"From the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force…Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds."[see* below]
My Dear Maxine [4/22/99],
About the news today oh boy…
I was talking with one of the women from the "Suitcase Clinic" about Faulkner's Light in August a few weeks back (I'd told her to email me and I'd help her with her English assignment, as she was "creative metaphor" making herself "humble in the eyes of God" by washing the feet of the homeless)…
She dinna like the novel-it turns out, chatting with her in person again-as the protagonist, "J.C.," was difficult for her to understand…(She wondered, too, what I saw in the book; in particular the "violence" which she felt was "glorified")…I had to think back, as I'd read the book in my Graduate Fiction Seminar with John Gardner-he'd used the example as a "challenging" way of how one could "ennoble" oneself through "creative metaphor"; i.e., a "son of a [white] country preacher" as himself might, according to the standard preconceptions, "take offense" at the symbolic use of what some of the Judeans derisively called "The Great White Rabbi," now known more reverently as "The Christ Himself," when the latter became (through Faulkner's imagination) a poor Southern blackman driven, through societal irrationality, to commit murder…
Not having read the book in almost twenty years at this late date, I proffered a "cold interpretation" of the matter being a "Southern Gothic tragedy," only to have the term not help in the least due to the modern "Goth" scene of these "black trenchcoat/vampire cult/Hitler admirers" like the kind who-a short while later-eerily left one's violent graffitti "mark" in a world "not of our making" …
The point of Faulkner's "difficult" writing style (the oft over-used "stream-of-consciousness"), I explained to her-bright, inquisitive, sincerely wishing to know-was to portray a "decaying society" in which, like the British and the "keep a stiff upper lip, old boy," people trade niceties back-and-forth-
-even though perhaps each has endured something horrifying in one's life, yet, according to the "local custom or policy," the matter must remain "unspoken"…What Faulkner was making use of in his writing, I suggested, was how these matters (my poem "John the Gardener," written admittedly a bit piquantly about my writing mentor, is a good example: There's a plague in the garden!, you shout…[returning Time after Time] until you sigh, and say/Yes/this too…) Victorianishly "repressed" nonetheless burst forth, i.e., the pouring forth of all those words of protest …Still, the matter, at that late date, having whizzed by the "Merely Dramatic" stop on that right-on-time! creaking behemoth of a subway train and wound up instead at "Truly Tragic" (a stop a wee bit before, thank Heaven, the "Apocalypse Now" dead-end of the line…)
Or something like that (i.e., in this instant case only, I'm paraphrasing my earlier words)…
______________________________
* Matthew 11:12,19 (The New Oxford Annotated Bible, with the Apocrypha (Oxford U. Press, 1994 rev.ed.), with a footnote: "The violent are the eager, ardent multitudes" [I would argue the Zealots, the Roman agent provocateurs who stirred up "revolutionary" riots, and then, as in the "dark clouds of dust" of "ill rumour" described as having "engulfed the Christ [before His crucifixion]," the "Letter from Two Essene Brethern Regarding the Disappearance of The Christ," reputedly to one "Philo of Alexandria" [Egypt, a "Therapeut" healing sanctuary], the "simple" perpetrators disappear in the confusion…
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I canna begin to tell you how truly saddened I was made at her having a look cross her face of not understanding when I attempted to explain the classical Greek use of a tragic protagonist; the "man up in the spotlight" has a "tragic flaw" in his/her otherwise "noble" character-in Faulkner's use, the same as a later "miner of the theme," Richard Wright and his "Outsider," an un-Fortuna resorting to violence as his choice of "conflict resolution"…
The fault lying not in the students, Horatio, but in the all too human "teachers" (what in the world are they explicating in academia these days…)-
best,
tom
In the noble tradition of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, PLEASE TAKE NOTICE:
-"'They talk about the (Colorado shooters) as some kind of weirdos. But they're not weirdos,' said Joe Marshall, director of the Omega Boys Club, a nationally recognized violence-prevention program based in San Francisco. 'The common thread is that these people were not taught to deal with their anger, fear and pain,' Marshall said. 'White, black-it's all the same thing. They're infected with the disease of violence.,…"
"The San Francisco Chronicle," 4/22/99, p. A5 (Years ago, when I was attempting to publish a "new journalism" piece on the "[candycane scene] and the damage done," I "very distinctly remember" the "East Bay Express" Editor, John Raeside, turning down my piece after not only his being told that I was "just an undercover cop/white racist doesn't understand 'bout rock being blackman's dove of liberation [in the exact goddamned res gestae of that FBI "paid informant" Herr "Spikie/Nikie" Lee], but too, his being "threatened with violence" is he ran it…The piece "not bad," if my memory serves me correctly-though admittedly a decade ahead of its time-as I interviewed an "Omega Boys Club" representative, an African-American man using words much the same as this quotation, and, ironically enough, urging me not to be too hard on the po-po (the O.P.D. Task Force(s), several of whose members I also interviewed for the sake of "media fairness"), as he gave me examples of "cops on the beat"-white, married-with-children types, who donated "time and money" for weight training equipment, basketball and soccer leagues …)
-"I want to write about the music I grew up with and that the world grew up with. But mainly, you know, what I set out to do was write a love story. And I think why I wanted to do that is that one of the reasons I've survived for the past 10 years is because of the love that I've been shown-by friends and, indeed, by strangers. Nobody gets through a thing like this alone…"
"Rushdie Unplugged," an interview with Salmon Rushdie, "The New York Times Book Review,"4/18/99, p. 8..(from a review of his new novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, by Michael Wood: "Much wonderful fiction runs parallel to reality, if we take reality (for the moment) to mean the material world inhabited by live human beings, and some fiction simply usurps reality's space. But there are writers who specialize in the angled relation: Borges, Nabokov, Grass, Garcia Marquez, Rushdie himself. There is a speculative or satirical edge to their divergences; the country at an angle is a quizzical commentary on our own…(p. 7)").
-"Deputy Public Defender Stephen Rosen had portrayed the defendant as a dim-witted man who snapped after being scolded repeatedly by Menicous for having served a dish, poached eggs, that was not on the menu. Zayed [the defendant] testified that he was under stress before the shooting because he had lost more than $5,000 gambling….Family members said Zayed and his attorney had smeared Menicou as a tormentor, when in fact she had lent the defendant money and brought him food when he was sick. 'She was a beautiful person who sacrificed her whole life for her family,' her husband said. Giannini portrayed Zayed as a 'cold-blooded killer' who had brought a gun to work and boastfully announced his intentions beforehand to other workers…[And, the woman's murdered son added, 'the Asst. Dist. Att. prosecuting] proved him (Zayed) a liar'…"
"The San Francisco Chronicle," 4/21/99, p. A19.
-"Knight [founder of Death Row Records in Beverly Hills], a flamboyant, 315-pound former University at Las Vegas football player with an extensive criminal history, is currently serving a nine-year prison term in connection with an unrelated 1992 attack on two aspiring rappers in a Hollywood recording studio…"
"The San Francisco Chronicle," 4/21/99, "Nation".
-"A member of the rhythm and blues group Tony!Toni!Tone! filed a $1 million claim againsT the City of Oakland yesterday, alleging that he was the victim of racial profiling when he was choked by a police officer… 'I'm a man of peace, but sometimes you gotta bring the heat,' Wiggins [the musician] said…Wiggins wrote a song describing the incident, which he played for reporters yesterday. The lyrics include, 'I was breaking no law' and 'Why did you put your hands on me?'."
"The San Francisco Chronicle," 4/22/99, p. A19 -"We make it exciting. We celebrate it, ronanticize it, erotiicize it, and mass-market the weapons that bring murder within easy reach of one and all. It's nto big deal. Just pick up that handgun and drive down to the video store for a couple of exciting flicks about killing women. And if somebody cuts your car off along the way, shoot him…
"It's like that with an addiction. Nothing happens until you admit you have a problem."
"The New York Times," Bob Herbert, "Addicted to Violence," 4/22/99, P. A31.
-"A 63-year-old Sacramento area multimillionaire killed himself during the weekend rather than face charges of sexual torture and child molestation stemming from what authorities believe was a decade-long double life of depravity…AuthoritIes said they believe that Nausler [the deceased] used the woman ["described by officials as a fellow 'sex freak'"] to lure a 17-year-old girl away from a Sacramento restaurant. She was then drugged, bound to a stair rail and molested on videotape in a town house in nearby Citrus Heights. Within days of his April 13 arrest, Nausler was also linked to the videotaped molestation of a 6-year-old girl, whose mother was seen on the tape as participating…"
"The San Francisco Chronicle," 4/20/99, p. A20.
