & his history, and let his mind loose. The resulting book is full of charming sounds & jokes, he didn't think he was Finnegan's wake; but some American Mouther Fucker." I love that, Mouther Fucker. To me it's also him imitating through his own isolated literary experiment-trip the mad immediacy of his and Cody's minds in some sort of strange fusion, playing off each other, two chemicals in a deadly bomb. When Evelyn (Cody's wife) pops in with sane questions, she only triggers further insanity. These parts, along with the ensuring re-entry to San Francisco, "Joan Rawshanks in the Fog", can be quite cumbersome due to their intensely personal, inside-story ways, but in retrospect, they are able to represent exactly what Kerouac meant when he spoke tirelessly of automaticity. Something says his friendship with Neal Cassady inspired that more than he'd ever let on.

The true gems of the story, however, belong to the last 60-some pages, almost an alternative version of "On the Road" in many ways, as Kerouac takes the trips from that story, speeds them up into a hypomanic fit, and delivers them with less punctuation and more raucous-ness. It's hard to get sick of him telling the story of his trip to Mexico, and the visions-- such as sitting in the Tropic of Cancer park, and Cody coming to his last will to remember, when prodded about his whorehouse experience on the way down to Mexico City says, surprisingly, "Makes no difference" -- these visions round it out, bring depth to what we've already heard, bulk to this legendary trip. All the insanity further developed, and it's refreshing for Kerouac to step out of his typically linear style to focus on images, vignettes of life, mad moments. In the end, it drove home his admiration of a man he'd follow to the ends of the Earth just to see what IT was really out there.

Though Jack ends on a tender, somber note, believing Cassady was to be lost to traditional marriage, settled times, Ginsberg is quick to note that it is Cassady -- who later reinvented his persona with Ken Kesey and the Pranksters -- who'd see Kerouac's decline from his alcoholism in the early 60s. They'd have their kicks again, but the heart of who they were together lives in the 40s and 50s, in "On the Road", though the fullness of the real Neal Cassady seems most likely immortalized in the pages of "Visions of Cody".

"I stood on sandpiles with an open soul, I not only accept loss forever, I am made of loss -- I am made of Cody, too --"

Below: Cassady is on the left, Kerouac the right

magic in the face of trouble

"St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised By Wolves", Karen Russell, 2006

It's funny, oh me, I'm jealous of this author and it's a bit hard for me to write about it. The term (or movement) magic realism has come up a lot with this collection of short stories, "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised By Wolves", and the combination of the fantastical with the fantastically lonely, ostracized, obscured soul brings together in an unusual and powerful way these full-bodied tales. Imagine that the author was my age when she did it! Karen Russell, still not 30, pretty, published, hmmm. I hate her! And I can't wait for she does next.

The protagonists here, whether they are the pretty/slutty girl's best friend (Big Red in "City of Shells"), the wolf-raised girl struggling to adapt to a harsh new culture (Claudette in the title story), or the old man on his isolated boat post-retirement (Sawtooth in "Out to Sea"), they all have one thing in common: they would never be protagonists in real life. What I mean by that is, they are not the spectacular lead-roles, and even in their own 360 degree reality they are unimportant, but Karen Russell shifts the focus to them. Tells their story.

Then it is that these forgotten-abouts are either engulfed in the fantastical already, or about to be. Set in an island dwelling, Sawtooth is part of a retirement community of refurbished boats and lives out at sea, the isolation and loneliness of aging and being cast away a definite poignant point. The concept of "ZZ's Sleep -Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers" is immaculate in its conception, seemingly well-researched on the sleep disorders of the day, and terrifying as the dreamers investigate an unexpected sheep murderer (and how apt is that!). Then the title story, which is the most powerful statement on the tyranny of conformity, which shows the progressions made at this home for girls raised by wolves, where they turn these girls against even their sister, breaking down their bonds and beating their minds into their image of what it is to be human. As if Karen Russell, or anyone, had to create such establishments, but indeed the creativity in her use of magical elements keeps these from being simple, redundant, disposable commentary, and raise the tension in the process of explaining our combustible spirits.

Over the past few weeks I bought this book, read a bunch of it shortly after buying it, left it locked in school for a week, forgot to bring it home, read it and read it, stopped, forgot about some of the earlier stories, finished it, browsed back, certainly not how I like to do it. But through all that, the writing of Karen Russell and her "Girls Raised By Wolves" has been memorable, as her work is sensitive whilst avoiding gross sentimentality, and instructive on the heart of the outsider without showing them pity. Brilliant! (Guinness guys crack bottles, drink up).

To go beyond your place in society

"Fear and Trembling", Soren Kierkegaard, 1843

Introduction

FEAR AND TREMBLING

Preface
Attunement
Speech in Praise of Abraham


PROBLEMATA

Preamble from the Heart
Problema I
Problema II
Problema III <----I am at the beginning of this as I start writing

Epilogue



OK, that's our map to one of my most difficult philosophical undertakings in a while. What people cull from philosophy, however, is rarely what the professor of philosophy culls, as they have been programmed by countless user guides to convey a philosophical text in its primary purpose (ie whatever popular notion of the time relative to philosophical trends at the time dictate). I suppose this is only the complicated way of me saying that what Kierkegaard puts forth here is understood in my own unique standing as: A) An Atheist and B) An Existentialist, and as he speaks of the paradox of going beyond Hegel's universal ethics to movements of faith toward the absurd, I have my place in the world, 2008, to consider. So consider them I will, before I even go to Problema III because I must start figuring out now where it is I stand with Kierkegaard and his analysis of the Binding of Isaac episode of Genesis 22.

I have attempted to put aside my atheism for the sake of understanding the philosophy underpinning the theology of Kierkegaard's writing. He is, after all, talking about what so many secularlists have talked about, the going beyond the universal, or that which is good for the whole. He uses Abraham as an example to show that, through his immediate action, that of sacrificing his son outside the bound of duty (duty to the State it sounds), would be considered ethically reprehensible, it is justified only by his faith, which answers the first Problema which is "Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?" To me, this points out to a higher calling beyond that of the society, to the origin of mankind, and since I don't believe in God, I find the origin to be within us, or that we are all God, and no doubt omnipotent. Problema II is, "Is there an absolute duty to God?" Kierkegaard says yes, and so do I, for the same and different reasons. Our common ground can be boiled in this sentence: "The paradox of faith is this, that there is an interiority that is incommensurable with the exterior, an interior which, it should be stressed is...a new interiority", meaning, as opposed to the ethical view of life that demands minimizing the interior and giving it an expression only in the exterior, the interior takes new precedence,"the single individual is higher than the universal", "the individual relates himself absolutely, as the single individual, to the absolute." With all the noise of the world, the temptations, the deadliest of sins, it's impossible for me to fathom this type of existence as it is Kierkegaard who can only describe his observances through his narrator Johannes de silentio, and never use himself as an example. Nevertheless, it is a sort of pure being uncovered in meditation, and he is correct in saying it cannot be mediated (I only tell you he is correct because I have experienced self-discovery at isolated times in as close to perfect form as I can fathom through journals and aloneness and readings). I find the absolute duty to God to mean the absolute duty to the Unabated Self inside us, to go beyond the ethical infinite resignation (being resolved to the inevitability of self) and subscribe to the absurd (the full realization, then perfection, of self). The former to me is a group of downtrodden, depressed pedestrians in need of serious in-patient attention. But we all belong to them at some point if we are to accept the inevitable horrors of ourselves. Still, it is then to act with faith toward the absurd--that we can be who we are and be perfect in this lifetime--that can make us dramatically wonderful. This is the most meaningful analogy I can draw to Abraham's movement toward the absurd--that he can sacrifice his son (We can be attuned to the horrors we are and meditate on that level...) and still enjoy his presence again in his lifetime (...And still be perfect in our lifetime). When I say perfect, I mean maximally healthful in all circumstances, Emotionally and Physically, living as perfect individuals and perfect members of society. We can either resolve to the impossibility and shiver for the forever silence and non-being of death (Knight of Infinite Resignation), or we can resolve ourselves to the impossibility and go beyond and move toward the absurd, to the notion that we can be perfect in all senses (Knight of Faith). And like Kierkegaard, I believe I have just said the same thing in three different ways.

I will continue my ramble after I finish the third Problema and the Epilogue.

Or is it like the Buddhist seeking Nirvana, though meditating on the harsh desolation of being. Through this meditation of the harsh desolation of being (the infinite resignation), he goes through another movement toward the attainment of Nirvana. Is this what we're getting at? Or am I hatching a new egg, or, at least, an egg hatched elsewhere in another Atheistic place?

Anyhow, Problem Tres, the last, "Was it ethically defensible of Abraham to conceal his purpose from Sarah, from Eleazar, from Isaac?" It was defensible in his faith, yes. Had he pronounced his purpose to them, they would not have understood anyhow, he would have been speaking gibberish. To say, I am now going to sacrifice Isaac as a trial to God, would have proven incomprehensible to the others. His undertaking would be to express faith, and that, as opposed to expressing the universal (as Socrates did at his death, which made his death all the more profound as an ultimate tragic hero), and Kierkegaard's whole purpose is to show how verbally expressing faith is not possible because it is beyond the universal (which is compelling when meditated upon through silence, or as I'm doing, through writing).

In short, we cannot speak to others what is only comprehensible within ourselves (faith, in this case). We will never come across as we would like.

As a sidenote, the parallel I drew from my own philosophy to Kierkegaard's could be fallible in some way. I wrote it in a stream, as I always do, because I find it typically futile to express one's deep reaction to life in form of a well-conceived, contrived essay. It's an incompatible format. Usually it's not verbally expressible. But I can stick by the premise: That it is one level of self-realization to reconcile ourselves to the horrors that lie deep inside each of us, but to go beyond self-realization to the absurd, that we know our nature is horrible but that we will be perfect in life is the absurd faith worthy of our being.

So what have we learned children?

Kierkegaard's philosophy asserts that faith is the highest of human passion.

Kierkegaard also asserts that faith is the go-beyond of ethical, therefore universal, behavior.

Kierkegaard sees that faith turns ethics inside-out in that ethics requires the giving up of the internal for an expression external, whereas faith shows the internal is immeasurably more important than the external (and is thus, as we see in Problema III not expressed intelligibly by the one who possesses the most impassioned of faith).

Kierkegaard is attacking Hegel's form of ethics. You can infer that he finds Hegel's ethics and their insistence of Society before Individual as oppressive, and as his legacy runs, and with the example of Abraham who is the father of faith, that we as individuals can have an extraordinary mission in life.

Kierkegaard uses Abraham as the ultimate figure of faith, but cannot understand him, and is modest in this approach. Instead he chooses admiration, shows him as someone much more worthy of admiration than an Agamemnon or some other tragic hero who gets to exult his pain in the drama of his actions and words, whereas Abraham's relationship to pain and anxiety are transcended by his belief in the absurd, that he will have his son back.

Kierkegaard's prose fly by more quickly and assertively than he receives credit for. His examples fly, he gets to the heart of his point through his examples, and whilst this is a tricky read worthy of revisits, he does not attempt to obscure his point by showy verbal tricks and is, indeed, and with no remorse or hesitation, passionate about his subject matter, and even if I went through some of his book not comprehending (and trust me, I did, though I assert that, through the preceding summary that I understand his main purpose and points), it was a joy to read someone so concerned with the essence of being human and what dictates human action, and the hierarchy in such actions.

Kierkegaard warrants further reading.

And that's where I'll end. I end now.

"The genuine tragic hero sacrifices himself and everything he has for the universal; his action, every emotion in him belongs to the universal, he is revealed, and in this disclosure he is the beloved son of ethics. This does not apply to Abraham. He does nothing for the universal and he is concealed."

in the world of nothingness

"The Dharma Bums", Jack Kerouac, 1958

You truly need to quiet your mind for this one, to piece together the wonders of Japhy Ryder (poet Gary Snyder) through the eyes of Raymond Smith (Jack Kerouac himself), to understand in a bit of a Buddhist nothingness not silence not noise not anything. At times, with all swirling in my brain these days--moving, staying in Phoenix, balancing finances, the hard-hit realization of being a full-fledged adult with credit and economy--I had times I felt shamefully noisy. But that's why it's good I hit a more romantic Kerouac with his "Dharma Bums" at this time, to remember the quiet and the joy and the OKness of many things. (Even if he was drunk and trying to get laid a lot of the time--).

Japhy Ryder is to "The Dharma Bums" what Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) is to "On the Road": the Chosen One Kerouac follows pseudonymed-up for another segment of his life--journey--adventure--learning. This time we go fewer places than "On the Road" before, but the visions of life are more wide-eyed. You can literally taste the coldness of the stream Kerouac sips from as they make their way up Matterhorn Mt., feel the exhilaration as Kerouac realizes you can't fall off of a mountain(!), and then, later, see the clouds swirling below you as the lookout on great Desolation Peak (a place not quite as romanticized in the more devastating "Desolation Angels"). Japhy takes Kerouac through all of this, showing him the purity in the quiet outdoors, steering clear of tourists and haggles, noise and human-inflicted pain. Even in the city they live in shacks and sit on haysacks meditating, doing nothing and everything. We even run into Allen Ginsberg who Kerouac portrays more crabby then ever due to his conflict with Kerouac's insane passion toward his BhuddiChristian beliefs (not hard to see why this was the Kerouac book he was the harshest towards, though honestly, I take him for a more objective intellectual then that). In turn for Japhy's guidance, Kerouac immortalizes him in his familiar rollicking prose, edited I'm sure with more tight punctuation, let loose enough to let the rhythm and spontaneity breathe through and sound authentically Kerouac. He is far warmer and more idolizing of him than the, at time caricature-like, Neal Cassady.

In the end, you see Kerouac as the mountain lookout, following in the shoes of this young man, Japhy, trying to understand his world, see how it fits him. In later books, we'd find out it didn't quite go as dreamily as he had wished or even chronicled in the last 30 or so pages of this book, but here, for the sake of this work of fiction, it was a blessing and a soothing peace gathering around this Raymond Smith, this man searching for something beyond the booze and women that plagued his life so, past the insane drama his so often inflicted upon himself and immediately returned to after his trip down the mountain. In many ways, perhaps, this was the silent climax in the hectic life of the fictional Sal Paradise, Raymond Smith, Jack Duluoz, as the one lurking in the shadows of the Duluoz Legend wanted us to see. Maybe. Or maybe that's my romantic interpretation of it all. Either way, I leave with a quote to fall with the popular interpretation of Kerouac as a brilliant chronicler of post-World War Americans searching for a place to be, with

"I recalled with a twinge of sadness how Japhy was always so dead serious about food, and I wished the whole world was dead serious about food instead of silly rockets and machines and explosives using everybody's food money to blow their heads off anyway."




PS: I've now read three of the 17 (as I count'um right now) "Graphic Classics" from penguin. This, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Candide, and Fairy Tales. I love the feel and the covers and all of the contextual intros and notes!

upside-down sadness imagery

"Fairy Tales", Hans Christian Andersen, stories between 1845 and 1872

I've had a hard time getting to writing this, primarily due to the fact I rarely wrote about Andersen's book while I was reading. Usually I'll take down a reaction, write something to keep my mind active and enhance the reading experience, but for these, I just read and laid back and enjoyed. These are dark, imaginative tales full of the most blessedly amazingly visual imagery you can come across, which respect children and provide intrigue for adults. And they are truly to be taken in, pondered, and enjoyed, and my own personal writing about them comes very secondary to digesting and feeling them.

In the Penguin Deluxe Classic, or the Graphic Classic, there is an extensive introduction plus a bevy of notes in the back which put these fairy tales into perfect context. Even if you're familiar with "The Ugly Duckling" or "Thumbelina" via other interpretations, movies, etc., this is the ultimate way to experience them -- from the author who perfected them with commentary that lets you understand why he went through the trouble. From his closeted homosexuality to his intense longing and self-mocking ways, you can feel the humanbeing in Andersen whereas before he's always been some mystical character full of magic and decidedly unreal.

The overriding themes of the collection tend to be alienation, the power of love (or art), and the appreciation for what one has. The imagery that accompanies these things, such as the mermaid of "The Little Mermaid" turning into suds on the water when she dies without her love the prince, or the tine soldier and ballerina being cooked and killed in the over of "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" (he melting into a heart, her going to ash), show the true anguish Andersen wished to express and drove his themes home and, at the same time, capture any reader of the past 150 years. Still, nothing beats the image of the ugly duckling alone, in wintertime, swimming circles in a pond that's slowly freezing around him, the hole he's swimming in getting smaller and smaller until he is frozen in it. That vision of loneliness and alienation in the face of unruly hate in the world is a timeless picture of the forever state of humanity.

So here are my five favorites of the collection with a quick word why I liked it so much:

"The Ice Maiden": The best of the longer writings, the wintry images along with the concept of death coming from under and grabbing you with no regard to your current life situation even vaguely hints at the absurdity of life through all the romantic visions and distinct chivalry.

"The Ugly Duckling": Who'd want to be a regular duck and have it that easy, when one can find out (s)he's a swan? Dumb mainstream society doesn't know what it has in us.

"The Little Mermaid": The mute girls can't express her love to the only one she wants, the power in the anguish here is unparalleled throughout the story and easily relateable to a sucker like me.

"The Fir Tree": Because we all get chopped up and burnt-up before we know it. Better enjoy our forest while we can!

"The Travelling Companion": For the love of Karma, treat people well! Shows Andersen's anguish toward the royal man he loved so but could not truly have, but that's not exactly why I love it. It's the queen getting beaten, the princess getting trounced! Wenches, pretentious wenches, take that! And all the death imagery is harrowing wonderful. The men who failed to win the princess hanging from trees all around.

And if I can have a bonus sixth, "The Match Girl" pays homage to the lonely world of the child, with the most sublime passing over after a life of poverty and abuse, into the arms of the only one who genuinely cared for her, her grandmother.

It was a delight to read all of these stories, and it will be a delight to revisit them over and over as we have been doing for over a century.

"It doesn't matter if you're born in a duck yard when you've been lying inside a swan's egg."

when the world brings its fire...

"We Have Always Lived in the Castle", Shirley Jackson, 1962.

Merricat Blackwood poisoned her family long ago. She strategically kept her sister Constance and Uncle Julian alive; everyone else had to go. In this sinister story themed around reclusiveness and resistance to mainstream culture, we have a villainess and heroine all wrapped into one person.

All's well, or so it'd seem for these outcasted ladies. Following a trial that set Constance free of being charged for murdering her family (you don't have Merricat confirmed as the perpetrator until halfway through the book or so), the Blackwoods live a life away from everyone. Constance never leaves, Uncle Julian can't, and Merricat only goes into town for shopping (and a side order of harsh ridicule).

Then Charles arrives. A mainstream main disguised as family, the girls' cousin, he infiltrates the their away-from-it-all world in attempts to assimilate. Unwittingly, he sets fire to the house with one of his pipes and burns the entire upstairs. Then the house is plundered and pillaged, the climax being the time where society attempts to crush the girls forever. But see them a few days later, the remaining portion of the house barricaded, with only their garden and tablecloths for Merricat's clothes, and on they go, to their own drum.

But is the drum sinister? Is Merricat's design to keep her sister down and subservient? Or has Merricat liberated what was left of her family and separated them and their useless fortune from the doldrums of normalcy? These are appropriate questions, I believe, and ridiculously hard to answer. I suppose that qualifies the books as challenging, morally speaking, and you almost feel pleasure out of not answering, simply pondering. I couldn't help but feel oddly hopeful in the last chapter as I heard of Society's hindsight horrible guilt as they left food for the girls who waited until late at night to retrieve it. Charity. Heavy consciences. And the girls, not needing, not caring, but eating it and living on the essentials of love, garden, and air. It's bohemian stuff. With some sick fantasy we've all had in our most bitter moments -- to be on an island with our families, and everyone, just everyone, lost forever -- if not killed, then just exiled.

Just be on an island.

"'The least Charles could have done', Constance said, considering seriously, 'was shoot himself through the head in the driveway.'"

the garden of laughter

"Candide", Francois Voltaire, 1759

After reading Michael Wood's excellent and exhaustive introduction on Voltaire's satirical masterpiece, "Candide", I've got no cause to write some retread interpretation. Instead, I offer my exhilaration upon my first of many readings of this novel, and what it means to my own work.

First of all, I sit in stream-of-postmodern-conscious and reel out all my anxieties, and I call it writing (which it is). Yet, I see Candide and his friends, who have been beaten, torn to shreds, tending their garden, and I forget to tend mine. I see Voltaire tending his for 94 pages and shredding the art of philosophy he made his legend off of, and I forget to *laugh* as he laughs at humanity.

To see Candide go through the the horrors, lie on a bed of philosophy and hope, travel the lands only to find perfection and deny it by some strange nature expelling himself from a land not natural to himself, all in the name of refuting Optimism, may be of the darkest joys I have ever partaken of. Even as he comes about his lovely Cunegonde, she is exposed as hideous and he marries her out of duty -- and I like the thought that this is reality realized through the previous ideal of marrying Cunegonde, or the idea of her.

No character leads a pointless existence, no episode drags, the pace of writing is extreme and refreshing to my eyes. There is an inkling of sentimentality toward the end, an existential nuance amidst the absurdity, even if it's the absurdity of destiny (a stylized contradiction in my reflection only). I love that Voltaire can even tease himself through Pococurante, and his pickiness toward literature, which the melancholy philosopher Martin chides when Candide suggests he's happy for his ability to criticize ("Which is to say...that there is pleasure to be had in not taking pleasure"). I can't say enough of the two day experience in reading "Candide", and how it reminds us that 1) Everything is indeed not OK and it's OK to confront this, and 2) Laugh at it, it's absurd.

Perhaps then I write my satire. Or just read more of them. Or, at the simplest and most useful, I walk around town and remember to laugh, that it's chaos and no one knows what to do and, indeed, we are asses. And I just laugh.

PS: The packaging with the various comics including the front cover of the opening of the novel and how Candide is thrown into his horrors, as well as the maze to discover the origin of Pangloss's social disease, are awesome, as well are the apt appendices (including excerpts from Voltaire's philosophical encyclopedia, a poem on the earthquake at Lisbon and its use toward refuting Optimism, and an alternate opening to the Paris chapter).

PPS: I also learned what an auto-da-fe is: When heretics were publicly charged and invited to make an "act of faith"; though in the circumstance in "Candide", Pangloss was hanged and Candide flogged in this horrid world.

"'What is Optimism?' asked Cacambo - 'Alas!' said Candide, 'it is the mania for insisting that all is well when all is by no means well.'"

broken hearted hoover fixer sucker guy

"Our Man In Havana", Graham Greene, 1958

First, it's been a month since I posted here. I've been in the doldrums of James Joyce's difficult "Ulysses", which I believe I understand on some levels (psychological, spiritual) but know I do not on others (cultural, literary), so I've recruited the help of "The New Bloomsday Book" to assist me. I got 461 pages in before I decided that, so the journey has been a rough sail, but I'm excited for the assistance, and strangely excited to go back through the book. I'm going to make it like a college course and study a few nights of the week, and will be an undergrad level "Ulysses" scholar by the time I finish the novel and its companion.

But oh, I've toiled.

Got to the point I had to read something else with it, and all knows Nietzche wasn't the one for it (figured that out tough) so after dabbling in "The Portable Kerouac" found in a Flagstaff used bookstore, I took Graham Greene's "Our Man In Havana", and up against the sometimes-impermeable "Ulysses", it was a fast, engaging read, even more readily appreciated because of Christopher Hitchens' intro, which at first I hated, and am now even more indebted to.

See, I tried reading Hitchens' "God is Not Great", but I find that he is far too in love with the sound of his own voice. Not to mention his writing is boring. However, this short essay on the ontological aspect of Greene's "entertainment" on Cold War Era espionage (from the British side) is right on the money. Greene's writing is clear enough in its purpose that the introduction serves only to put into words what we figure easily enough by reading -- that Jim Wormold, the middle-aged vacuum cleaner selling protagonist, was floating toward death and in need of an awakening from his luke warm state. The incompetent secret service in Britain was the just the thing to assist him, and before you know it, he was of sudden importance, and took advantage of it to rough consequence, before crushing both identities and living. There are risks and there are rewards in stepping out of your box; and as opposed to Kurt Vonnegut's impressive, dire "Mother Night", Greene goes for the lighter side and Wormold's world manipulates him juuuuuuuust right to get around the worst of fates.

The transformation of Wormold's being, then, is primary, and the events of the Cold War it premeditates are secondary, perhaps only an interesting and relevant setting for growth, and I'm sure for the time, an incendiary commentary on British incompetence. But it's really all about Jim, the pathetic man who sits late at nights with his only friend, Dr Hasselbacher, also old and pathetic, after his vacuum job. When the infantile, idiotic Hawthorne comes to see him at the bar and make him Our Man In Havana, Wormold sees the way to make some extra cash by creating fake agents under him and submitting numerous reports under these aliases, and using sketches of vacuum cleaner parts to pass as designs for bombs. The cash is, of course, to get him and his daughter, 17-year-old bombshell Milly, back to Great Britain, and away from sex fiend Captain Segura. Thus, he becomes, as Greene would say through secretary Beatrice, a successful, well-paid writer of bad fiction, who cares not about his characters. He's living on the edge, which would cost him his best friend, and his Havana world, but the consequences don't seem to outdo the ultimate rewards, and perhaps Greene is chiding himself early on for the inevitable death of Hasselbacher, who seems so easily disposed of.

Regardless, Wormold eventually outsmarts Segura, finds he is not a killer and delights in the moral standard he now owns and we realize the difference between the real and artificial in life, so we blame nottasoul when his ending sees him back in Britain with job, Beatrice as a girlfriend, and all the money he saved up to get Milly a better life. He crushes the old sad Wormold by finding an actual mission to live for (quite existential, the belief we are capable of satisfying a great objective), he crushes the new Wormold by standing up to his lies and seeing the incompetent crushed. And Christopher Hitchens might say this far better than I, but hey, this is my reflective spot. Being is being able to be something rather than simply floating. For Wormold, a traditional-minded, low-key, loving push-over father, the be something is naturally to provide and be there for his loved ones. In a quirky, fun, rollicking way, Greene presents his character study with great intrigue.

Thank all, too, that Milly drops the duenna face, too, and grows to be a woman. Her transformation is subtle, but it seems father and daughter are destined for a much closer relationship; and the entrance of Beatrice into their world, a non-Christian womanly influence on Milly, can only help bridge the gap between Jim and his daughter. The old silly Milly of Catholic mockings was, after all, crazy enough to get involved with Segura. Man, evolve!


"If I love or if I hate, let me love or hate as an individual. I will not be 59200/5 in anyone's global war" (Wormold)

dare you blush

"Native Son", Richard Wright, 1940

In a letter to one of his critics, Richard Wright wrote of his masterpiece expressing the oppression of the African American in the mid-1900s, "In Native Son I tried to show that a man, bereft of a culture and unachored by property, can travel but one path if he reacts positively but unthinkingly to the prizes and goals of civilization, and that one path is emotionally blind rebellion. In Native Son I did not defend Bigger's actions, I explained them through depiction. And what alarms [the critic] is not what I say bigger is, but what I say made him what he is." That sums up better than I can put into words what "Native Son" is all about, as well as the very small backlash against it.

In the three sections of Native Son -- "Fear", "Flight", and "Fate" -- a black man named Bigger Thomas, according to Wright, goes along the path constructed for him by years of dangling carrots before his kind and then telling them they are to remain quarantined with the rest of the inopportune of his ilk. There is a sense of fear and self-denial Bigger Thomas struggles with throughout the book, a stark internal monologue flowing through the pages which reveal him as undereducated, impulsive, and dangerous, yet not on his entire freewill, but via the machine that tolerates the creation of black souls to obscure them, pack them into unwanted sections of urban areas, and make them do the dirty work, while occasionally out of guilt having one of the privileged throw a bit of "charity" their way.

The defining act of the book is where Bigger unwittingly smothers Mary Dalton, the daughter of wealthy whites who hired him as a driver, out of the great fear of being caught in her room at night. He had encroached in the place no white man wanted him, shook with the fear when her blind mother came in to check on her, and held a pillow over her face so as not to end his job, his little hope of providing food for his mother and two siblings, one of the few chances he knew whites ever gave him, but through killing Mary this was an act of aliveness as he stepped out of order of things and did something radical even if he had not intended it. The ensuing cat-and-mouse he played with the police and reporters were his moments to feel what had long been stripped from him by white society: the chance to direct his own destiny.

Though he ultimately faces the death penalty, the most inspiring and awful moments of the book are when his attorney, they call him Max, a Communist who represents him for free, gives his closing argument to attempt to save the life of Bigger. He goes as far as to condemn the "charitable" acts of the deceased's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Dalton, and this is a big crux of Richard Wright's book as he takes on those who oppress then throw dry bones to their victims, as Max states, "The relationship between the Thomas family and the Dalton family was that of renter to landlord, customer to merchant, employee to employer. The Thomas family got poor and the Dalton family got rich. And Mr. Dalton, a decent man, tried to save his feelings by giving money. But, my friend, gold was not enough! Corpses cannot be bribed! Say to yourself, Mr. Dalton, 'I offered my daughter as a burnt sacrifice and it was not enough to push back into its grave this thing that haunts me.'" And throughout this lengthy speech, Wright indeed uses Max as his mouthpiece to articulate the origins of the problems facing the African Americans and what they, as a race, have become in the face of such tragic realities.

The structure of the book is that it flows from paragraph to paragraph with hardly any breaks, and Wright says he's trying to show the day-to-day consciousness of his character. His thoughts race, fear paralyzes him -- if I were to judge it I would say it's hard to believe a mindstate could be so stark, outside of a few spare parts at the end, Bigger rarely seems to believe in anything besides living and dying. But that seems to be the aim to Wright, to show us all that such a mindstate is exacted upon those who have been used for the purposes of the wealthy and white. Thus, the structure is effective and the book is difficult to put down because there is constant tension and you wonder often, What direction is this all going in?

Even in 2008, "Native Son" has to be considered essential reading for anyone yearning for a glimpse of oppression's mindstate, especially as our material culture intensifies in its influence over us all, including those who have little to no chance in attaining what is purportedly offers. Before we look to condemn, we must learn to understand, something we as a people seem to overlook time and time again.


[From Max's closing argument] "He was _living_ only as he knew how, and as we have forced him to live. The actions that resulted in the death of those two women were as instinctive and inevitable as breathing or blinking one's eyes. It was an act of _creation_!"