As I was working on a draft of an essay to be posted in "Against Dark Arts," hackers again engaged in deliberate alterations of my text and prevented me from making corrections at NYPL computer #7, Morningside Heights branch. I will struggle to finish typing this text in order to post the essay dealing with Mr. Roque's arrest and indictment and Mr. Christie new troubles which I am, at this moment, being prevented from writing by Trenton officials, seemingly, with impunity for their crimes committed against a person living in New York.
Sabotage prevented initial publication of the essay that appears below at this blog. An earlier version of this text was posted on January 30, 2012. I am not on Face Book nor am I on Twitter. I do not have a e-bay account nor have I ever had such an account. There are no photographs of me posted on the Internet. Bogus images and web sites purporting to be associated with me may be posted by New Jersey persons. These blogs are the only locations where I write on-line.
http://www.amacad.org/news/pressReleases.aspx?i=199 ("The Heart of the Matter.")
http://www.facebook.com/juangalismenendez?ref=fs (Bogus Facebook site purporting to be mine and bearing the photo of a man in his seventies who is not me. There is no "Jose Galis-Menendez" in the USA or on facebook. I have no idea who created this site or why. OAE?)
There is no New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs "Final Order" against me, nor any other state agency judgment against me that I am aware of, nor do I face criminal charges anywhere in America or the world. I have never been charged with a crime in any jurisdiction. I do not own (or use) a cellphone. I never have made use of such a mobile device. ("Invicta Watch Company" and "The Invicta Watch Company Caper.")
I will attempt to retype the work in order to fit the text into this altered format. I will also attempt to print the republished essay. For an example of the cybercrime and censorship that I struggle against, please see "Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" at Philosopher's Quest.
Recent hearings have confirmed Pentagon claims that the "entire world" is a battlefield in America's "War on Terror." This military and intelligence struggle is estimated to be likely to persist for ten to twenty years "at least."
The U.S. government claims the right to monitor ALL communications between persons on-line and news organizations. Accordingly, ALL records and sources from any publication or writer may be seized. Perhaps this claim explains my experiences as an Internet writer.
"The Return of the Democratic Left." West, Piven, Walzer. February 12-19, 2012, St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, New York. A conference on Building a Democratic Socialist Left. Will this conference provide the basis for a book?
President Barack Obama admitted in January, 2012 that the U.S. has made use of drone weapons which are "very precise." Estimates of "collateral damage" -- in the form of "unintended casualties" -- number in the thousands. The vast majority of these casualties may be women and children.
Among the disturbing developments in American academia is a turning away from standards of excellence and respect for the intellectual monuments of our civilization. This includes the political achievements of American society which receive far less attention than its failures. For example -- at least until recently -- America's endangered commitment to freedom of the press and privacy of citizens was insufficiently appreciated.
Young people have always defined themselves in opposition to tradition. This is a healthy and, often, extremely wise attitude on the part of the young. Like sex, the fundamental ideas of philosophy are rediscovered by every generation of young persons.
In the past, however, there was a slight recognition of the need to glance at the classics in order to determine whether allegedly unenlightened commentators -- like Aristotle, for example -- may have had something interesting to say on subjects of continuing interest to youthful admirers of Lady Gaga or "The Colbert Report."
I refer to subjects and concepts like justice, politics, or the meaning of history and goodness as well as truth. This naive notion that there is merit in the classics -- or such a thing as truth -- is dismissed today as a relic of a world and the educational experiences of persons unaware of The Simpsons television show and lap-top computers who are, thus, no longer worthy of concern or respect. ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism" and "Why I am not an ethical relativist.")
A young person attending a so-called "elite" (translated as "expensive") liberal arts college in America may be told by a trendy, politically correct, and duly-tenured imbecile that it is not only possible but advisable to read a difficult author (Michel Foucault) -- who is immersed in the Western philosophical tradition even as he contributes to it -- without ANY knowledge of that tradition or, indeed, of Foucault's roots as (successively) a phenomenologist, Stucturalist, Poststructuralist, historian, or even a Kantian Critical Theorist.
The Order of Things was reviewed in France as a twentieth century version of The Critique of Pure Reason. Please see Jacques Derrida's debate with Michel Foucault, then Jurgen Habermas's critique of the later works of Michel Foucault.
There is "no need to know all of that stuff," our children are told and then explain to the rest of us, because people can "just read the book" -- for instance, Discipline and Punish. "Think outside the box!"
Reading the book will not be enough (even for Gloria Anzaldua) without a knowledge of the issues to which the "author" is contributing, or how Foucault's method is both revolutionary and a continuation of Nietzschean genealogical methods from the nineteenth century, along with suspicions filtered through the French high-cultural tradition that includes Sartre, Ganguilhem, Deleuze, and so many others.
To turn your back on what an "older" student of Foucault's works may contribute to your appreciation of such thinkers and much more is foolish.
Demonizing authority, especially in its masculine form, is a bizarre deformation of what purports to be feminist theory. Judith Butler studied with Hans-Georg Gadamer. To my knowledge, Professor Butler has not vilified (publicly) the works of her mentor despite the fact that Gadamer was an unrepentant male person until his death. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory" and "'The Stepford Wives': A Movie Review.")
I cannot accept that contempt for scholars who happen to be men over 40 is now a requirement of feminist scholarship. I am sure that some of those over-forty students and thinkers of the male persuasion may be highly sympathetic to feminist "discourse." Plato, Freud, Marx, Hegel, Wollstonecraft and Weil may still merit an occasional perusal before finals. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld" and "Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
To praise ignorance or bad taste is dangerous for those who would challenge conventional or traditional understandings of fields of learning. ("Why Jane Can't Read" and "America's Nursery School Campus.")
Challenges and suspicions of power are most effective when uttered by those who have mastered the same fields of learning, displaying impressive scholarship themselves, as did Michel Foucault and as does Judith Butler today. ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz" and "Michel Foucault and the Authorship Question.")
Hostility to the achievements of classic thinkers may account for shallow and incompetent writings in the humanities, which seem to be more common than ever these days, together with laughable reviews of films and books by the likes of "Manohla Dargis" of The New York Times. ("Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!" and "'The Reader': A Movie Review" then "Is the universe only a numbers game?")
Civilization is your inheritance and also your legacy to future generations of students and scholars. The purpose of higher education or cultivation of taste and judgment -- which is a life-long process -- is to become, in the fullness of time and with a lot of luck, also much effort, a civilized human being. ("Master and Commander" and "Conversation on a Train.")
Relish and celebrate the civilization which your fine education will allow you to absorb, if you are at an elite university today, so that you can improve that civilization for those who come after you, or who will never be as fortunate as you are and (I hope) will be.
This is a major part of what the word "graduation" means: to make a better world that you can then give to others who will come after you.
"There is thus a definite correspondence between the Kantian critique and what in the same period was posited as the first almost complete form of ideological analysis." Michel Foucault explains: "But ideology [power] by extending its reflection over the field of knowledge -- from primary impressions to political economy, by way of logic, arithmetic, the sciences of nature, and grammar -- tried to resume in the form of representation precisely what was being formed and re-formed outside representation. This resumption could be accomplished only by the quasi-mythical form of a simultaneously singular and universal genesis: an isolated, empty, and abstract consciousness must, beginning with the most tenuous form of representation, build up little by little the great table of all that is representable. In this sense ideology is the last of the Classical philosophies -- rather Juliette [the Marquis de Sade's "sado"-masochistic novel] is the last of the Classical narratives. ... [Kant] sanctions for the first time that event in European culture which coincides with the end of the eighteenth century: the withdrawal of knowledge and thought outside the space of representation. ..."
Michel Foucault, "The Limits of Representation," in The Order of Things: The Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage, 1973), pp. 242-243 then Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979), pp. 170-195. Please compare Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy? (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1998), pp. 15-34 with Quassim Cassam, "Mind, Knowledge and Reality: Themes From Kant," in Anthony O'Hear, Ed., Current Issues in Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1998), pp. 321-348.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
What is education for?
"Mr. Pullman's Compass," (Editorial) in The New York Times, February 1, 2011, at p. A26.
Brand Blanshard, "What is Education For?," in The Uses of a Liberal Education and Other Talks to Students (La Salle: Open Court, 1973), pp. 73-93.
It was reported this morning on television that several American politicians believe it is a "mistake" to prepare all students for a four-year college or university experience. We are told that it may be wiser to ensure that a number of young people -- especially many of the poor, African-Americans possibly -- will attend vocational training schools rather than universities.
How much better for all of us it would have been if this advice had been followed by George W. Bush. Mr. Bush and everyone I know would have been happier if George W. Bush had attended computer repair school or learned to be an electrician as opposed to wasting his time at Yale and Harvard Business School.
Naturally, none of the politicians making this helpful suggestion have opted for vocational training when it comes to their own children. This is strange. America's Republican politicians who share this mind-set are confident, however, that "refrigeration repair" or "automobile mechanics" (perhaps the wonders of barber college) will be just fine for other people's children.
I am sure that U.S. Senator Marco Rubio would have been very happy with his own construction company in Miami as distinct from having to learn so many speeches with big words written by others.
Two characteristically American assumptions concerning education are on display in this controversy -- a controversy which is not sufficiently intense in my judgment. People are not fully appreciative of the implications of what is being proposed: First, Americans often believe that education is concerned exclusively or primarily with the kind of job that a student will obtain after graduation; secondly, more controversially, it is assumed that different educational experiences should be afforded to persons not on the basis of individual aptitude, but for class reasons alone.
These controversial assumptions are, surprisingly, frequently shared with our British friends these days who find themselves -- under the reign of David Cameron the First and, they hope, the Last -- in a related controversy regarding UK libraries and access to higher education because of rising tuition fees.
Before commenting on the suggestion that our children should learn to fix air conditioners rather than attending Yale or Oxford Universities, I wish to examine the debate in the UK. Please do not cut back on BBC America, Mr. Cameron, or any other cultural programs exported to the colonies.
"The austerity cuts in Britain -- part of the government's overly harsh deficit reduction plan -- have provoked many outcries, but few quite as eloquent as a speech given recently in Oxfordshire by Philip Pullman, author of the highly regarded trilogy 'His Dark Materials.' The subject was the Oxford county council's plan to stop financing 20 of its 43 libraries -- because of cuts in national financing -- and hope that they would be run instead by volunteers."
Perhaps hospitals in poor neighborhoods in Britain could be staffed not by expensive medical professionals but by kind-hearted "volunteers." This will save a great deal of money for the public treasury to spend on additional weapons systems to be tested in Afghanistan. Tariq Ali, no doubt, favors this suggestion. Irony?
Besides all of the other advantages, this suggestion will lead to a drastic reduction in the number of poor people living in the British isles. Poor Brits may be tempted to vote for Labour politicians. "We" do not want this dangerous electoral tendency to find an outlet in "today's Britain." If I could, I would persuade the MP from Tunbridge-Wells to raise this issue at Question Time with the Prime Minister: "Will the Prime Minister agree that depriving poor children of books is a bad thing?"
"[Mr. Pullman's] speech [is] worth pondering for its defense not just of the value of reading but of the open democratic space enshrined in public libraries. Libraries, he said, remind us that 'there are things above profit, things that profit knows nothing about ... things that stand for civic decency and knowledge and the value of simple delight.' ... "
Libraries and universities seek to democratize learning and excellence in a national culture. This is a controversial and, weirdly, threatening notion to some people. Conservatives may be frightened that, with access to Shakespeare or Plato, ordinary people will begin to ponder all of the ways in which they are not so free and necessary improvements in society. It never ceases to amaze me that there are people so frightened of intelligence that they wish to destroy its achievements wherever they detect them. Genius and those who admire works of genius infuriate some people. Weird.
"We" certainly do not want that kind of "unpleasantness" (discontent) among the masses. I am an "unpleasant" member of what is usually called "the masses." I want as much education as possible for as many persons as possible, regardless of their economic status or ancestry in Britain, America, and everywhere else. Universal education disconcerts people by hinting at the equality shared with a local immigrant working as a "domestic assistant" (maid or cook) or the homeless person asking for spare change that even poor persons (like me) are all too willing to give in our "fiscal irresponsibility." ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")
A person foolish enough to enter a philosophical controversy which he did not understand very well ended his losing effort to defend philosophical incoherence by complaining that his adversary -- me -- had refused the instructions of a "superior." ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")
"Superior" is a category that had nothing to do with learning or intelligence for this person, there was no suggestion of "superiority" on the merits, but the concept of "superiority" was associated (for this sadly deluded debator) with money and what money buys in America, power. ("The Allegory of the Cave.")
For a person who is poor and maybe for any woman to prevail in debate on a controversial political or philosophical issue is an affront to the moral order and "unnatural." Much the same was said of women who wished to read a few centuries ago. Worse, some women demanded the right to attend universities or even to vote -- look what those suggestions got us! Nothing but trouble and Mrs. Tatcher along with Hillary Rodham-Clinton. Horrors. ("Master and Commander" and "A Doll's Aria.")
I refuse to be guided by my self-described "superiors" concerning issues I know better than these persons do or ever will know them. I do not accept the status of "inferior" -- in a moral or political sense -- on the basis of wealth. I presume to think and feel for myself in a very American and British way that inconveniences conservative governments on both sides of the Atlantic. Education and the arts, availability of books and beautiful things helps me to understand and cope with life's pains and mysteries, including the mystery of evil. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow.")
Education helps all of us to be fully human -- regardless of how we earn our living, even if we are lawyers or politicians -- if we are fortunate enough to have a job in these austere times. Not only should education and libraries be open to all, but the arts should be as widely available as possible to as many persons as we can include in aesthetic experiences.
I have seen the faces of spellbound persons (often not the persons you may imagine going to a theater!) seeing Shakespeare performed for the first time in their lives by professional actors. I want government that is concerned to provide such experiences to as many persons as possible.
As we say in New York: "What could it hurt?" Shakespeare is great because he speaks to all of us about what is universally human -- love, death, loss and the tragic, neverending struggle against evil that is not "all relative." ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
"Mr. Pullman is most brilliant in his attack on what he calls 'the greedy ghost of market fundamentalism.' What he registers so forcefully is the fact that a hidebound conservative approach to deficit reduction creates a social austerity far more harmful than the deficit itself."
Education is quite distinct from vocational training (which is an excellent thing!) because the process of learning and achieving a small measure of wisdom, however fleeting and fragile that modicum of wisdom may be for us ordinary guys and gals, is called "living a fully human life with meaning and purpose, beauty and goodness":
" ... to educate one's self was to be more completely human, to give this distinctive faculty [thinking] dominance and free play. If one did this, what would be the standard of the educated man [or woman]? As respects beliefs, adjustment to the evidence. As respects feeling, propriety to the object. As respects action, making the most of one's self consistently with the general good. In sum and in short, in all things be reasonable."
"I do not echo this counsel of the master [Aristotle] as a prescription for success. In a country where Jimmy Hoffa can be an idol, and attacks on UNESCO make thousands cheer, one can hardly rely on reasonableness as a winning card. But then success in the ordinary sense is not what education is for. The business of education is to show that nothing fails like success if that is achieved with inward emptiness, and that nothing succeeds like failure, if that is pursued by integrity of mind."
"The case for being reasonable is not that it will make one successful, still less that it will make one spectacular, but that without it everything else is apt to turn to ashes in one's mouth. Reasonableness is hard because it means keeping our human nature at all points in check. When Ruskin was called on for an epitath for his businessman father, he prepared one that he thought almost extravagant in its praise: 'Here lies an entirely honest merchant.' It would be high praise for any of us, when he has finished his course to have it said, 'Here was a fine scholar, a good soldier, a great executive.' In the light of what human nature notoriously is, it would be praise still rarer and higher if it could be said of us, 'Here was a really reasonable man.' ..." (Blanshard, pp. 92-93.)
Brand Blanshard, "What is Education For?," in The Uses of a Liberal Education and Other Talks to Students (La Salle: Open Court, 1973), pp. 73-93.
It was reported this morning on television that several American politicians believe it is a "mistake" to prepare all students for a four-year college or university experience. We are told that it may be wiser to ensure that a number of young people -- especially many of the poor, African-Americans possibly -- will attend vocational training schools rather than universities.
How much better for all of us it would have been if this advice had been followed by George W. Bush. Mr. Bush and everyone I know would have been happier if George W. Bush had attended computer repair school or learned to be an electrician as opposed to wasting his time at Yale and Harvard Business School.
Naturally, none of the politicians making this helpful suggestion have opted for vocational training when it comes to their own children. This is strange. America's Republican politicians who share this mind-set are confident, however, that "refrigeration repair" or "automobile mechanics" (perhaps the wonders of barber college) will be just fine for other people's children.
I am sure that U.S. Senator Marco Rubio would have been very happy with his own construction company in Miami as distinct from having to learn so many speeches with big words written by others.
Two characteristically American assumptions concerning education are on display in this controversy -- a controversy which is not sufficiently intense in my judgment. People are not fully appreciative of the implications of what is being proposed: First, Americans often believe that education is concerned exclusively or primarily with the kind of job that a student will obtain after graduation; secondly, more controversially, it is assumed that different educational experiences should be afforded to persons not on the basis of individual aptitude, but for class reasons alone.
These controversial assumptions are, surprisingly, frequently shared with our British friends these days who find themselves -- under the reign of David Cameron the First and, they hope, the Last -- in a related controversy regarding UK libraries and access to higher education because of rising tuition fees.
Before commenting on the suggestion that our children should learn to fix air conditioners rather than attending Yale or Oxford Universities, I wish to examine the debate in the UK. Please do not cut back on BBC America, Mr. Cameron, or any other cultural programs exported to the colonies.
"The austerity cuts in Britain -- part of the government's overly harsh deficit reduction plan -- have provoked many outcries, but few quite as eloquent as a speech given recently in Oxfordshire by Philip Pullman, author of the highly regarded trilogy 'His Dark Materials.' The subject was the Oxford county council's plan to stop financing 20 of its 43 libraries -- because of cuts in national financing -- and hope that they would be run instead by volunteers."
Perhaps hospitals in poor neighborhoods in Britain could be staffed not by expensive medical professionals but by kind-hearted "volunteers." This will save a great deal of money for the public treasury to spend on additional weapons systems to be tested in Afghanistan. Tariq Ali, no doubt, favors this suggestion. Irony?
Besides all of the other advantages, this suggestion will lead to a drastic reduction in the number of poor people living in the British isles. Poor Brits may be tempted to vote for Labour politicians. "We" do not want this dangerous electoral tendency to find an outlet in "today's Britain." If I could, I would persuade the MP from Tunbridge-Wells to raise this issue at Question Time with the Prime Minister: "Will the Prime Minister agree that depriving poor children of books is a bad thing?"
"[Mr. Pullman's] speech [is] worth pondering for its defense not just of the value of reading but of the open democratic space enshrined in public libraries. Libraries, he said, remind us that 'there are things above profit, things that profit knows nothing about ... things that stand for civic decency and knowledge and the value of simple delight.' ... "
Libraries and universities seek to democratize learning and excellence in a national culture. This is a controversial and, weirdly, threatening notion to some people. Conservatives may be frightened that, with access to Shakespeare or Plato, ordinary people will begin to ponder all of the ways in which they are not so free and necessary improvements in society. It never ceases to amaze me that there are people so frightened of intelligence that they wish to destroy its achievements wherever they detect them. Genius and those who admire works of genius infuriate some people. Weird.
"We" certainly do not want that kind of "unpleasantness" (discontent) among the masses. I am an "unpleasant" member of what is usually called "the masses." I want as much education as possible for as many persons as possible, regardless of their economic status or ancestry in Britain, America, and everywhere else. Universal education disconcerts people by hinting at the equality shared with a local immigrant working as a "domestic assistant" (maid or cook) or the homeless person asking for spare change that even poor persons (like me) are all too willing to give in our "fiscal irresponsibility." ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")
A person foolish enough to enter a philosophical controversy which he did not understand very well ended his losing effort to defend philosophical incoherence by complaining that his adversary -- me -- had refused the instructions of a "superior." ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")
"Superior" is a category that had nothing to do with learning or intelligence for this person, there was no suggestion of "superiority" on the merits, but the concept of "superiority" was associated (for this sadly deluded debator) with money and what money buys in America, power. ("The Allegory of the Cave.")
For a person who is poor and maybe for any woman to prevail in debate on a controversial political or philosophical issue is an affront to the moral order and "unnatural." Much the same was said of women who wished to read a few centuries ago. Worse, some women demanded the right to attend universities or even to vote -- look what those suggestions got us! Nothing but trouble and Mrs. Tatcher along with Hillary Rodham-Clinton. Horrors. ("Master and Commander" and "A Doll's Aria.")
I refuse to be guided by my self-described "superiors" concerning issues I know better than these persons do or ever will know them. I do not accept the status of "inferior" -- in a moral or political sense -- on the basis of wealth. I presume to think and feel for myself in a very American and British way that inconveniences conservative governments on both sides of the Atlantic. Education and the arts, availability of books and beautiful things helps me to understand and cope with life's pains and mysteries, including the mystery of evil. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow.")
Education helps all of us to be fully human -- regardless of how we earn our living, even if we are lawyers or politicians -- if we are fortunate enough to have a job in these austere times. Not only should education and libraries be open to all, but the arts should be as widely available as possible to as many persons as we can include in aesthetic experiences.
I have seen the faces of spellbound persons (often not the persons you may imagine going to a theater!) seeing Shakespeare performed for the first time in their lives by professional actors. I want government that is concerned to provide such experiences to as many persons as possible.
As we say in New York: "What could it hurt?" Shakespeare is great because he speaks to all of us about what is universally human -- love, death, loss and the tragic, neverending struggle against evil that is not "all relative." ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
"Mr. Pullman is most brilliant in his attack on what he calls 'the greedy ghost of market fundamentalism.' What he registers so forcefully is the fact that a hidebound conservative approach to deficit reduction creates a social austerity far more harmful than the deficit itself."
Education is quite distinct from vocational training (which is an excellent thing!) because the process of learning and achieving a small measure of wisdom, however fleeting and fragile that modicum of wisdom may be for us ordinary guys and gals, is called "living a fully human life with meaning and purpose, beauty and goodness":
" ... to educate one's self was to be more completely human, to give this distinctive faculty [thinking] dominance and free play. If one did this, what would be the standard of the educated man [or woman]? As respects beliefs, adjustment to the evidence. As respects feeling, propriety to the object. As respects action, making the most of one's self consistently with the general good. In sum and in short, in all things be reasonable."
"I do not echo this counsel of the master [Aristotle] as a prescription for success. In a country where Jimmy Hoffa can be an idol, and attacks on UNESCO make thousands cheer, one can hardly rely on reasonableness as a winning card. But then success in the ordinary sense is not what education is for. The business of education is to show that nothing fails like success if that is achieved with inward emptiness, and that nothing succeeds like failure, if that is pursued by integrity of mind."
"The case for being reasonable is not that it will make one successful, still less that it will make one spectacular, but that without it everything else is apt to turn to ashes in one's mouth. Reasonableness is hard because it means keeping our human nature at all points in check. When Ruskin was called on for an epitath for his businessman father, he prepared one that he thought almost extravagant in its praise: 'Here lies an entirely honest merchant.' It would be high praise for any of us, when he has finished his course to have it said, 'Here was a fine scholar, a good soldier, a great executive.' In the light of what human nature notoriously is, it would be praise still rarer and higher if it could be said of us, 'Here was a really reasonable man.' ..." (Blanshard, pp. 92-93.)
Friday, October 29, 2010
The Wanderer and His Shadow.
Today, my list of contents is being blocked in order to obstruct access to my own essays. This makes revising my work impossible. I expect computer attacks and insertions of "errors" after posting this short story. "Errors" are usually inserted in waves over the first several days that a new item is posted with the goal of maximizing psychological harm as I make identical repairs and corrections many times. Thereafter, "errors" are inserted at irregular intervals, again, to maximize the anxiety-effect and frustration-inducement. There are dozens of intrusions into my computer every day from New Jersey government and private computers. The goal is censorship and maximing psychological "touchless" torture of the victim for the purposes of bringing about a mental breakdown and collapse. I doubt that this effort will succeed with me.
I believe that the subject of evil is important and underexamined. Nearly every statement made by the protagonist-narrator of this text has been made to me in life and during Internet debates with ethical skeptics, nihilists, or "relativists." I have kept copies of many such exchanges taking place on-line. I would not be surprised to discover that persons advocating views not all that distant from those set forth below are officials in America's "Soprano State." Those who are interested in these disturbing literary themes are directed to:
Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song (New York: Warner Books, 1979).
John Banville, The Book of Evidence (New York: Warner Books, 1989).
Sebastian Faulks, Engleby (New York: Vintage, 2007).
Mitch Smith & Monica Davey, "Two Men From Elite Universities Charged With a Killing 'Dark and Disturbing,'" The New York Times, August 21, 2017, p. A11.
Alan Cowell, "Ian Brady, Unrepentant Killer of British Children, Dies at 79," The New York Times, "Business Section," May 17, 2017, p. B14.
Mike Ives, "Life Sentences for British Banker in Murder of 2 Persons," The New York Times, November 9, 2016, p. A11.
William Glaberson, "Trial of 2nd Man Will Revisit the Horror of a Triple Murder," The New York Times, November 11, 2010, at p. A29.
"Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?"
State v. Carlos R. Mendoza
Affidavit in Support of Motion for Reconsideration of Death Sentence and Appeal for Clemency
Filed before the Supreme Court of
________________________ .
Docket No.: 94-198856-10
Indictment No.: 1267790-10
I, Carlos R. Mendoza, being duly sworn hereby depose and say:
1. I am awaiting execution in accordance with a death sentence imposed after multiple convictions for the murders of several persons.
2. My "termination" at the hands of state officials is scheduled for not later than 24 hours from the signing of this official document. I submit this Affidavit in support of the legal brief seeking reconsideration of my sentence and appeal for clemency prepared by my attorney and his assistants which is to be filed not later than 9:00 A.M. on the day of my scheduled execution.
3. These "murders" of which I am convicted were only one part of a larger criminal conspiracy and chain of events in which I am said to have "participated." The United States Attorney's Office has described me in legally filed documents as a "Kingpin" and "career criminal." I am highly flattered by these descriptions and colorful epithets even as I must decline the honor that they bestow upon me.
4. I am, your Honors, merely your humble servant. I am a minor felon. I am a "poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage." I am as nothing in comparison with the evils done, every day, by ladies and gentlemen -- such as yourselves, perhaps? -- whose decisions and judgments result in death and suffering on such a colossal scale as to defy description in words, making any crimes attributed to me insignificant. It has been noted that "nations and states are but robber barons writ large." (Adam Smith) I am merely a robber baron writ small.
5. The United States of America does not deny responsibility for the deaths in the last decade of more than 1 to 2 million persons in the Middle East alone, including 500,000 children; millions of native Americans were killed in the conquest of a continent; millions more persons of African ancestry were enslaved and killed in developing the world's largest economy during the past several centuries; hundreds of thousands died instantly through incineration at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; more than one million succumbed in the Pacific to U.S. colonialism; thousands died and are still dying in Vietnam as a result of U.S. efforts in that country that included chemical as well as germ warfare. Many thousands continue to die in Pakistan from U.S. "robot" bombs -- as reported (or ignored) -- in America's daily newspapers. Hundreds of thousands have died and continue to die in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan from "secret" U.S. missions. My achievements are insignificant by comparison with "your" deeds, distinguished judges and justices, ladies and gentlemen. I am only an amateur in crime. All of you are the true professionals in the art of murder.
6. Dr. Johnson remarked that "nothing so concentrates the mind as the knowledge that a man will be hanged in the morning." I have little hope that this appeal for clemency will be successful. I am cooperating with my lawyer's efforts because he seems so interested in the research and arguments to be submitted to the court and officials deciding the matter that I would hate to disappoint him by ignoring or trivializing his effort to save my "worthless" skin. We have grown very fond of one another, my lawyer and I. At least, I like him. My lawyer regards me with fascinated "horror." Unlike many of you in the so-called "world of normality," my lawyer -- who is my age and even resembles me, physically, if not morally -- understands that "there but for the grace of God go I."
7. I share in the human condition, ladies and gentlemen. I am one of you. Your horror and dread at my actions (or at my existence) emanates from this suppressed knowledge. Admit it, you see yourselves in me and others like me. You are as much attracted as repelled by what you see in me. We need each other. No saint without a sinner, eh? No judges or lawyers and laws without criminals and violators of laws. I notice that my lawyer nods his head in agreement as these words are taken down by a typist or court reporter for transcription. Think of ancient drama or literature, if you like, or the sad poetry in court documents and filings, the foul residue of miserable lives exhaled (like a miasmic cloud) from places such as the establishment where I now find myself placed by cruel fortune and the vicissitudes of a deeply flawed legal system. Justice is only to be found in heaven. On earth we have a surplus of laws. Happily, I am surrounded by books. Finally, I have the leisure to read and a little time to think.
8. I am a man who is about to die. I must make my peace with my killer, society, even as I endeavor to justify my life with mere words. A final meal, a cigarette, some last words. These are poor consolations for the misfortunes of fate. My lawyer's eyes sparkle with pity. He pities me. I pity him. My life's final act is anticlimactic, scripted by Henry Fielding and (somehow) unfolding in the wrong century. I would have fared better in the eighteenth century -- or earlier still -- as a Spanish pirate sailing the high seas.
9. This is what psychologists call "lack of proper affect" or "insight," failure of moral imagination, inability to appreciate the pain of others, a poverty of feeling and empathy. I am a Republican. I believe in money -- our only true God -- also in punishment for criminals. Criminals enjoy committing their crimes, your Honors, just look at Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, or Mr. Trump. They -- no, we -- deserve all that is meeted out to us. So many criminals are lawyers and judges, elected officials and businessmen, even prosecutors and cops -- many of these social frauds were on my payroll. I have little sympathy for hypocrites concerned about the "ethics" and "souls" of their neighbors in Soprano States. After all, what is to be expected from this monkey race of killers and carnivores? Not much: 98% of our genes are shared with chimpanzees. Indeed, we are "50% identical to the banana. ... Homo sapiens, according to current evolutionary theory, exists primarily as a container for inactive bacteria which have been successful in the struggle for survival. ... Laws of Newtonian elegance can't apply to human behavior. Bananas aren't motivated by 'cause and effect.' Ask one." Engleby, pp. 109-110.
10. My lawyer is about my age, fifty years-old. He lives in a modest non-descript place a few miles from the courthouse. He is in debt up to and beyond his eyeballs to pay for the education of his only child. He has few possessions in comparison with what I have enjoyed. My lawyer is also a Republican. He does not have sex with young and very beautiful women. I have delighted in the pleasures of women of every kind and from every nation in the world, almost on a daily basis. He has never owned a very expensive watch. I have possessed exquisite jewelry of every kind. He has never travelled the world. I have been everywhere in Europe. I have also visited at least some parts of every continent, including Asia and Africa, mostly on business. I know what it is like to have money and power.
11. I drove a Mercedes Benz, the most luxurious model ever made. My dull and average-looking lawyer has only a very modest Japanese car. I have dined in the finest restaurants with famous faces surrounding me. He eats at home with his pleasant wife of thirty years. He dreams of nights that he cannot afford in great concert halls and theaters. I have been to all the great theaters of the world. We debate philosophy and cultural issues. He believes in goodness and love. I do not. My death may arrive tomorrow. His death (and yours) will arrive soon enough -- if it has not arrived already without your noticing the fact -- usually, death arrives before most of you have done much living. I pity all of you.
12. We "live" in different worlds of value, my lawyer and I. The boredom of his life would have killed me ages ago. I have very little confidence that my well-meaning attorney (or any judges) will appreciate all I have to say. My question to you, your Honors, is whether you or he -- this totally insignificant and flawed person, struggling to be good, with his silly books of ethics and love of art, my "inferior" in every sense of the word -- have truly lived or whether all of you will die without savoring this precious gift of life? Am I making this appeal "for" life? Or is my lawyer and are all of you with him begging for some of this "authenticity" or Nietzschean elan that I embody? Who is to be pitied? Me? Or you? How are we as "sacks of protein and water" different in the end from one another whether we are criminals or cops? How could we possibly matter to the universe?
13. My lawyer lives in an orderly world, in linear time, real spaces, and genuine emotions. I thrive upon chaos and quantum mystery. Like Milton's Lucifer, I "rule in hell" whereas he serves in heaven. I am rich in life-force. How many of you can say the same? Not many, I promise you.
14. Experts and courts demand an explanation for my actions and life choices. Their theories are laughably absurd. This demand misses the point of the enterprise: "Evil," one meddlesome English critic reminds us, "has, or appears to have, no practical purpose. Evil is supremely pointless. Anything as humdrum as a purpose would tarnish its lethal purity. In this, it resembles God, who if he does turn out to exist" -- I shall discover the answer to this question soon enough! -- "has absolutely no reason for doing so. He is his own reason for being. ... Farce is human action stripped of meaning and reduced to mere physical motion. This is also what the Nazis had in mind for the Jews." Terry Eagleton, On Evil (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 84-87.
15. One of my colleagues in business described persons as "meat puppets," things of no consequence to be moved about by men like us. We are the gods. They -- all of you -- are animals and nothing more. You are "collateral damage," like those millions of brown people who must be murdered to further America's national interest. No one claims that my life has been dull or average. I can truthfully assert -- with my hand on my heart as I do so -- that few persons have found my conversations or company boring. I am blessed with a strong dose of what Friedrich Nietzsche describes as "life-energy." Heidegger understood the need for affirmation of the moment. A single act of gratuitous cruelty that produces a victim writhing in agony is what nature intends for all of us. To deny the luxurious pleasures derived from the destruction of "little" lives is mendacious. Admit your addiction to hurting the "little people" who make the world turn. After all, to those who dare to act greatly or seize what must be theirs all is permitted. All is permitted.
16. We are carnivores, killers, takers, aggressors. We take pleasure in fulfilling our aggressive natures. This is what the blood-stained god of creation must have intended. Humanity is not made in the image of any loving God's compassion. The very suggestion of such an ethics of love is utterly absurd. Hitler had some excellent points even if he got a little carried away at times. Who is to say that Hitler was wrong? Morality is subjective. Goodness is relative to the individual and his or her situation: " ... the strong man is also the free man, ... while the subjected man, the slave, [like my earnest attorney,] lives dull and oppressed. -- The theory of freedom of will is an invention of the ruling classes." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Wanderer and His Shadow, R.J. Hollingdale, s. 9.
17. An invention of the "ruling classes" is what morality always will be. Yes, morality is a tool for the oppression of the people -- simple people and fools who deserve what they get from the likes of me. Much the same must be said of laws. They are for the masses not the masters of men. I was (the past tense is now necessary!), in life, a master of men. I was an "Overman." I will not end my life by grovelling to small men and women. All of you fine ladies and gentlemen are the cave in which I dwell. Right and wrong is all about power. You may kill me, but you cannot be like me and you want, desperately, to be like me. This explains why so many of you follow me and are fascinated by me, or others like me, who rule over nations and states everywhere in the world. I have lived and now I will die, greatly, loudly, proudly. I could not have borne a small and trivial life. This violent death at the hands of the state is much better. "Who would fardles bear? ..." Not I, your Honors, not me -- never.
18. I suppose some comment is desired from me concerning the murders of which I stand convicted. Very well. Let us savor the delicious details. I was forced by the relatively few gainful financial opportunities of my early life to operate a business in which credibility is vital. I cannot permit a rival (or employee) to absond with my goods or cash. Otherwise, you can be sure that others will attempt to do the same. My life unfolded in a world without the regular and predictable institutional responses that would have allowed me to forego self-help. In other words, I could not go to the cops for help. Hence, I was the cops.
19. Now many persons in such a position in America hire what are known as "subcontractors." There are "garbage disposal experts" who solve these problems for a small fee in what used to be called "the Underworld." I could have formulated a "coalition of the willing." I preferred -- even delighted -- in doing my own sanitary work. I admit that what I will now describe will seem "evil." However, I do not believe in "evil." The word is a relic of a religious age that is no longer needed. "The world is everything that is the case." (Ludwig Wittgenstein) Evil is not an item that is found existing, empirically, in the world. Evil is a concept deposited in human affairs by persons. Evil is a hypocritical concept. Evil is subjective. The winners in every war or conflict define what is evil. Had the Nazis or Japan won the Second World War there would have been "Virginia" and not "Nuremberg Trials." Besides, the word "evil" should not be applied to me. I am merely more honest than most people. I take what I want. I get rid of my competitors. I survive. This is what nature intends, ladies and gentlemen. I am in compliance with the strictures of evolution. How can anyone blame me for that? I am only a "survivor."
20. "What rats do when a member of a strange rat clan enters their territory or is put in there by a human experimenter is one of the most horrible and repulsive things which can be observed in animals." Konrad Lorenz writes of the immediate attacks and slow dismerberment of these rodents by others who bite, claw, tear at the stranger, usually over a long period of time, deliberately prolonging the agony: "Only rarely does one see an animal in such desperation and panic, so conscious of the inevitability of a terrible death, as a rat which is about to be slain by rats. It ceases to defend itself. One cannot help comparing this behavior with what happens when a rat faces a large predator that has driven it into a corner whence there is no more escape than from the rats of a strange clan. ..." "Rats," in On Aggression (New York & London: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, 1963), pp. 161-163. (American prisons duplicate the conditions of overcrowded rodent environments to perfection, probably deliberately, with predictable consequences in terms of inmates' suicides and frequent violence.)
21. American experts in psychological torture have devised techniques aimed at reproducing this breakdown in defensive and coping capacity in persons not convicted of any crimes through frustrations and anxiety. They have improved upon Nazi techniques. Persons lay down and die, if subjected to such excruciating torments over a sufficiently long period, except for a few annoying individuals who do not seem to fit the pattern of so-called "normality." I hate when people refuse to be victims. I detest persons who disobey me. I hate everyone who thinks he is smarter than me. They need a little humility. No offense: "Anglos are not smart enough to be philosophers." I am a true philosopher. I do not bother with all of the books my lawyer reads. His constant study shows a lack of originality. All my lawyer does is to quote from his readings and then to comment on them in formulating his opinions. I am my own source of quotations.
22. "It has been noted that the existence of evil is only a 'problem' in the philosophical sense if one presupposes that Nature is an essentially benevolent enterprise or that it is the creation of an essentially benevolent deity or deities. If one makes no such presupposition, then evil's existence ceases to be a philosophical problem. But it does not necessarily cease to be a mystery. Indeed, one can never fully explain the existence of evil merely by denying the alleged benevolence of the universe. One must also provide a completely adequate account of the ultimate origins of human suffering. ... " Timothy Anders, The Evolution of Evil (Illinois: Open Court, 1994), at pp. xii-xiii.
23. I am compelled to agree with Professor Anders. "Suffering" by victims is indeed a crucial component of this mystery. How pleasant it is to savor the suffering of another. The exquisite flavor of a dying person's pleas for mercy and recognition of one's demonic "power" -- power over life or death, power to bestow favors or inflict pain and frustrations, eternally, for no rational reason, control over others, establishing one's infinite superiority -- like the demon, Malbus, in world mythology. I am still amused by a woman's attempt to escape death by offering sex and the look of shock on her face as a bullet was fired into her belly. I did not know there was a child in that woman's body. This knowledge, I must say, would have added to the pleasure of the experience. The look of absolute loss and devastation in a person's face as his or her children are murdered is really funny. The realization in a man's face that everything he loves has been or will be destroyed is priceless. I try to force them to see that everything they believe is nonsense. There is no truth. You can do whatever you want. I know what Vikings felt when they sacked a city. I understand Cortez as he raped and burned native women. These men must have been very much like me. These are the men who made empires and built mountains of gold. These are successful men. My lawyer admires artists and philosophers, scientists and great jurists. Such men and women are only servants of the wealthy and powerful. Money is the meaning of life. Genius is something I can buy like a hundred-dollar haircut. Violence is the ultimate sexual experience.
24. I entered my rival's home with some of my employees. I tied him to a chair. I took everything of value, material and non-material, raped his woman, murdered his children. After enjoying their bodies and turning them over to my people as a reward or bonus for the evening's work, I allowed my would-be usurper to die, slowly, by bleeding to death from several gun shots to the lower portions of his body. As he was surrounded by his dead family members, I snapped a photo, after posing the group in a touching family composition. I think of these murders as my humble creation of a work of art. My masterpiece. I then set fire to the establishment. Some of the victims may have been alive before the flames engulfed them. I wish that I had brought marshmellows to roast in the flames. I certainly succeeded in sending a message to any others contemplating a "revolution."
25. This evening's entertainment was strictly a "rational means to achieve a desired goal." David Hume would say that I am utterly rational. Psychologists suggest a career in politics. This lovely scene has been repeated 70 to 100 million times in the twentieth century. We are well on our way to similar or, perhaps, even greater numbers of victims in the new century. Am I so unusual? Am I really a monster? Or do you see in me only the monstrosity in human nature -- a human nature in which you share? I am merely the other side of you. Do what you like to my body. I have enjoyed my fun. I have lived. Living is killing, eating, fornicating, excreting one's victims. Morality and human compassion are things for weak persons like all of you. When you speak of human nature, remember that (whatever other aspects of humanity are postulated) you will also have to deal with me. There will always be someone like me.
The foregoing statements are true to the best of my knowledge. I am aware that if any of the foregoing statements made by me are wilfully false, I am subject to punishment.
s/Carlos R. Mendoza
Carlos R. Mendoza, Inmate No. 45587, Appellant.
Signed before me this 21st day of September, 2010.
s/Carlo R. Mauro, Esq.
Carlo R. Mauro, Esq.
Decision of the State Supreme Court in State v. Carlos R. Mendoza, et als.
Docket No.: 94-198856-10
Indictment No.: 1267790-10
PER CURRIAM:
Appeals for Clemency and Motions for Reconsideration of all Death Sentences have been brought before this tribunal in the above captioned and related matters. The state legislature has enacted a statute that forbids the imposition of the death penalty in this jurisdiction prior to the filing of these appeals and requests. All pending death sentences of persons convicted of murder in this state will be and hereby are commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole subject to review by appellate tribunals in the event that new evidence of factual innocence surfaces in any of these matters at any future time. Accordingly, the Appeals and Requests by these Appellants are rendered moot and are hereby dismissed. So Ordered.
Dated and Signed by All Justices this 1st Day of November, 2010.
I believe that the subject of evil is important and underexamined. Nearly every statement made by the protagonist-narrator of this text has been made to me in life and during Internet debates with ethical skeptics, nihilists, or "relativists." I have kept copies of many such exchanges taking place on-line. I would not be surprised to discover that persons advocating views not all that distant from those set forth below are officials in America's "Soprano State." Those who are interested in these disturbing literary themes are directed to:
Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song (New York: Warner Books, 1979).
John Banville, The Book of Evidence (New York: Warner Books, 1989).
Sebastian Faulks, Engleby (New York: Vintage, 2007).
Mitch Smith & Monica Davey, "Two Men From Elite Universities Charged With a Killing 'Dark and Disturbing,'" The New York Times, August 21, 2017, p. A11.
Alan Cowell, "Ian Brady, Unrepentant Killer of British Children, Dies at 79," The New York Times, "Business Section," May 17, 2017, p. B14.
Mike Ives, "Life Sentences for British Banker in Murder of 2 Persons," The New York Times, November 9, 2016, p. A11.
William Glaberson, "Trial of 2nd Man Will Revisit the Horror of a Triple Murder," The New York Times, November 11, 2010, at p. A29.
"Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?"
State v. Carlos R. Mendoza
Affidavit in Support of Motion for Reconsideration of Death Sentence and Appeal for Clemency
Filed before the Supreme Court of
________________________ .
Docket No.: 94-198856-10
Indictment No.: 1267790-10
I, Carlos R. Mendoza, being duly sworn hereby depose and say:
1. I am awaiting execution in accordance with a death sentence imposed after multiple convictions for the murders of several persons.
2. My "termination" at the hands of state officials is scheduled for not later than 24 hours from the signing of this official document. I submit this Affidavit in support of the legal brief seeking reconsideration of my sentence and appeal for clemency prepared by my attorney and his assistants which is to be filed not later than 9:00 A.M. on the day of my scheduled execution.
3. These "murders" of which I am convicted were only one part of a larger criminal conspiracy and chain of events in which I am said to have "participated." The United States Attorney's Office has described me in legally filed documents as a "Kingpin" and "career criminal." I am highly flattered by these descriptions and colorful epithets even as I must decline the honor that they bestow upon me.
4. I am, your Honors, merely your humble servant. I am a minor felon. I am a "poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage." I am as nothing in comparison with the evils done, every day, by ladies and gentlemen -- such as yourselves, perhaps? -- whose decisions and judgments result in death and suffering on such a colossal scale as to defy description in words, making any crimes attributed to me insignificant. It has been noted that "nations and states are but robber barons writ large." (Adam Smith) I am merely a robber baron writ small.
5. The United States of America does not deny responsibility for the deaths in the last decade of more than 1 to 2 million persons in the Middle East alone, including 500,000 children; millions of native Americans were killed in the conquest of a continent; millions more persons of African ancestry were enslaved and killed in developing the world's largest economy during the past several centuries; hundreds of thousands died instantly through incineration at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; more than one million succumbed in the Pacific to U.S. colonialism; thousands died and are still dying in Vietnam as a result of U.S. efforts in that country that included chemical as well as germ warfare. Many thousands continue to die in Pakistan from U.S. "robot" bombs -- as reported (or ignored) -- in America's daily newspapers. Hundreds of thousands have died and continue to die in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan from "secret" U.S. missions. My achievements are insignificant by comparison with "your" deeds, distinguished judges and justices, ladies and gentlemen. I am only an amateur in crime. All of you are the true professionals in the art of murder.
6. Dr. Johnson remarked that "nothing so concentrates the mind as the knowledge that a man will be hanged in the morning." I have little hope that this appeal for clemency will be successful. I am cooperating with my lawyer's efforts because he seems so interested in the research and arguments to be submitted to the court and officials deciding the matter that I would hate to disappoint him by ignoring or trivializing his effort to save my "worthless" skin. We have grown very fond of one another, my lawyer and I. At least, I like him. My lawyer regards me with fascinated "horror." Unlike many of you in the so-called "world of normality," my lawyer -- who is my age and even resembles me, physically, if not morally -- understands that "there but for the grace of God go I."
7. I share in the human condition, ladies and gentlemen. I am one of you. Your horror and dread at my actions (or at my existence) emanates from this suppressed knowledge. Admit it, you see yourselves in me and others like me. You are as much attracted as repelled by what you see in me. We need each other. No saint without a sinner, eh? No judges or lawyers and laws without criminals and violators of laws. I notice that my lawyer nods his head in agreement as these words are taken down by a typist or court reporter for transcription. Think of ancient drama or literature, if you like, or the sad poetry in court documents and filings, the foul residue of miserable lives exhaled (like a miasmic cloud) from places such as the establishment where I now find myself placed by cruel fortune and the vicissitudes of a deeply flawed legal system. Justice is only to be found in heaven. On earth we have a surplus of laws. Happily, I am surrounded by books. Finally, I have the leisure to read and a little time to think.
8. I am a man who is about to die. I must make my peace with my killer, society, even as I endeavor to justify my life with mere words. A final meal, a cigarette, some last words. These are poor consolations for the misfortunes of fate. My lawyer's eyes sparkle with pity. He pities me. I pity him. My life's final act is anticlimactic, scripted by Henry Fielding and (somehow) unfolding in the wrong century. I would have fared better in the eighteenth century -- or earlier still -- as a Spanish pirate sailing the high seas.
9. This is what psychologists call "lack of proper affect" or "insight," failure of moral imagination, inability to appreciate the pain of others, a poverty of feeling and empathy. I am a Republican. I believe in money -- our only true God -- also in punishment for criminals. Criminals enjoy committing their crimes, your Honors, just look at Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, or Mr. Trump. They -- no, we -- deserve all that is meeted out to us. So many criminals are lawyers and judges, elected officials and businessmen, even prosecutors and cops -- many of these social frauds were on my payroll. I have little sympathy for hypocrites concerned about the "ethics" and "souls" of their neighbors in Soprano States. After all, what is to be expected from this monkey race of killers and carnivores? Not much: 98% of our genes are shared with chimpanzees. Indeed, we are "50% identical to the banana. ... Homo sapiens, according to current evolutionary theory, exists primarily as a container for inactive bacteria which have been successful in the struggle for survival. ... Laws of Newtonian elegance can't apply to human behavior. Bananas aren't motivated by 'cause and effect.' Ask one." Engleby, pp. 109-110.
10. My lawyer is about my age, fifty years-old. He lives in a modest non-descript place a few miles from the courthouse. He is in debt up to and beyond his eyeballs to pay for the education of his only child. He has few possessions in comparison with what I have enjoyed. My lawyer is also a Republican. He does not have sex with young and very beautiful women. I have delighted in the pleasures of women of every kind and from every nation in the world, almost on a daily basis. He has never owned a very expensive watch. I have possessed exquisite jewelry of every kind. He has never travelled the world. I have been everywhere in Europe. I have also visited at least some parts of every continent, including Asia and Africa, mostly on business. I know what it is like to have money and power.
11. I drove a Mercedes Benz, the most luxurious model ever made. My dull and average-looking lawyer has only a very modest Japanese car. I have dined in the finest restaurants with famous faces surrounding me. He eats at home with his pleasant wife of thirty years. He dreams of nights that he cannot afford in great concert halls and theaters. I have been to all the great theaters of the world. We debate philosophy and cultural issues. He believes in goodness and love. I do not. My death may arrive tomorrow. His death (and yours) will arrive soon enough -- if it has not arrived already without your noticing the fact -- usually, death arrives before most of you have done much living. I pity all of you.
12. We "live" in different worlds of value, my lawyer and I. The boredom of his life would have killed me ages ago. I have very little confidence that my well-meaning attorney (or any judges) will appreciate all I have to say. My question to you, your Honors, is whether you or he -- this totally insignificant and flawed person, struggling to be good, with his silly books of ethics and love of art, my "inferior" in every sense of the word -- have truly lived or whether all of you will die without savoring this precious gift of life? Am I making this appeal "for" life? Or is my lawyer and are all of you with him begging for some of this "authenticity" or Nietzschean elan that I embody? Who is to be pitied? Me? Or you? How are we as "sacks of protein and water" different in the end from one another whether we are criminals or cops? How could we possibly matter to the universe?
13. My lawyer lives in an orderly world, in linear time, real spaces, and genuine emotions. I thrive upon chaos and quantum mystery. Like Milton's Lucifer, I "rule in hell" whereas he serves in heaven. I am rich in life-force. How many of you can say the same? Not many, I promise you.
14. Experts and courts demand an explanation for my actions and life choices. Their theories are laughably absurd. This demand misses the point of the enterprise: "Evil," one meddlesome English critic reminds us, "has, or appears to have, no practical purpose. Evil is supremely pointless. Anything as humdrum as a purpose would tarnish its lethal purity. In this, it resembles God, who if he does turn out to exist" -- I shall discover the answer to this question soon enough! -- "has absolutely no reason for doing so. He is his own reason for being. ... Farce is human action stripped of meaning and reduced to mere physical motion. This is also what the Nazis had in mind for the Jews." Terry Eagleton, On Evil (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 84-87.
15. One of my colleagues in business described persons as "meat puppets," things of no consequence to be moved about by men like us. We are the gods. They -- all of you -- are animals and nothing more. You are "collateral damage," like those millions of brown people who must be murdered to further America's national interest. No one claims that my life has been dull or average. I can truthfully assert -- with my hand on my heart as I do so -- that few persons have found my conversations or company boring. I am blessed with a strong dose of what Friedrich Nietzsche describes as "life-energy." Heidegger understood the need for affirmation of the moment. A single act of gratuitous cruelty that produces a victim writhing in agony is what nature intends for all of us. To deny the luxurious pleasures derived from the destruction of "little" lives is mendacious. Admit your addiction to hurting the "little people" who make the world turn. After all, to those who dare to act greatly or seize what must be theirs all is permitted. All is permitted.
16. We are carnivores, killers, takers, aggressors. We take pleasure in fulfilling our aggressive natures. This is what the blood-stained god of creation must have intended. Humanity is not made in the image of any loving God's compassion. The very suggestion of such an ethics of love is utterly absurd. Hitler had some excellent points even if he got a little carried away at times. Who is to say that Hitler was wrong? Morality is subjective. Goodness is relative to the individual and his or her situation: " ... the strong man is also the free man, ... while the subjected man, the slave, [like my earnest attorney,] lives dull and oppressed. -- The theory of freedom of will is an invention of the ruling classes." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Wanderer and His Shadow, R.J. Hollingdale, s. 9.
17. An invention of the "ruling classes" is what morality always will be. Yes, morality is a tool for the oppression of the people -- simple people and fools who deserve what they get from the likes of me. Much the same must be said of laws. They are for the masses not the masters of men. I was (the past tense is now necessary!), in life, a master of men. I was an "Overman." I will not end my life by grovelling to small men and women. All of you fine ladies and gentlemen are the cave in which I dwell. Right and wrong is all about power. You may kill me, but you cannot be like me and you want, desperately, to be like me. This explains why so many of you follow me and are fascinated by me, or others like me, who rule over nations and states everywhere in the world. I have lived and now I will die, greatly, loudly, proudly. I could not have borne a small and trivial life. This violent death at the hands of the state is much better. "Who would fardles bear? ..." Not I, your Honors, not me -- never.
18. I suppose some comment is desired from me concerning the murders of which I stand convicted. Very well. Let us savor the delicious details. I was forced by the relatively few gainful financial opportunities of my early life to operate a business in which credibility is vital. I cannot permit a rival (or employee) to absond with my goods or cash. Otherwise, you can be sure that others will attempt to do the same. My life unfolded in a world without the regular and predictable institutional responses that would have allowed me to forego self-help. In other words, I could not go to the cops for help. Hence, I was the cops.
19. Now many persons in such a position in America hire what are known as "subcontractors." There are "garbage disposal experts" who solve these problems for a small fee in what used to be called "the Underworld." I could have formulated a "coalition of the willing." I preferred -- even delighted -- in doing my own sanitary work. I admit that what I will now describe will seem "evil." However, I do not believe in "evil." The word is a relic of a religious age that is no longer needed. "The world is everything that is the case." (Ludwig Wittgenstein) Evil is not an item that is found existing, empirically, in the world. Evil is a concept deposited in human affairs by persons. Evil is a hypocritical concept. Evil is subjective. The winners in every war or conflict define what is evil. Had the Nazis or Japan won the Second World War there would have been "Virginia" and not "Nuremberg Trials." Besides, the word "evil" should not be applied to me. I am merely more honest than most people. I take what I want. I get rid of my competitors. I survive. This is what nature intends, ladies and gentlemen. I am in compliance with the strictures of evolution. How can anyone blame me for that? I am only a "survivor."
20. "What rats do when a member of a strange rat clan enters their territory or is put in there by a human experimenter is one of the most horrible and repulsive things which can be observed in animals." Konrad Lorenz writes of the immediate attacks and slow dismerberment of these rodents by others who bite, claw, tear at the stranger, usually over a long period of time, deliberately prolonging the agony: "Only rarely does one see an animal in such desperation and panic, so conscious of the inevitability of a terrible death, as a rat which is about to be slain by rats. It ceases to defend itself. One cannot help comparing this behavior with what happens when a rat faces a large predator that has driven it into a corner whence there is no more escape than from the rats of a strange clan. ..." "Rats," in On Aggression (New York & London: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, 1963), pp. 161-163. (American prisons duplicate the conditions of overcrowded rodent environments to perfection, probably deliberately, with predictable consequences in terms of inmates' suicides and frequent violence.)
21. American experts in psychological torture have devised techniques aimed at reproducing this breakdown in defensive and coping capacity in persons not convicted of any crimes through frustrations and anxiety. They have improved upon Nazi techniques. Persons lay down and die, if subjected to such excruciating torments over a sufficiently long period, except for a few annoying individuals who do not seem to fit the pattern of so-called "normality." I hate when people refuse to be victims. I detest persons who disobey me. I hate everyone who thinks he is smarter than me. They need a little humility. No offense: "Anglos are not smart enough to be philosophers." I am a true philosopher. I do not bother with all of the books my lawyer reads. His constant study shows a lack of originality. All my lawyer does is to quote from his readings and then to comment on them in formulating his opinions. I am my own source of quotations.
22. "It has been noted that the existence of evil is only a 'problem' in the philosophical sense if one presupposes that Nature is an essentially benevolent enterprise or that it is the creation of an essentially benevolent deity or deities. If one makes no such presupposition, then evil's existence ceases to be a philosophical problem. But it does not necessarily cease to be a mystery. Indeed, one can never fully explain the existence of evil merely by denying the alleged benevolence of the universe. One must also provide a completely adequate account of the ultimate origins of human suffering. ... " Timothy Anders, The Evolution of Evil (Illinois: Open Court, 1994), at pp. xii-xiii.
23. I am compelled to agree with Professor Anders. "Suffering" by victims is indeed a crucial component of this mystery. How pleasant it is to savor the suffering of another. The exquisite flavor of a dying person's pleas for mercy and recognition of one's demonic "power" -- power over life or death, power to bestow favors or inflict pain and frustrations, eternally, for no rational reason, control over others, establishing one's infinite superiority -- like the demon, Malbus, in world mythology. I am still amused by a woman's attempt to escape death by offering sex and the look of shock on her face as a bullet was fired into her belly. I did not know there was a child in that woman's body. This knowledge, I must say, would have added to the pleasure of the experience. The look of absolute loss and devastation in a person's face as his or her children are murdered is really funny. The realization in a man's face that everything he loves has been or will be destroyed is priceless. I try to force them to see that everything they believe is nonsense. There is no truth. You can do whatever you want. I know what Vikings felt when they sacked a city. I understand Cortez as he raped and burned native women. These men must have been very much like me. These are the men who made empires and built mountains of gold. These are successful men. My lawyer admires artists and philosophers, scientists and great jurists. Such men and women are only servants of the wealthy and powerful. Money is the meaning of life. Genius is something I can buy like a hundred-dollar haircut. Violence is the ultimate sexual experience.
24. I entered my rival's home with some of my employees. I tied him to a chair. I took everything of value, material and non-material, raped his woman, murdered his children. After enjoying their bodies and turning them over to my people as a reward or bonus for the evening's work, I allowed my would-be usurper to die, slowly, by bleeding to death from several gun shots to the lower portions of his body. As he was surrounded by his dead family members, I snapped a photo, after posing the group in a touching family composition. I think of these murders as my humble creation of a work of art. My masterpiece. I then set fire to the establishment. Some of the victims may have been alive before the flames engulfed them. I wish that I had brought marshmellows to roast in the flames. I certainly succeeded in sending a message to any others contemplating a "revolution."
25. This evening's entertainment was strictly a "rational means to achieve a desired goal." David Hume would say that I am utterly rational. Psychologists suggest a career in politics. This lovely scene has been repeated 70 to 100 million times in the twentieth century. We are well on our way to similar or, perhaps, even greater numbers of victims in the new century. Am I so unusual? Am I really a monster? Or do you see in me only the monstrosity in human nature -- a human nature in which you share? I am merely the other side of you. Do what you like to my body. I have enjoyed my fun. I have lived. Living is killing, eating, fornicating, excreting one's victims. Morality and human compassion are things for weak persons like all of you. When you speak of human nature, remember that (whatever other aspects of humanity are postulated) you will also have to deal with me. There will always be someone like me.
The foregoing statements are true to the best of my knowledge. I am aware that if any of the foregoing statements made by me are wilfully false, I am subject to punishment.
s/Carlos R. Mendoza
Carlos R. Mendoza, Inmate No. 45587, Appellant.
Signed before me this 21st day of September, 2010.
s/Carlo R. Mauro, Esq.
Carlo R. Mauro, Esq.
Decision of the State Supreme Court in State v. Carlos R. Mendoza, et als.
Docket No.: 94-198856-10
Indictment No.: 1267790-10
PER CURRIAM:
Appeals for Clemency and Motions for Reconsideration of all Death Sentences have been brought before this tribunal in the above captioned and related matters. The state legislature has enacted a statute that forbids the imposition of the death penalty in this jurisdiction prior to the filing of these appeals and requests. All pending death sentences of persons convicted of murder in this state will be and hereby are commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole subject to review by appellate tribunals in the event that new evidence of factual innocence surfaces in any of these matters at any future time. Accordingly, the Appeals and Requests by these Appellants are rendered moot and are hereby dismissed. So Ordered.
Dated and Signed by All Justices this 1st Day of November, 2010.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Out of the Past.
"He looked as if he would murder me and he did."
I stared at this sentence on the page in my old and battered Underwood typewriter. I pushed a weathered fedora hat back on my head, loosened my tie. I always knew the end would come because of some dame. I just never realized how they'd get me. The two of them were in on it from the beginning. He was a lawyer, a shyster downtown, an ambulance chaser. She was a peroxide blond who wore tight dresses and too much lipstick, always carried a forty-five in her bag, had a tattoo on her back -- where the sun don't shine -- that said: "Hot Lips."
They were perfect for each other. I got in the way. They had no choice. I see it now. They had to get rid of me. I could almost forgive them for that. But they killed Madeleine. And that I'll never forgive. Today is the day of reckoning. I have a bullet for each of them.
This place isn't so bad. It's a lot like Jersey City on a rainy afternoon. I remember reading a ghost story that was kind of like that. I think it was Muriel Spark's "Portobello Road." There's a lot of guys, like me, wandering around in this black-and-white reality. If you have some unfinished business you may get stuck in a reality like this. I pack my 38 caliber police special -- Philip Marlowe had a revolver just like this baby! -- I step away from my desk, the typewriter, and the whole grimy office. I have to find those two grifters. I need some fresh air. Madeleine has to be here somewhere. I'm gonna find that dame.
I stroll through "The Mansions of Hades," which is a residential neighborhood for well-to-do existentialists and others dead before resolving the puzzle of their lives, still questioning, doubting, angry and unaccepting. Norman Mailer drinks at a bar nearby. Jacques Derrida scopes out the babes at the corner restaurant. Jean-Paul Sartre "lives" about a block away.
What does it mean to "live" as opposed to merely "existing"? How is hell different from the Marais district of Paris? Let's drop in on Sartre to discuss my predicament. I want to know how a dead man can kill the bastard who plugged him. No wonder all the great philosophers are here. Most of them are trying to kill their predecessors and teachers. Wittgenstein is hunting for all of them. Bastards.
I expect to find Sartre in his messy apartment that is filled with books. Instead, I find him sitting in a sidewalk cafe. Sartre holds a newspaper, stares at a cup of strong black coffee, his pipe sits on a dirty ash tray. I notice two books before him -- a collection of works in hermeneutics and the late writings of Jacques Derrida. I tip my hat in his direction, point to the seat before him as I glance at the Derrida texts. Sartre shrugs his shoulders, then gestures at the empty chair.
I sit and ask the philosopher: "How's it going?"
Sartre sips his coffee and says: "Everything just is."
"Yeah, I know the feeling."
"Feelings? Here?"
"Yeah, in a way. There's a constant numbness or dullness, a frozen quality in one's perceptions and an inescapable affective tone or mood to everything that makes life stale and flat. I have lately -- but wherefore I know not -- lost all my mirth in life ... or death. The world is black-and-white for a really good reason here, now. Cigarette smoke follows you everywhere. People dress in black a lot. The neighborhood is filled with existentialists and postmodernists -- like Hollywood."
Sartre seemed exited and child-like: "I met Humphrey Bogart, you know."
"I'd rather meet Lauren Bacall. The deepest circles of hell are reserved for analytical philosophers and the linguistic analysts. Nobody has been able to finish a sentence for centuries in hell because of all the parsing of meanings and debates over syntax. I hear they're planning to make George W. Bush deliver a speech for eternity in hell. Think about the poor saps who'll have to sit through it. 'No Exit' is right." Part of the meaning of hell is not knowing that you're in it.
"It makes you long for the guestapo." Sartre sipped his coffee.
"I want to ask you a question."
"Go right ahead. It won't mean anything."
"Well, I want to plug the bastard who did me in. I have no body. I can't physically kill the mug. What should I do?"
"Why not wait fifty years? That's nothing here."
"That's not good enough for me. I want to dispatch the guy, send him to his maker with all his sins upon his head."
"Are you sure you have the right man."
"Yes, but I haven't seen him in a while. He's a master of disguise who looks a lot like me."
"That is a problem. Your murderer -- like your self -- is an entity in the world. Definitely not a Cartesian 'I.' You'll have to trail him through his actions. Maybe you'll be able to draw a picture of the mug."
"A picture?"
"Yes," Sartre took a drag on his pipe. "You see, Schopenhauer (who lives about a block from here) said that, if you were to connect the dots of a person's actions or the deeds of his life, the image produced would constitute a kind of portrait of an external shape -- a ghost, if you like -- of the self. All of the inner life would be missing, of course, but everything else would be there. You would have a 'mug shot,' as it were, of the killer to put in post offices and supermarkets. Of course, we don't have either of those establishments in this neck of the woods. You might come up with the image of God or the devil ... either (or both) may look like you -- or me."
"I see."
With a wave to my favorite existentialist, I got up from the table and drifted, aimlessly, through the half deserted streets and muttering retreats. Sartre is still waiting for that waiter who is not there and may not be coming, like those two bums waiting for Godot.
I felt a breeze scattering some leaves, then I saw her. She was standing under a streetlamp wearing a beautiful suit -- maybe Christian Dior -- white gloves in one hand, a hat tipped over one eye. Perfect make up, cigarette on her lips, holding an envelope-type purse. She looked like Jane Greer as she appeared in Out of the Past, except she was a blond. She had trouble written all over her. I didn't care. I waltzed right up to her. In my best casual manner, I tried an opening line which is more direct than my usual coolness and distance from this sort of dame:
"You look a little too glamorous for this neck of the woods, sister. Can I help you find your way?"
I made sure she got the message. This was one tough dame. She didn't blink and gave it right back to me:
"What's it to you?" She blew some smoke in my face.
"Nothing. I'm just trying to be sociable. Mind if I walk with you. These streets can be dangerous."
"I'm dead. There's not too much more anybody can do to me."
There's something incomplete about this moment in history -- maybe it's only in my society, but I doubt it -- a feeling of deadness. Something remains unfinished in our culture and ourselves. The new age is still unborn. We are not yet what we must be. This state of being nothing applies to the living and dead. Maybe that's perfect since my name is Nick, Nick Orpheus. The choice is between "Being" and "Nothingness."
"Well, there's places and then there are much worse places. The local boys could drag you to New Jersey, which has to be the last circle."
"Anything but that." She chuckled. A lifted eyebrow said she didn't care if I walked with her or shot myself in the head. We could hear some music from nightclubs in the distance. I suggested walking in the direction of the music. It was all the same to her. She was looking for the no good bastard who shot her. I told her my story. I explained about Madeleine. She said that she must have known her from somewhere. She couldn't remember too much before she got to this place. Me too. Something about being murdered is cleansing. You leave something behind. Create something new. Her name was Jane Eurydice. She asked me about Madeleine.
"Well, Madeleine ... " I hesitate to speak of her. One of my rules in "life" is never to discuss one woman with another. The strange similarity between these women -- Madeleine's hair was chestnut colored, sometimes -- even if her hair color changed by the week -- and her eyes were dark. Otherwise, this stranger might have been Madeleine's twin: same height, weight. Despite the new arrival's blond hair and green eyes, red lipstick, and greater glamor, I felt like I was talking to Madeleine. It was enough to give me a sense of ... vertigo. Maybe "frenzy" is a better word.
"Madeleine was among those few women with a legitimate grievance against life. She was owed something for what was -- and is -- taken from her. I can't speak of her in the past tense. I love her laughter and curiosity, passionate interest in things and ideas. People fascinate and horrify Madeleine. They mostly horrify me -- especially the lowlifes and bastards she associated with."
"I am not a big fan of humanity." She said this with a hardness in her eyes I would not have believed possible for such a beautiful woman.
"You got something better?"
"There must be something better."
"Maybe that's what this place is about. Finding something better." The music was pretty loud now. There was neon in the middle distance. I gestured in a north-by-northwest direction, towards the light and shadows, smoke and mirrors.
"You want a drink?"
"Why not? You look like the best company I'm going to find in this town." Jane laughed as she said this. It wasn't meant as a compliment.
We found a cabaret that looked like something from "Casablanca." There were a lot of people dancing. Great jazz music was playing. Cigarette smoke filled up the joint. There was a never-ending party going on. I slipped the doorman a fin to get into the club, then looked for some little guy in a rented tux with gleaming dentures who would finagle a table for a brand new twenty dollar bill. Money works even at these levels of reality.
There were beautiful women all over this place. It was a lot like Hollywood. Jane wasn't worried a bit. Jane sat accross from me in the soft light of the place, removed her hat and gloves, pointed those big eyes at me posing an unspoken question. I ordered a bottle of champagne. She was some seriously beautiful woman. Her eyes were filled with intelligence and curiosity, also deeper levels of pain than one expected to see in a woman who looked the way she did -- not at her age, anyway. She must've been no more than twenty-five when she passed into this realm of blighted souls. Some women are even younger when they are ushered into this grim reality through horrible trauma. I do not envy those all-too brief lives.
"Should I make conversation? Or will you be witty for me?" A lifted eyebrow told me that she had little hope that I would succeed in amusing her. If you have eternity on your hands, she seemed to say, a moron is worth a few laughs. I was the moron.
"I'll just try to make the conversation light and fluffy."
"Go ahead and do that." I got a smile. Well, that's a start. I had a feeling that there was something about our being together, here, in this nowhere place, that was important to what we were both after. Maybe she sensed this as well, but would not articulate the insight. Women who look the way she always will, to me, are targets of every imbecile in the world. They develop techniques for wrestling with gorillas of all varieties.
The suspiciousness was understandable, shadows that fell across her features, the intensity and presence of pain or shock said that, somewhere along the way in her brief life -- probably when she was very young -- someone evil and perverse hurt her forever. Maybe she was here to find the guy or gal who would love her forever, balancing the scales. Maybe I could help. And just maybe, if I was right about these intuitions, by helping her I'd help myself. This could be the only way to get out of here.
Some things a guy in my line of work figures out by dealing with lives lost to squalor and crime, blasted souls and walking wounded in this bleak landscape where fine young cannibals walk the night. The band began to play "You Must Remember This." I fixed my tie, smiled, and extended a hand. After a few seconds of cold contemplation, Jane put her hand in mine.
We stepped on to the dance floor. I liked the feel of her body close to mine, the subtle but excellent perfume, the fabric of her dress. I liked the way Jane looked at me -- amused and expectant, cool and assessing, smart, tough, challenging, also curious. Never let a woman become bored with your mind. Most men are boring to women. In fact, most men are boring to themselves.
The most beautiful woman in the world becomes less interesting the moment it is clear that she's an idiot. I don't know why I feel that way. Most men feel the opposite emotions. They are attracted to women who will always be more ignorant and less intelligent than they are. Women who are physically attractive and intellectually dull seem to constitute one masculine ideal. Women who are easily impressed, I guess.
Life must be happier for idiots, male and female. Think of all the fools you know who are doing great. Have you ever seen the Republican Convention? They're all happy as kids in a candy store waving their flags and balloons. True, a lot of them get indicted for having too much candy, but you know what I mean.
Gradually, Jane relaxed and began to tell her story. She was the product of a broken home. Mother left early. Father liked to beat her. I suspect that he did worse. She liked boys. They liked her. Jane didn't care about much. There was a fatalism about her from the start. She expected a short life. She was certainly right about that abruptly-ended or -shortened life. Jane never thought of her life as anything other than an ordeal punctuated by moments of self-abandonment in pleasures -- pleasures of various kinds which is always an anticipation of death, a kind of living death or purgatory of the moment.
Any kind of mood altering or hallucinatory substance is about pain management. Eventually, the pain does the managing. Purgatory is the condition of a never-ending party, a nightclub that does not close, a celebration with strangers and without mirth, an eternity of boredom. Have you ever seen the Oscars ceremony?
There was so little love in Jane's life that she must have felt a desperate hunger for genuine affection or any true human connection, let alone real love. It was a wonder to me that people -- especially men -- had not taken advantage of this poor woman from day one. Maybe they did. Jane was carrying a neon sign around her neck that said: "Please exploit me."
Many women seem unaware of projecting emotional need and vulnerability, frailty, and spiritual loss. Predators feed on that sort of need and vulnerability.
At first, Jane didn't see her vulnerability as an invitation to every worthless bastard in the world. After a while, Jane didn't care or, maybe, she believed that things could never be different with anyone that she would meet. Despite the veneer of toughness and cynicism -- the edgy quality about her and Jane's formidable beauty -- she was a softie inside, craving affection, just made for the exploiters of this world, exploiters that she would seek out with a suicidal compulsion and apathy.
Jane was begging for destruction because, absurdly, she had accepted the one lesson that power always teaches its victims at every level of reality -- you deserve what I am doing to you. You are my slave. Never believe that nonsense.
"We need to find the people who hurt us." I said this and stared into her eyes. I held her close and felt the music surrounding us.
"Maybe," Jane whispered in my ear, "it's the only way we can be free."
That's when we turned and saw the man in the black raincoat. He was of middle height, his features appeared indistinct or nondescript because of the distance that made it impossible to identify him as someone familiar to me in life. He seemed like a man who knew too much. He was clearly observing us, maybe following me. He was with a woman -- dark haired, wearing dark glasses, even inside this nightclub. I didn't like the look of either one of them. There are all kinds of bosses and minor deities exacting tribute in these nether regions of lost souls. Jane saw what I saw.
"Let's get out of here." She grabbed my arm. I felt that this was right and good somehow, together we're unstoppable.
"Come on. There must be a back way out of here." Her nearness was reassuring. I want her never to be far away.
We pushed our way through the crowd. As we left the nightclub, it seemed that night had remained irremovably in place for years or eons. At this level of reality darkness ruled. There were parties everywhere, music, cheap perfume, cigarette smoke, the sounds of sex were often heard, but no love-making, street walkers at every corner. We wandered through twisting and darkening streets then came upon a man standing near a taxi. I could hear steps behind us, approaching. I (somehow) knew that it was the couple from the nightclub aiming to "get" us. They would shadow us, like a guilty past. I wasn't sure whether we could shake them off.
"Need a lift?" The man wore a cap on the back of his head, a cigarette behind his ear, unshaved, maybe forty. The car was a beat-up old checker cab with New York plates.
"Where you heading?" I asked and looked over my shoulder. Footsteps approached, quickly.
"That depends on you, buddy."
"Get in, Jane. Let's get out here pronto." We ducked into the comfy back seat. The cab peeled out into the night traffic faster than a bat out of hell -- or purgatory -- and we settled into a comfortable cruising speed, but were we heading in the right direction?
I tried to make out the streets in the darkness, deciding to trust my emotions and intuitions. I'd have to feel my way along. I would need to see through the blindness. Jane seemed to trust my judgment more than I did.
"That way," I said. The driver turned towards a dark and lost highway. We drove some ways, then -- I don't know how -- I felt there were familiar landmarks along the way, allowing them to point me in the right direction, they seemed to whisper to me, gesturing towards something known and true, a powerul emotion pulled me towards an ambiguous resolution to our adventure.
A glance behind us revealed a black cadillac, 1947, gleaming, menacing. The grill on that car resembled the smile of a hungry shark -- the caddie was gaining on us. I saw what appeared to be a very familiar street. I asked the cab driver to pull over quickly. I dropped a wad of cash in his lap, opened the door of the vehicle, then pulled Jane out of the car.
"This way." I suddenly knew the right direction. My office was on a street like this, maybe this very street. I looked at the numbers on the doors of the buildings. The numbers seemed blurry -- like in a dream or as if we were under water -- I concentrated and, somehow, I knew that I was only a few blocks from my old haunts. I felt like a man fighting his way out of a hypnotic spell, rescuing forbidden memories from the dungeon to which they were consigned by an evil witch.
"Come on, Jane."
"Where are we going?"
"Towards redemption."
I smiled at her with a confidence that I knew she could not resist. We made our way through darkened and dirty streets. No footsteps were heard behind us. This was further proof that we were headed the right way. I saw a building I knew, but everything seemed to be in the wrong place, shifted around in my recollection. I saw my office building. There was no one around. The entire area seemed desolate, abandoned, like a stage set. I thought that my old key might still open the door.
We made our way towards the entrance. No security guard. I didn't want to try the elevator. We climbed the thirty-nine steps to the fifth floor. My office door was closed, not locked. Jane seemed frightened. I offered silent encouragement. We both sensed that a revelation lay on the other side of that door. I opened it and was frozen to the spot where I stood. Jane's scream seemed to come from far away.
There were two corpses in that room. One looked exactly like me; the other like Jane. From the shadows, a man in a perfect tuxedo stepped forward and lit a cigarette. It was the cab driver, except now he was the epitome of elegance, with a pencil-thin mustache, a gardenia in his lapel, a neatly folded handkerchief in his pocket. His shoes gleamed. He sat on my desk before the two corpses, then smiled and tilted his head toward the empty seats before the bodies. He was the best dressed psycho I'd ever seen.
"I was wondering how long it would take you two to get here. These are the earlier versions of yourselves. They're as dead as doornails. I think you killed them."
He looked at me when he said this.
"Both of you, I mean." He chuckled merrily at this observation. "Pity, I wanted them to belong to me. I liked those two people. You took them away from me. I can't accept anybody who loves the way you two kids do. It's just not the kind of thing I can tolerate. You even offered to take the rap for this dame. What kind of a thing is that for a grown man to do? It ain't natural."
He reached for a drink that appeared in his free hand.
"In my position I have only a few rules. I try to be accomodating of every sort of person. I am a true democrat. I am tolerant of human foibles and peccadillos, even ... encouraging occasional sinfulness." He smiled. "With you two, I have ... failed to communicate."
The man in the tux walked around the room, smelled the gardenia in his lapel: "There is no space for you two and what you feel for each other in the realm where I am king. You two simply do not belong in the kingdom of shadows. You love her too much for that. It is that love that killed the darkness in you. The parts of you that I liked so much. Shame. I always get stuck with the stiffs."
Jane was unaware of speaking the next words: "But who really killed them?"
"You did. You 'transcended' them. I hate when people do that. Now all of you are bringing loving versions of this guy and gal to life by reading these words. It's all terribly complicated and annoying. Here's what I'm willing to do for you."
The man stood and opened his hands, holding them before our eyes like a carnival magician.
"Jane, doesn't really know you. She has no memory of her life at this lowest-level of reality. It's so similar to Union City in this sinister realm. If you can get her out of here, into the sunlight and the Springtime. If you can find the key to her love -- the old love that she felt and feels for you in the deepest part of herself -- then I'll punch your tickets and you can get to the other ride. You'll know you're there when you hear birds singing and everybody seems to be happy. They're usually all grinning like idiots in that place with the skyscrapers and a big park in the middle. I have to warn you the sex is awful in that town."
"What happens if she does not remember?"
"Then you stay with me in the kingdom of darkness becoming the two shadows of yourselves, corpses, that followed you from the club. Living dead, like everybody else in New Jersey. Whatta-ya say? Shake on it?"
Jane interrupted: "Listen, buster -- No one has to rescue me. I barely know this guy. I am not going to let him take the rap for me. I'll go any place you want. He can take off."
I was not going to let Jane risk eternity in that hell: "Not on your life. She's right. Jane does not know me. She can be very happy and better off in the sunshine. Maybe she'll find a banker or some very successful guy --"
" -- that would be hell." Jane said with a laugh.
Suddenly, I felt a blackness swallow all of my conscious awareness. The room began to spin around. I could not see Jane. I reached out for her with a desperation that I had never felt before. I lost consciousness. Everything faded to black. I knew that I might never again find the lady that vanishes.
I awoke after what seemed like hours. I was in a park or something. The grass smelled wet and clean. I heard children laughing, playing. I walked towards a small group of persons visible in the middle distance. I saw birds in a blue and white sky. I felt the warmth of the sun on my flesh and saw everything in beautiful technicolor. I was over the rainbow.
I felt dazed, walking, looking for someone. Then I saw her near some flowers, laughing with an assortment of children surrounding her. Her hair was light brown. She was wearing a sun dress. I approached, nervously and fearfully -- Did she know me?
"What are you doing here?" Jane smiled. Or was it Madeleine? "I thought for sure they'd never let you out."
I stared at this sentence on the page in my old and battered Underwood typewriter. I pushed a weathered fedora hat back on my head, loosened my tie. I always knew the end would come because of some dame. I just never realized how they'd get me. The two of them were in on it from the beginning. He was a lawyer, a shyster downtown, an ambulance chaser. She was a peroxide blond who wore tight dresses and too much lipstick, always carried a forty-five in her bag, had a tattoo on her back -- where the sun don't shine -- that said: "Hot Lips."
They were perfect for each other. I got in the way. They had no choice. I see it now. They had to get rid of me. I could almost forgive them for that. But they killed Madeleine. And that I'll never forgive. Today is the day of reckoning. I have a bullet for each of them.
This place isn't so bad. It's a lot like Jersey City on a rainy afternoon. I remember reading a ghost story that was kind of like that. I think it was Muriel Spark's "Portobello Road." There's a lot of guys, like me, wandering around in this black-and-white reality. If you have some unfinished business you may get stuck in a reality like this. I pack my 38 caliber police special -- Philip Marlowe had a revolver just like this baby! -- I step away from my desk, the typewriter, and the whole grimy office. I have to find those two grifters. I need some fresh air. Madeleine has to be here somewhere. I'm gonna find that dame.
I stroll through "The Mansions of Hades," which is a residential neighborhood for well-to-do existentialists and others dead before resolving the puzzle of their lives, still questioning, doubting, angry and unaccepting. Norman Mailer drinks at a bar nearby. Jacques Derrida scopes out the babes at the corner restaurant. Jean-Paul Sartre "lives" about a block away.
What does it mean to "live" as opposed to merely "existing"? How is hell different from the Marais district of Paris? Let's drop in on Sartre to discuss my predicament. I want to know how a dead man can kill the bastard who plugged him. No wonder all the great philosophers are here. Most of them are trying to kill their predecessors and teachers. Wittgenstein is hunting for all of them. Bastards.
I expect to find Sartre in his messy apartment that is filled with books. Instead, I find him sitting in a sidewalk cafe. Sartre holds a newspaper, stares at a cup of strong black coffee, his pipe sits on a dirty ash tray. I notice two books before him -- a collection of works in hermeneutics and the late writings of Jacques Derrida. I tip my hat in his direction, point to the seat before him as I glance at the Derrida texts. Sartre shrugs his shoulders, then gestures at the empty chair.
I sit and ask the philosopher: "How's it going?"
Sartre sips his coffee and says: "Everything just is."
"Yeah, I know the feeling."
"Feelings? Here?"
"Yeah, in a way. There's a constant numbness or dullness, a frozen quality in one's perceptions and an inescapable affective tone or mood to everything that makes life stale and flat. I have lately -- but wherefore I know not -- lost all my mirth in life ... or death. The world is black-and-white for a really good reason here, now. Cigarette smoke follows you everywhere. People dress in black a lot. The neighborhood is filled with existentialists and postmodernists -- like Hollywood."
Sartre seemed exited and child-like: "I met Humphrey Bogart, you know."
"I'd rather meet Lauren Bacall. The deepest circles of hell are reserved for analytical philosophers and the linguistic analysts. Nobody has been able to finish a sentence for centuries in hell because of all the parsing of meanings and debates over syntax. I hear they're planning to make George W. Bush deliver a speech for eternity in hell. Think about the poor saps who'll have to sit through it. 'No Exit' is right." Part of the meaning of hell is not knowing that you're in it.
"It makes you long for the guestapo." Sartre sipped his coffee.
"I want to ask you a question."
"Go right ahead. It won't mean anything."
"Well, I want to plug the bastard who did me in. I have no body. I can't physically kill the mug. What should I do?"
"Why not wait fifty years? That's nothing here."
"That's not good enough for me. I want to dispatch the guy, send him to his maker with all his sins upon his head."
"Are you sure you have the right man."
"Yes, but I haven't seen him in a while. He's a master of disguise who looks a lot like me."
"That is a problem. Your murderer -- like your self -- is an entity in the world. Definitely not a Cartesian 'I.' You'll have to trail him through his actions. Maybe you'll be able to draw a picture of the mug."
"A picture?"
"Yes," Sartre took a drag on his pipe. "You see, Schopenhauer (who lives about a block from here) said that, if you were to connect the dots of a person's actions or the deeds of his life, the image produced would constitute a kind of portrait of an external shape -- a ghost, if you like -- of the self. All of the inner life would be missing, of course, but everything else would be there. You would have a 'mug shot,' as it were, of the killer to put in post offices and supermarkets. Of course, we don't have either of those establishments in this neck of the woods. You might come up with the image of God or the devil ... either (or both) may look like you -- or me."
"I see."
With a wave to my favorite existentialist, I got up from the table and drifted, aimlessly, through the half deserted streets and muttering retreats. Sartre is still waiting for that waiter who is not there and may not be coming, like those two bums waiting for Godot.
I felt a breeze scattering some leaves, then I saw her. She was standing under a streetlamp wearing a beautiful suit -- maybe Christian Dior -- white gloves in one hand, a hat tipped over one eye. Perfect make up, cigarette on her lips, holding an envelope-type purse. She looked like Jane Greer as she appeared in Out of the Past, except she was a blond. She had trouble written all over her. I didn't care. I waltzed right up to her. In my best casual manner, I tried an opening line which is more direct than my usual coolness and distance from this sort of dame:
"You look a little too glamorous for this neck of the woods, sister. Can I help you find your way?"
I made sure she got the message. This was one tough dame. She didn't blink and gave it right back to me:
"What's it to you?" She blew some smoke in my face.
"Nothing. I'm just trying to be sociable. Mind if I walk with you. These streets can be dangerous."
"I'm dead. There's not too much more anybody can do to me."
There's something incomplete about this moment in history -- maybe it's only in my society, but I doubt it -- a feeling of deadness. Something remains unfinished in our culture and ourselves. The new age is still unborn. We are not yet what we must be. This state of being nothing applies to the living and dead. Maybe that's perfect since my name is Nick, Nick Orpheus. The choice is between "Being" and "Nothingness."
"Well, there's places and then there are much worse places. The local boys could drag you to New Jersey, which has to be the last circle."
"Anything but that." She chuckled. A lifted eyebrow said she didn't care if I walked with her or shot myself in the head. We could hear some music from nightclubs in the distance. I suggested walking in the direction of the music. It was all the same to her. She was looking for the no good bastard who shot her. I told her my story. I explained about Madeleine. She said that she must have known her from somewhere. She couldn't remember too much before she got to this place. Me too. Something about being murdered is cleansing. You leave something behind. Create something new. Her name was Jane Eurydice. She asked me about Madeleine.
"Well, Madeleine ... " I hesitate to speak of her. One of my rules in "life" is never to discuss one woman with another. The strange similarity between these women -- Madeleine's hair was chestnut colored, sometimes -- even if her hair color changed by the week -- and her eyes were dark. Otherwise, this stranger might have been Madeleine's twin: same height, weight. Despite the new arrival's blond hair and green eyes, red lipstick, and greater glamor, I felt like I was talking to Madeleine. It was enough to give me a sense of ... vertigo. Maybe "frenzy" is a better word.
"Madeleine was among those few women with a legitimate grievance against life. She was owed something for what was -- and is -- taken from her. I can't speak of her in the past tense. I love her laughter and curiosity, passionate interest in things and ideas. People fascinate and horrify Madeleine. They mostly horrify me -- especially the lowlifes and bastards she associated with."
"I am not a big fan of humanity." She said this with a hardness in her eyes I would not have believed possible for such a beautiful woman.
"You got something better?"
"There must be something better."
"Maybe that's what this place is about. Finding something better." The music was pretty loud now. There was neon in the middle distance. I gestured in a north-by-northwest direction, towards the light and shadows, smoke and mirrors.
"You want a drink?"
"Why not? You look like the best company I'm going to find in this town." Jane laughed as she said this. It wasn't meant as a compliment.
We found a cabaret that looked like something from "Casablanca." There were a lot of people dancing. Great jazz music was playing. Cigarette smoke filled up the joint. There was a never-ending party going on. I slipped the doorman a fin to get into the club, then looked for some little guy in a rented tux with gleaming dentures who would finagle a table for a brand new twenty dollar bill. Money works even at these levels of reality.
There were beautiful women all over this place. It was a lot like Hollywood. Jane wasn't worried a bit. Jane sat accross from me in the soft light of the place, removed her hat and gloves, pointed those big eyes at me posing an unspoken question. I ordered a bottle of champagne. She was some seriously beautiful woman. Her eyes were filled with intelligence and curiosity, also deeper levels of pain than one expected to see in a woman who looked the way she did -- not at her age, anyway. She must've been no more than twenty-five when she passed into this realm of blighted souls. Some women are even younger when they are ushered into this grim reality through horrible trauma. I do not envy those all-too brief lives.
"Should I make conversation? Or will you be witty for me?" A lifted eyebrow told me that she had little hope that I would succeed in amusing her. If you have eternity on your hands, she seemed to say, a moron is worth a few laughs. I was the moron.
"I'll just try to make the conversation light and fluffy."
"Go ahead and do that." I got a smile. Well, that's a start. I had a feeling that there was something about our being together, here, in this nowhere place, that was important to what we were both after. Maybe she sensed this as well, but would not articulate the insight. Women who look the way she always will, to me, are targets of every imbecile in the world. They develop techniques for wrestling with gorillas of all varieties.
The suspiciousness was understandable, shadows that fell across her features, the intensity and presence of pain or shock said that, somewhere along the way in her brief life -- probably when she was very young -- someone evil and perverse hurt her forever. Maybe she was here to find the guy or gal who would love her forever, balancing the scales. Maybe I could help. And just maybe, if I was right about these intuitions, by helping her I'd help myself. This could be the only way to get out of here.
Some things a guy in my line of work figures out by dealing with lives lost to squalor and crime, blasted souls and walking wounded in this bleak landscape where fine young cannibals walk the night. The band began to play "You Must Remember This." I fixed my tie, smiled, and extended a hand. After a few seconds of cold contemplation, Jane put her hand in mine.
We stepped on to the dance floor. I liked the feel of her body close to mine, the subtle but excellent perfume, the fabric of her dress. I liked the way Jane looked at me -- amused and expectant, cool and assessing, smart, tough, challenging, also curious. Never let a woman become bored with your mind. Most men are boring to women. In fact, most men are boring to themselves.
The most beautiful woman in the world becomes less interesting the moment it is clear that she's an idiot. I don't know why I feel that way. Most men feel the opposite emotions. They are attracted to women who will always be more ignorant and less intelligent than they are. Women who are physically attractive and intellectually dull seem to constitute one masculine ideal. Women who are easily impressed, I guess.
Life must be happier for idiots, male and female. Think of all the fools you know who are doing great. Have you ever seen the Republican Convention? They're all happy as kids in a candy store waving their flags and balloons. True, a lot of them get indicted for having too much candy, but you know what I mean.
Gradually, Jane relaxed and began to tell her story. She was the product of a broken home. Mother left early. Father liked to beat her. I suspect that he did worse. She liked boys. They liked her. Jane didn't care about much. There was a fatalism about her from the start. She expected a short life. She was certainly right about that abruptly-ended or -shortened life. Jane never thought of her life as anything other than an ordeal punctuated by moments of self-abandonment in pleasures -- pleasures of various kinds which is always an anticipation of death, a kind of living death or purgatory of the moment.
Any kind of mood altering or hallucinatory substance is about pain management. Eventually, the pain does the managing. Purgatory is the condition of a never-ending party, a nightclub that does not close, a celebration with strangers and without mirth, an eternity of boredom. Have you ever seen the Oscars ceremony?
There was so little love in Jane's life that she must have felt a desperate hunger for genuine affection or any true human connection, let alone real love. It was a wonder to me that people -- especially men -- had not taken advantage of this poor woman from day one. Maybe they did. Jane was carrying a neon sign around her neck that said: "Please exploit me."
Many women seem unaware of projecting emotional need and vulnerability, frailty, and spiritual loss. Predators feed on that sort of need and vulnerability.
At first, Jane didn't see her vulnerability as an invitation to every worthless bastard in the world. After a while, Jane didn't care or, maybe, she believed that things could never be different with anyone that she would meet. Despite the veneer of toughness and cynicism -- the edgy quality about her and Jane's formidable beauty -- she was a softie inside, craving affection, just made for the exploiters of this world, exploiters that she would seek out with a suicidal compulsion and apathy.
Jane was begging for destruction because, absurdly, she had accepted the one lesson that power always teaches its victims at every level of reality -- you deserve what I am doing to you. You are my slave. Never believe that nonsense.
"We need to find the people who hurt us." I said this and stared into her eyes. I held her close and felt the music surrounding us.
"Maybe," Jane whispered in my ear, "it's the only way we can be free."
That's when we turned and saw the man in the black raincoat. He was of middle height, his features appeared indistinct or nondescript because of the distance that made it impossible to identify him as someone familiar to me in life. He seemed like a man who knew too much. He was clearly observing us, maybe following me. He was with a woman -- dark haired, wearing dark glasses, even inside this nightclub. I didn't like the look of either one of them. There are all kinds of bosses and minor deities exacting tribute in these nether regions of lost souls. Jane saw what I saw.
"Let's get out of here." She grabbed my arm. I felt that this was right and good somehow, together we're unstoppable.
"Come on. There must be a back way out of here." Her nearness was reassuring. I want her never to be far away.
We pushed our way through the crowd. As we left the nightclub, it seemed that night had remained irremovably in place for years or eons. At this level of reality darkness ruled. There were parties everywhere, music, cheap perfume, cigarette smoke, the sounds of sex were often heard, but no love-making, street walkers at every corner. We wandered through twisting and darkening streets then came upon a man standing near a taxi. I could hear steps behind us, approaching. I (somehow) knew that it was the couple from the nightclub aiming to "get" us. They would shadow us, like a guilty past. I wasn't sure whether we could shake them off.
"Need a lift?" The man wore a cap on the back of his head, a cigarette behind his ear, unshaved, maybe forty. The car was a beat-up old checker cab with New York plates.
"Where you heading?" I asked and looked over my shoulder. Footsteps approached, quickly.
"That depends on you, buddy."
"Get in, Jane. Let's get out here pronto." We ducked into the comfy back seat. The cab peeled out into the night traffic faster than a bat out of hell -- or purgatory -- and we settled into a comfortable cruising speed, but were we heading in the right direction?
I tried to make out the streets in the darkness, deciding to trust my emotions and intuitions. I'd have to feel my way along. I would need to see through the blindness. Jane seemed to trust my judgment more than I did.
"That way," I said. The driver turned towards a dark and lost highway. We drove some ways, then -- I don't know how -- I felt there were familiar landmarks along the way, allowing them to point me in the right direction, they seemed to whisper to me, gesturing towards something known and true, a powerul emotion pulled me towards an ambiguous resolution to our adventure.
A glance behind us revealed a black cadillac, 1947, gleaming, menacing. The grill on that car resembled the smile of a hungry shark -- the caddie was gaining on us. I saw what appeared to be a very familiar street. I asked the cab driver to pull over quickly. I dropped a wad of cash in his lap, opened the door of the vehicle, then pulled Jane out of the car.
"This way." I suddenly knew the right direction. My office was on a street like this, maybe this very street. I looked at the numbers on the doors of the buildings. The numbers seemed blurry -- like in a dream or as if we were under water -- I concentrated and, somehow, I knew that I was only a few blocks from my old haunts. I felt like a man fighting his way out of a hypnotic spell, rescuing forbidden memories from the dungeon to which they were consigned by an evil witch.
"Come on, Jane."
"Where are we going?"
"Towards redemption."
I smiled at her with a confidence that I knew she could not resist. We made our way through darkened and dirty streets. No footsteps were heard behind us. This was further proof that we were headed the right way. I saw a building I knew, but everything seemed to be in the wrong place, shifted around in my recollection. I saw my office building. There was no one around. The entire area seemed desolate, abandoned, like a stage set. I thought that my old key might still open the door.
We made our way towards the entrance. No security guard. I didn't want to try the elevator. We climbed the thirty-nine steps to the fifth floor. My office door was closed, not locked. Jane seemed frightened. I offered silent encouragement. We both sensed that a revelation lay on the other side of that door. I opened it and was frozen to the spot where I stood. Jane's scream seemed to come from far away.
There were two corpses in that room. One looked exactly like me; the other like Jane. From the shadows, a man in a perfect tuxedo stepped forward and lit a cigarette. It was the cab driver, except now he was the epitome of elegance, with a pencil-thin mustache, a gardenia in his lapel, a neatly folded handkerchief in his pocket. His shoes gleamed. He sat on my desk before the two corpses, then smiled and tilted his head toward the empty seats before the bodies. He was the best dressed psycho I'd ever seen.
"I was wondering how long it would take you two to get here. These are the earlier versions of yourselves. They're as dead as doornails. I think you killed them."
He looked at me when he said this.
"Both of you, I mean." He chuckled merrily at this observation. "Pity, I wanted them to belong to me. I liked those two people. You took them away from me. I can't accept anybody who loves the way you two kids do. It's just not the kind of thing I can tolerate. You even offered to take the rap for this dame. What kind of a thing is that for a grown man to do? It ain't natural."
He reached for a drink that appeared in his free hand.
"In my position I have only a few rules. I try to be accomodating of every sort of person. I am a true democrat. I am tolerant of human foibles and peccadillos, even ... encouraging occasional sinfulness." He smiled. "With you two, I have ... failed to communicate."
The man in the tux walked around the room, smelled the gardenia in his lapel: "There is no space for you two and what you feel for each other in the realm where I am king. You two simply do not belong in the kingdom of shadows. You love her too much for that. It is that love that killed the darkness in you. The parts of you that I liked so much. Shame. I always get stuck with the stiffs."
Jane was unaware of speaking the next words: "But who really killed them?"
"You did. You 'transcended' them. I hate when people do that. Now all of you are bringing loving versions of this guy and gal to life by reading these words. It's all terribly complicated and annoying. Here's what I'm willing to do for you."
The man stood and opened his hands, holding them before our eyes like a carnival magician.
"Jane, doesn't really know you. She has no memory of her life at this lowest-level of reality. It's so similar to Union City in this sinister realm. If you can get her out of here, into the sunlight and the Springtime. If you can find the key to her love -- the old love that she felt and feels for you in the deepest part of herself -- then I'll punch your tickets and you can get to the other ride. You'll know you're there when you hear birds singing and everybody seems to be happy. They're usually all grinning like idiots in that place with the skyscrapers and a big park in the middle. I have to warn you the sex is awful in that town."
"What happens if she does not remember?"
"Then you stay with me in the kingdom of darkness becoming the two shadows of yourselves, corpses, that followed you from the club. Living dead, like everybody else in New Jersey. Whatta-ya say? Shake on it?"
Jane interrupted: "Listen, buster -- No one has to rescue me. I barely know this guy. I am not going to let him take the rap for me. I'll go any place you want. He can take off."
I was not going to let Jane risk eternity in that hell: "Not on your life. She's right. Jane does not know me. She can be very happy and better off in the sunshine. Maybe she'll find a banker or some very successful guy --"
" -- that would be hell." Jane said with a laugh.
Suddenly, I felt a blackness swallow all of my conscious awareness. The room began to spin around. I could not see Jane. I reached out for her with a desperation that I had never felt before. I lost consciousness. Everything faded to black. I knew that I might never again find the lady that vanishes.
I awoke after what seemed like hours. I was in a park or something. The grass smelled wet and clean. I heard children laughing, playing. I walked towards a small group of persons visible in the middle distance. I saw birds in a blue and white sky. I felt the warmth of the sun on my flesh and saw everything in beautiful technicolor. I was over the rainbow.
I felt dazed, walking, looking for someone. Then I saw her near some flowers, laughing with an assortment of children surrounding her. Her hair was light brown. She was wearing a sun dress. I approached, nervously and fearfully -- Did she know me?
"What are you doing here?" Jane smiled. Or was it Madeleine? "I thought for sure they'd never let you out."
Sunday, September 26, 2010
"The American": A Movie Review.
November 22, 2010 at 6:46 P.M. A previously corrected "error" was restored to the text, then corrected, again, by me. ("Genius and Lust.")
September 26, 2010 at 1:03 P.M. In the middle of an unsuccessful effort to scan my computer, the cable signal to my computer was cut off or blocked, illegally. The computer shut down. The scan could not be completed. The message conveyed by this tactic on the part of New Jersey government officials, who know that this is computer crime directed against me, is: 1) New Jersey does not care whether crimes are committed in trying to stop me from posting "inconvenient truths"; and 2) the feds can't stop them and may be looking the other way.
Is it all about cash? Which federal official has been bribed in this matter? Menendez?
The only logical conclusion drawn by observers is that the F.B.I. is unable (or unwilling) to protect persons struggling against the Trenton mafia or willing to testify against such figures.
Nobody will cooperate with the feds in the future if they continue to let this slide, publicly. Maybe the mafia has more friends in the F.B.I. than the NYPD.
I will continue to write from public computers. Mr. Holder, the whole world is watching.
A recent film starring George Clooney entitled, "The American" was a surprise. I expected a good thriller and the usual accomplished acting from Mr. Clooney. These expectations were fulfilled. I also discovered a work of Catholic meditation hidden inside an action movie.
"The American" is a much better movie than many New York reviewers realized. I say this as an audience member who is still surprised by Mr. Clooney's philosophical talent and political concerns. Bravos to all of the players.
The excellent script was attributed to a name that I did not recognize and, promptly, forgot. I apologize to this excellent writer whoever he or she may be. Clooney using a pseudonym, perhaps? (Yes, I will look up the name of the script writer and include it in this review.)
Having checked since writing the above, I believe the writer is "Rowan Joffe." Never heard of him. Is it "him"? An old joke often told in Hollywood concerns the proverbial dumb starlet who has sex with the writer under the impression that writers have some significance in tinsel land. Writers, sadly, do not matter much in the age of images. Cinema is a director's medium. Unless -- like Woody Allen -- the writer also directs, he or she is and should be at the service of the director. ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")
The director Anton Corbijn is identified only as "a Dutch-born photographer." This is like calling Pablo Picasso a Spanish-born artist who plays around with colors. I will concentrate on various levels of this film: 1) the psychological investigation of individuation and meaning in terms of a quest for the definition of masculinity; 2) a theological inquiry into eschatology and the problem of evil, where Augustine and Aquinas are specifically invoked in the narrative; 3) a display of symbolist imagery in terms of cinematic language ("Papillon," "Breathless," "Hustle" are all alluded to in the imagery to which we are treated), along with Operatic lore (Madame Butterfly is referenced in a reverse-gender tribute to Puccini), literary echoes (the film is based on a stark and brilliant novel by Martin Booth) are obvious amidst the beautiful Apenines where St. Francis of Assissi fulfilled his salvific mission. I am aware of the location in the alps. The Apenines are identified in a road sign visible on screen for a good reason.
Mr. Butterfly may be one more soul saved by St. Francis.
The novel was originally entitled "A Very Private Gentleman." The work has been reissued by Picador as "The American." Henry James is only one of the relevant novelists for viewers reflecting on this film. The novel opens with the metaphor of the cave (caves are metaphors for the "Self"), which is so important in the story of St. Francis. The Operatic score features (I am guessing) Renata Tebaldi singing "Un Bel Di." The explicit hommage to Sergio Leone's ("Italiano"!) spaghetti westerns clues us in to the "spaghetti Noir thriller" that we are enjoying. ("'Shoot 'Em Up': A Movie Review.")
Images of women in this movie are disturbing and provocative. The paradoxically named Violante Placido ("Violently Peaceful") is one of the most erotically powerful women that I have seen on-screen in a very long time. "Violently peaceful" is a classic description of coitus. This woman -- as the character of "Clara" -- exudes sexuality combined with innocence or the absence of guilt in an unusual mixture, managing to capture and represent the feminine archetype of Woman, as goddess of love.
Sofia Loren and Gina Lollabrigida with a little extra humor in the eyes constitute the screen persona of Ms. Placido.
Anthony Burgess speaks of the "yielding, vulnerable quality which men see as essentially feminine ..." Ms. Placido adds a sense of humor, charm and intelligence to abundant eros and that makes her very up-to-date. Clara can live without a man, but she likes her fun. A female Pinkerton. Anthony Burgess, "Marilyn," in One Man's Chorus: Uncollected Writings (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), at p. 377.
I am reminded of more than one contemporary star when I ponder these attributes of our "goddesses."
The scene in a restaurant and the look given to Mr. Butterfly by the Italian waiter first glancing at Clara is worth the cost of the film experience in the theater. The look by that waiter is untranslatable and may be only imperfectly understood by any woman living north of Naples. C'imica.
Ms. Placido knew what she was doing in this film by embodying a masculine ideal and desire, even dividing into a duality as "Anna"/"Clara." She is both "The Virgin and St. Anne" and/or the two Marias of Catholic mythology. Schelling's "Clara" also comes to mind. ("'The Da Vinci Code': A Movie Review" and "Duality in Christian Feminine Identity.")
The cinematographer (Martin Ruhe) cannot resist underlining Clara's identification with Venus/Mary Magdalen by establishing a relationship with the various Italian canvases depicting "The Birth of Venus" (Boticelli) or Titian's "Reclining Nudes" or "Venus." Clara emerges from the waters of life. Clara's erotic power is a miracle of the sophistication and allure that seems so easy for European actresses and increasingly rare among American women subjected to the infantilizing and dehumanizing forces that are rampant in Hollywood. This is to say nothing of currently popular forms of feminist puritanism or hostility to eros. (Compare "Genius and Lust" with "Not One More Victim.")
Any American young female movie star's quest to be thin, while possessing suitably impressive breasts and remaining nineteen years-old forever, makes the challenge of becoming a woman -- in the full meaning of the word -- an impossibly difficult one. The alternative to becoming a woman is death. Ms. Placido is, in the full meaning of the word, a WOMAN. ("Master and Commander.")
The one masculine or sexually ambiguous female in the movie is Clooney's "client," working for his "enemy-friend" (the gray-haired villain Mr. Butterfly might become or who embodies the protagonist's future self). She is the woman purchasing a gun (rifle) from Clooney's character. This female character is also "Mr. Butterfly's" feminine side. She does not end well. "If you live by the sword then you may expect to die by the sword."
This movie reverses Puccini's and David Belasco's story of the American sailor, Pinkerton, who arrives in a land he does not know, enjoys a sexual encounter with a woman whose disgrace at his hands results in her death, then withdraws to his American wife and the comforts of imperialism. It is not Cio-Cio San who falls in love in this version of the story, but Pinkerton-Clooney, as it were, who is undone by passion. Ironically, this movie which is about masculinity, subverts the masculine principle in favor of female knowingness. Gender transfers are subtle and successful at the conclusion of the work. Clara becomes Pinkerton. ("The Soldier and the Ballerina.")
Mr. Clooney's hit-man character "lives in hell," as he is told by a theologically-minded priest who has been reading Kierkegaard -- played beautifully by Paolo Bonacelli -- echoing the reflections of the Dutch theologican Miskotte and the poetry of Dante:
"Even though we are bound to take ourselves as our point of departure in every sphere in which revelation and faith are discussed, we cannot really take ourselves as our point of departure. We have to make a more precise distinction. We can say, for example, using the word in a good sense, that faith has its own kind of autonomy, that it is personal, that it is chosen in freedom, but also, enclosed within itself, entails freedom, creates it and sustains it. But there must be a place 'somewhere' where the criterion of the truth is not to be found with me. There must be a 'somewhere' where man can say in the absolute sense that he is not lonely, that he is not alone and neither a creator nor a judge. There must be a 'somewhere' where he has, less in ecstasy than with a sober sense of what is true, to feel permitted to understand that he is understood and known and that he has been chosen."
Edward Schillebeeckx, God is New Each Moment (New York & London: Continuum, 1983), pp. 67-68. (emphasis added)
John Lennon's words force themselves into the mind: "Come together over me!"
Redemption is to "choose" or affirm this moment that I am. To "be" is to love and be loved. "Hell," says the philosophical priest, "is a place without love." This is to describe hell as an absolute absence of the Other. Hell is fragmentation or division from others and within the self. Hell is to be unchosen, even by oneself, or not to own one's own life. Hell is an inner landscape externalized in the movie as a bleak terrain of gray hills and cold metallic colors -- like Mr. Clooney's hair and non-descript wardrobe -- also as the rifle which Mr. Butterfly fashions that is himself. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow.")
Mr. Butterfly is in the midst of a transformation. Butterflies are symbols of the soul and freedom. A butterfly is self-becoming. Mr. Butterfly is recovering from Kierkegaard's "Sickness Unto Death." (I hope to see "Salt" and to review the film here.)
Mr. Butterfly, like St. Francis, has wandered out to T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland," without God ("middle age"?), where the air is cold and clear. Emptiness surrounds this struggling soul, as he journeys from Inferno, to Purgatorio -- the first stirrings of a conscience -- then to Paradiso, love, the fulfillment of the metanoia journey for Man, as the beloved Other is finally recognized to be more important than the self, achieving a kind of redemption (or woman's wisdom) through self-giving or sacrifice in an ambiguous ending.
We are invited to decide what happens next. I opt for Mr. Butterfly's recovery and the couple's move to Englewood, New Jersey. ("'Michael Clayton': A Movie Review.")
These are the stations of Carl Jung's life-journey -- also the migrations of the Christian soul enduring the "stations of the cross" -- that is identified in mythology by Joseph Campbell with the "hero's quest" where Anima is self-realization through self-giving passion, eros. C.S. Lewis in "The Allegory of Love" has charted much of this territory of the soul, of which the Troubadors sang, even providing inspiration for film-makers in "The Discarded Image." ("'The English Patient': A Movie Review" and "'The Reader': A Movie Review.")
Literary parallels for the mystery of identity, as a search, are common in the great masters of the espionage and thriller genre: Maugham's "Ashenden" is a clear source here, but Henry James and the "American's" encounter with Europe -- reversals of innocence (American) and guile (Europe) -- is also useful. Mr. Butterfly is Henry James' "Strether Martin" as both a criminal and spiritual seeker. (Compare Henry James' The American with his later novel, The Ambassador.)
Joseph Conrad, John Le Carre, Graham Greene, Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, Ward Just have all been fascinated by this masculine territory of purification, passion, penance, and mortality symbolized in the character of a spy or other figure in hiding. "I cannot hide from myself," says Verdi's Otello.
"Where I have flown off to is a secret. I have to remain a private man, reborn into my new existence and comfortably settled into it. I have my memories of course. I have not forgotten how to paint insects, that the cyclic rate of a Sterling Para Pistol Mark 7A is 550 rounds per minute and the muzzle velocity 365 metres per second; nor have I forgotten that it is developed from the last shadow dweller's gun. I can recall quite vividly the basement in Marseilles, Father Benedetto's little garden, the sink-hole in Hong Kong, blood-red wine like the kisses of girls, the workshop in the arches in South London, Visconti and Milo and the others, Galeazzo and Signora Prasca and the exquisite beauty of the plagiara. I shall never forget the view from the loggia."
"You do not naturally, expect me to divulge into whom I metamorphosed. Suffice it to say Mr. Butterfly -- il Signor Farfalla -- still sups at the wild honey of life and is comparatively content. Similarly, he is quite safe."
"Yet I cannot drive Clara from my mind, no matter how I try."
Martin Booth, The American (New York & London: Picador, 2004), at p. 274.
For comparison, see the review attributed to David Denby in The New Yorker, September 27, 2010, at p. 17.
September 26, 2010 at 1:03 P.M. In the middle of an unsuccessful effort to scan my computer, the cable signal to my computer was cut off or blocked, illegally. The computer shut down. The scan could not be completed. The message conveyed by this tactic on the part of New Jersey government officials, who know that this is computer crime directed against me, is: 1) New Jersey does not care whether crimes are committed in trying to stop me from posting "inconvenient truths"; and 2) the feds can't stop them and may be looking the other way.
Is it all about cash? Which federal official has been bribed in this matter? Menendez?
The only logical conclusion drawn by observers is that the F.B.I. is unable (or unwilling) to protect persons struggling against the Trenton mafia or willing to testify against such figures.
Nobody will cooperate with the feds in the future if they continue to let this slide, publicly. Maybe the mafia has more friends in the F.B.I. than the NYPD.
I will continue to write from public computers. Mr. Holder, the whole world is watching.
A recent film starring George Clooney entitled, "The American" was a surprise. I expected a good thriller and the usual accomplished acting from Mr. Clooney. These expectations were fulfilled. I also discovered a work of Catholic meditation hidden inside an action movie.
"The American" is a much better movie than many New York reviewers realized. I say this as an audience member who is still surprised by Mr. Clooney's philosophical talent and political concerns. Bravos to all of the players.
The excellent script was attributed to a name that I did not recognize and, promptly, forgot. I apologize to this excellent writer whoever he or she may be. Clooney using a pseudonym, perhaps? (Yes, I will look up the name of the script writer and include it in this review.)
Having checked since writing the above, I believe the writer is "Rowan Joffe." Never heard of him. Is it "him"? An old joke often told in Hollywood concerns the proverbial dumb starlet who has sex with the writer under the impression that writers have some significance in tinsel land. Writers, sadly, do not matter much in the age of images. Cinema is a director's medium. Unless -- like Woody Allen -- the writer also directs, he or she is and should be at the service of the director. ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")
The director Anton Corbijn is identified only as "a Dutch-born photographer." This is like calling Pablo Picasso a Spanish-born artist who plays around with colors. I will concentrate on various levels of this film: 1) the psychological investigation of individuation and meaning in terms of a quest for the definition of masculinity; 2) a theological inquiry into eschatology and the problem of evil, where Augustine and Aquinas are specifically invoked in the narrative; 3) a display of symbolist imagery in terms of cinematic language ("Papillon," "Breathless," "Hustle" are all alluded to in the imagery to which we are treated), along with Operatic lore (Madame Butterfly is referenced in a reverse-gender tribute to Puccini), literary echoes (the film is based on a stark and brilliant novel by Martin Booth) are obvious amidst the beautiful Apenines where St. Francis of Assissi fulfilled his salvific mission. I am aware of the location in the alps. The Apenines are identified in a road sign visible on screen for a good reason.
Mr. Butterfly may be one more soul saved by St. Francis.
The novel was originally entitled "A Very Private Gentleman." The work has been reissued by Picador as "The American." Henry James is only one of the relevant novelists for viewers reflecting on this film. The novel opens with the metaphor of the cave (caves are metaphors for the "Self"), which is so important in the story of St. Francis. The Operatic score features (I am guessing) Renata Tebaldi singing "Un Bel Di." The explicit hommage to Sergio Leone's ("Italiano"!) spaghetti westerns clues us in to the "spaghetti Noir thriller" that we are enjoying. ("'Shoot 'Em Up': A Movie Review.")
Images of women in this movie are disturbing and provocative. The paradoxically named Violante Placido ("Violently Peaceful") is one of the most erotically powerful women that I have seen on-screen in a very long time. "Violently peaceful" is a classic description of coitus. This woman -- as the character of "Clara" -- exudes sexuality combined with innocence or the absence of guilt in an unusual mixture, managing to capture and represent the feminine archetype of Woman, as goddess of love.
Sofia Loren and Gina Lollabrigida with a little extra humor in the eyes constitute the screen persona of Ms. Placido.
Anthony Burgess speaks of the "yielding, vulnerable quality which men see as essentially feminine ..." Ms. Placido adds a sense of humor, charm and intelligence to abundant eros and that makes her very up-to-date. Clara can live without a man, but she likes her fun. A female Pinkerton. Anthony Burgess, "Marilyn," in One Man's Chorus: Uncollected Writings (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), at p. 377.
I am reminded of more than one contemporary star when I ponder these attributes of our "goddesses."
The scene in a restaurant and the look given to Mr. Butterfly by the Italian waiter first glancing at Clara is worth the cost of the film experience in the theater. The look by that waiter is untranslatable and may be only imperfectly understood by any woman living north of Naples. C'imica.
Ms. Placido knew what she was doing in this film by embodying a masculine ideal and desire, even dividing into a duality as "Anna"/"Clara." She is both "The Virgin and St. Anne" and/or the two Marias of Catholic mythology. Schelling's "Clara" also comes to mind. ("'The Da Vinci Code': A Movie Review" and "Duality in Christian Feminine Identity.")
The cinematographer (Martin Ruhe) cannot resist underlining Clara's identification with Venus/Mary Magdalen by establishing a relationship with the various Italian canvases depicting "The Birth of Venus" (Boticelli) or Titian's "Reclining Nudes" or "Venus." Clara emerges from the waters of life. Clara's erotic power is a miracle of the sophistication and allure that seems so easy for European actresses and increasingly rare among American women subjected to the infantilizing and dehumanizing forces that are rampant in Hollywood. This is to say nothing of currently popular forms of feminist puritanism or hostility to eros. (Compare "Genius and Lust" with "Not One More Victim.")
Any American young female movie star's quest to be thin, while possessing suitably impressive breasts and remaining nineteen years-old forever, makes the challenge of becoming a woman -- in the full meaning of the word -- an impossibly difficult one. The alternative to becoming a woman is death. Ms. Placido is, in the full meaning of the word, a WOMAN. ("Master and Commander.")
The one masculine or sexually ambiguous female in the movie is Clooney's "client," working for his "enemy-friend" (the gray-haired villain Mr. Butterfly might become or who embodies the protagonist's future self). She is the woman purchasing a gun (rifle) from Clooney's character. This female character is also "Mr. Butterfly's" feminine side. She does not end well. "If you live by the sword then you may expect to die by the sword."
This movie reverses Puccini's and David Belasco's story of the American sailor, Pinkerton, who arrives in a land he does not know, enjoys a sexual encounter with a woman whose disgrace at his hands results in her death, then withdraws to his American wife and the comforts of imperialism. It is not Cio-Cio San who falls in love in this version of the story, but Pinkerton-Clooney, as it were, who is undone by passion. Ironically, this movie which is about masculinity, subverts the masculine principle in favor of female knowingness. Gender transfers are subtle and successful at the conclusion of the work. Clara becomes Pinkerton. ("The Soldier and the Ballerina.")
Mr. Clooney's hit-man character "lives in hell," as he is told by a theologically-minded priest who has been reading Kierkegaard -- played beautifully by Paolo Bonacelli -- echoing the reflections of the Dutch theologican Miskotte and the poetry of Dante:
"Even though we are bound to take ourselves as our point of departure in every sphere in which revelation and faith are discussed, we cannot really take ourselves as our point of departure. We have to make a more precise distinction. We can say, for example, using the word in a good sense, that faith has its own kind of autonomy, that it is personal, that it is chosen in freedom, but also, enclosed within itself, entails freedom, creates it and sustains it. But there must be a place 'somewhere' where the criterion of the truth is not to be found with me. There must be a 'somewhere' where man can say in the absolute sense that he is not lonely, that he is not alone and neither a creator nor a judge. There must be a 'somewhere' where he has, less in ecstasy than with a sober sense of what is true, to feel permitted to understand that he is understood and known and that he has been chosen."
Edward Schillebeeckx, God is New Each Moment (New York & London: Continuum, 1983), pp. 67-68. (emphasis added)
John Lennon's words force themselves into the mind: "Come together over me!"
Redemption is to "choose" or affirm this moment that I am. To "be" is to love and be loved. "Hell," says the philosophical priest, "is a place without love." This is to describe hell as an absolute absence of the Other. Hell is fragmentation or division from others and within the self. Hell is to be unchosen, even by oneself, or not to own one's own life. Hell is an inner landscape externalized in the movie as a bleak terrain of gray hills and cold metallic colors -- like Mr. Clooney's hair and non-descript wardrobe -- also as the rifle which Mr. Butterfly fashions that is himself. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow.")
Mr. Butterfly is in the midst of a transformation. Butterflies are symbols of the soul and freedom. A butterfly is self-becoming. Mr. Butterfly is recovering from Kierkegaard's "Sickness Unto Death." (I hope to see "Salt" and to review the film here.)
Mr. Butterfly, like St. Francis, has wandered out to T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland," without God ("middle age"?), where the air is cold and clear. Emptiness surrounds this struggling soul, as he journeys from Inferno, to Purgatorio -- the first stirrings of a conscience -- then to Paradiso, love, the fulfillment of the metanoia journey for Man, as the beloved Other is finally recognized to be more important than the self, achieving a kind of redemption (or woman's wisdom) through self-giving or sacrifice in an ambiguous ending.
We are invited to decide what happens next. I opt for Mr. Butterfly's recovery and the couple's move to Englewood, New Jersey. ("'Michael Clayton': A Movie Review.")
These are the stations of Carl Jung's life-journey -- also the migrations of the Christian soul enduring the "stations of the cross" -- that is identified in mythology by Joseph Campbell with the "hero's quest" where Anima is self-realization through self-giving passion, eros. C.S. Lewis in "The Allegory of Love" has charted much of this territory of the soul, of which the Troubadors sang, even providing inspiration for film-makers in "The Discarded Image." ("'The English Patient': A Movie Review" and "'The Reader': A Movie Review.")
Literary parallels for the mystery of identity, as a search, are common in the great masters of the espionage and thriller genre: Maugham's "Ashenden" is a clear source here, but Henry James and the "American's" encounter with Europe -- reversals of innocence (American) and guile (Europe) -- is also useful. Mr. Butterfly is Henry James' "Strether Martin" as both a criminal and spiritual seeker. (Compare Henry James' The American with his later novel, The Ambassador.)
Joseph Conrad, John Le Carre, Graham Greene, Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, Ward Just have all been fascinated by this masculine territory of purification, passion, penance, and mortality symbolized in the character of a spy or other figure in hiding. "I cannot hide from myself," says Verdi's Otello.
"Where I have flown off to is a secret. I have to remain a private man, reborn into my new existence and comfortably settled into it. I have my memories of course. I have not forgotten how to paint insects, that the cyclic rate of a Sterling Para Pistol Mark 7A is 550 rounds per minute and the muzzle velocity 365 metres per second; nor have I forgotten that it is developed from the last shadow dweller's gun. I can recall quite vividly the basement in Marseilles, Father Benedetto's little garden, the sink-hole in Hong Kong, blood-red wine like the kisses of girls, the workshop in the arches in South London, Visconti and Milo and the others, Galeazzo and Signora Prasca and the exquisite beauty of the plagiara. I shall never forget the view from the loggia."
"You do not naturally, expect me to divulge into whom I metamorphosed. Suffice it to say Mr. Butterfly -- il Signor Farfalla -- still sups at the wild honey of life and is comparatively content. Similarly, he is quite safe."
"Yet I cannot drive Clara from my mind, no matter how I try."
Martin Booth, The American (New York & London: Picador, 2004), at p. 274.
For comparison, see the review attributed to David Denby in The New Yorker, September 27, 2010, at p. 17.
Friday, July 23, 2010
David Denby is Not Amused.
September 15, 2010 at 10:54 A.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected. New obstructions of my computer signal prevented me from running a security scan of my system yesterday. I will try, again, today. Please inform law enforcement in your area of these matters. ("Jennifer Velez is a 'Dyke Magnet!'")
September 13, 2010 at 8:11 P.M. Attacks against my computer from New Jersey may have resulted in the insertions of "errors" in a number of these writings. I will do my best to make corrections as quickly as possible. This may mean that new indictments are expected in New Jersey.
September 11, 2010 at 5:45 P.M. I just received a call from "Time/Warner" (?) threatening to shut off my cable connection on Tuesday, despite previous assurances that satisfactory and normal payment could be made on Wednesday of this week. How curious? Censorship? The call was made from the following number identified as "Time/Warner": September 11, 2010 at 5:42 P.M. (718)-670-0200. I live in New York. Why would "Time/Warner" call from New Jersey or Brooklyn?
"G.E. Moore's Critique of Idealism" was vandalized today. Threatening and anonymous calls are received regularly.
September 3, 2010 at 7:10 P.M. Several essays were vandalized. I have made the necessary corrections.
August 28, 2010 at 12:59 P.M. The latest wave of computer crimes has damaged my security system. As a result, I cannot run a full scan of my computer at this time. Noise and other harassments makes it difficult to write today, from this computer. I will write on a legal pad and transfer the essays on to this blog from public computers. I cannot write substantial essays or creative fiction under these conditions, of course, but I can continue to focus on New Jersey corruption and criminality. I hope to purchase a laptop or notebook to write the novel I have been working on for some time.
August 27, 2010 at 2:19 P.M. Due to the seven occasions on which my cable signal to my computer has been blocked over the past two days, requiring me to reboot my computer each time, I have been unable to write as much I would like. Mysteriously, someone mentioned that "death is all we're going to get." For some reason, I "get" the impression that some New Jersey persons do not wish me well. "Headshots?" I will continue to struggle to run security scans and do more work on New Jersey issues. I hope that you will enjoy the lovely weather today. In case there is any doubt about my position, I will make it clear that I am willing to die to express my opinions freely and to face the persons who have committed these crimes against me. I hope those persons are willing to make a similar commitment.
August 17, 2010 at 11:40 A.M. Numerous defacements of writings at these blogs overnight have required me to make corrections, once again. Fraudulent advertisements have been attached to this blog, once more, illegally. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
August 7, 2010 at 1:41 P.M. An advertisement was attached to this blog, illegally and against my will, ostensibly from "Ads by Google":
"NEW YORKER OFFICIAL SITE, Subscribe to New Yorker magazine for $39.95/yr. & save 83%. http://www.newyorker.com/ "
The message conveyed by this bogus advertisement is that David Denby or David Remnick is behind this advertisement and attacks on my writings, except that the subscription price is wrong. New Jersey's OAE? "Cubanoids?" ("New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
August 6, 2010 at 10:07 A.M. A computer attack last night has left me with no personal computer. I will write twice per week from multiple public computers. I cannot say who is behind this latest attack. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "What is it like to be censored in America?")
July 25, 2010 at 12:49 P.M. More "errors" inserted in this comment and disfigurements of my review of "Inception." I wonder why? Envy? ("What is it like to be plagiarized?")
July 24, 2010 at 7:14 P.M. "Error" inserted since this essay was posted earlier this afternoon. I hope that this action was not taken on behalf of Mr. Denby or The New Yorker. ("The Heidegger Controversy.")
July 24, 2010 at 12:56 P.M. Attacks against this essay and all of my writings will continue with the protection of corrupt American officials for many years to come. I will make corrections of any inserted "errors" as quickly as possible. These writings are ostensibly protected by the Constitution of the United States of America and copyright laws enacted by the U.S. government. Let us see how much that protection is worth. (Mr. McGill at the OAE?)
September 11, 2010 at 5:40 P.M. Thus far, in practice, legal guarantees have meant nothing to New Jersey which continues to urinate on the Bill of Rights for which men and women in uniform are dying. This sanctioned illegality is especially disgusting and unforgivable on the anniversary of 9/11. Shame on you, Mr. Rabner. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead" then "No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")
David Denby, "Dream Factory," in The New Yorker, July 26, 2010, at p. 78.
David Denby, Great Books: My Adventures With Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), entirety.
Two supplemental sources briefly alluded to in what follows:
Christopher Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1965).
Amit Goswami, Ph.D., The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World (New York: Penguin, 1995).
I rarely purchase The New Yorker magazine anymore, unless I see something by Woody Allan or another writer I admire greatly. Mr. Denby is a critic I respect and admire as a writer. However, there have been serious mistakes in reviews by Mr. Denby, in my opinion, and also in the view of many persons within as well as beyond the United States of America.
I am sure that David Denby is a moral person and not someone who would ever deliberately insult the religion or ethnicity of another person. I believe that someone inserted paragraphs in Mr. Denby's review -- perhaps, unlike me, this computer criminal is a notorious reader of "graphic novels"? -- that cannot be attributed to the critic whose writings I know fairly well and whose book I would give, if I could, to every college freshman in America. ("Martha Nussbaum on the Vindication of Love" and "Is This America?")
The recent review of "Inception" is a greater disappointment than the astonishing claim by Mr. Denby that there was "no philosophy" in The Matrix: Reloaded. Those were Mr. Denby's words. Well, scholars from all over the world disagree with this contention regarding the Matrix sequel. Years after that film series appeared, scholars continue to write books commenting on the philosophical ideas in those rich "cinematic texts." Christopher Grau, ed., Philosophers Explore the Matrix (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Mr. Denby did not like or "get" The Matrix: Reloaded. I am confident that this is not because Mr. Denby is antisemitic or hostile to the Wachowski brothers of Chicago. David Denby simply did not absorb the ideas in the movie. There is a difference between not liking something that you understand and rejecting something because you don't appreciate all there is in the work. Stupidity is always forgivable, Mr. McGill, especially by highly intelligent critics like Mr. Denby. ("New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
There are many young men and women -- especially, urban young people -- who like this movie, "Inception," or Dark Knight (which I think less good than "Inception"), whose only contact with philosophical and scientific ideas may be such films. I hope to be respectful of their philosophical curiosity, also to encourage their passion for cinema and ideas. I agree with those young men, especially, that what seems "deep" to them often is deep. "Inception" is a case in point. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")
It may be that, when it comes to Dark Knight, I am the one who missed something in the movie.
Mr. Denby, with all due respect to you, you did not fully appreciate the themes in this movie ("Inception") or all of the references, cinematic, philosophical, theological, scientific, mythological, to say nothing of the various painters conjured by the images on-screen. You missed it, David. In a single sentence, this is Mr. Denby's opinion of "Inception":
" ... 'Inception' is a stunning-looking film that gets lost in fabulous intricacies, a movie devoted to its own workings and to little else." (p. 78.)
This conclusion is surprisingly similar to A.O. Scott's opinion. I wonder whether reviews of "Inception" in the Times and New Yorker were "coordinated" or written by the same person or persons? More likely, sentences were inserted in both texts by someone other than their respective authors. A banality repeated by many persons sharing or reflecting a mindset remains a banality. Mr. Edelstein at CBS may concur with this observation? David Brooks?
Among the "little else" the movie deals with are quantum mechanics, Buddhist and Hindu metaphysics and theology -- at least, these issues are present in the opinion of persons who teach the subjects at elite universities -- mind/body issues, the myth of Orpheus, Adriadne's labyrinth, hermeneutics, aesthetic theory, deconstruction, Jungian psychology, love and death, also madness. I wonder whether David Denby writes as "David Brooks"? Their views are so similar, perhaps for the same inserted reasons. For any writer to participate in the violation of the creative efforts of others is especially despicable and cowardly. Mr. Denby, you have been "incepted."
"If you don't pinch yourself too hard," you will believe that Mr. Denby is dismissive and insulting of the religious views of 2 billion or so Hindus and Buddhists, to say nothing of Muslims: "For long stretches, you're not sure of whether you're in a dream or reality, which isn't nearly as much fun as Nolan must have imagined it to be." (p. 78.)
We all know that everyone in America has the right to create a place of worship on private property. Hence, objections to a mosque near ground zero are politically popular, but Constitutionally absurd. Mayor Bloomberg is to be commended for his principled and correct stance on that issue. Symbolically, I cannot think of a more fitting place to indicate the true meaning of Islam as opposed to the bizarre interpretations of terrorists.
This idea that the world is a dream is central to the religious views of billions of persons on the planet, many of whom happen to be very well-educated -- for example, scientist Amit Goswami. Among these persons are Sufis whose mystical versions of Islam are beautiful interpretations of the world as dream-like.
Mr. Denby, how carefully did you think about this statement "not as much fun" as Nolan thought? Is it your statement? You could not have proof-read this text very well. Were there "insertions" (inceptions, perhaps) into your text by lesser hands? I suspect that there must have been such "additions" to this review. This amused contempt for antirealism is not a statement that I associate with the author of the book listed above who wondered in discussing Plato's parallel theories: "Was anything holding us together?" (The Great Books, at p. 66.)
As one inheritor of a religious tradition and people (a point which Mr. Edelstein should bear in mind) which has been subjected to great crimes, oppression and ridicule, Mr. Denby, do you really wish to imply that the religions of Asia are "silly and not much fun?" I doubt it. As a writer, will you remain silent in the presence of censorship or torture? I hope not.
Many of the ideas in "Inception" are paraphrases of ancient metaphysical doctrines, some of which are sacred to many persons today. Mr. Denby, astonishingly, claims that there is "no spiritual meaning or social resonance to any of this, no critique of power in the dream world struggle between C.E.O.s." (p. 79.)
I disagree. I am not alone in this view of "Inception" which is shared by many theologians and philosophers, also scientists, who are already devoting substantial attention to this film. They should study "Inception" most carefully. I have discussed my reasons for differing with Mr. Denby concerning the merits of this movie in my humble "little" review of "Inception." That review is thoroughly documented with scholarly support for all of my assertions of opinion or interpretations. I have reason to believe that the review is admired outside the U.S. and, maybe, by one or two persons inside America who are as "uneducated" as I must seem to Mr. Denby.
Sadly, my review of "Inception" -- like most of my writings -- is subjected to daily vandalism of a kind that Mr. Denby cannot imagine and which is only possible with the cooperation of a corrupt and lying state government that, allegedly, "guarantees freedom of speech to all Americans." The effort to denigrate my intelligence and to silence me is the experience of billions of humans on this planet who are also relegated to silence and irrelevance by many fortunate Americans. Perhaps their cable connections will be cut off? I believe that the justified anger of those billions of persons will not be contained for long. ("Barack Obama and 'The New Yorker.'")
Perhaps some persons are under the impression that I am a Palestinian. This would make it O.K. for some people to torture or murder me since Palestinian, Arabs (like poor minority men in America) are unworthy of serious consideration in the estimation of some affluent persons in my society who see themselves as my "superiors." We, insignificant persons, must not be heard. Whatever my ethnicity, it should be prohibited to deface and vandalize my writings over so many years, publicly, especially since these writings are protected by U.S. law. To obstruct my access to my own creative work is another form of censorship and psychological torture which can only take place in America with governmental cooperation. ("Censorship!")
I cannot believe that American officials are unable to control this situation. Anyone who writes for a living should think carefully about indulging in censorship of the writings of others or about remaining indifferent to such public cruelty even if they are Jewish graduates of Yale specializing in reviewing restaurants for The New Yorker. The first writers who will be censored and suppressed in a fascist society will be Jews and radical intellectuals of all sorts. ("The Heidegger Controversy" and "Abuse and Exploitation of Women in New Jersey.")
I may have the unique distinction of being insulted by Nazis and antisemites assuming that I am a Jew (close) and also by persons assuming that I am a Palestinian. Right-wing Cuban-Americans claim that I am Fidel Castro; Cubans may think that I am not far enough on the Left. When everyone objects to something that you are saying, it probably means that you are speaking truth to power. No more "errors" to be inserted today? Will you destroy my Internet connection, Mr. Rabner? ("No More Lies and Cover-Ups, Chief Justice Rabner!")
This scholarship in my writings is necessary because my opinions, as a non-resident of the Upper West Side who avoids summers in Long Island and holds only a J.D. degree, will be dismissed or ignored, laughed at (probably) by many of New York's "witty" media elites right before they plagiarize my work. This does not refer to Mr. Denby. I am lucky not to be hit with a "robot bomb." However, the obvious range of my reading and languages, together with the reception of this work (both the movie and my review, I believe) in many places in the world -- including some elite universities, I hope -- suggests that it is not to be insulted or ignored easily, even if I am not a member of the "club." Pick a card?
Many of us are not members of Manhattan's media "club." Maybe I have been hit with a robot bomb. The trouble with robot bombs is that everyone will start to use them. I prefer argument, discussion, humor to violence. This is probably because I am uneducated. This would be a good time to insert "errors" in this essay, again, New Jersey. ("G.E. Moore's Critique of Idealism.")
"The Da Vinci Code" and several other essays have been vandalized today. I surmise that American authorities are aware of these crimes, but U.S. officials are unable or unwilling to take action to prevent these crimes. Tell your friends in other countries about this spectacle. Hypocrisy? Should China and Cuba believe American claims that we respect freedom of speech and protect the rights of dissidents? Is America's dialogue with the world a monologue in which only U.S. voices expressing the will and opinions of the powerful few will be heard? It may be that the world is slightly bigger and more complex than the comfortable media elites in the Hamptons may imagine. Care for a Perrier, Mr. Denby?
Mr. Denby's (or someone else's) fashionable and weary sigh (he has seen through it all?) -- from Amagansett, Long Island perhaps -- at the foolishness of mere mortals who have not socialized with full professors at Columbia University is a little exhausting for the reader: "Nolan is working on so many levels of representation [exactly!] at once that he has to lay in pages of dialogue just to explain what is going on." (p. 79.) (emphasis added)
The universe and/or your psyche, David, are working on many levels all the time, even when you dream. Cosmos and brain are now seen as "holograms": " ... if the holographic brain model was taken to its logical conclusions, it opened the door on the possibility that objective reality -- the world of coffee cups, mountain vistas, elm trees, and table lamps -- might not even exist, or at least not exist in the way we believe it exists."
Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), at p. 29. ("A Philosophical Investigation of Ludwig Wittgenstein.")
At the midnight showing of the film which I attended, a group of undergraduates sat next to me, with decks of cards in their hands, shuffling the cards during the best parts of the film (distraction?). Happily, this activity reminded me of the mathematics of manifolds and theories of probability, randomness, and chance. Who would not be reminded of such theories? I wonder whether Congressman Jerrold Nadler can provide any illumination in this matter?
I invite you to ponder Paul Ricoeur's reflections as he approached death in light of this movie's comment on one couple's construction of their "dream world" over 30 years and its destruction with the loss of one partner in the dialectic. Paul Ricoeur, "The Duty of Memory, The Duty of Justice," in Critique and Conviction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 116-126. (Holocaust studies?)
" ... the Unknowable is that which lives in the cracks between the known and the irrelevant; between the hard edges of the world and the ignorance of superstition. Between Hegel's absolute idea and Feuerbach's sensuousness. The unknowable lives in a pack of cards after it has been fairly shuffled but before it has been dealt, each possibility matters."
Steven Brust & Emma Bull, Freedom and Necessity (New York: Tor, 1991), at p. 60.
Reality is that deck of cards always being dealt for a new game. Spin that top, David.
September 13, 2010 at 8:11 P.M. Attacks against my computer from New Jersey may have resulted in the insertions of "errors" in a number of these writings. I will do my best to make corrections as quickly as possible. This may mean that new indictments are expected in New Jersey.
September 11, 2010 at 5:45 P.M. I just received a call from "Time/Warner" (?) threatening to shut off my cable connection on Tuesday, despite previous assurances that satisfactory and normal payment could be made on Wednesday of this week. How curious? Censorship? The call was made from the following number identified as "Time/Warner": September 11, 2010 at 5:42 P.M. (718)-670-0200. I live in New York. Why would "Time/Warner" call from New Jersey or Brooklyn?
"G.E. Moore's Critique of Idealism" was vandalized today. Threatening and anonymous calls are received regularly.
September 3, 2010 at 7:10 P.M. Several essays were vandalized. I have made the necessary corrections.
August 28, 2010 at 12:59 P.M. The latest wave of computer crimes has damaged my security system. As a result, I cannot run a full scan of my computer at this time. Noise and other harassments makes it difficult to write today, from this computer. I will write on a legal pad and transfer the essays on to this blog from public computers. I cannot write substantial essays or creative fiction under these conditions, of course, but I can continue to focus on New Jersey corruption and criminality. I hope to purchase a laptop or notebook to write the novel I have been working on for some time.
August 27, 2010 at 2:19 P.M. Due to the seven occasions on which my cable signal to my computer has been blocked over the past two days, requiring me to reboot my computer each time, I have been unable to write as much I would like. Mysteriously, someone mentioned that "death is all we're going to get." For some reason, I "get" the impression that some New Jersey persons do not wish me well. "Headshots?" I will continue to struggle to run security scans and do more work on New Jersey issues. I hope that you will enjoy the lovely weather today. In case there is any doubt about my position, I will make it clear that I am willing to die to express my opinions freely and to face the persons who have committed these crimes against me. I hope those persons are willing to make a similar commitment.
August 17, 2010 at 11:40 A.M. Numerous defacements of writings at these blogs overnight have required me to make corrections, once again. Fraudulent advertisements have been attached to this blog, once more, illegally. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
August 7, 2010 at 1:41 P.M. An advertisement was attached to this blog, illegally and against my will, ostensibly from "Ads by Google":
"NEW YORKER OFFICIAL SITE, Subscribe to New Yorker magazine for $39.95/yr. & save 83%. http://www.newyorker.com/ "
The message conveyed by this bogus advertisement is that David Denby or David Remnick is behind this advertisement and attacks on my writings, except that the subscription price is wrong. New Jersey's OAE? "Cubanoids?" ("New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
August 6, 2010 at 10:07 A.M. A computer attack last night has left me with no personal computer. I will write twice per week from multiple public computers. I cannot say who is behind this latest attack. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "What is it like to be censored in America?")
July 25, 2010 at 12:49 P.M. More "errors" inserted in this comment and disfigurements of my review of "Inception." I wonder why? Envy? ("What is it like to be plagiarized?")
July 24, 2010 at 7:14 P.M. "Error" inserted since this essay was posted earlier this afternoon. I hope that this action was not taken on behalf of Mr. Denby or The New Yorker. ("The Heidegger Controversy.")
July 24, 2010 at 12:56 P.M. Attacks against this essay and all of my writings will continue with the protection of corrupt American officials for many years to come. I will make corrections of any inserted "errors" as quickly as possible. These writings are ostensibly protected by the Constitution of the United States of America and copyright laws enacted by the U.S. government. Let us see how much that protection is worth. (Mr. McGill at the OAE?)
September 11, 2010 at 5:40 P.M. Thus far, in practice, legal guarantees have meant nothing to New Jersey which continues to urinate on the Bill of Rights for which men and women in uniform are dying. This sanctioned illegality is especially disgusting and unforgivable on the anniversary of 9/11. Shame on you, Mr. Rabner. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead" then "No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")
David Denby, "Dream Factory," in The New Yorker, July 26, 2010, at p. 78.
David Denby, Great Books: My Adventures With Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), entirety.
Two supplemental sources briefly alluded to in what follows:
Christopher Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1965).
Amit Goswami, Ph.D., The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World (New York: Penguin, 1995).
I rarely purchase The New Yorker magazine anymore, unless I see something by Woody Allan or another writer I admire greatly. Mr. Denby is a critic I respect and admire as a writer. However, there have been serious mistakes in reviews by Mr. Denby, in my opinion, and also in the view of many persons within as well as beyond the United States of America.
I am sure that David Denby is a moral person and not someone who would ever deliberately insult the religion or ethnicity of another person. I believe that someone inserted paragraphs in Mr. Denby's review -- perhaps, unlike me, this computer criminal is a notorious reader of "graphic novels"? -- that cannot be attributed to the critic whose writings I know fairly well and whose book I would give, if I could, to every college freshman in America. ("Martha Nussbaum on the Vindication of Love" and "Is This America?")
The recent review of "Inception" is a greater disappointment than the astonishing claim by Mr. Denby that there was "no philosophy" in The Matrix: Reloaded. Those were Mr. Denby's words. Well, scholars from all over the world disagree with this contention regarding the Matrix sequel. Years after that film series appeared, scholars continue to write books commenting on the philosophical ideas in those rich "cinematic texts." Christopher Grau, ed., Philosophers Explore the Matrix (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Mr. Denby did not like or "get" The Matrix: Reloaded. I am confident that this is not because Mr. Denby is antisemitic or hostile to the Wachowski brothers of Chicago. David Denby simply did not absorb the ideas in the movie. There is a difference between not liking something that you understand and rejecting something because you don't appreciate all there is in the work. Stupidity is always forgivable, Mr. McGill, especially by highly intelligent critics like Mr. Denby. ("New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
There are many young men and women -- especially, urban young people -- who like this movie, "Inception," or Dark Knight (which I think less good than "Inception"), whose only contact with philosophical and scientific ideas may be such films. I hope to be respectful of their philosophical curiosity, also to encourage their passion for cinema and ideas. I agree with those young men, especially, that what seems "deep" to them often is deep. "Inception" is a case in point. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")
It may be that, when it comes to Dark Knight, I am the one who missed something in the movie.
Mr. Denby, with all due respect to you, you did not fully appreciate the themes in this movie ("Inception") or all of the references, cinematic, philosophical, theological, scientific, mythological, to say nothing of the various painters conjured by the images on-screen. You missed it, David. In a single sentence, this is Mr. Denby's opinion of "Inception":
" ... 'Inception' is a stunning-looking film that gets lost in fabulous intricacies, a movie devoted to its own workings and to little else." (p. 78.)
This conclusion is surprisingly similar to A.O. Scott's opinion. I wonder whether reviews of "Inception" in the Times and New Yorker were "coordinated" or written by the same person or persons? More likely, sentences were inserted in both texts by someone other than their respective authors. A banality repeated by many persons sharing or reflecting a mindset remains a banality. Mr. Edelstein at CBS may concur with this observation? David Brooks?
Among the "little else" the movie deals with are quantum mechanics, Buddhist and Hindu metaphysics and theology -- at least, these issues are present in the opinion of persons who teach the subjects at elite universities -- mind/body issues, the myth of Orpheus, Adriadne's labyrinth, hermeneutics, aesthetic theory, deconstruction, Jungian psychology, love and death, also madness. I wonder whether David Denby writes as "David Brooks"? Their views are so similar, perhaps for the same inserted reasons. For any writer to participate in the violation of the creative efforts of others is especially despicable and cowardly. Mr. Denby, you have been "incepted."
"If you don't pinch yourself too hard," you will believe that Mr. Denby is dismissive and insulting of the religious views of 2 billion or so Hindus and Buddhists, to say nothing of Muslims: "For long stretches, you're not sure of whether you're in a dream or reality, which isn't nearly as much fun as Nolan must have imagined it to be." (p. 78.)
We all know that everyone in America has the right to create a place of worship on private property. Hence, objections to a mosque near ground zero are politically popular, but Constitutionally absurd. Mayor Bloomberg is to be commended for his principled and correct stance on that issue. Symbolically, I cannot think of a more fitting place to indicate the true meaning of Islam as opposed to the bizarre interpretations of terrorists.
This idea that the world is a dream is central to the religious views of billions of persons on the planet, many of whom happen to be very well-educated -- for example, scientist Amit Goswami. Among these persons are Sufis whose mystical versions of Islam are beautiful interpretations of the world as dream-like.
Mr. Denby, how carefully did you think about this statement "not as much fun" as Nolan thought? Is it your statement? You could not have proof-read this text very well. Were there "insertions" (inceptions, perhaps) into your text by lesser hands? I suspect that there must have been such "additions" to this review. This amused contempt for antirealism is not a statement that I associate with the author of the book listed above who wondered in discussing Plato's parallel theories: "Was anything holding us together?" (The Great Books, at p. 66.)
As one inheritor of a religious tradition and people (a point which Mr. Edelstein should bear in mind) which has been subjected to great crimes, oppression and ridicule, Mr. Denby, do you really wish to imply that the religions of Asia are "silly and not much fun?" I doubt it. As a writer, will you remain silent in the presence of censorship or torture? I hope not.
Many of the ideas in "Inception" are paraphrases of ancient metaphysical doctrines, some of which are sacred to many persons today. Mr. Denby, astonishingly, claims that there is "no spiritual meaning or social resonance to any of this, no critique of power in the dream world struggle between C.E.O.s." (p. 79.)
I disagree. I am not alone in this view of "Inception" which is shared by many theologians and philosophers, also scientists, who are already devoting substantial attention to this film. They should study "Inception" most carefully. I have discussed my reasons for differing with Mr. Denby concerning the merits of this movie in my humble "little" review of "Inception." That review is thoroughly documented with scholarly support for all of my assertions of opinion or interpretations. I have reason to believe that the review is admired outside the U.S. and, maybe, by one or two persons inside America who are as "uneducated" as I must seem to Mr. Denby.
Sadly, my review of "Inception" -- like most of my writings -- is subjected to daily vandalism of a kind that Mr. Denby cannot imagine and which is only possible with the cooperation of a corrupt and lying state government that, allegedly, "guarantees freedom of speech to all Americans." The effort to denigrate my intelligence and to silence me is the experience of billions of humans on this planet who are also relegated to silence and irrelevance by many fortunate Americans. Perhaps their cable connections will be cut off? I believe that the justified anger of those billions of persons will not be contained for long. ("Barack Obama and 'The New Yorker.'")
Perhaps some persons are under the impression that I am a Palestinian. This would make it O.K. for some people to torture or murder me since Palestinian, Arabs (like poor minority men in America) are unworthy of serious consideration in the estimation of some affluent persons in my society who see themselves as my "superiors." We, insignificant persons, must not be heard. Whatever my ethnicity, it should be prohibited to deface and vandalize my writings over so many years, publicly, especially since these writings are protected by U.S. law. To obstruct my access to my own creative work is another form of censorship and psychological torture which can only take place in America with governmental cooperation. ("Censorship!")
I cannot believe that American officials are unable to control this situation. Anyone who writes for a living should think carefully about indulging in censorship of the writings of others or about remaining indifferent to such public cruelty even if they are Jewish graduates of Yale specializing in reviewing restaurants for The New Yorker. The first writers who will be censored and suppressed in a fascist society will be Jews and radical intellectuals of all sorts. ("The Heidegger Controversy" and "Abuse and Exploitation of Women in New Jersey.")
I may have the unique distinction of being insulted by Nazis and antisemites assuming that I am a Jew (close) and also by persons assuming that I am a Palestinian. Right-wing Cuban-Americans claim that I am Fidel Castro; Cubans may think that I am not far enough on the Left. When everyone objects to something that you are saying, it probably means that you are speaking truth to power. No more "errors" to be inserted today? Will you destroy my Internet connection, Mr. Rabner? ("No More Lies and Cover-Ups, Chief Justice Rabner!")
This scholarship in my writings is necessary because my opinions, as a non-resident of the Upper West Side who avoids summers in Long Island and holds only a J.D. degree, will be dismissed or ignored, laughed at (probably) by many of New York's "witty" media elites right before they plagiarize my work. This does not refer to Mr. Denby. I am lucky not to be hit with a "robot bomb." However, the obvious range of my reading and languages, together with the reception of this work (both the movie and my review, I believe) in many places in the world -- including some elite universities, I hope -- suggests that it is not to be insulted or ignored easily, even if I am not a member of the "club." Pick a card?
Many of us are not members of Manhattan's media "club." Maybe I have been hit with a robot bomb. The trouble with robot bombs is that everyone will start to use them. I prefer argument, discussion, humor to violence. This is probably because I am uneducated. This would be a good time to insert "errors" in this essay, again, New Jersey. ("G.E. Moore's Critique of Idealism.")
"The Da Vinci Code" and several other essays have been vandalized today. I surmise that American authorities are aware of these crimes, but U.S. officials are unable or unwilling to take action to prevent these crimes. Tell your friends in other countries about this spectacle. Hypocrisy? Should China and Cuba believe American claims that we respect freedom of speech and protect the rights of dissidents? Is America's dialogue with the world a monologue in which only U.S. voices expressing the will and opinions of the powerful few will be heard? It may be that the world is slightly bigger and more complex than the comfortable media elites in the Hamptons may imagine. Care for a Perrier, Mr. Denby?
Mr. Denby's (or someone else's) fashionable and weary sigh (he has seen through it all?) -- from Amagansett, Long Island perhaps -- at the foolishness of mere mortals who have not socialized with full professors at Columbia University is a little exhausting for the reader: "Nolan is working on so many levels of representation [exactly!] at once that he has to lay in pages of dialogue just to explain what is going on." (p. 79.) (emphasis added)
The universe and/or your psyche, David, are working on many levels all the time, even when you dream. Cosmos and brain are now seen as "holograms": " ... if the holographic brain model was taken to its logical conclusions, it opened the door on the possibility that objective reality -- the world of coffee cups, mountain vistas, elm trees, and table lamps -- might not even exist, or at least not exist in the way we believe it exists."
Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), at p. 29. ("A Philosophical Investigation of Ludwig Wittgenstein.")
At the midnight showing of the film which I attended, a group of undergraduates sat next to me, with decks of cards in their hands, shuffling the cards during the best parts of the film (distraction?). Happily, this activity reminded me of the mathematics of manifolds and theories of probability, randomness, and chance. Who would not be reminded of such theories? I wonder whether Congressman Jerrold Nadler can provide any illumination in this matter?
I invite you to ponder Paul Ricoeur's reflections as he approached death in light of this movie's comment on one couple's construction of their "dream world" over 30 years and its destruction with the loss of one partner in the dialectic. Paul Ricoeur, "The Duty of Memory, The Duty of Justice," in Critique and Conviction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 116-126. (Holocaust studies?)
" ... the Unknowable is that which lives in the cracks between the known and the irrelevant; between the hard edges of the world and the ignorance of superstition. Between Hegel's absolute idea and Feuerbach's sensuousness. The unknowable lives in a pack of cards after it has been fairly shuffled but before it has been dealt, each possibility matters."
Steven Brust & Emma Bull, Freedom and Necessity (New York: Tor, 1991), at p. 60.
Reality is that deck of cards always being dealt for a new game. Spin that top, David.
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