Beauty and the Beast.

"Every woman forgives adoration ..."

Oscar Wilde.

Once upon a time there was nice lady who lived with her two daughters, Lilly and Rose. They were very happy -- until the nice lady married a very unpleasant man, who shouted all the time and ordered everyone about. Sometimes this man even struck the girls who were both in their teens, and he also hit their mother. Finally, the women decided to escape together from the house.

Suddenly, the nice mother became ill and was hospitalized before they could make their escape. The wicked stepfather would not hear of their departure and even slapped Lilly -- the youngest of the girls -- warning both young women that if they left home without his permission, he would kill them.

Rose would not allow her little sister to be hurt. She knew that their only hope was to escape the house together. They lived in a town called "Roselle."

They must go to the big city and find the hospital where their mother was to be operated.

One night, after their stepfather was asleep, Rose escaped with her younger sister. She had saved some pennies from her school money, purchased bus fare to get to the city and find the hospital where her mother was a patient. It was a cold and drizzly night. Rose gave her jacket to Lilly. The two girls were wet and tired by the time they arrived in the city. They walked for many blocks, until they found St. Vincent's Hospital, on 12th Street. It was there that they found their mother's room. They were told how ill she was and that she must not be disturbed. Only one visitor was allowed to spend the night with a patient. Rose insisted that it must be Lilly. The girls embraced, then Rose left to wait in the lobby until morning.

Rose was too tired to think. She knew that she could never go home again. She had no money and her mother was very sick. She did not tell Lilly about this. After the surgeon spoke to her privately, Rose only smiled -- confidently, with seeming indifference -- for her sister's benefit. Rose always tried to be strong for her little sister, accepting all of the responsibility of their shared troubles.

Rose was a very brave young woman and clever, although she was bored at school. So many of her school lessons were taught by men -- and even women -- who behaved like her father. They always shouted at her. There were too many rules and punishments at her school.

Rose hated to be shouted at or ordered about by people. Rose liked freedom and gardens filled with beautiful flowers. As a girl, she had loved pretty dolls with lovely dresses and tea sets. The doctors at this hospital were mostly men who shouted at Rose that she could not sleep in the lobby and must leave before midnight. Shortly before the twelfth hour struck the security guard escorted Rose out to the street.

It was very cold and raining heavily. Rose had no umbrella and no jacket, for she had left hers with Lilly, so that Lilly would be warm and safe with their mother. All that Rose could do was to walk aimlessly through the streets of the city. Men said things to her that frightened her. There were hypodermic needles on the streets. After a few hours, she could not walk any more. She was so tired and drenched that she collapsed on the sidewalk, crying, feeling her stomach muscles contract with hunger.

Rose heard what sounded like a lion's roar. Turning, she saw a man, wrapped in a great black coat with the collar pulled up very high, wearing a fine hat. In the darkness and rain, she could not see his face very well since he was bundled behind a long scarf, besides the coat and hat that he wore. He spoke with a lyrical, gentle and soft -- also sad -- voice. It was different from the voices of all the men that Rose had known. It was a voice that, she somehow knew, could never shout at her.

"You seem cold and wet. May I invite you to visit my home for some food and warmth. I promise to keep my distance. You will be safe with me. If you stay here, you will certainly become ill. Please come with me."

Rose was careful around strangers. Yet her situation was desperate. This man's voice was so soothing and kind that she decided to accept his invitation. A long black automobile, driven by a small rodent-like person wearing a cap, pulled up immediately (almost out of thin air) and the back door of the vehicle opened.

"Take us to the Metropolitian Museum of Art, Perrault."

The man in the long coat and hat said this to the driver.

"You live in the museum?"

"Certainly not. The museum is only a portal. It is an entrance to my home. There are many more. The library, for example."

Mozart was playing softly in the elegant car -- an antique Rolls Royce that was refurbished splendidly -- which was warm and comfortable.

When they arrived at the museum the driver accelerated so that the powerful black vehicle went up the stairs, into the lobby, then stopped. No effort was made to approach them. All of the other persons in the museum seemed frozen.

"We'll walk from here." Rose exited the beautiful car -- which, suddenly, was white -- as the driver opened the door for her, very ceremoniously. Removing his cap and bowing deeply, he said: "Welcome home, my lady."

The vehicle had a name written in shiny letters on the passenger's door -- "Le Magnifique." Rose noticed that the clock above the long marble stairs in the museum was stopped.

It was now exactly midnight.

"You see," The man said: "these works of art are like windows." He pulled his collar up even more, so that Rose could only see his big and very sad brown eyes. "They afford us a glimpse of the shadow world, where we really live."

Rose had never before visited this great museum. The paintings were so beautiful that she wanted to cry. One canvas seemed especially lovely. It was of a man and woman in elegant clothing, eighteenth century, French. She could not make out the painter's signature. The two subjects of this portrait seemed very much in love. They were in a garden and it was always Spring.

They climbed the long stairs, approaching the great marble copy of a famous Greek statue by Phidias -- "Perseus Holding the Head of Medusa" -- at the top of the stairs. When they arrived at the gallery of European paintings from the Renaissance to Abstract Moderns and Postmoderns, Rose noticed for the first time that she wore a beautiful silk dress, exactly like the one worn by the woman in the eighteenth century dual portrait. It was green, the color of her eyes, and decorated with jewels -- safires and pearls, mostly, also rubies.

The museum had become a castle. All of the artworks remained, but now there were furnishings from different periods, even medieval art, and some of the rooms were filled with books. There was music playing -- she recognized Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" and "Fur Elisse."

Rose was fond of music, feeling comfortable and at home already. She knew that she belonged here. She felt at peace. A huge fireplace suddenly roared with flames, giving an orange and purple glow to the gown she wore, bringing the jewels in her dress to life with color and light. Despite the enormity of the premises, a gentle illumination was provided by long candles in ancient silver candelabras and plush, very comfortable-looking chairs and sofas were available everywhere for their convenience.

There were plenty of safe places to read good books of stories. Rose liked stories, especially romantic ones. The shadows cast by these Deutsch candles seemed to dance and sway with the music. It was as though the shadows attended upon and caressed Rose, giving her a formal welcome, providing a feeling of safety and peace to Rose.

They came to a long room, with an immense table that might have seated a hundred people. It was set only for two. The dishes and silver dated from the sixteenth century. "He" said that they had belonged to someone called "Madame Leprince de Beaumont."

The goblets were crimson-colored Venetian crystal. There were exotic flowers in a central decoration of some kind on this table. The same man who had served as their driver was now dressed, magnificently, in red silk livery and wearing white gloves -- while another man who looked just like him, wearing identical clothes and also in white gloves -- poured wine for each of them from a tall decanter that sparkled in the candlelight.

Rose thanked her host for the wonderful food and complimented him on the surroundings. It all seemed very strange to her, mysterious, like most good things that happen to us.

Rose was afraid to inspect this experience too closely, fearing that it would vanish. She dreaded finding herself asleep in the rain on that sidewalk. She knew something magical was happening in her life and that it was good.

"I don't know how to thank you." Rose said.

"There is no need. Everything that you see here -- all of the paintings and everything that is in those books -- belongs to you. This place would not exist, except for you. All that you desire will be brought to you immediately. I ask only that you share a meal with me at midnight -- each night, for one week -- and tell me what you feel."

"I can't. You see, my mother is ill and I must be at her side in the morning."

"This place is outside of time in the world that you have known. A week here will consume as much or as little of your time, as we like. I promise that you will be returned to your mother's bedside exactly when you should be. But if you wish to leave at any time, you only need to say so and I will escort you myself anywhere you like. When you return to the day world, it will seem that only one night's journey has been completed, however much time we spend together." Then he added: "I have been waiting for you forever. All of this was only made with you in mind."

"But you don't know me."

"I've always known you. And you, like all women, have always expected someone like me, except that you did not know my name or what I would look like, only that I would be waiting for you, here. I have been looking for you -- the only person who would wear that gown -- and building this place in order to please you."

After they finished their meal, including a wonderful dessert and Turkish coffee, they strolled through the rooms of the castle. Rose enjoyed their conversation about medieval art and early Renaissance painters. He explained that each day, they would visit one room in the castle and examine canvases from a different period. They talked of poetry and philosophy. Rose felt the time vanish, "spellbound" by her host's charm and self-deprecating wit.

His suggestive comments were never shouted. There was no correction or instruction, only more gentle questioning, always, so that she found herself discovering how much she knew already and how much more she wanted to know, also how much she could teach him. He was helpless with machines and devices, childlike in his playfulness, sometimes nervous and awkward. They would sit and read to one another. He would tell her stories. Some made her laugh. She could never see his face or call him by name, he explained, until the moment of her departure.

When she asked: "Why, the disguise?"

He answered: "Only at your departure will you know my name because, at that instant, you will see my face."

Rose was escorted to her sleeping chamber by one of the servants. There were many servants, appearing silently when something was needed and disappearing, just as unobtrusively, when all was satisfied. She had only to wish for something, somehow, they would know her desires and appear; then they'd disappear again once she was happy. Her sleeping quarters were decorated with landscapes in large wooden frames; a huge canopy bed with layered white sheets and big pillows was the most comfortable bed on which she had ever slept; a low fire in a marble fireplace kept the room warm.

There was a dressing table with jewelry and all of her favorite things from home -- hair brushes, facial creams, very expensive ones that she never bought, also perfumes from France. And there was a large, silver-framed mirror, where she saw herself more beautiful than she had ever known herself to be.

This was the only mirror in which she hoped to see herself forever.

There was a private bathroom with a large tub to soak in and huge towels, also white aromatic candles. Adjacent to the bedroom was another large room with plush leather furniture from the forties, a large screen on one wall and a library of films available, as well as what seemed like genuine Picassos and Dalis, fitting in perfectly with painted movie posters from the early history of cinema.

A nightgown was placed on the bed, which was already prepared for Rose. On the nightable, next to the bed was a white book without a title and an eighteenth century clock (a clock which was stopped at midnight, like all the other clocks). As she settled in to sleep, she glanced at the book, which contained a single verse on the first page. All of the other pages were empty:

MY SOUL: I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
Upon the star that marks the hidden pole,
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul?

Rose awoke the next morning to find comfortable and casual clothes laid out for her and new shoes. The day was beautiful and the windows of the castle opened on to a verdant landscape.

What happend to the city?

Somehow she knew that, if she wanted the city, it would be there -- filled with cars and noise, lots of people walking about and traffic signals. This morning she liked the trees and lake in the distance of this perfect view.

"He" briefly joined Rose at breakfast and presented her with a pin. It was a beautiful golden sword that she must keep with her at all times. Rose promised that she would wear the sword pin, feeling happy and strong as soon as she did so.

They were off to the galleries of Baroque paintings for the day, then movies in the evening with popcorn in big buckets set before them. They ordered take out food from a great Chinese restaurant (Kosher!), whose delivery person looked exactly like Perrault and all the other servants, riding a white bicycle with the name "Le Magnifique" written on its side.

All of the servants seemed to speak with a voice similar to her host's -- and they were just as tactful and gentle as he was -- everyone's greatest concern was to make her happy.

She had never received such attention and treatment before.

Each day she visited a different gallery. Impressionist and modernist works competed for her affections with great masterpieces from earlier periods. Rose laughed so much at her new friend's jokes and seemed to have learned and taught -- effortlessly and with great joy -- more than she had imagined knowing in all of her previous life.

The music wrapped itself around her in the evenings, guiding her into the arms of soothing sleep; then, every morning -- magically -- a different view appeared outside her window ... some mornings it was Paris or Venice, other mornings London or Rome could be seen from her bedroom, even the ocean or mountains, if she wanted them -- all were within reach. She had never known such happiness and never wanted to leave.

Finally, the seventh day arrived and the view from her window that morning was of a dark, windy and bleak landscape. There was a chill in the air, flowers were wilting in all their vases, and a terrible sadness hung in the air. The book that rested on her nightstand had a new black cover and the single verse on the first page had changed providing Rose with an enigmatic message:

MY SELF: I am content to follow to its source,
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

At breakfast, that final morning, he seemed weaker and much sadder than usual, smaller and less imposing. Rose felt strong and loved, safe and powerful. Like the candles that had burned low, he seemed to be melting. He offered her a final gift, explaining that her mother would die unless she returned to her at once with this blue rose made of jewels which would cure her mother and keep them all safe.

Rose wore her golden sword pin and, again, asked his name. He only explained that she must return immediately to her bedroom and look in her mirror before the clocks began to strike. Only then would she return to her mother and also know his name.

Rose ran to her chamber, looked deeply into her mirror and saw reflected in the glass the man with brown eyes in the dual portrait by the French painter knowing that this man had been her host all along and that his name was "love."

At the next instant, Rose was at the hospital, wearing her old clothes, still with a pin made of gold and a jeweled rose in her pocket. Rose knew that she had to find her way back to the enchanted castle, that she must return to the kind man with the sad voice and bown eyes, whose name was love.

Rose could not be happy anywhere else. Her mother and sister would now be safe, she was certain of this, because they would live in the city.

Rose was allowed to enter her mother's room. After embracing her sister, "she" placed the sparkling flower next to her mother's sleeping form. Rose saw -- almost immediately -- a warm color enter her mother's cheeks. Lilly cried and smiled because she saw it, too. This was powerful magic. Rose explained that she must find the man who made this possible. In only one night, she had matured and developed, "blossomed" into a woman.

Rose ran all the way to the museum and entered with a crowd. People walked and stared at the art works -- often not seeing them. She knew that this made the paintings and sculptures sad. She searched for the entrance to their world. No luck. It was hopeless. Then she thought of the dual portrait -- was it Watteau? -- and ran to the galleries of French paintings. Standing before "their" paining was a man who was casually dressed. As he turned to her, he was smiling. He resembled the man in the portrait.

Rose knew then, at that instant, whispering to herself ... "Everything I look upon is blessed."

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Author.

This short story was first posted in 2006. With the release of a new film of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, I thought that I would re-post the work. My suggestions for those who wish to read more include:


Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, 2 Volumes (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2003). (Introduction and Notes by Kyle Freeman.)
Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (New York: Norton, 1974). (Holmes meets Freud. The book is better than the movie.)
Michael Dibdin, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (New York: Vintage, 1978).
Mitch Gullin, A Slight Trick of the Mind (New York: Doubleday, 2005).
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1967), translation Gayatri Spivak.
Jacques Derrida, Writing & Difference (London: Routledge, 1967), translation Alan Bass.

Please see "Sherlock Holmes," (2009), starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, also starring Rachel McAdams. (Time/Warner). ("The Art of Robert Downey, Jr.")

"When William Gillette, the American actor, asked the author if he might introduce a love interest in the Sherlock Holmes play ... Sir Arthur briskly cabled: 'Marry him, murder him, do what you like with him.' It should be recorded that some enthusiasts regarded even this high canonical (Conanical?) authority with disfavor."

James Edward Holroyd, introduction to Seventeen Steps to 221B.

In December of 1887 my friend Sherlock Holmes endured a spell of severe melancholia. He was despondent and listless, his books lay scattered throughout our shared quarters at 221B Baker Street, fragments of malodorous scientific experiments were visible everywhere. His violin gathered dust in the usual corner of our largest room, but his pipes were filled daily and the pungent smoke that filled the premises left an imprint on the curtains, insinuated itself into the books on the shelves and the faded paintings on the walls, even into the worn carpets that I had brought home from my travels in India.

Like the fog that enveloped the city in what should have been a season of joy, the strong odor of tobacco that accompanied my friend's gray mood seemed to absorb all of the joy that might have existed for us leaving us both taciturn and sad.

It was a letter from a young lady that awoke our spirits to the call of duty:

"Look here, Holmes," I was delighted to bring the note to his attention, "A young lady writes imploring you to provide some assistance. She asks you to help find her friend, a writer, who has vanished under mysterious circumstances and whose name is Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle."

I saw immediately that I had struck a nerve, for Holmes rose slowly to his full height and turned his penetrating and steely gaze upon me and, with a wavering smile, he suggested that we invite the young lady at once to visit our quarters so as to discuss the matter further.

I knew then that all would be well. Holmes put down his pipe and collecting his books, he said: "Come along, Watson. The game's afoot."

It was not until a week later that we heard a light, but firm step on the stairway to our quarters at precisely the appointed hour of a cool Monday afternoon. I had prepared some tea and gathered my papers for note-taking when Holmes, uncharacteristically, rose to open the door for our guest.

"Miss Sharp, I presume?" Holmes was casual about his discovery and announced it matter-of-factly.

"Why, yes. Really, you astonish me Mr. Holmes." Miss Sharp smoke in a musical and practiced voice.

"Not at all. You are artistic, left-handed and probably a Catholic."

Holmes was cheerful, as always, when making his deductions. I was mystified by his intellectual powers. This was a fairly standard performance which proved to be absolutely accurate.

"You fascinate me, Mr. Holmes." Miss Sharp said.

Our guest was a young lady of indeterminate age, certainly not older than thirty. Her letter had provided only an initial by way of a signature. She wore a beautiful dress in the fashionable colors of the season -- a rich deep blue, with gold and purple trim. Ladies' fashions had come to resemble the riches and exotic tones of the distant corners of the empire. With marriage, of course, more sober hues become mandatory. Our guest was unwed. The young lady had already made an unusual impression on Holmes. Her hair was the color of fine, soft, very light sand and her eyes were like the glittering emeralds that I had seen only once, in India, in the treasure chests of the maharajah.

"Not at all," said Holmes. "Watson, allow me to introduce Miss Rebecca Sharp."

"I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Sharp." I put out my hand and took the small gloved hand of Miss Sharp which had been extended in response.

"I believe that we have some friends in common, Miss Sharp. Indeed, Mr. Bram Stoker once remarked, with some amusement, on your sharing a name with Mr. Thackery's heroine." Holmes observed with a smile.

Holmes seemed quite formal as he waived our visitor to a favored armchair close to the fire. Holmes never failed to surprise me with his friendships and acquaintances. There were always odd persons involved in the theater or other marginal professions -- like solicitors or barristers -- on whom he could call for a favor or information, though rarely did he socialize with them nor, it must be said, did he care for the best society.

It was only in confronting a puzzle such as this that he normally came alive. There was clearly much more about Miss Sharp than her dilemma that seemed to "arouse," as it were, his enthusiasm.

"Now what is this trouble, Miss Sharp?" Holmes sat in the comfortable old arm chair opposite to Miss Sharp. I sat behind them as the fire began to roar.

"Well, Mr. Holmes, my friend is a writer and physician -- like Dr. Watson."

She directed a smile at me, causing me to spill my tea and mumble some incoherent remark in response.

"For some time he has been writing a novel to be called, A Study in Scarlet. He writes to me once each week, offering advice and sometimes generous support. You see, Mr. Holmes, I hope to be an actress. London is an expensive city, as you know, and one must study for years before one may hope to succeed in the theater, which many regard as far from a respectable profession for a young lady from the ... provinces."

She blushed charmingly at this revealing phrase.

"Dr. Conan Doyle's touching concern was meant to prevent my ... falling into error. I cannot tell you how much I miss the five pounds ... I mean, the kindness of this gentleman that I have never met."

She then bowed her head and seemed about to cry. Holmes immediately leaned forward and provided a handkerchief to our guest.

"You say that you have never met the gentleman?" Holmes asked.

"No, Dr. Conan Doyle attended a single amateur performance of Hamlet at which I played Ophelia. He wrote a brief note to me afterwards in which he described himself as 'devoted to my cause for life.' He asked permission to write to me and to offer assistance as well as advice on my artistic endeavors, and he promised never to be so vulgar as to suggest a meeting. I felt that I could hardly refuse such kindness. But now he has disappeared and I am so distraught."

Again, there was a tear in her eye. Holmes interrupted --

" -- Please trouble yourself no further about this, Miss Sharp. Dr. Watson and I will be certain to find Dr. Conan Doyle, to ensure that he fulfills his obligations to you as I know that he would wish. We will accept no payment for our services. You must allow us to provide you with the sum that you have not received this week."

"Thank you, no, Mr. Holmes." Miss Sharp said, with a bow and a flutter of feminine attire as she reached for the door: "Your assistance is all that I can accept from such an important gentleman."

A scent of lilacs hovered in the air for a moment or two after Miss Sharp's departure, as Holmes and I stood nailed to the floor in an unusual state of reverie and confusion.

I am afraid that neither of us were very expert -- despite our exotic learning on a great range of subjects! -- on the curious topic of ladies of fashion.

I have never seen my friend more devoted to a cause. He was tireless in his efforts. He searched throughout the city, all of the haunts of Dr. Conan Doyle, every place where he might have been found, all who might have known or spoken to him were questioned, but the mystery only increased. No one had actually met the man. There were stories of his travels in Africa, of his education in Scotland, of his friendships with prominent persons, all turned out to be based on correspondence.

No one had actually seen Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle. It all seemed hopeless and utterly perplexing.

One morning, after two days' absence, Holmes entered the flat in a disheveled state, unshaven, dirty, and signaled a "v" for victory before collapsing from exhaustion. After he had slept for nearly twelve hours and dined well, Holmes explained that the solution to the mystery would be provided that very afternoon. His investigations had led to the doorstep of the evil Professor Derrida.

There was no more feared master theorist of the "unreal" than Professor Derrida, Holmes' great nemesis, a man capable of denying all that we hold dear in the nineteenth century. Upon Professor Derrida's return to London from Paris the previous evening his interest in Holmes' adventures had become impossible to ignore. It became clear that the solution to our puzzle lay with this evil personage.

Holmes had managed to locate the Frenchman and extracted from him (tact prevented me from asking just how he had managed this!) Professor Derrida's word, as a gentleman -- who had, after all, attended a great European university -- that he would appear at our establishment at the appointed hour to offer an explanation.

At 4:00 P.M. that very afternoon a French gentleman with flowing white locks, trailing a long scarf and a black cape, smoking a pipe, entered our home. The unmistakable aroma of evil and French cuisine entered with him.

"Holmes, you fool," said the French person, "there is no Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle!"

"I beg your pardon." Holmes said.

"Dr. Conan Doyle was writing a novel about a detective named Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson. He completed the work. His presence is no longer required. In fact, now Conan Doyle need never have existed -- for the meaning of words derives not from their necessary connections with objects in the world (whatever 'world' that may be), nor from their author's intentions, but only from their relations to other words. Language belongs to no one. The crucial thing about language, my fine detective, is not its capacity to mirror the world -- for we cannot step outside of language or our minds to compare the so-called real world with the contents of our minds as expressed in language -- rather, the crucial thing about language is its ability to 'signify' independently of any author. There is nothing outside the text."

Derrida seemed amused by this unspeakable evil:

"We must live in language now, forever, Mr. Holmes. We need not trouble ourselves any longer about an author. We need no God nor gods either, incidentally, but can now dwell, together with any readers who care to join us, in these texts forever ... along with the blessedly free Miss Sharp, eh, Mr. Holmes?"

"The man is fiendishly clever, Watson, but he neglects our freedom." Holmes gathered his own pipe, then strolled over to the window.

"If we are free, Professor Derrida, able to live within the authority of these texts that need not depend on a missing (or non-existent) author -- as your colleague and rival M. Foucault might say -- then we must be responsible for what we make of ourselves and of these 'signs' that define us. It may be that we are responsible also for what is made of us by those readers that you speak of ... We must now write and live our own adventures."

Professor Derrida helped himself to an astonishing number of cakes and cucumber sandwiches, which he stuffed into his pockets:

"These are difficult to find in Paris." Derrida shrugged his shoulders in a sinister and very Gallic manner, saying: "I hope you don't mind."

The man can only be described as brazen and fearless.

"It is just as I suspected. There is no Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle. Besides, it is now as though he never existed. This French villain is responsible for theorizing all of this for us."

Holmes frowned and smoked his pipe reaching for his copy of F.H. Bradley's Ethical Studies.

"It cannot be denied, Watson."

"What will you do Holmes?" I asked this, even as I saw from the corner of my eye that Professor Derrida was escaping out of the window with a wave and a casual remark about heading off to -- "Cambridge to pick up an honorary degree ..."

"There is only one thing to do Watson. I must take care of Miss Sharp myself."

Holmes was firm -- entirely firm -- about this.

It was thus that my friend Sherlock Holmes met the woman that he would marry (so much for Irene Adler and that "Scandal in Bohemia"!), who shared many of his future adventures, not to mention our old quarters at 221B Baker Street. I did get to keep my carpets.

It took me nearly six months to find suitable quarters in London. I cannot avoid conjecturing that it might have been better, for me, if there had been a Dr. Conan Doyle to be found. I might have requested a re-write or at least some further adventures of my own. Such moments of discontent are rare.

Holmes seemed remarkably happy for the remainder of his life, doing very well for decades as the author of a number of detective stories, also lending his name to a fine line of men's clothing. As a final honor and kindness the first child born of this union was named "John" and is now studying at Cambridge University to become a philosopher ... which is also to be a kind of detective, I suppose.

More Torture of Captured American Soldier.

February 2, 2010 at 9:56 A.M. "Error" inserted and corrected.

January 4, 2010 at 12:05 P.M. Essays were defaced overnight. I have made all corrections. I expect additional attacks against these writings from N.J.'s government hackers. ("Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")

December 27, 2009 at 3:51 P.M. Obstructions made it difficult to reach these blogs just now. "Errors" may have been inserted in essays, again. I will attempt to make all corrections quickly. I expect additional cybercrime emanating from Trenton, New Jersey.

David E. Sanger & Eric Schmitt, "U.S. and Britain Close Embassies in Yemen Capital: Terror Threats Cited," in The New York Times, January 4, 2010, at p. A1. (Did Yemen provide intelligence assistance to the bombers killing CIA agents in Afghanistan? Are there any countries in the Middle East where Americans are not subject to threats?)
Alissa J. Rubin, "Taliban Release Video of American Soldier Captured in June in Afghanistan," in The New York Times, December 26, 2009, at p. A4. (Video released on Christmas day to maximize psychological impact -- just like the OAE, which enjoys screwing up people's holidays.)
Andrew Jacobs, "In Sentence Of Activist, China Gives West a Chill," in The New York Times, December 26, 2009, at p. A4.
Mark Mazzetti, "C.I.A. Takes On Expanded Role On Front Lines," in The New York Times, January 1, 2010, at p. A1. (We can all relax since the boys from Virginia have arrived.)
Charlie Savage, "Charges Voided for Contractors in Iraq Killings," in The New York Times, January 1, 2010, at p. A1. (No rapes? NJ state troopers include rape in their activities.)
Scott Shane, "9/11 Shadow Is Cast Again," in The New York Times, December 31, 2009, at p. A1. (Repetition of incompetence that allowed for the events of 9/11.)
Mark Mazzetti & Eric Lipton, "U.S. Spy Agencies Failed to Collate Clues on Terror: Details on Breakdown," in The New York Times, December 31, 2009, at p. A1. (Aside from the bogus dad wandering into the American embassy, the bad guys were obviously feeding us this terrorist -- and still we almost failed to prevent this attack.)
Alissa J. Rubin & Mark Mazzetti, "8 Americans, Most With C.I.A., Reported Killed in Afghan Blast," in The New York Times, December 31, 2009, at p. A1. (How many local governments -- besides Pakistan -- are sharing intelligence with our enemies to get rid of American intelligence operatives in the area? "We don't need the little brown people," the C.I.A. says.)

I am always supportive of any person incarcerated or otherwise punished for the expression of opinions. This includes Liu Xiaobobo, recently sentenced in China to 11 years in prison for "antigovernmental activites." ("Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal" and "Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Unconstitutionality of the Death Penalty.")

China is at the brink of a magnificent moment in its long history. We are not in a position to "pressure" China. To suggest such a thing about China's government (that we can "compel" China to take a specific action) is absurd. People who are not stupid understand that "China is too big to be placed in anyone's pocket," to quote Fidel Castro. Castro said the same of Cuba. Miami's Cubanazos disagree with Castro. Cubanoid politicians would like Cuba to achieve a Honduras-like level of "freedom" and the "rule of law." ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")

We can engage in a moral appeal recognizing, as citizens of a country burdened with terrible human rights issues, human solidarity with a suffering Chinese intellectual and his family, requesting the compassion and tolerance of China's government. I believe that on human rights issues China is probably superior to New Jersey, certainly less hypocritical than the soiled American jurisdiction governed by the mafia. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")

Does Mr. Torricelli still represent Taiwan's interests as a lobbyist? This affiliation -- and alliances with Cubanazos by way of "El Bobo" Menendez -- may explain much of the hostile press for China's government in recent issues of the New York Times. Is it true that you can purchase slanted articles in the Times? I cannot imagine any other explanation for "Manohla Dargis"? ("Manohla Dargis Stikes Again!")

January 4, 2010 at 11:58 A.M. I have just discovered newly inserted "errors" in several essays by way of a response from the Trenton boys. I will do my best to correct all of the writings damaged in this latest criminal cyberattack. Ethics?

Mumia Abu-Jamal has been incarcerated in the U.S. for close to 30 years. The real reason for that continuing incarceration, as many persons believe, is Mr. Abu-Jamal's crusading journalism and radical politics. Some of us have been subjected to psychological torture and rape, stolen from and demonized in American society (still pretending that nothing happened, Anne Milgram?) because of our opinions or activism. American torturers are permitted to escape legal punishment before the eyes of the world. ("American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles" and "Havana Nights and CIA Tapes.")

I express my solidarity with all tortured and incarcerated dissidents, including men and women experiencing such fates in the United States of America. America's so-called "touchless torture techniques" have been borrowed by the Afghanistan and Iraqui opposition forces as well as Al Qaeda. We will see many more American soldiers tortured, tragically, as persons within our nation's borders will be captured and turned into instruments of anti-American propaganda. Perhaps family members will be tortured to increase pressure on dissidents in America. ("U.S. Courts Must Not Condone Torture.")

Terrorist factions and revolutionary movements around the world are concerned to duplicate the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo horrors by making victims of American citizens. Do we understand this threat? Are we prepared for these coming terrorist attacks, Mr. Obama? Most of them will be directed against New Yorkers. I am a New Yorker.

I infer from the continuing denials and obfuscations of atrocities for which New Jersey's legal system is responsible that we are simply going to "ignore" this looming threat. This may not be very smart. How much credibility do we have on human rights issues after Bush/Cheney? Zero? ("Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")

"The Taliban released video of a captured American soldier on Friday, the second to surface since he was seized in southern Afghanistan about six months ago."

The video reflects many separate sessions cobbled together to achieve a desired effect, edited, contrived -- Hollywood methods are also being emulated by the Taliban. I believe that tapes and video of psychological tortures in New Jersey will be instructive in terms of these "methods." (See the movies "Bob Roberts" and "Bulworth.")

"Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, 23, of Idaho, was captured in late June in Paktika Province, a rural, mountainous region along the Pakistani border where the Taliban have a large presence. The circumstances of his capture remain unclear. Initially, military officials said he had walked off his outpost in eastern Afghanistan. But in the first video, which the Taliban sent out in July, ["Captured American on Video by Taliban"] Private Bergdahl said he had been captured after he lagged behind during a patrol."

Psychological torture is a terrible and life-long crippling injury to any person that is a particularly vicious weapon in the hands of sadists. Persons who are especially selected for such disgusting criminal methods -- like Terry Tuchin in New Jersey -- delight in inflicting suffering on their victims. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")

Americans are regarded as the world's greatest experts in this so-called "art" of touchless torture. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.") Psychological torture, including SECRET use of hypnosis and drugging in interrogations, frustrations and economic harms, also cybercrime and censorship -- I am sure that this American soldier has experienced most of these methods, probably without realizing it -- is always a "crime against humanity." ("Crimes Against Humanity in New Jersey" and "How Censorship Works in America.")

"The 36-minute video was posted on a web site affiliated with the Afghan Taliban, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks militant Islamist Web sites. The video alternates clips of Private Bergdahl with those of him [?] in the traditional Afghan shalwar kameez tunic and simple cap worn by many men here."

Here?

" ... [Bergdahl] criticizes the United States, which has TORTURED MUSLIM CAPTIVES 'in Bergram, in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib,' he has been treated fairly. [I have not been treated fairly.] The United States Army, he says, gives its soldiers propaganda about the people they are fighting." (emphasis added)

Attacks on this essay, making use of governmental resources, possibly with the assistance of American journalists employed by our "independent media," will be constant in violation of copyright and U.S. Constitutional laws. This protected criminality -- in which American attorneys may also participate -- is deemed "ethical." My opposition to these censorship and torture tactics, also rejection of attempts to produce violent reactions from victims, makes me "unethical." (Again: "How Censorship Works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")

America's orchestrated media silence in response to the atrocities that you are witnessing undermines any claims that the U.S. press is free and independent, much less concerned about victims of psychological torture anywhere. What follows are the words of Private Bergdahl:

"One of the biggest illusions that the Army gives us coming over here as a soldier, as a private in their army, is that we're coming over here to fight a terrorist group of men."

This brave and suffering young man goes on to say:

"We are fighting a country and a people that are well-organized and extremely smart of how to fight. I keep bringing up the point of history to people that I talk to. You simply need to look at their history" -- the Russians, earlier the British, were fought to a standstill in those mountains -- "to know that the Afghan people know how to fight [a guerrilla war,] and they have lived this way since the beginning of their people ..." (Vietnam?)

A Taliban spokesperson warns that if there is no deal, more soldiers will be captured. A humanitarian gesture by the Taliban would earn American attention for Taliban concerns much more than further tortures of this young soldier. The young man is not responsible for the statements that he is making.

A new Taliban technique in Afghanistan (which suggests cooperation between Al Qaeda and other anti-U.S. factions) is generating popular unrest against the American military forces, using the people as a weapon. This also suggests the assistance of foreign powers.

Ordinary Americans ask for the release this young man as well as his return to family and friends. Such a step by the Taliban may constitute a first effort in the direction of genuine negotiations leading to the cessation of hostilities, also the release of Mr. Bergdahl would be a demonstration of good will that is expressive of the Afghan and American people's hopes for peace. Ishallah.

Stocking Filler.

December 24, 2009 at 1:37 P.M. An advertisement from "Google Ads" was imposed on this site, where no advertisement of any kind is allowed, suggesting that the allegations in the quoted newspaper articles pertaining to U.S. and N.J. human rights abuses are mere "movie nonsense." You decide.

"Movie Showtimes, One-Click Access to Upcoming Movie Showtimes Near You. Search on. www.goggle.com/Movies " ( I doubt this message is from Google.)

December 21, 2009 at 1:55 P.M. Numerous writings were vandalized over the past several days, some texts were altered or defaced several times, after corrections were made -- including my short story "Master and Commander." I will do my best to make all necessary corrections. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "How Censorship Works in America.")

Christmas Greetings

[From a Fairy to a Child]

By

Lewis Carroll

Lady dear, if Fairies may
For a moment lay aside
Cunning tricks and Elfish play.
'Tis a happy Christmas-tide.

We have heard the children say --
Gentle children, whom we love --
Long ago, on Christmas-Day,
Came a message from above.

Still, as Christmas-tide comes round,
They remember it again --
Echo still the joyful sound
"Peace on earth and good-will to men!"

Yet the hearts must child-like be
Where such heavenly guests abide;
Unto children in their glee,
All the year is Christmas-tide.

Thus, forgetting tricks and play
For a moment Lady dear,
We would wish you, if we may,
Merry Christmas, glad new year!

Christmas, 1867.

To One in Paradise

by

Edgar Allan Poe

Thou wast all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine --
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fancy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the future cries,
"On! on!" -- but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me
The light of life is o'er!
No more -- no more -- no more --
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the ends upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy [green] eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams --
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.

Saying Goodbye to John Updike.

December 9, 2009 at 2:43 P.M. A new advertisement was forced upon this site against my will: "NJ Background Checks, Call us for background checking and Pre-Employment Screening today. http://www.thedrugtestingco.com/ " ("Burn Notice.") 

False police reports and accusations can always be manufactured in New Jersey for a small fee.

December 8, 2009 at 10:04 A.M. This morning I experienced many difficulties and attempts to intrude into my computer: 12 viruses have been detected (so far), one has been removed. An advertisement containing explicit partisan political content was imposed on this site against my will: "Is Obama a socialist? Do you support Obama and the decision for the U.S.? [What decision?] Vote here! [For what?] http://www.newsmax.com/ " Cubanazos?

This advertisement purports to come from "Ads by Google." The illiterate quality of the message suggests that Right-wing Cuban-American PACs or the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) may have been involved in developing this "message." 

Perhaps Senator Menendez can shed some light on this mystery? Mel Martinez? Ms. Ross-Lehtinen? Albio Sires? Marco Rubio?

Michiko Kakutani, "Intuitive and Precise, a Relentless Updike Mapped America's Mysteries," The New York Times, January 28, 2009, at p. A1.
Christopher Lehman-Haupt, "John Updike, a Lyrical Writer of the Middle-Class Man, Dies at 76," The New York Times, January 28, 2009, at p. A28.
John Updike, "On Such a Beautiful Green Little Planet," in Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism by John Updike (New York: Vintage, 1984), pp. 292-296.

January 29, 2009 at 5:13 P.M. This essay was posted this morning at my MSN group which (I am told) no longer exists. The text has been altered once already. I will do my best to make corrections of inserted "errors" as often as necessary. No images can be posted at these blogs and my second book is still suppressed. I wonder what is the connection between Lulu and New Jersey? Publish America? ("How Censorship Works in America.")

There is a peculiar intimacy that accompanies the reading experience. You come to know someone whose writings become familiar to you. The writer is transformed into a presence or a relationship that is felt just as intensely or in as "real" a way as relationships with persons we encounter in the empirical world. Of course, the physicality is missing. We do not touch or kiss famous authors, usually. Nevertheless, we seem to inhabit a shared psychological or mental space with them and their creations. Peter Ackroyd's biography of Dickens begins with a fictional walk with the author and his now almost mythical characters.

We are "intimate" (there is no other word for the experience) with Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and many others, especially those of our contemporaries who have accompanied us on our life-journeys. Roth, Vidal, Mailer, Parker, Jong, so many others have provided this company for me.

John Updike became that sort of pervasive presence in my life. Updike's death is the loss of a friend. Updike's absence will be felt in American literature. Political correctness and feminist litmus tests nothwithstanding, Updike will be remembered (deservedly) as a great American writer.

Middle class males in America and all non lesbians from the Upper West Side are discouraged from literary interests, also from voting for political candidates in New York city. This may account for the hostility to Updike in some New York media enclaves.

" ... These [literary] experiments did not always work. 'S.' (1988) used Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter' as a jumping-off point for a crude attack on feminists. ..."

Ms. Kakutani ("Jennifer Shuessler"?) should reflect on this comment. With all due respect to this seasoned reviewer for the Times, Updike was not capable of "crudity," especially in his criticisms of alternative views of the world and politics.

Updike was generous, elegant, fair and subtle to the point of genius. These qualities were evident even in his polemical writings, such as his many political essays and literary criticisms of colleagues. Updike was never merely a polemicist in novels.

Is Ms. Kakutani also Jill Abramson?

Fictitious names allow journalists to escape responsibility for their comments and errors. The ethical qualities of this practice seem doubtful (to me). It is easy to say nasty and false things about people when you lack the courage to attach your real name to your writings. A.O. Scott?

"S" is a sensitive portrayal of a comfortable American white woman's experiences and search for independence as well as self-awareness in the middle of life's journey. Incidentally, "carpet munchers" (Updike was a self-proclaimed "expert" in the art of "pleasuring a woman orally") will delight in one or two female same-sex romances described in this novel.

No good novel is a political argument and nothing more. Such political ideas as novels may contain are incidental -- even in explicitly political literature, like Orwell's and Huxley's dystopias -- to a vision of life and all human suffering or joy.

Updike was no antifeminist. He was not "hostile to women." I have read "S." and I expect to review the book as a response to Ms. Kakutani, also as a way of saying goodbye to Mr. Updike.

I'd say the work is a feminist interpretation of a woman's life that is roughly contemporary with Updike's journey. It is touching and poignant, also "real," amounting to one writer's projection of his "womanly perspective" on things or upon a plausible literary character.

No, John Updike was not gay. Antifeminist? Why?

Ms. Kakutani cannot be all bad since she provoked Norman Mailer to say that he would like to "punch her in the nose." This is a compliment from Mailer.

Any Times reviewer has great power which is not always used wisely. I remember reading reviews by Ms. Kakutani which seemed intelligent and well-written, but somewhat lifeless and unfeeling or unimaginative and, weirdly, unsympathetic to the author's project.

Somehow this ignorant comment on an Updike novel does not seem like the kind of thing Ms. Kakutani would say because it is clearly the remark of a person who has not read Updike's novel.

"Ms. Kakutani" usually "seems" very diligent and thorough about reading the books that she reviews. I say this regardless of whether I agree with her opinions or share her tastes.

A great critic -- perhaps our best essayist in the twentieth century and beyond -- once suggested that the reader and reviewer's task is to seek to inhabit the work to be evaluated, to be "had" by the artist's magic, evaluating or judging only after the full experience of an aesthetic encounter.

Many reviewers can no longer enjoy the works they judge. This death of joy or aesthetic delight in literature is lethal to critical faculties.

Don't you want books and movies to be good? I do. I feel delight, joy, celebration at Updike's flawless prose. I am happy to see the English language used so well. I am also inspired to write as well as I can in response. I know that politics and corruption in America will make it difficult -- if not impossible -- to publish or disseminate my work in the U.S. I will write anyway.

I recall an interview or conversation on the old "Dick Cavett Show" feturing Updike and John Cheever. They were utterly civilized and articulate, so considerate of one another's feelings and achievements. I recall thinking that I hoped to be that sort of person someday.

This is not to diminish the anger expressed by Updike for the real evils of racism and social injustice. I would not wish to be nice to Mengele or Eichman. Yes, those angers are in his work -- and in mine -- as well as part of all of us forever.

Cavett noted the similarities detected by critics in their writings as "chroniclers of the suburban bedroom and affluent people's despair." I like it very much when affluent people despair. This is an example of my own empathetic responses. ("'Revolutionary Road': A Movie Review.")

Cavett mentioned that "one of you has been to college and the other has not."

Cheever smiled and explained that he was "the drop out, whereas John enjoys the obvious benefits of a Harvard education."

Updike was quick to interrupt:

"Well, when reviewing and doing other busy work, I sometimes dust off my English majoring. Otherwise, my college education is mostly irrelevant to what I do that John Cheever does so well."

Graciousness, tact, sensitivity came easily to Updike. This has nothing to do with excess humility which can injure a writer. Like Mailer, Vidal, Styron and others, including Morrison or our goddess of the poisoned pen, Mary McCarthy, Updike could dazzle on the page and he knew it.

Updike's poetry displays bravura moments and his romanticism -- romanticism not least about America as revealed in lyrical flights on the subject of American women's mysteries will guarantee his lasting importance.

No one is better at describing making love to a woman than John Updike.

Updike on Monroe or (this is a fantasy!) his description of Kate Winslet at the Golden Globes are to die for.

Having dusted off my non-English majoring to acknowledge a debt and loss that is deeply felt, I now leave you with some words of the Master and an invitation to read "S." and then to discuss it among yourselves:

"Looking back, and trying to compare the class of 1950 with what I know of children now" -- "Full Frontal Feminism," duh! -- "I suppose our horizons were rather narrow -- ... we took our racial and economic homogeneity all too easily for granted. But we assumed the world necessarily had rules and never for a minute believed that life was a free ride. Learn to Live, Live to Learn, the motto read on the orange brick facade of old Shillington High. I was sorry when, not many years after I graduated, the school name ceased to exist, though the building did not. The motto I noticed recently is still up."

Sartre or Guevara?

January 16, 2010 at 11:12 A.M. Hypocritical expressions of concern have appeared in The New York Times, after allegations concerning the arrest of a dissident lawyer in China and his supposed disappearance. Much the same may be expected in response to the death of a Cuban prisoner on a hunger strike, whose family and memory I respect and support, with whom I express my solidarity. I am on the side of dissidents everywhere.

Cuban society today is subject to less criticism for torture or systematic cruelty than the nation operating Guantanamo's concentration camp. American concern for freedom of speech is difficult to believe when readers from many nations may witness my daily struggle against government-sanctioned censorship and suppressions of speech which officials pretend is not taking place or is unknown to them. ("How Censorship Works in America.")

Much of the world is skeptical concerning the genuiness of this U.S. concern with free speech which is seemingly part of a campaign of vilification aimed at China, with many negative articles featured prominently in the paper focusing on Beijing's "human rights failures." Human rights failures that are just as severe (or worse) for which New Jersey is responsible are ignored by the media. The American media's orchestrated silence in reaction to the rape, thefts, destruction of the life of a dissident intellectual living in the city where this newspaper is published -- along with many others elsewhere in America -- makes a lie of these expressions of concern for a single Chinese dissident. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "What is it like to be tortured?" as well as "What is it like to be plagiarized?")

December 9, 2009 at 10:40 A.M. "Is it rational to believe in God?" was vandalized once more and corrections have now been made. Evidently, God is suspected of Communism by New Jersey and Miami Cubanazos. Perhaps Pope Benedict is suspected of affiliations with the Cuban Revolution. ("Havana Nights and CIA Tapes.")

December 4, 2009 at 5:55 P.M. Several essays were altered and corrected, including "Foucault, Rose, Davis and the Meanings of Prison."

December 5, 2009 at 5:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M. "A Holiday Appeal Will be Made for Class-War Prisoners and for the Freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal," District Council 1707 Hall, 75 Varick Street, 14 th Floor, Manhattan, N.Y. http://www.partisandefense.org/

December 1, 2009 at 9:40 A.M. Spacing was affected in this essay overnight. I have now corrected inserted "errors."

November 28, 2009 at 2:15 P.M. An advertisement was imposed on this site, against my will: "Harassment Attorneys, Castronovo & McKinney, LLC Free Consultation -- 973.920.7923. CandMLegal.com "

The crude allusion to "Castronovo" ("the new Castro") leads me to believe that clever Right-wing Cubanazos in wife-beater t-shirts, munching cigars, and unshaven (this is only to describe the women) disapprove of this essay. I disapprove of them.

November 27, 2009 at 10:38 A.M. Spacing was affected, but there were fewer "errors" inserted than I expected. Maybe N.J.'s hackers were enjoying their Thanksgiving turkeys, probably at the taxpayers' expense.

November 26, 2009 at 10:00 A.M. This is the essay to infuriate the Cubanoids, who may continue to demonstrate their commitment to freedom of speech through inserting "errors" in these writings. Senator Bob, Dick Codey, and Speaker Roberts will not be in Trenton forever, boys, so make the most of these opportunities. ("Miami's Cubanoids Protest AGAINST Peace.")

July 18, 2008 at 11:32 A.M. After writing the comments that appear below, this essay and several others were vandalized yesterday. I will now attempt to repair the harm done to these works, once again. Please see "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?"

July 17, 2008 at 10:47 A.M. Once again "errors" not found in print versions of this essay have appeared in the text. It is obvious to me both that such harassment and induced frustration of creative or intellectual efforts are based on the contents of my opinions, and also that they could not take place for so many years without the active cooperation of corrupt local politicians from the Cuban-American community. These people indulge, publicly, in censorship as well as sadism.

Sanctioned censorship is disgusting proof that wherever such low-level political types appear on the scene, democracy and the rule of law are in trouble. I am saddened and humiliated to think that these persons are members of my own ethnic group. I now fully understand some unpleasant things said about Cuban-Americans in the past. I hope that there are many of us who do not reflect these hateful Fascist opinions and tactics. It is possible that these thugs will fail to realize they are alienating their own potential allies and every other decent person in the nation through the use of these tactics. No wonder the Cuban Revolution is thriving by comparison with this opposition. Do you wish to delete another letter from this essay?

February 19, 2008 at 10:32 A.M. "errors" were inserted in this essay. I will continue to correct and re-post it. If you remain passive and apathetic to torture and censorship, along with other evils designed to bring about the destruction or death of any person, then you are complicit in these crimes. This blog and everything that I write in this torture chamber becomes a question for you, the reader, and for America: Will you be a guilty bystander to atrocity?

Religious persons should know that, while I am respectful of religious beliefs, I do not believe in the supernatural. I am sure that there are natural explanations -- even for phenomena that we do not yet understand -- and this includes the natural human inclination for religion and spiritual life.

I.

In discovering a vocation for struggle against oppression, American intellectuals today face frustrating theoretical difficulties. There is a "feeling" (a dirty word in political discourse for some law school graduates is "feeling"), on the one hand, that traditional sources of insight and inspiration for revolutionary struggle, Marxist and anarchist literature, are bankrupt and dated. On the other hand, too much of the best philosophical and jurisprudential work in the United States -- which should be devoted to social justice within the American post-revolutionary and Constitutionalist "situation" -- is made safe and sanitized by coopted intellectuals, whose function is to legitimate the actions of government, whatever those actions may be. Many of these intellectuals (tragically) are law professors; others are judges; still others are journalists or "pundits."

One result of this state of affairs is apathy. Nearly half of all elligible voters in the U.S. are opting out of the process because they feel that elections are a sham, offering few real options among candidates who are essentially identical because they are representative of wealth and corporate interests exclusively. I disagree with this view. However, I understand it. Furthermore, what I do agree with in the so-called "postmodernist disillusion" is the criticism or insight that politics has become -- indeed, it could not avoid becoming -- "show business." ("Colin McGinn's Naughty Book.")

All political dialogue in the future must take account of entertainment values because it will unfold in a media-televisual setting as well as at the level of ideas. The goal must be to avoid sacrificing substance -- by becoming irrelevant or trite -- while remaining serious and contemporary. The challenge of creating a genuine politics of meaning for the future is formidable.

There are two typical responses to this dilemma concerning a loss of political meaning and threats to the status quo: First, the pacifying intellectuals' role is to disarm political theory by the marginalized and oppressed population in America with calls for "patience" and "understanding of the complexities of the situation." (George Will) I am well beyond both at this point in my life. Noam Chomsky is eloquent on the ways in which government intellectuals -- who often gravitate towards media jobs after their "service" -- convince people that "they cannot be involved in [social justice reforms] or foreign affairs because they do not (and can not) understand the 'subtleties' of the situation." Robert F. Barsky, Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent (London: MIT Press, 1997), p. 167; and Noam Chomsky, Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship (New York: New Press 2003), p. 13. Second, some radical legal scholars (CLS) suggest that reforms within the conservative, middle-brow culture of the courts and legal academia is impossible because adjudication is too-often a smoke-screen for ideological discourse and a mask for oppression. See Duncan Kennedy, A Critique of Adjudication (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 339-379.

I do not accept that American Constitutional theory and law is inherently conservative, or that "maturity" implies accepting necessary limitations on transformative possibilities. I continue to believe in the U.S. Constitution and in the American Revolution. I refuse to give up on the courts, with the possible exception of New Jersey's hopelessly tainted tribunals. Today the real contest concerns the meaning of America and the Constitution for us and the world. I refuse to allow Fascists or a tiny segment of the population in possession of great wealth and power to define the American Revolution and Constitution for the rest of us. A critique of pacification has been offered by Roberto Unger and Cornel West, for example, whose crucial insight (for me) has to do with the atrophy of imagination in American political-legal discourse and debate. This criticism is particularly relevant to liberals and the Democratic party's "pundits":

"A major contention of this book is that Americans should use the tools of institutional experimentalism to rethink and rebuild each strand in their religion of possibility: the hope of social opportunity and mobility for the individual; the hope that practical ingenuity can resolve, one by one, the problems people face; and the hope that under democracy individual men and women can achieve the largeness of vision and experience that less democratic civilizations have reserved for the exceptional few. Our message is that unless Americans prove themselves to be as open-minded about the institutional arrangements of the country as they have been about almost everything else they will continue to find their hopes frustrated. It is not enough to rebel against the lack of justice unless we also rebel against the lack of imagination."

The Future of American Progressivism, pp. 23-24.

Imagination is desperately needed. It is only imagination in our readings of the Constitution today that will make possible the transformations that these thinkers and many others -- myself included -- demand. I am sure that such transformations are possible within the structures and constraints of American governmental institutions. Imagination is connected to emotion and feeling responses ("Soul") that may allow for greater creativity in resolving issues of pressing moral concern in the public sphere.

For an example of the sort of scholarship that is an effort at a Sartrean "totalization" and still a revolutionary work, see Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories, 2003), pp. 60-83. The Jena 6 case should call out for resolution and protest. It should infuriate all of us that such grotesque travesties of justice take place in America. ("America's Holocaust" and "Foucault, Rose, Davis and the Meanings of Prison.")

Senator Obama's candidacy and (now) presidency is inspirational not only because America's language of political symbols is already altered and enriched by Obama's mere presence on the scene, but also because Obama is the only political figure who understands that suffering humanity lives, thrives, or dies on the basis of possibility, what Tennessee Williams describes in "The Glass Menagerie" as the long hoped-for "something" that keeps us going. Ernst Bloch's humanistic Marxism may be brought into relation with the writings of liberation theologians on this question of hope. President Obama is no lightweight on philosophical matters, displaying a theoretical sophistication not equalled by any rival in this election, with the exception of Hillary Clinton in the primaries:

" ... not only art but philosophy -- and especially the latter -- has consciously to bear the responsibility of prefiguration, and the prefiguration at that of an objectively real appearance, of the world of process, of the real world of hope itself. Furthermore, the latter remains uniquely based in matter -- in something that is certainly mobile in a polymorphic and not stereotyped manner; in that-which-is-in-accordance-with-possibility, and as such has a duly determinative effect, and in that-which-is-in-possibility, and as such has a substantively opening effect. To perceive this genesis is the function of philosophy. Its new shape is the dialectically aimed, systematically open, vista into matter as it takes tendential form.

On Karl Marx (New York: Herder, 1971), at p. 43 (emphasis in original).

You can live with almost anything if you still have your future, the future as potentiality. Once that future is taken from you, then you are already dead. Physical disintegration then becomes only a matter of waiting for the inevitable. Persons in such a condition are living in limbo. Prison? Frustration tactics used against me -- insertions of identical "errors" in these essays dozens or more times -- are attempts to take away all that is left to a still struggling and dissenting intellectual, hope. It ain't gonna happen. (Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me'" and "'The Prisoner': A Review of an AMC Television Series," then "Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")

The real reason to do such an unspeakably evil action as to "deny hope to the hopeless" is delight in cruelty, unconvincingly rationalized with a patina of political rhetoric. Fascists (like Miami's Cubanoids) believe nothing -- except, perhaps, for the efficacy of cruelty. Keep your eyes on further defacements of this essay. ("Today's Cuban Revolutionaries Are on the Internet" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")

The works of Professor Angela Davis should be required reading in U.S. law schools because one of her subjects is the way that racism in prisons -- which is reflected in every aspect of prison life -- is an instantiation of the pervasive and more subtle racism and sexism in society. Much the same is true in courts. There is a substantial literature called "Critical Race Theory" (CRT), which is associated with the work of scholars such as Richard Delgado. I have read several of Professor Delgado's law review articles. However, I do not feel qualified to discuss Delgado's work or CRT, unless I were to spend weeks reading to bring myself up to date. Perhaps that will be a future project.

In America, all major political issues become legal controversies sooner or later -- usually sooner -- which means that the role of courts in important civil transformations that lead to institutional changes (that is, to "new" Constitutional and social interpretations) cannot be overstated. At this point, the obligatory reference is to Karl Marx's early (1843) essay "On the Jewish Question," in Karl Marx: Early Writings (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 211.

We need to transform civil society before meaningful instrumental political reforms, new laws, will be possible or meaningful. This sounds contradictory to the standard law school product ("it's got to be one or the other!"). I am asking you to think dialectically. In fact, I am asking you to think seriously and profoundly. Most importantly, I am asking that you do what you are told not to do in American law schools -- to think originally and creatively about ultimate political and legal values.

O.K., science buffs, try "symbiosis." We need new (non-racist, non-sexist, radically egalitarian) attitudes in society to cope with our more complex world; that need should express itself in new readings or understandings of the Constitution; these new understandings of our Constitutional relations may then lead to more profound changes in society, giving rise (again) to new needs and attitudes. The process will never end. Revolutions are always "unfinished." (See "Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")

If there is such a thing as a forum in the U.S. where ideas and Dworkinian "principles" (I think I just made up the word "Dworkinian") are SOMETIMES debated, as opposed to pragmatic compromises ("deals") being struck, it must be in law courts and not the legislative or executive branches. As moronic as some legal arguments are, any appellate court is Plato's Academy compared to legislatures and local government. If we hope to encourage a meaningful debate on fundamental moral-political values -- on what America is or means today -- my guess is that it will take place only in the courts and with reference to our always new understandings of the Constitution. Such a debate will be meaningful only if everyone is invited to participate. Jurgen Habermas is a source here, as is Ronald Dworkin's discussion of "The Forum of Principle."

To borrow from Hegel, American law and the courts (heaven help us!) have become the societal equivalent of the third movement in Hegel's dialectic, seeking to make use of some of the best features of the political branches and yet to "do the right thing," in Spike Lee's terms. Law and judges provide the "resolution at a higher stage" of the contradictions of both the executive and legislative branches. If there is to be a hope of resolving these contradictions -- in what is now a viciously divided society -- then it can only happen in the courts, because it is certainly not going to happen elsewhere in government. The political branches are just too responsive to popular pressures and a little thing called "money" to be able to heal the wounds in America's national psyche today. Maybe judges are sold-out too. I said if there is a "hope of resolving these contradictions." The key word in that last sentence is "hope."

The next time you see a judge, walk up to him or her and say: "You are aufheben." Then run. And no, I am not "running" anywhere. Anyone who wants to "get" me, should know where to find me. "What is aufheben? And does it involve a sexual act?" Don't worry, boys and girls, this is not on the bar exam. Compare Walter Dean Myers, Malcolm X -- By Any Means Necessary (New York: Scholastic, 1993) with Mumia Abu-Jamal, Live From Death Row (New York: Avon, 1996).

To suggest that imprisonment of these men -- Malcolm and Mumia -- had nothing to do with politics is absurd. Racism as a motivation for their incarceration is obvious. Given recent incidents of black rage that are all too understandable and the puzzled commentary of experts, a discussion of the conditions bringing about this social reality and response from individuals is desperately needed. I plan to write an essay on this worrisome topic.

Thank goodness that on "Good Morning America" today Mr. Stephanopoulous expressed concern for the homeless by showing a video of a homeless man seeking a job. This concern is so touching and quite rare. The hosts were charmed and amused by the homeless individual's video efforts that produced a chuckle from them.

II.

Aufheben is best defined by Frank Ramsey in his Foundations of Mathematics, pp. 115-116:

"The truth lies not in one of the disputed views but in some third possibility which has not yet been thought of, which we can discover by rejecting something assumed as obvious by both the discussants." ("John Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness.")

In this sense, judges may yet provide some "truth" for the rest of us. How about this truth? We must never torture or enslave people in America. Robert C. Solomon, "Hegel's Epistemology," in From Hegel to Existentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 17. I am not surprised that, among his first official actions, President Obama listed the closing of the Guantanamo prison. I am confident that, eventually, most of the men tortured at that facility will be released because they were never involved in terrorism in the first place. Those released victims of American torture may now become the terrorists we fear and have made them into. ("American Doctors and Torture.")

Accompanying and introducing this essay, I have provided a picture of a conversation between Ernesto "Che" Guevara -- someone with whom I disagree as to the scope of legitimate State power -- and Jean Paul Sartre, whose work I admire much more. That image was blocked. I have replaced it with another photo of Guevara. This image will also be blocked. My ability to post images, together with my access to MSN has been obstructed. I find myself making the same correction in this essay ten or more times. Frustration tactics? ("How Censorship Works in America.")

This use of images and present focus has nothing to do with whether I agree with Che. It is a protest against censorship and cyberstalking, even when such crimes take place under the protection of corrupt politicians from New Jersey or Florida. I do this mostly to infuriate those members of the Cuban exile community in the U.S. who fail to appreciate what is free speech even as they speak of bringing "democracy" to other places. Efforts by such persons with political protection to destroy these writings are an example of the opposite of democracy. You cannot defeat an argument with brutality and violence or the threat of violence. Threatening me with physical harm is not a response that proves me wrong. In fact, just the opposite. If it is true that my writings are being read in Cuba and that an effort is underway to publish writings that are suppressed within the U.S. in Havana, then I am very grateful for the attention. (One letter was deleted from the foregoing sentence since my previous review of this work.)

In case you have not figured me out yet, as a non-Communist who is a democratic socialist concerned to protect civil liberties, allow me to be clear: There are more important things than living a long life or personal survival, like "speaking truth to power" (Malcolm X) and fighting for what one believes. No one is going to prevent me from doing that. In fact, it is because I claim the right to such FREE speech that I love and live in this society. These beliefs make me "unethical" in New Jersey. You decide who is unethical. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")

You will spend weeks trying to find a single judge in New Jersey who is competent or not a political whore subject to influence by the boss system. Good luck with that effort. Sending off-duty real estate lawyers to threaten me with physical harm will not affect my views or their expression on-line. Inserting "errors" in my writings after attacking my computer will not help you. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")

As a critic of human rights violations in Cuba, I have no doubt that I would have been imprisoned or executed if I were on the island in 1960; I also have no doubt that exactly the same would have happened to me under Batista; and if the Right-wing fanatics -- often my fellow Cuban-Americans -- in Miami or New Jersey were to govern anywhere, exactly the same fate awaits me should I be unfortunate enough to find myself in their power.

Publication of my writings in Cuba may indicate a greater willingness to discuss ideas in that society today than exists in Union City, New Jersey. The levels of corruption and complicity with organized crime on the part of Cuban-American politicians makes any hopes for such people ridiculous. Cubans are much better off with what they have than with what such so-called "leaders" in New Jersey or Florida can possibly offer them. This would be a good time to insert another "error." ("Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?" and "Is Senator Bob 'For' Human Rights?")

There is no doubt in my mind that New Jersey's legal system and politics are more corrupt and hypocritical than anything in the Cuban system today. The only reason that the tortures and rapes to which I have been subjected by N.J. have not resulted in my fraudulent imprisonment or death is probably public attention. The lowlifes observing these events and doing nothing are as culpable as the cybercriminals. This includes Ms. Milgram and her minions. I wonder why the number of hits at my blogs has not changed? Sabotage? 1 out 3 hits are counted? Or is it less than that? ("Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")

People forget that today's leading Cuban dissident and philosopher, Elizardo Sanchez, is also a self-described "democratic socialist." Professor Sanchez is Cuba's Noam Chomsky. It may be that my experience in the U.S. is worse than what Professor Sanchez has endured in Cuba. My primary emotion in reacting to the daily vandalisms of my writings is embarassment that persons in the Cuban-American community can be so stupid, also that American politicians and jurisdictions can be so corrupt. ("Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics.")

Cuba is transitioning into a more democratic and open society, despite the attempts to obscure this truth on the part of Cubanazos with political power. I think we should encourage that transition and be a part of healthy changes in Havana now, before we are made more irrelevant by other nations (like China). I refer to changes not only to Cuba's possible future, but also to the destiny of Latin America. Positive change is what matters, not your opinion of Fidel Castro. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")

We are being edged out of power and influence in Latin America by other nations whose diplomatic skills exceed our own "tactics" for winning hearts and minds. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")

I offer the same disdain and defiance to the "puppet masters," pulling strings behind the scenes in New Jersey's smoke-filled and foul-smelling back rooms, where all deals are cut concerning who gets what for next year -- not to mention who steals what in the legal and political system -- right before the hacks go on the judicial bench in order to speak to others of "ethics" and "legality." If you are an American, living anywhere in this country, New Jersey's legal and political system should sicken you. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "We don't know from nothing.")

I distinguish between hacks and real judges. The key criteria in making this distinction is fearlessness in upholding the rights of the least fortunate and privileged litigants. Fearless protection of rights is something (sadly) I have not seen lately in many state courts. I say this as efforts are still being made to obstruct my writings. Anybody heard of the First Amendment?

Jurisprudential imagination is desperately needed to reinterpret our great Constitution so that it will address, in a meaningful way, the need for social justice and freedom of a people now burdened with crushing economic suffering and spiritual deprivations. I am referring to Americans.

Only one new "error" since my review this morning? That's good. Spacing between sentences and paragraphs will be altered by New Jersey's whores on retainer. I am thinking of referring to Senator Menendez as "the Prostitute." ("Senator Bob Struggles to Find His Conscience" and "New Jersey Mafia Culture in Law and Politics" then "Abuse and Exploitation of Women in New Jersey.")

What is a spiritual deprivation? Widespread and trendy nihilism, for a start, also denials of education to people who cannot pay for it because too much public money has been stolen by political leeches. Clear enough? Our contemporary "Search for a Method" (see Sartre's Preface, first published as "Search for a Method," in the Critique of Dialectical Reason) in American politics and jurisprudence still comes as news to many judges. Jean Paul Sartre, Search for a Method (New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1963).

Compassion and some common sense or shared humanity, as well as solidarity with fellow human beings is required from New Jersey's judges, for example, who are often found chuckling and guzzling Champagne at black tie dinners -- provided at public expense -- as persons who are "detained" and not convicted of any offense are tormented by ferocious dogs, beaten, raped and tortured, even murdered in the state's jails, or maybe tortured in their homes. Those who have been tortured or otherwise violated, "for their own good" in New Jersey will not go away. I will not go away. (See "Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Jaynee La Vechia and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

Judges are often surprised to discover that they are not universally admired. Ruthless though they can be, judges are mere human beings, "who excrete and yearn," like the rest of us, "suffering sometimes from insomnia and insecurity." (Christopher Hitchens) "They are also vain in the extreme, and often wish to be liked almost as much as they desire to be feared." The intensity of hatred directed at such officials -- often with good reason -- should worry you. No objective observer of New Jersey's legal system will fail to appreciate the impossibility of legitimacy in so corrupt a setting. Persons deserve better that what that terrible place has to offer by way of a court system. The very sight of the people growing rich on taxpayers' money in New Jersey should be revolting to all of us. ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court" and "New Jersey's Legal System is a Whore House.")

The cultivation of feelings by judges is not something to be discouraged, but a necessity. There is no non-emotive form of legal cognition. All legal reasoning is evaluative and in that understanding of the term which relates it to public values, therefore, political. This is not to suggest that legal decision-making is "relative," "non-objective," merely "subjective," so that time and effort must be spent pretending that judicial opinions are deductions from a priori premises. The time for the sort of rubric that insisted that: "It is nothing personal," or that "the" law MECHANICALLY "requires" only one result, is over. (Compare "America's Holocaust" with "Driving While Black [DWB] in New Jersey.")

This has nothing to do with whether there is a right answer to each legal dispute. I am arguing for such right answers. Positivist legal analyses are now known -- even by the general public -- to be nonsense. The violation of a person's rights and denigration of any individual's humanity is always "personal." Legal reasoning is merely a branch of political and moral thinking. Nevertheless, it can be objective and yield truths. There is and can be no excuse for New Jersey's jurisprudential reality. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

Unlike Rawlsian or Kantian philosophy, legal reasoning is not best thought of as "pure" abstract reasoning because: 1) there is always a specific case to decide (remember the "case or controversy" requirement in Supreme Court jurisprudence?); and 2) there are always relevant and pre-exisiting legal materials to consider. Reasoning in terms of principles that "fit" a tradition (Dworkin, Fried) is indeed relevant at the point when courts seek to elaborate their own answers to legal conundrums in a fashion that renders coherent both particular decisions -- that means "cases" -- and the system as a whole.

Notice, again, that spacing between paragraphs will be affected regularly in this essay by New Jersey's hackers. This is one of their favorite tricks, which they find amusing, despite the violations of the Constitution and copyright laws. ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?")

You still with me law school graduates? I hope so. Ask the philosophy majors for some help, if you get lost. If courts will engage in social legislation for the "public good" (as defined by them), which they may have to, then please do so intelligently, with a frank acknowledgment of the emotive and value basis underlying legal reasoning as well as your "alleged" reliance on authoritative legal materials.

Be honest, if you are a judge, about the politics at the heart of the judicial enterprise. Be welcoming of non-traditional contributions from interested third parties in society, say, parties filing amicus briefs on behalf of the Constitution. Admit your politics and value choices because we can tell what they are anyway. Do not offer a smoke screen for yet another level of obfuscation and denial of legal justice to oppressed masses, who are stuck with the courts as the only protection we have against the abuse of power by government. Do not become only another level of oppression. If there is a jurisprudential or political equivalent of what theologians call a "salvific mission," then it rests with judges in American society. Scary, huh? ("Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory.")

Judges must be good at formulating and applying legal principles (requiring an INDIVIDUALIZED focus), at an abstract level, but they must also keep an eye on the policy impact of decisions (which requires a social or COLLECTIVE focus), balancing a need to protect freedom and rights -- which is primary -- with the responsibility to protect the public or common good, that is, to foster social equality. The most important way in which the public must be protected is by having each person's rights guaranteed, individually. If you agree, then direct your demand for both freedom and equality, for justice with civil liberties, to the tainted courts that most need to hear it:

http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/supreme/images/justices.jpg ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court" and "New Jersey's Political and Judicial Whores.")

In reading the tepid and forgettable legal prose churned out by appellate tribunals in America (which is deemed, for some reason, to be "good" writing in the legal academy) one is struck by the lack of affect and heavy-handed abstractness in discussions of legal controversies that reveal -- to those with the technical training to see it -- the blood and sinews of U.S. society. This revelatory power in case law is something which cannot be admitted by judges. Discussions of the death penalty are notable in this regard. Such discussions focus on everything except race and economic desperation, which is the crux of the issue. Take another look at my citations to the work of the important philosopher of law and politics, Angela Y. Davis and also, "Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Unconstitutionality of the Death Penalty." Francis Wheen, Marx's Das Kapital (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006). (Law as "instrumental" or superstructural to the economic-power base and also, in postmodernist Marxism, as "constitutive" of social realities.)

One senses intellectual mediocrity and smugness in judges, absence of passion ("isn't absence of passion a good thing?"), and lukewarm commitment to an enterprise that is concerned with life and death, freedom and justice, punishment and redemption. Context is all. To ask for compassion and intelligence from writers of such dismal legal prose may well be a doomed enterprise. Yet there is no alternative. Dispassionate, cool "legal" rationality may be a virtue; inhumanity is not. In confronting Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, judges did not engage in creative tax accounting, rule-mongering, or policy anaysis, they spoke of justice and freedom, of human dignity, and of what the very idea of law will not tolerate with regard to the treatment of a person. I am not a slave. I am not a laboratory animal. Even minority attorneys who are solo practioners challenging the system should be considered persons. If you will be wearing black robes today, then think of what you have become ... and of what you are supposed to be, even in New Jersey. Get it, Stuart Rabner? ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Maurice J. Gallipoli and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

Among the concepts that may be helpful to the sort of argument I am sketching for a revolutionary understanding of legal method, is Professor Unger's work on "deviationist doctrine and argument," as set forth in his essay on CLS. In speaking of the disenchanted "serious law student" with a philosophical and moral-political vocation, Professor Unger says:

"The individual who has undertaken this spiritual itinerary [a life in law] cannot easily regain the faith in a world in which justification comes from the good faith performances of well-defined roles, a world in which the system of roles is itself taken as the outward manifestation of an authoritative moral or even cosmic order. Without either that faith or its successful replacement by the idea of a transformative vocation, work appears as a mere practical necessity, robbed of higher significance or effect. Apart from the pleasures of technical intricacy and puzzle solving, it becomes solely a means to material comfort and an incident, if you are lucky, to domestic felicity or personal diversion." ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")

One either becomes a slave to money and sexual conquests, to status and the grovelling tribute of fellow professionals -- as many American lawyers and judges do -- or one comes to accept a devotion to political change, which is more important than professional status, by becoming a true advocate (maybe for the first time) for those without representation in this broken and wounding legal system. I am thinking of New Jersey. Look at the final paragraph of Unger's essay and visualize that state's befouled Supreme Court, not to mention the Garden State's political bosses (Boss Bob) secretly running the lives of the "little people":

"When we came, they were like a priesthood that had lost their faith and kept their jobs. They stood in tedious embarassment before cold altars. But we turned away from those altars and found the mind's opportunity in the heart's revenge."

"O.K.," my friends in the tax department of a local corporate law firm say, but "is all of this practical"? My response is: Where do you want the argument about fundamental values in America to take place -- because it is certainly coming, given the high level of frustration and anger people feel -- in the streets, violently, with riots? Or would you prefer that discussion to take place in a forum where rationality and persuasion are the weapons of struggle? Let us begin by foresaking violence, censorship, and all attempts at destroying the communicative efforts of others. Has spacing been affected in this essay, again?

I am "for" argument and debate (even feisty debate), just as I am always against terrorism, violence, torture, rape or abuse of any kind, even when it is sanctioned, secretly, by apologists for the State in black robes. Censorship is always wrong. Debate does not have to mean a discussion taking place exclusively in the bland language of privileged, upper middle-class whites (by which I mean all persons, whatever their ethnicity or race, who "choose" such a conformist identity). Rather, the conversation concerning who we are now, as a people, should allow for wit and anger, demonstration and performance. Poetry, literature and philosophy must be welcome at today's debates concerning the politics of the future. ("American Courts Must Not Condone Torture.")

In the choice of companions, I am astonished to find that -- in my forties, when I expected to be anywhere but where I am, much more as I turn fifty -- I prefer the company of oppressed people to that of their oppressors, of the poor (like me) to well-fed and successful "professionals," making the big decisions and staring at their plasma television sets, while wearing black ties or fancy gowns. Maybe wearing both. They say that God or the universe has a wicked sense of humor. I am beginning to believe it. Unger says:

"To live in history means, among other things, to be an active and conscious participant in the conflict over the terms of collective life, with the knowledge that this conflict continues in the midst of the technical and everyday. We teach this by pushing the negative lessons to the extreme point at which they start to become constructive insights."

Unger concludes:

" ... in a world of broken dreams and paper pushing, of abstractions that have long ceased to be living theory and that, once routinized and mutilated turn into the guiding principles or the empty slogans of forms of social practice to which they lend the spurious semblance of sense, authority, or necessity ... The conventional concept of revolution combines at a minimum the notion of basic if not total change in the formative context of routine social life with the idea of more or less widespread participation in the remaking of a social order that the state has temporarily ceased to control. In the ruling traditions of historical and critical social theory and in the vulgar beliefs that these traditions have inspired, [for me, non-violent] revolution [within the structures of American Constitutional jurisprudence] appears as the best hope of real social change, the only clear alternative to the endless reproduction of society through reformist tinkering or to its slow and obscure remaking through the accumulation of an enormous number of largely unrelated decisions and conflicts."

The Critical Legal Studies Movement, pp. 112-114.

Perhaps similar approaches are needed at the international level, not resorts to military invasions or "cruel embargos." (Fidel Castro's latest speech at the United Nations.) This may be an argument for the U.S., finally, to join the community of nations in supporting an International Criminal Court and strengthened human rights tribunals.

Does Cuba support the International Criminal Court? The responsibility for resolving fundamental social conflicts -- in a manner consistent with our deepest values -- rests, first, with judges ... and then, maybe, with all of us. Judges must remember: "No justice, no peace."