the Night Cafe

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the

NI G H T CA F ÉMARCH 2008

Inside the Box by Marina TempelsmanWorkbox’s strangest calls of all timeMeeting Mailer by Josh Cohen!e ultimate self-created legend at the twilight of his career!e Concertmaster by Nathan WainsteinA conversation with Philadelphia playwright Michael HollingerScience of the Surreal by Eli Epstein-DeutschA museum that is truly out thereAnimal Souls by Brendan WorkExcerpts from the short storyDance Revolution by Louis JargowA new breed of Indie music!e Lost Rebellion by Eli Epstein-DeutschRevisiting an avant-garde classic of postwar French cinemaBoy vs. God by Fletcher WortmannWhere were all the dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden?

Writing

Art and Poetry

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Study #1 by Nathan WainsteinModern Synapses by Alice Xiang“Trawling” by Nicole SingerStudy #2 by Nathan WainsteinAction in Action by Robin LippBack Page by Jonathan Stafstrom

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Cover:Julie Kumar is a painter and sculptor. She lives in Boston.

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FROM THE EDITOR

T H E N IGH T CA FÉ / M A RCH 2 0 0 82

FROM THE EDITOR

V"# G$%& '"( ')*+*#% here of his newly completed master-piece, !e Night Café (La Café de

Nuit), a provocative rendering of the Café de la Gare in Paris. With violent, three-di-mensional swaths of fractured color, Van Gogh, like no artist before or probably a,er him, managed to animate the urban café as a place where contradictions come to a head, where opposing sensibilities clash like strokes of lurid red and green paint. Religiosity and squalid realism, re-pose and insanity, social awareness and escapism, mysticism and claustrophobic paranoia—all jostle within the café, or at least within Van Gogh's notional memo-ry of the café as he painted it at his coun-tryside retreat in Arles. Paul Gauguin's Night Café, a slightly later portrayal of the identical location, o-ers another, comple-mentary vision. !is one is much cooler, smokier, more contemplative—rife with melancholy and alienation but marked also by a sense of inner whimsy. !e idea of the café is still evocative. As in Van Gogh's time, a café that is open late can be a refuge for the down and out, the truly strung out, those who have reached a point in their life or their night when the only thing to do is to hunker down in a corner and wait things out with a cup of... well… unlike in Van Gogh's time, most cafés don't serve genuine absinthe, but an excess of co-ee, lack of sleep, and persistent glare of urban anonymity can become its own kind of addictive delir-ium. !e sanctuary, as well the peculiar

paranoia that comes from being in a well-lit place with seated strangers who also stumbled in from the night, is still there. For writers, the café has always had a particular signi.cance. It is a place where material is unearthed through endless conversation, or where material is pro-vided by the café's strange denizens, of which the writers are probably some of the strangest. Mostly, a café is a place a writer goes to be alone among people, as opposed to nature or books, to quietly think, or else to feverishly scribble some desperate screed or potentially inspired script. !e image is obviously part of it: in a café, writers will inevitably see themselves as writers, being seen and enacting their role in the scene, even if they know that this conceit is a bit ridiculous. Now, for instance, the writer is probably no longer scribbling a novel in longhand, but rather planning out a .rst dra, in a Microso, Word document on their MacBook Pro. And so from any distance, it is quite dif-.cult to tell whether a café-dweller fu-riously typing away is a writerly type, or merely chatting on Gmail to several quick-.ngered friends (unless you know for a fact that the café has no wireless in-ternet). !e cynical view is that the signi.-cance, or aura, of the night café has bled away, lost in the age of Starbucks and ebusiness. But to bemoan the end of an era is to miss the point: a café is and al-ways was ambiguous. !at is what we

can see from Van Gogh and Gauguin's contradictory, yet equally compelling depictions. !e café, especially at night, especially from afar, is always a place on which to project one's ideals and fears. For similar reasons, it is somewhat absurd to wax too apocalyptic about the corporatization of American co-ee ven-ues, i.e. the fact that they are almost all Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts. (Obvi-ously, Cosi, Buck's County Co-ee Co. etc. make their bids for legitimacy as well, but come on, who are we kidding?) Whatever criticisms one might level at the politics or economics of these chains, they have not spelled wholesale, undi-erentiated doom for the romance of the cafe, nor have they avoided the psychological, symbolic, and social complexities of ear-lier cafés. Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts each has its own distinct personality and function that .ts, for better or ill, into the constantly developing interplay between the café, society and (sub)urban con-sciousness. Starbucks o-ers a homogenized, well- packaged gloss on slightly alternative (i.e. slightly elite) culture, which can at least be counted on for predictable, a-bit-spici-er-than-bland pleasantness. On the other hand, Dunkin' Donuts, I would argue—at least the kind on strips or in city down-towns, the kind that is open 24 hours—may be the real heir to the 19th century "night cafés." !ese Dunkin' Donuts are places are where the indigent and bere, may go to get out of the darkness. Today,

they are the clearest manifestation we have of the sort of café where one "can ruin oneself, go mad, commit a crime," as Van Gogh put it. And for the creative or even religious impulse, the inside of a Dunkin' Donuts can be a blank, bleached-out background—a pure, /uorescent-lit here-and-now, undistinguished by geog-raphy or history—onto which imagina-tive or spiritual /ights can be projected at will. It should be recognized that Dunkin' Donuts owes this speci.c charm partly to its contrast with Starbucks, whose com-fortable ambience invariably comes with a mushy background of spoon-fed cul-ture that always feels like it is inhibiting creative thought. Local, funky, distinctive cafés may still be the most conducive to whiling away hours in conversation and debate—both integral to the café spirit. But Dunkin' Donuts has that gritty numi-nosity that is the atmospheric essence of !e Night Café. To sum up, then, or possibly to leap way ahead for lack of space, I think it is a shame that Swarthmore doesn't have a café that is open a,er midnight, into the time when a low-level delirium starts to .ll the place where dreams are supposed to be and when most really good conver-sations happen. Towards the end of my freshman year I thought about starting an actual night café, but I'm not much of an entrepreneur or food service techni-cian, so I settled for a magazine. My idea is to make it something of a sanctuary for the madness, terrible passions, contem-

plation, whimsy, and hard-boiled realism of Swarthmore students, so long as it is well-cra,ed, which !e Night Café (the painting) de.nitely is. Ultimately, I hope that this magazine might help to round out, deepen, or at least enliven this amor-phous thing we call "Swat Culture." My thought is that this may begin with a bit more of "Culture that just happens to be available at Swat." !e idea of an outward-looking maga-zine at such an inwardly focused place as Swarthmore may seem like a bit of a contradiction. But Swarthmore is full of contradictions—that seems to be its hall-mark. We are in so many ways a main-stream, establishment school, which bills itself as "quirky." We maintain a quaint, small town "community" feel, even as we are perched on the edge of a major city, .lled with urban squalor. We are evident-ly committed to squarely facing social reality, and we are designed like an arbo-real escapist hallucination. We are proud of our paci.st Quaker heritage, and (as somebody recently told me, maybe it is old news here) we invest in Lockheed Martin, the maker of ballistic missiles. I don't fault us these contradictions: I think it actually speaks to a kinship this place has with the concept, or the aes-thetic, or whatever you want to call it, of !e Night Café. I just think it means we could bene.t from engaging in a more multifaceted way with the world beyond "the bubble" (as so many of us call it), and looking critically at our relation to it. !is,

I think, should happen partly outside the sphere of our notorious "academic rigor," which, as important as it is, can lead to its own kind of complacency. It should also happen partly outside of "social criti-cism," (using theoretical terms to explic-itly dissect social relations) which can sometimes ignore important creative di-mensions even while talking o,en about aesthetics. Something more is needed. !e idea here is that publishing stu-dent encounters with the outside world in all forms—literary, artistic, scienti.c, analytic, personal—will help to achieve this aim. Issue #1's "Meeting Mailer," for instance, provokes questions about the nature of hero worship, the role of a fa-mous writer, and the meaning of literary aspirations. I hope that this and other pieces will become part of an ongoing di-alogue, both inside and outside the pages !e Night Café. Endless conversation is not only inherent in the idea of a café, but is, in the words of Professor Phillip Wein-stein, "the romance of our times." !e lo,ier ambitions I have for this magazine may take any number of issues to be realized. In immediate terms, I am just enthusiastic about working with as many creative people here as possible (es-pecially those who work in 2-dimension-al media) to improve the quality of the publication. !anks for checking us out, and I hope you'll get involved. Not just humanities majors, science and math too. It's all going down.

“I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity in red and green.”–Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother !eo

By Eli Epstein-Deutsch

Submissions of essays, reviews, sketch art, cover designs, photography, cartoons, "ction, poetry, epic poetry, plays and science writing are

welcome.

Send them to [email protected] by April 10th to be considered for the second issue.

To pitch article ideas or learn more about the magazine, send us an email or come to our meetings, Thursdays at 4:30 in Kohlberg.

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BE H I N D T H E S C E N E S

E01)2 3"2 Carolyn Vance, Work-box Coordinator of Facilities Ser-vices, receives dozens of Workbox

requests to dispatch amongst its twenty-four person maintenance sta-. Usually, these complaints revolve around clogged toilets, overzealous air conditioners, bro-ken bulbs and leaking ceilings. “Heating season” brings in twice the usual number of phone calls. But life at Workbox is only as routine as Swarthmore allows—and, as we all know, the quirky Swarthmore com-munity comes with its fair share of surprises. Amidst the routine check-ups and .x-ups, Workbox receives the occasional gem of a phone call that, in the words of one anonymous Work-box employee, “you couldn’t pay writ-ers to come up with.” In general, Workbox deals with minor technical repairs. Lightbulbs to be replaced. Cockroaches to be exter-minated. Leaks to be repaired. But as Workbox can certainly tell you, there are leaks and then there are leaks. !is was made all too clear by the /ood in Parrish a few years ago when a game of football on the third /oor was in-tercepted by a hallway sprinkler. !e sprinkler “started shooting water out, probably at about a bathtub-full a min-ute,” one employee estimated. “It leaked all the way to the basement.” Workbox has seen stranger happen-ings than that. Two years ago, Vance re-

ceived a call about a /ood in the Paces kitchen. When the Workbox crew arrived to clean the mess, they found a bizarre sight: Paces covered in three feet of soap suds. !e students working in the kitchen that night had put hand dish-washing de-tergent in the machine instead of washing machine detergent, resulting in the sea of foam for Workbox to deal with. !e dirty Paces /oor probably bene.t-ed from this mishap, so at least it wasn’t an unmitigated disaster. If only the same

could be said of the deer that broke into Willets—literally. “It went through the plate glass” said Bill Maguire. !e deer ran around Mephistos leaving behind it a trail of glass and blood before it man-aged to free itself by the time Workbox

arrived. Yes, Workbox is responsible for exter-minating or removing animals when they try to commune with the student body, but when a handful of students tried to commune with nature by moving to the Crum, Workbox had to interfere once again. !e two students brought their bed-room furniture along with them, said Vance, and they set up camp along the Crum Creek. When the students were

found out, Workbox was responsible for contacting the moving depart-ment that restored the furniture to its rightful place. (Apparently, Vance ex-plained, “dorm furniture has to stay in dorms.”) Swarthmore students keep Workbox busy throughout the year, but primetime for student antics is, of course, April Fools Day. A,er Swarth-more students create chaos on cam-pus, Workbox is typically responsible for returning everything to normal. Sometimes students are merely shoot-ing for a simple acknowledgement of their prank. But when students put thirty feet of railroad track in the Ad-

missions O4ce about .,een years ago, Workbox had its work cut out for them. “!at’s eighty pounds a yard,” said one employee. “It was brought outside and stuck on a bulldozer.” Unfortunately, this headache of a

INSIDE THE BOX

by Marina Tempelsman

As the Swarthmore maintenance staff can tell you, not all problems can be fixed with a toolbox. A look at Workbox’s strangest calls of all time.

BEHIND THE SCENES / POETRY

prank was fairly inconspicuous. !e hard work that went into the railroad track prank could only be appreciated by a handful of administrators and the Workbox crew responsible for removing it. Slightly less discreet was the occasion where students li,ed the Adirondack chairs from Parrish Beach and placed them in the trees around McCabe. But the golden standard for all April Fools pranks re-mains, arguably, the clothes-line students somehow strung up between the top of Clothier and the top of Parrish, com-plete with two hundred feet of panties. What’s more, they managed to do this in a very small time frame: “between nine and ten-thirty in the morning,” one employee es-timated. And the sight alone wasn’t the end of the prank: when Workbox climbed to the roof of Parrish to remove the clothes-line, students padlocked the door behind them. “We were locked up on the roof,” says !ayer with a laugh. Of course, they

had their radios with them and were able to call in for help. !ayer and the other Workbox em-ployees took the prank extremely well. “It was in the spirit of good play,” !ayer

explains. “We were in no danger at any time.” But, of course, Workbox pride wouldn’t let the students get away with the prank scott-free: a,er the incident, Parrish students mysteriously found themselves without hot water for the en-tire weekend. A,er all, explained Vance, “You don’t mess with facilities.” (Although, “We’re

very nice normally,” Bill Maguire said.) While !ayer never felt endangered over the course of the prank, he was con-cerned about the safety of the students themselves. Another employee shared

Ralph’s concern. “!ere was stu- where if [the students] slipped, you’d have seen it on the national news,” he said. “For a while, that’s why they started putting the Adiron-dack chairs out a#er April Fools.” !ese quirky phone calls can bring with them massive repair jobs. (As a ref-erence: nighttime strolls on the top of Sharples typically cost the college $1,500 to re-

pair damaged tiles.) But Carolyn Vance and the other Workbox employees enjoy the absurdity. “One of the really good ones comes once a month,” says Vance. “It’s comic relief during the day.” Workbox takes the quirks of their job with grace. “We love our job,” says Vance. “Everyone here loves working here.”

I. PARRISH PARLOR

Here is the dewy patchingOf pasture-white and apple-goldGarlands for the crickets, nightbirds,!e swish of dark hair outside,Reading lamps like hot liquidIn the cup on the table, brimming.

She walks so,ly, the dark,On a bed of leafy grass Curtainfolds for a canopy,!e sparkling noise of the clockIs a scent reclaimed.

Grandfather, of ocean robesWatches from the wall the lawn-slope,High deep windowpanesBeyond—the rushing night.

P OE T R Y

STUDY #1By Nathan Wainstein


E S S A Y

MEETING MAILER

(Or, the Evil of Banality)

By Josh Cohen

In which the young writer encounters the ultimate self-created legend at the twilight of his career.

ESSAY

Q: Do you know what you’re going to write about before you start, or does it just come to you?

A: No.Q: How do you choose the names of your characters?A: Gin.Q: What do you think of our president?A: Shit.

November 2, 2006, Montgomery Country Community College’s 11th Annual Writers’ Club Conference, Q & A with Norman Mailer (condensed and cherry-picked)

MEETING NORMAN MAILER was exactly what you would imagine. No human being has ever so ful.lled my expectations—for example, I expected him to use

the word “cunt,” and he did, in adjectival form1. !e readily banal evil of the word “cunt,” so e-ective in its barroom base-ness, should be expected of Mailer. A,er all, the writer, who was eighty-three when I faced him, must have been work-ing from a routine .ne-tuned by some sixty years of meeting people whose expectations were formed, for the most part, by facts about Mailer that came from Mailer himself. My expec-tations, then, were not only exactly what you’d imagine—they were exactly what he had imagined. !at is, being the source of the rumor, Mailer was preternaturally keen to every hope I had for him. !e scriptedness of our meeting is what enabled him to deliver 100%.

And yet, still, it was thrilling. I mean: there he sat, arms up, hands holding the edges of a leather chair, leonine as hell, eyes more watery than blue but, still, irrefutably twinkling—and whatever he said, it was a rush, in that sinking sublime way, because you were being made a partner in the realization of a contract drawn up in an imaginary realm.

WE —NORMAN MAILER, BOB LUCID2, ADAM HASLETT ’92, AND ME—sat at a small table next to the bar in the Blue Bell Inn and had a nightcap. We had been in

the Inn for a dinner held for Mailer, who, along with Adam, was serving as a name for Montgomery County Community College’s 11th Annual Writer’s Club Conference. Twice during dinner Adam had asked Mailer if he was game for a drink; twice Mailer had responded, we’ll see. But when we sat down to drink—before that, actually, since Mailer ordered by gen-tly grabbing the waitress’s arm on our way in and whispering

in her ear—it didn’t seem like it had been anyone’s idea but Mailer’s. Mailer had a way of taking control. Once he became the sun, the system erased any memory of a system prior, or al-ternate, to this one. We had been sitting, had folded our hands together, when Mailer suddenly yelled across the room: Julie, make that three more—the same! As in, on a feigned second thought, he decided to include us in his drink. It was wound-ing. But then, as Mailer grinned and stretched his arms up-ward like a little boy, the hurt gave way to this welcome, re-demptive sense of the uncanny, like really we’d just been sitting with Marcel Marceau and it had taken him this long to mime. Mailer had been—and would be—having us, and it was easier to believe you wanted this of the man than to let the symbolic violence of Mailer’s cruelty really register. !e whiskey he chose was cruel, too. We know: writers, whiskey—but we don’t consider speci.cs, or experience. Mail-er, for example, drinks blue label like it were Nefertiti’s breast milk. First, he apologized—with the most sincerity I saw that night—for taking his with ice. !en, he drank; then, you drank; and then the drink vibrated your buccal nerve before you even swallowed (which meant, Mailer explained, that one ought to hold her for a while). When you swallowed, the drink le, a hot trail down your stomach lining, and when it sat, .nally, you felt stronger. !is was a whiskey you never had—but then, what else would you have with Norman Mailer? Invert Hegel: the extraordinary was ordinary.

!e whiskey was good for .,een minutes of silence, dur-ing which Mailer sucked in and stored the room’s souls. He swiveled his small, distinguished head on its /esh mantle in a way that could only be described as taking stock; he made a sick geriatric clicking, his lower lip trembled, and close-up you could tell: only the eyes weren’t dying. !e eyes, though, were all the man needed. And when, by the third round, the conversation started, we—more me, since Adam really seemed to regard Mailer as no one—were so much Mailer’s that all that unfolded therea,er seemed to emanate right from his chest. It was hard to shake the sense of being part of some writer’s tradition, even if mine was a fundamentally interchangeable role in the historical concatenation.

LIKE MOST godly men, Mailer was obsessed with Satan and his minions. He started it when he invited two mid-dle-aged blonde women who were sitting at a table ad-

This was a whiskey you never had—but then, what else would you have with Norman Mailer?

1 He explained that his second wife, Adele Morales, was being a “cunty automaton” at the party during which Mailer would stab her with a penknife.2 !e U. Penn professor, Mailer’s best friend and biographer, whose jowls touched his shoulders and who, despite the heavy eyelids near covering his pupils, only

had eyes for Norman, and who died two days later.


ESSAY

jacent to ours to join us. By then, the thought was not beyond me: these blondes had been planted by a Mossad-like P.R. .rm working for Mailer from Blue Bell’s basement. !eir be-ing there wasn’t enough, either—worse, the women responded to Mailer’s invitation with the sort of B-movie submissiveness that unimaginative critics call unrealistic. !e unrealism went beyond Mailer’s wattle and objective 83 years—as was immediately made clear by the blinking blank-ness with which Mailer’s beckoning was obeyed, the women didn’t know the name “Norman Mailer,” nor who this white-haired man handling his cane thought he was. !is thrilled Mailer (It makes sense: his elation was the inverted joy of the

unknown artist who .nds someone that knows him)—and it inspired him, too. With a sly sidelong glance, he implicated Adam, me, and Bob, and then, closing his eyes as if looking for a child’s gi,, Mailer pulled the then-manuscript of !e Castle in the Forest from an inside blazer pocket and, per precedent, had the two women. A demon, he explained, is narrating:

Here, I promise you, he would hold up his hand in precisely that little gesture Hitler used to employ—one prissy $ip of the wrist. It was Heinrich’s way of saying: “Now comes the meat. And with it—the potatoes!” O% he would go on a peroration. “Yes,” he would say, “incest! !is is one very good reason that old peasants are devout. An acute fear of the sinful is bound to display itself by one of two extremes: Absolute devotion to religious practice. Or nihilism. I can recall from my student days that the Marxist Friedrich Engels once wrote, ‘When the Catholic Church decided adultery was impossible to prevent, they made divorce impossible to obtain.’ A brilliant remark even if it comes from the wrong mouth. As much can be said for blood-scandal. !at is also impossible to prevent. So, the peasant looks to keep himself devout.” He nodded. He nodded again as if two good pumps of his head might be the mini-mum necessary to convince us that he was speaking from both sides of his heart.

When society is working, Hitler is the tasteless endpoint of a long conversation. !at night, however, Hitler was repeat-

edly a spark for Mailer’s ranting (as he was in !e Castle, which would be Mailer’s last novel)3. For example, when the women had le, for good for the ladies’ room, Mailer stashed away the unpublished novel. !en, poking Lucid to make him watch, he eagerly directed a question at Adam, who he had been trying to have all night: How much of the devil do you think the writer, I mean the real writer, has in him? A lot, yes; and so did Hit-ler; so much does the writer have in common with the fuhrer?4 Adam didn’t answer. But Mailer, predetermined, would go on about Hitler’s failed ambition in art school; about his consti-pation and resultant taste for aided evacuation; and, .nally, about masturbation, both .gurative and literal.

(A few years earlier, Mailer had been Jesus; his last book was to be On God. Timeless stu-. Here, though, Mailer was tapping into the twentieth century’s most famous marriage: Hitler and the Devil. !is was truly Mailer material, and you could tell by the happy glint in his eye, because while you can only kill God once, you can endlessly and freely kill, and pro.t from killing, Hitler.) When Mailer was at a rest, Adam .nally addressed him by changing the subject. Repressing a yawn, he mentioned to Mailer a conversation he and I had been having about the in-corporation of technology into contemporary .ction (about which Adam was mercifully indi-erent). “What do you think of technology…?” I started, encouraged—but Mailer, greedy to pronounce on this new subject, pounced, initiating a ri- on young women and their cell phones, shutting me up.. Yet here, .nally, it seemed Mailer was interested in me. In a stream of quietly delivered barbs (which, cruelly, carried em-bedded insights), he actually seemed to be drawing close to me. Are they all whores? He asked me about the girls at my school. My granddaughters only talk to me about shopping on the Internet. We ought to rue tangibility. Do they walk around with their stu% out and their gadgets, like—this— Like this: Mailer stood up, placed one hand on his hip, and with one prissy /ip of his wrist a-ected an accent I hadn’t heard since Clueless: like, I am totally a delicate Nazi paratrooper. !e two blondes clapped.

3 !is is Godwin’s law inverted. Also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies, the law was formed in 1990 by American attorney, Mike Godwin, and states: “As a discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

4 !is is the other way to use Hitler, which is the reductio ad hitlerum, or ad nazium. According to Wikipedia, the term, which is dog Latin for “reduction to Hitler [or Nazis]” was coined by Leo Strauss, the disputed father of neo-conservatism, in his 1950 book, Natural Right and History. It is a logical fallacy, also known as “playing the Nazi card.

It was clear that what we were getting was

Mailer doing Mailer rather than Mailer himself.

ESSAY

In this moment, feeling a new, uneasy intimacy with Mailer, a revelation snuck up on me: his performance was falling /at. Certainly, Mailer meant to vilify young women that stand on the cross-town bus gabbing into their cell phones. But it was a cheap shot. If this was classic Mailer, it was only that. At eighty-three, Mailer was sheer performance; age had emptied him of content rather than .lled him with it. Suddenly see-ing Mailer’s lower lip tremble, emitting the weak energy of a tired .ghter, as he gave us his delicate paratrooper, it was clear that what we were getting was Mailer doing Mailer rather than Mailer himself. Mailer, who called himself a “Le,-conservative” (it was part of the identity he had began to carve out for himself at my age) had had real ideas, which were simultaneously misogynistic and adolescent and deeply traditional and moral—surprising, at least. What I knew I never really liked, yet I always couldn’t help but be turned on by his obsession with authenticity, indi-viduality, the life. Now, though, with the precession of simula-cra in Mailer’s universe, his success seemed to depend on our continued investment in his performance. It was more dependent on my investment, since I was the one, performing in turn according to our contract, asking empty questions to be heard, not answered. In retrospect, it might even have looked like I was sacri.cing myself for the sake of Mailer’s myth, since these questions were the only grist to his performance. !e worst was this:

—How do you, you know, know that you are a writer?

—What’s that Mr. C?—I don’t know if I am a writer. I need, like,

con.rmation, I need to know that I’m good. (It was me playing the version of myself I feared I was; I don’t know if that made it real.)

—!en you are not a writer.

Said Mailer, looking me in the eyes, without any dramatic hesitation. Whether I had unconsciously o-ered him revenge on me for growing keen to my importance for him, or whether he had sensed my dawning perception and strategically moved in for an act of interpersonal terrorism, it was a win that sus-tained Mailer the night. Mailer was stingy with his truth, but he knew how to use it.

* * *

“I’m weary of that now. But at the time I felt as if I were sick, and attention given to me by others was my fastest cure.”

–Norman Mailer, quoted in !e Paris Review, 1961

ULTIMATELY, Mailer fed me back answers that didn’t have questions—or rather, I got emptily performative answers to my emptily performative questions. It is

a long road ahead. None of it is "nal. Follow your gut. I want to say that it was perversely triumphant to hear a man who could so much better—indeed, a man whose immortality was earned by his ability to do better with words than most all of humanity could ever do—say things like this. But most of what Mailer eventually said made me feel no way at all. !e thrill only comes now, in the writing, getting to use such useless words for something. Mailer, of course, made sure I’d have a hard time proving my disappointment. A,er drinks, I walked him and Lucid to the elevator. At this point in the night I was concerned with just how far I was going. I talked all the way, telling Mailer this, that, etc., telling him, you know, I won’t forget a word you said. Suddenly, slowly, Mailer put his cane out at 45 degrees and physically stopped me. He told me not to do that—to forget every word. He had no authority. !en he said something or other. In retrospect, it was all a diversionary set-up to this, his coup de grace: With a hand on my hanging head, Mailer said, It’s all existential, kid. And thus Mailer exacted his revenge upon me. !e advice—the warning—the platitude—whatever those words were, I can’t get rid of them. !is was Mailer’s brilliance: making statements that begged to be repeated. !e .rst time I repeated them wasn’t ten minutes a,er they were uttered, via SMS to my then-girlfriend. I didn’t say anything else, just sent her Mailer’s words. Quotation marks didn’t seem necessary, but maybe I should have used them—that is, now, I am almost nearly posi-tive that Mailer only said what he said so that I would repeat it; own it; continue him. !e purely signifying cliché: It’s all existential, kid—this is what was particularly evil in Mailer’s genius. !is, too, is what is cruelest to the reiterator, who .nds that he owns words he didn’t say, precisely because he physically says them without having said them. If he tries pass them on, tell them, purify himself, he only exaggerates his ownership, con.rms his un-originality relative to the Original. He remains solely respon-sible for his worship, even if his god turns out to have been invented wholesale in the .rst place. Here, then, the only articulable conclusion is that Norman Mailer made all of us partially responsible for his existence, such that by de.nition, his persona would always be bigger than ours.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Insults?

Send letters [email protected]


A R T

MODERN SYNAPSES

By Alice Xiang

I N T E RV I E W

P5"2*#% +&1 0*$5" was a painful experience for Michael Hollinger. “I used to get terrible anxiety

attacks before performances,” he recalled. “Playing music for me was physically tax-ing. It was lonely.” !at’s not what you expect to hear from somebody whose job demands that he spend most of his time alone in a room, but Hollinger is satis.ed with his transformation from classical violist to award-winning playwright. “I get to be a private person and a public person at the same time,” he said. “I’m happy that I don’t have to give a perfor-mance every night. I can produce in the moment, but I can make my mistakes over a long period of time.” Hollinger, whose play “Opus” .nished its o--Broadway run in September, stud-ied viola at Oberlin Conservatory. As an undergraduate he planned a double major in English and Music, but abandoned Eng-lish a,er being frustrated by the creative writing program. “I didn’t learn anything. My classes were the ‘anything goes’ kind. We would write something, talk about it,

and go home. !e problem is that then there’s no standard for what works and what doesn’t. Playwright is spelled with a ‘GH’—like shipwright, wheelwright, cartwright. It’s a practical art, a cra,. If you were to take a shipwright’s class, the teacher wouldn’t say: ‘!is is a thing called a hull. Now go make one and we’ll talk about it.’ You’d need to understand the physical principles that are at work.” Hollinger’s musical training proved more valuable. “Studying viola certainly in/uenced me. !e aural experience of a play is very important—the way that language works rhythmically. !e mere sound of words has musical qualities. !ey represent a range of pitches and dy-namics.” His knowledge of musical texts has also in/uenced the way he marks his plays. “I look at a script as a musical score, with accents, staccatos, and rests. I’m very methodical about my notation.” His attention to detail sometimes leads to trouble with actors, who are of-ten taught to disregard stage directions. At times, this helps to give clarity to a

scene—young playwrights o,en fall into the trap of “directing” each line (“CHAR-ACTER: Nervously, Pugnaciously, etc.”). But Hollinger gives a greater signi.cance to scene notation. “!e small things are really of immeasurable importance,” he said. “When you stand up from your chair to say something, for example, the simple act of standing up completely changes the meaning of what you’re say-ing. When a musician looks at a score and sees dynamic markings, tempo, rests, he doesn’t feel constrained by it. It should be the same for an actor.” Hollinger got his playwriting start in Philadelphia, where he lives now with his wife and two children. Out of college, he moved to the city in 1984. A,er .nish-ing his Masters in !eater at Villanova, he went to work as a literary manager at the now-defunct Philadelphia Festival !eater for New Plays. !e year was 1989, and the Philadelphia theater scene was burgeon-ing. Newcomers founded companies le, and right. Fledgling theaters like the Ar-den (now located at 2nd and Arch in Old

THE CONCERT-

MASTERBy Nathan Wainstein

Philadelphia local Michael Hollinger discusses the role of music in his distinguished playwriting career.


IN TERV IEW

expensive proxy from the theater’s stash. Absorbed in the action of the play, the audience rarely noticed the change. I told Hollinger that the cellist with whom I saw the play yelped in horror when the instrument was shattered. “Good,” he said, grinning. !e smashing of the violin is the most startling moment in the play. Serving as both the Lazara quartet’s namesake and

the keystone that holds the group togeth-er, the violin becomes a character of its own. In a play where unvoiced discom-forts and squabbles over dynamic mark-ings compose most of the action, the de-struction of the instrument is shocking and terrifying. “It’s something I think about with every piece,” said Hollinger. “I always ask myself, ‘What’s extremity in this play? What’s the farthest things can go?’ When you look at other plays, ‘Death of a Salesman’ requires the death of a

salesman. !en you take a play like ‘!e Glass Menagerie,’ where a glass unicorn shatters and a girl has her heart broken, and the audience knows the world has changed completely for those characters. I think that the scale of [‘Opus’] allows for small actions with great rami.cations.” “Opus” opened at Primary Stages !eater last July. It was the third of Hol-linger’s plays to be produced in New

York. Despite the visibility that city o-ers, Hollinger prefers to premiere his work in Philadelphia. “It’s great to be able to know your audience,” he said. “Here, I’m able to work where I live, to have a fam-ily.” Still, he isn’t blind to the e-ect a New York success can have on a playwright’s career. “New York is a megaphone to the rest of the world. If a play is well received in Philadelphia, one or two literary direc-tors hear about it. If it’s well received in New York, every theater in the country

.nds out, because they pay attention. It means something.” As our time drew to a close, I asked Hollinger where he sees himself in the fu-ture. “I’ve thought about doing an opera,” he said. “But opera is hard. I don’t know exactly what a New Opera is, or can be. I don’t know what the future of contempo-rary opera is. I’m not sure if there’s a place for it.”

As for the future of contemporary theater, Hollinger considers himself a classicist. “I’m heartened by the resilience of an art form that has lasted three thousand years. But I don’t look very far down the road to the future of the art form. I’ve never been interested in breaking ground, in doing something that nobody’s done before. I guess what I’ve done is look back carefully.”

“I always ask myself, ‘What’s extremity in this play? What’s the farthest things can go?’”

Abstract Study of Gauguin’s “Night Cafe”By Robin Lipp

IN TERV IEW

City) started producing world-premieres, creating room for emerging writers, and likewise for Philadelphia actors. “!is was extremely important,” said Hollinger. “Local theaters began casting experi-enced, local actors in big roles instead of just the guy at the bar.” Hollinger learned the trade by writing children’s plays and

taking occasional teach-ing jobs. In 1994, the Arden !eater produced his .rst full-length play, “An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf ” at their original home in St. Stephen’s Alley. It was the .rst of seven produc-tions at the Arden. “My relationship with the Arden developed at a time when Philly !e-ater really came into its own,” said Hollinger. “My timing was really lucky. !e Arden was .ve years old when they did my .rst play. We got to grow up together.” A revival of “An Empty Plate” is fea-tured as part of the Arden’s 20th Anniver-sary season. In the play, Victor, a wealthy American expatriate in the mode of Ernest Hemingway, walks into his private restaurant in Paris and announces that he is going to starve himself to death. At once a tragedy, a comedy, a celebration of French cooking, and a heartfelt tribute to Hemingway, the play exhibits Hollinger’s characteristic melding of genre. “When I aim for a form, I’m not entirely interested in doing exactly what the form requires. I think that the forms I work with mutate as I interpret them.” Hollinger attributes his comfort with a variety of dramatic forms to his musi-cal background. “Form is something that comes to me from music. A composer has to master all the forms—sonata, solo, symphony. It’s part of your musical ap-

prenticeship, your journey.” He is cur-rently working on two musicals—one for the Arden, the other with his Oberlin roommate—and a solo show. Despite all of this, he still .nds time to play the viola. “I still play, though not as much as I used to. Since my daughter was born, I haven’t had much time. But I love

chamber music. It may be my favorite art form in the world.” Hollinger tapped into his personal ex-perience playing chamber music when writing “Opus.” !e idea for the play oc-curred to him during his years at Oberlin. “I’d always wanted to write a play about a string quartet. I was always interested in that—exploring the musical sense of language, of instruments as characters. But I didn’t know how to go about it.” Hollinger pushed the idea to the back of his mind. He moved to Philadelphia and focused on establishing himself as a playwright. Eighteen years passed. !en a neighbor asked if he wanted to play in a string quartet that was performing at Settlement Music School. Hollinger ac-cepted. Gradually, “Opus” began to take shape. “I was tired,” Hollinger remembered. My previous play [“Tooth and Claw”] had been such a huge production—an

epic piece. I wanted the next play to be .ve people in a room talking. !at’s what ‘Opus’ is, really.” “Opus” follows the .ctional Lazara string quartet as they prepare for a tele-vised performance at the White House. It is both a dialogue-driven melodrama and an elegiac meditation on the transience of

art. “Five characters in a room with four chairs,” is how Hollinger describes it. !e play opened in January of 2006 at the Arden !eater, and opened at Primary Stages !eater in New York last summer. When I saw “Opus” at the Arden, I was im-pressed by the quiet el-egance of the script and the technical virtuosity of the performance. Despite

its small size, “Opus” pos-es a few unusual technical challenges. !e actors are required to mime playing their instruments onstage—potentially disas-trous for the actor who has never held a cello before. For the Arden production, professional string players were recruited to help the actors master the appropriate motions for their instruments. And then there is the broken violin. !e centerpiece of the plot is the Lazara violin, an 18th-century antique of inestimable value. In the .nal scene, Carl, the cellist of the Lazara Quartet, smashes the instrument onstage. Considering the average price of concert-quality instru-ments, the scene posed an interesting challenge to the director. !e Arden’s production solved the problem by simple substitution. For most of the play, the actors used an authentic handcra,ed violin. But moments before the .nal scene, when the cast runs o--stage to perform for the President, the “Lazara” violin was swapped for an in-

“Playwright is spelled with a ‘GH’–like shipwright, wheelwright, cartwright. It’s a practical art, a craft.”

Ozier Muhammad/NYT


DESTINATIONS

navigation allowed for encounters with realms beyond what the Western World had previously considered the scope of existence. Signs of this “aberrant domain” .rst began to appear through tales cir-culated by returning sailors and more crucially, in the form of objects brought back on oceangoing vessels. !ese items, which resisted classi.cation, provided the hard physical evidence of a world that lay on the other side of understanding. !e adjective “‘Patamechanical” refers to just this property of validating a reality out-side the boundaries of the common ken. Such souvenirs became the prized collectibles of “enlightened” aristocrats in the 17th century, who housed them in so-called “Wonder Rooms,” or Wun-derkammen. To magnify the prestige of their collections, these elite eccentrics soon began to display their exceptional artifacts in carefully structured ways in-tended to enhance and manipulate the viewer’s experience of them. !us the practice of museum curation arose, in an embryonic, occult form to which the ‘Pa-tamechanical Museum pays tribute. What does all this have to do with the /ashy, vertigo-inducing exhibit in the ‘Patamechanics Hall? In the strange-ness of 15th century European encounter with the New World, there is an analogy for contemporary scienti.c frontiers of perception, quantum mechanics and ge-netics. !ese are areas that continue to reveal marvels and pose challenges to the foundations of our knowledge. !ey therefore belong to the territory of ‘Pata-physics, the broad-ranging .eld of which ‘Patamechanics is but a small subsection.

!e Birth and Disappearance of ‘Pataphysics

P"+"6&2(*7( '"( 8$)# at a mo-ment when many believed the se-crets of the physical universe had

been nearly solved. !e setting was the turn of the last century, France. !e icon-oclastic writer Alfred Jarry—absinthe-sipping bicycle enthusiast, weapons-sup-plier to Picasso, puckish progenitor of the !eatre of the Absurd—coined the term ‘Pataphysics to describe the neo-scienti.c

portion of the tour,” the curator said, the array of luminous machines a portentous glimmer in his spectacles. “I won’t be able to answer any questions until things have settled down.” As the Ear-o-lin kicked up a notch, we struggled to follow our guide, who bounced nimbly through the installation with the unpredictability of a subatomic particle, rattling o- highly poetic lectures on the quantum principles and cosmic import of the ‘Patamechanical devices. !ese revealed their functions one by one in a pan-sensory display whose precision choreography incorporated Mr. Salley himself as a kind of central cog in the macro-machine of the exhibit. Most thrilling was a kind of bio-rap performance that the cu-rator delivered at one point, ably accompanied by a chorus of singing Mixotricha Para-doxa, “the paradoxical creatures with mixed-up hair”—single-celled life forms that dwell symbiotically inside a species of termite. !ese had been captured, musically trained, magni.ed for visibility and ensconced in a series of glowing tubes to form a sonorous as-semblage that truly put the “organ” in microorganism. !is literal harmony be-tween man and protozoan may suggest a metaphor for symbiogenesis, or the fact “that we are all a restless nest of wooly .ckle beings” as one lyric in Salley’s poem claims. Some of the other technology is also worth mentioning. !e Resonance Ma-chine or Vibro Aegrotatio Machinamen-tum by Prince Atom Belglom demon-strates the “sympathetic resonances” inherent in “quantum biophysics,” or the ways in which energy waveforms—im-material patterns—manifest in physical matter. In the Cymatic Exciter, two elec-tronically generated tones are conveyed through a Petri dish .lled with water, and the resulting disturbances in the liquid are videotaped and projected onto a screen, forming a hypnotic vision of /ux like an abstract religious symbol. !en, inside

the Resonance Chamber, the visitor has a chance to play the role of the vibratory substrate. Laying posed like Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous “Vitruvian Man,” I grabbed onto a plastic cylinder with each hand and those same two tones /owed through my body. I could feel every inch

of my skin undulating force-fully, and inside the dark, soundproof compartment, I

had the unnerving sensa-tion of rising. !en there is the Time Machine, or Lumineus Maximus by Ezekiel Borges Plateau, a great black wheel that when spun creates a nearly indescribable kaleido-

scopic e-ect involving a slew of /ickering “ocular

entities.” !is spectacle, we were informed, has something to do with the fundamental na-ture of time.

Of course, this should all really be experienced in person.

But even then, there will be some uncertainty as to what it all means. Neil Salley will only o-er so much by way of elucidation. On a small ledge in the eaves of the ‘Patamechanics Hall above the entrance there is a set of cardboard box-es, which all supposedly contain explana-tions. !e boxes are labeled with words like, “/imsy,” “simplistic,” “makes one ill,” and “adequate.” When attempting to provide any kind of overarching explana-tion for the Musée Patamecanique, I am very conscious of how it might be shelved on site. Perhaps, in light of this concern, I will consider the following account of ‘Patamechanics not an explanation, but rather the introduction of yet further obscurity.

!e Origins of ‘Patamechanics

M). S"5512’( 6)19"71 to the exhibit pointed to a “rupture” in the consciousness of 15th

century European as the critical jump-ing-o- point for the “Science and Art of ‘Patamechanics”: the great age of sea

‘

DE S T I N AT IO NS

SCIENCEOF THE

SURREALBy Eli Epstein-Deutsch

When the Smithsonian is just too tame…a museum that is truly out there.

N1'52 $61#13 this past year with little fanfare at a “secret” location in Bristol, R.I., !e

Musée Patamecanique (‘Patamechanical Museum) provides a rare, mind-bending glimpse into a realm where the scienti.c, the arcane and the imaginary fuse into a decidedly real and quite eerie multimedia encounter. !e locals probably don’t even know it’s there. Bristol, distinguished primar-ily by its elaborate displays of patriotism on Independence Day, is the epitome of a peaceable, prosperous New England

on the front steps in a dark suit comple-mented by a black fedora, circular glasses and marbled bowtie. With mannered speech, he directed us into a small foyer with an eclectic array of wall adornments: a phrenological skull, an ancient-looking cabinet of preserved insect specimens, portraits of somber 16th century aristo-crats, diagrams of chimerical beasts and hideous laughing automata from a sim-pler age… and also color photographs of the Disney Palace, all linked by some logic we were not quite ready to comprehend. Mr. Salley presented us with compli-mentary goblets of sherry and o-ered us a brief history of ‘Patamechanics, which, like all history, he warned, can be related in a practically in.nite number of ways. !e de.nition for ‘Patamechanics he presented was: “the pracitice of manifest-ing artifacts that symbolically attribute properties described by their virtuality to their lineaments.” (!is was as incompre-hensible as it was useless in preparing me for anything I was about to experience.) !en the curator disappeared. A door to an adjoining room had a sign that said: “Ring for .ngers” and beneath it a door-bell /ashed. Upon our third ring, the door opened. Neil Salley appeared once again, and with a Willy Wonka grin he ushered us inside. It’s hard to get one’s bearings inside the ‘Patamechanics Hall. !e room is shrouded in darkness not quite penetrat-ed by the little /ashlights attached to the Musée’s pocket guidebooks. !e tour pro-ceeds at an electric pace. It’s really not so much a tour as a one-man cabaret perfor-mance crossed with a demented technol-ogy fair. !e whole complex is allegedly powered by the Crank-O-Wank, a wired wheel that I was recruited to turn faster and faster, at Mr. Sally’s behest and my own peril, until the frightening instant when the alarm bells started clanging, ethereal orchestral music poured from the “Ear-o-lin,” (a /oating hologram of a giant bow hovering next to an ear) and the other apparatuses /ickered to life all over the room. “!is is the automated

seaport town: sleepy pubs, charming rocky coastline looking out at the Narra-gansett Bay, the smell of homemade do-nuts and sea salt competing for primacy in the air and seemingly not a whi- of the bizarre anywhere. Our destination, the address of which was revealed to my traveling party only a,er we had e-booked a private evening tour, turned out to be an elegant building in the heart of the town, a mansion with white columns and bronze reproduc-tions of classical statues /anking the wide lawn. !e curator, Neil Salley, greeted us


DESTINATIONS / CA RTOON

as evidence of the renewed force with which ‘Pataphysics has thrust itself into the postmillennial era. (Or, with which the postmillennial era has thrust itself into ‘Pataphysics.”) !e College’s promise of reemergence has been ful.lled quite impressively. !e Guardian (UK) has re-ported that the Parisian College du Pata-physique now registers over 1000 fee-pay-ing members, not the least among them the Italian literato and semiotics professor Umberto Eco. Upon the great year of de-

occultation, London manifested its own tributary Institute of ‘Pataphysics, which was inaugurated in a joyful ceremony attended by grandees (high ranking of-.cials) from the College du Pataphysique. !e Bureau for the Investigation of Sub-liminal Images and the Committee for Hirsutism and Pogonotrophy are two of the London Institute’s renowned depart-ments. !e Musée Patamecanique, tucked away in quiet, stately little Bristol, R.I., is

merely one of the latest and most com-pelling instances of this slowly gather-ing trend. But the Musée is clearly very well funded, o-ering free admission and maintaining a set of sophisticated machines. It is likely that the establish-ment has ties to the upper echelons of the global ‘Pataphysics network. So check the place out: it might give you the slightest taste of what is to come.

See www.museepata.org for further information.

C A R T O O N

“TRAWLING”By Nicole Singer

DESTINATIONS

discipline of his own invention. !e term “‘Pataphysics” might have come from patte à physique (leg of phys-ics), pas ta physique (not your physics) or Pâtè à physique, (physics-dough); no one knows for sure. Jarry apparently added the meaningless punctuation mark in order to purposely confound such speculation. In the 1896 pica-resque novel “Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician,” the .eld’s founding document, Jarry de-.nes ‘Pataphysics as “the science of imaginary solutions… extending as far beyond metaphysics as the lat-ter extends beyond physics.” Central to ‘Pataphysics—“the science of the particular”—are the exceptions and alternate interpretations that under-mine any .xed set of universal laws, whether the laws are natural (physi-cal) or supernatural (metaphysical). Jarry’s views challenged induc-tive scienti.c reasoning. He was perhaps one of the earliest thinkers to seriously (or humorously) contest the Newtonian paradigm. “Instead of formulating the law of the fall of a body toward a centre, how far more apposite would be the law of the ascension of a vacuum toward a periphery,” Jarry wrote, in an illustra-tion of the ‘Pataphysician’s obsession with equivalencies and inversions. !e ‘Pataphysical mode of thought prophesied some of the most signi.cant developments in 20th Century science and mathematics: Einstein’s general relativity, Schrodinger’s equations describing quan-tum indeterminacy, as well as Godel’s In-completeness !eorem. Many interpret-ed these discoveries as quanti.ably fatal blows to the Enlightenment model of a rational, knowable reality. Accordingly, Jarry’s ideas gained a tenacious hold on a small yet illustrious group of modern intellectuals and artists. Among them was Marcel Duchamp, who considered himself a die-hard prac-titioner of ‘Pataphysics. Jarry’s in/uence can be observed in such signi.cant works as !e Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelor, Even (!e Large Glass). Made between 1915 and 1923 out of various materials

attached to panes of glass, Duchamp’s masterpiece is a massive diptych of pseudo-engineering sketches outlining a complex, unreal mechanism, which func-

tions somehow through the interaction of erotic essences and machine components in four-dimensional space. !e artist’s accompanying notes refer to the slightly distorted laws of physics that might be re-quired to make the contraption work, in-cluding “oscillating density” and “friction reinterpreted.” !is is pure Jarry. Indeed, the Musée Patamecanique could well have chosen to trace their roots to Duchamp’s unveiling of his “Bride”: probably the .rst time that Pataphysical principles were consciously employed in the service of an (imagined) tangible construction. Duchamp, along a group of friends and associates that included the absurd-ist playwright Eugene Ionesco and the surrealist painter Joan Miro, started the Parisian College of ‘Pataphysics (College du Pataphysique) in 1948. It may have originally been intended merely as a fo-rum for reviving Jarry’s plays. But it bur-

geoned into a much bulkier beast, soon boasting a boundless bureaucracy brim-ming with meaningless subcommittees, hierarchies, and bylaws, and attracting

such esteemed members as M.C. Escher, Raymond Queneau, Max Ernst, and Asger Jorn. It is ru-mored that all four Marx Brothers were Transcendent Sartraps. !e College’s precise long-term aims, not to mention the nature of their day-to-day proceedings, were al-ways very di4cult to ascertain. !eir motto, Eadem mutata resur-go (I arise again the same, though changed), may have had some-thing to do with their decision, made publicly in 1975, to go into occultation, with an agreement to resurface in the year 2000. For twenty-.ve years, the College of ‘Pataphysics denied its own exis-tence.

Postmodernism and the Resurgence of ‘Pataphysics

P"+"6&2(*7( $9 +&1 Y1") :;;;” is the title of an essay published in 1992 by the

prominent French cultural critic Jean Braudillard, recently de-

ceased. !e article revealed Braudillard’s connection to the international ‘pata-physical organization, then just beginning to stir from its underground hibernation. According to the cultural and political scholar Arthur Kroker, Braudillard was “haunted by the enigma of ‘pataphysics, namely the magical ascent of the reality-principle itself into the language of arti-.ce, seduction and terror.” Braudillard’s slim 2002 pamphlet, Pataphysique, lends a poetic expressiveness to his somewhat tortured ruminations on the subject. It contains the memorable, if characteristi-cally opaque line: “the ‘pataphysical spirit is the nail in the tire—the world, a wolf ’s mouth (lupo vesce)… does a tire die? It renders its tire soul. Flatulence is at the origin of the breath.” !e conquest of the soul of Jean Braudillard—the so-called “high-priest of postmodernism,”—should be taken

“


FICTION

wistfully where he went. !e Soviets made wanted posters. But Hunyuk scam-pered throughout Kamchatka in his reindeer suit, and people as far away as Petrapavlosk at the southern tip of the peninsula reported sightings of the old man—sometimes in his herb-induced trance, sometimes on his uchakh1, always on the move. “But then,” Hunyuk invariably says, “you were born,” and looks at Vasily’s foot. Hunyuk’s recounting of events accom-panies a sigh and a self-congratulating smile. !e signs were obvious. !e trees were growing faster, several of them bent toward Esso. Animal bones formed dia-grams in the permafrost, reindeer antlers grew in strange ways, and the volcanoes snored too loudly. Vasily remembered that it was a dream that settled the matter for the old shamán—it o,en was—but he couldn’t recall the details. Yet at Vasily’s birth, there was Hunyuk, hiding in plain sight, sitting in the empty hospital wing with the antlers of his reindeer fur cap tickling the air vent. Vasily’s childhood had played like a tragedy enacted during an artillery shell-ing. He slurped vodka to celebrate his eleventh birthday and never met his fa-ther. His mother, who had spoken to him in Eveni, le, the city while Vasily was in boarding school to remarry in Alaska. Vasily was unemployed for years, grew skeletal, and then Fedor and his heroin moved to Esso. But spontaneous booms turned average dismay into wondrous disorder. Hunyuk had .rst taken Vas-ily to see the reindeer when he was just six, looking like a welcome clown with funny words and /ashy necklaces. Later he would give Vasily fur blankets during the winters, lucky bear teeth to smuggle into boarding school, and strips of rein-deer jerky, which he would leave in the grocery store cash register overnight for Vasily to .nd in the morning. But how Hunyuk opened the locked cash register presented the di4cult side of the rela-tionship—the old shamán was subject to no rules besides the ones he set himself.

He would break into Vasily’s apartment, high on wild herbs that he called sharik and claimed grew on Uksichan. He sub-jected Vasily to Kamchatka’s world-record winters, making him help the shamán herd reindeer. As Vasily slept o- terrible hangovers, Hunyuk burst in to perform tiny rituals in his apartment, resulting in singed sheets and broken windows. !e logic that escaped Vasily, of course, was that he was to be Hunyuk’s successor. !e evidence was in his sixth toe.

* * *

Slowly now,” Hunyuk whispers over his shoulder. “!ey are here.” Vasily freezes at .rst, then, as

Hunyuk begins to creep forward, he fol-lows. A twig snaps under his boot and he winces—he has disturbed herds before, to Hunyuk’s disappointment. !e rain has let up and the air is still around him. He feels like he’s a disturbance. Inch by inch, he and Hunyuk approach the un-seen herd. !e shamán holds one hand up behind his back, then uses it to point. “Look.” In the gap between two larches, in a green clearing, Vasily can see it: the mag-ni.cent head of a wild reindeer, a buyun. A smile creeps onto Vasily’s face, the kind it hasn’t known in years. !e reindeer is grazing assiduously, its ears /itting back and forth. Its furry antlers appear to have collected the raindrops, which now glint in the daylight. Hunyuk and Vasily move closer to the herd, each advance becoming more me-ticulous than the last. !en the herd is in view: at least a hundred reindeer, brown, white, and dappled, some snorting and stamping, but most grazing in the lush streambed. When they hu-, their breath billows up brie/y as they look around. !e mass of their antlers looks like the tangled brushwood of winter, no foliage, just branches. Vasily thinks perhaps he has been sensed—but when a reindeer moves to graze somewhere else, it is with the lazy saunter of a king. Hunyuk turns around, his face aglow.

“!ey are happy. Stay here.” Hunyuk reaches into his hide trousers and pulls out a leather pouch, shakes it and empties a pile of salt into his palm. !en he stalks forward to the opening of the clearing, kneels, and puts out his hand. Vasily tries to still himself and /attens up against a tree. With one eye around the side, he watches Hunyuk work. !e reindeer don’t bolt, but at .rst they sneer at the shamán from afar. !ey are not fooled by his fur suit. But Hunyuk’s palm remains open, and some of the reindeer begin a stop-start approach. !e .rst to draw near has a chestnut overcoat with a lighter scru-. Vasily holds his breath. !e reindeer looks at Hunyuk and Hunyuk at the reindeer. !e sight is bewildering: two spirits, four antlers, and a stillness in the air that does not feel like tension. !e reindeer sni-s the salt in Hunyuk’s palm, then drops its snout and licks it clean in a few swipes of the tongue, its antlers quivering. It looks up expectantly. “Holimangan,” says Hunyuk. Unex-pectedly, he turns to Vasily, letting the reindeer follow his gaze. “It means a rein-deer who is always eager for salt. If you piss, it will rush to your stream.” Vasily presses himself against the tree even harder and whispers, “Oh.” !e second reindeer is also holiman-gan—it, too, licks the salt clean o- in a matter of seconds. Hunyuk keeps up his one-sided conversation with Vasily. “Your kujjai should not be holimangan. Too eager, easily misled, easily duped. !ese can be greedy and vain creatures, little Berne.” Vasily remains behind the tree for the next hour or so, as dozens of reindeer gather around Hunyuk. Some, like the holimangan, eventually return to graze, only to be replaced by another curious customer. Hunyuk’s diagnoses begin to take time. He rubs noses, strokes ears, looks each reindeer in the eye. One of the buyun is beymenga—“a reindeer that attacks humans, not good for a kujjai, liable to get you into trouble.” Another is mechengen—“a very cunning reindeer, likely to throw you over its antlers, also

1 uchakh: a personally signi.cant reindeer used for transport

“

F IC T IO N

ANIMALSOULS

By Brendan Work

I# K"<7&"+=", everything stirs in the predawn season. !e bears .dget as they dream and the clouds swell.

!ere are rumblings in the earth, but nobody knows if they are from the rein-deer stamping the permafrost or Uksi-chan, the great volcano, murmuring in its sleep. Down in the valley, all the Eveni are drunk. !e young curse the old and the old curse the Soviets. But in the muddy gutters lives a pale hope that nobody mentions, because it is as much a joke as a buoy, that with the rains will come the reindeer, and the drone of the mosquitoes will go away at least for a little while. Vasily, an Even, has had only two or three shots because he is working. !e bottle of Ruskova vodka, chilli-/avored because he has tried all of the others, sits on the counter next to the cash register and prompts no objections. Customers want gum and cigarettes. Nobody except the tourists has bought authentic Kam-chatkan bilberry jams since the store opened, because nobody wants to be re-minded where they are. !e city of Esso is not quaint like the village, which is what the tourists have come to see. A few blocks from the con-venience store, Vasily’s apartment build-ing forms a dim centerpiece for several hundred squat concrete houses, in which most of the Eveni now live. Unpaved streets turn to mud when the snow melts. Here, the dogs occasionally mistake ciga-rette butts for food and shit them out in the vegetable gardens, which aren’t grow-ing anything anyway.

* * *

F$) V"(*52, the Eveni language died in the boarding school—several miles outside of Esso, in Avangai,

a converted warehouse, .ve /oors, .,een windows, no insulation against the bit-ing -60º F winters. !e Soviets gave them wool blankets, not reindeer fur, and a stove in the corner of each dormitory. Vasily’s breath hissed when it touched the air. He learned not to cry because the tears froze. In school, nobody learned a thing. El-ementary Russian, a plain red textbook, was perpetually open on every student’s desk, but Vasily’s teacher was never in-clined to move past the second lesson. Aleksandr Vladimirevich Tomsky was his name, and his .rst demand was that each student call him by his full patronymic. His haggard eyes betrayed very little of the fury that lay behind them. In the autumn of 1985, Uksichan began to belch smoke and lava. It was nothing more than a natural part of its eruption cycle, but it awakened the spirits of the Eveni students, whose childhoods were punctuated by the booms and cracks of their volcanic homeland. All at once, they cocked their heads to the window. “Tog muhoni,” one girl murmured. Fire spirits. Vasily and Anatoly shared a wild-eyed grin. “Vidimo tak,” whispered Anatoly. “Naverno,” Vasily replied. Suddenly Tomsky roared above the hum of the classroom, bursting out of his chair, his face red. “Nyet! Quiet, all you sons of bitches! You will not speak that

language again!” “Ajit gu! Ma!” came a whisper from the other side of the classroom. “Ma, tog odak!” Tomsky /ashed through the desks, came up brandishing a piece of /oor paneling. “Do not speak! You will speak Russian or not at all!” He rounded on Anatoly and viciously slapped him. Vas-ily recoiled. Uksichan thundered on, but the classroom fell silent. Vasily’s grasp of Russian is mod-est now, but Eveni words have become foreign. He supposes that the cultural re-vival programs that started a,er the fall of the Soviet Union have helped—now, when the time comes, the Esso Eveni gather for the hedje, the ancient dance of the sun, and Vasily understands the dif-ference between buyun, wild reindeer, and oron, domesticated. But cultural concepts cannot help him or anyone else construct sentences or articulate thoughts in the language of their ancestors. When the subject crops up, which is not o,en, people say that staying in place has made the wandering Eveni lost. !ey say the vodka has replaced the shamáns. Mostly they say in broken Russian, “!e Eveni are dead. !ey have killed us.” Hunyuk survived. While the Soviets caught the other shamáns by their jangling talismans, Hunyuk disappeared into the forests. At night when he performed his rituals, the drumbeats were loud, but always o- the rhythm of his pursuers, and his howling never echoed from the same peak twice. !e Esso Eveni got drunk and wondered


T H E M USIC S C E N E

Oct. 20: CMJ Music Festival !e Knitting Factory

Lower Manhattan, New York City

I .nd myself surrounded by an odd assortment of people. !ere are Brooklyn hipsters, who line the walls

in dark glasses and tight pants. !ey seem to be here because they know the bands playing, or maybe they’re just here to catch some of the festival. Twentysome-thing Lower-Manhattanites, dressed for clubbing, are here just because the venue has a bar—this is where they go on the weekends, regardless of who’s playing. !en there are kids like me, coming from afar to CMJ (College Music Journal spon-sors this annual citywide event) and the Knitting Factory because of our love of music, even though we don’t know most of the bands playing. When a band like HEALTH comes on, we are taken aback. HEALTH is not the typical indie one singer-songwriter line-up, and it’s not a fully orchestrated post-rock band either. !ree motley L.A. rock-ers stumble onstage. A drummer in the background, pounding the drums as fast as he can, makes a sort of tribal hip-hop beat. A guitarist/synth player wearing a skeleton t-shirt doesn’t so much play as make glittering, heavily distorted noise with his instruments. !e last member, who also sings, plays a keyboard and a sequencer with a tone both digitalized

and crunchy. !eir rhythm is incredibly danceable despite the harsh sound; the performers move and thrash and are gen-erally entertaining. !e result is a noise dance party more than a concert, and I can’t help but shove, .ght, and dance. HEALTH’S show highlights the latest trend in music, which has been to focus less on an artist’s talent and more on the ephemeral euphoria of the live perfor-mance. !is is true at least among the “new” indie scene. Hip music is moving away from the beauty and technical skill of bands like Explosions in the Sky or the immaculate songwriting capability and complex instrumentation of Su>an Ste-vens. We are now moving to a place where what’s most important is how danceable the music is and whether shows are rock-in’ fun parties. Many of these so-called “artists” don’t even play instruments. Instead, they have mastered the ways of music DJing, mixing, and sequencing. !e product is somewhere in the range of pure dance, synthetic electronica, and harsh noise—a throwback to 1980s hip-hop and dance music. !is trend is also noticeable in fashion, with bright neon-colored shoes, tight retro shirts, hoodies, headbands and big headphones all com-ing back into style. CMJ is o,en a bellwether of the direc-tion music will be headed during the rest of the year. Seeing each of these bands live was like getting down at an awesome

dance party. Now, from Da, Punk and Justice, to Girl Talk and Simian Mobile Disco to Health and even to Animal Col-lective, music is shi,ing in the direction of dance. Inspired by 1980s electronic sounds and contemporary hip-hop songs, this new style of music is taking over a range of genres—indie, noise, and electronica. !e verdict is in. Put on your neon Adidas, if you haven’t already, for this ’80s revival: electronic dance revolu-tion is taking over.

Between Tuesday and Saturday I saw about 20 bands out of the hundreds that played. Much of

what I saw was at the Knitting Factory, but there were at least 30 other CMJ ven-ues between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Every self-respecting up-and-coming indie band that was able to came, from places as far away as L.A. and Stockholm. Names of bands that might strike home include Islands (ex-Unicorns), Old Time Relijun, Japanther (who played at Olde Club last fall), And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, and Dan Deacon (who is playing at Olde Club this spring). Most of these bands employed synthesiz-ers, sequencers, and danceable beats.

Here is a quick guide to some of this movement’s notable new bands:

(over)

DANCE REVOLUTION

By Louis Jargow

THE PAST YEAR HAS SEEN THE RISE OF A NEW BREED OF INDIE MUSIC…

FICTION / POETRY

not a good kujjai.” Several are kuhitea, kicking reindeer, and Hunyuk dismisses them with clucking noises. Hunyuk is emptying the last of his salt pouch onto his sticky palm when he looks up at Vasily. His expression is frank. “Your kujjai is not here today, I think.” “Really?” Vasily’s whole head juts out from behind the tree. It is hard to imag-ine Hunyuk’s strange prescience for these things being wrong. “Oh, yes. Not to fear, however. We will return soon.” Hunyuk pats the last reindeer on its wet nose and stands up. His amulets rattle against each other as he walks past Vasily, back into the underbrush. But a little fur-ther, he stops and turns around. “Little Berne,” he says, “I want to ask you some-thing.” “Yes?” “Do you know what you’re looking for?”

“What?” “Here. What are you looking for?” “My kujjai.” !ere is an uncomfortable silence. A reindeer snorts. “Right?” “And what is that to you?” “My consecrated reindeer?” Hunyuk’s facial expression doesn’t change. He blinks. “Consecrated to do what?” Vasily produces a sorry look and says, “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” “I thought not. Berne, you have for-gotten yourself.” Vasily sighs at the begin-ning of this familiar sermon, but listens on. “You have forgotten what it means to be Eveni. To be an orach, a reindeer per-son. You stand behind that tree like the buyun are monsters. Like they are not a part of you—but they are, Berne. !at is what a kujjai is. It is as much a part of you as your own body. It is your animal soul. We consecrate the kujjai to protect you from harm. When danger is imminent,

your kujjai deliberately gives up its life for you. It is its ultimate sacri.ce, beyond giving us its milk, its meat, and its back. !e kujjai will die for you.” “I understand,” said Vasily. He sees the concern in the old man’s face and wants to placate him. But like always, he doubts Hunyuk’s words. “When can we return here?” Hunyuk asks. “On Sunday. I have things to do to-morrow.” !ey are walking again now, and a drizzle has begun to fall. It takes several more steps for Vasily to say, “I’m sorry.” But Hunyuk is ambling through the woods ahead, his antlers clacking against branches as he goes.

P OE T R Y

STUDY #2By Nathan Wainstein

II. GENESIS

!e water-drop drips from the leaf-drop slowly!e cat is at the window-glassBreathe, stir, dewy grass.

“Look at the mountains. !eir heads are gone.”“I see.” Poor child, she thinks they have le, the earthForever. “Co-ee is ready.” I thinkToday I’ll .x the damned rudder.

Eight o’ clock. !e bacon grins on the stoveA feast and a yawn of a crack and a chillSomething white is rising from the lake.

Playing in the garden, she .nds!e face of a man in patch of leaves, crownedBy sparrows at this morning angle.“Look!” “What is it, dear?”

Pointing to the kitchen glass, she tracesA quiet .lm of morning frost.


JusticeW"# $"%& '(%: A two man French electro-club unit (Gaspard Augé and

Xavier de Rosnay) with a dedicated European cult following; they are viewed in America primarily as artsy DJ performers in the Da, Punk vein.

W"%(% T"%&’(% F(#): Paris, Ile-de-France, France.W"%* T"%& G#$ T"%+( S$'($: 2003 W"'$ T"%& H',%: A wall of speakers, sequencers, synthesizers and

electronic mixing equipment.W"'$ T"%&’(% K*#-* F#(: !e hit singles “We Are Your Friends,” a

remastering of the Simian song “Never Be Alone,” which re/ects their tendency to make wild and upbeat remixes of other artists’ songs. !eir symbol is the shining cross of light, which appears at all their shows and on the tattoos of their faithful followers.

W"# I. L+.$%*+*/ T# T"%): Crazy post-house euro-ravers who deify the band, 18–22 yr. olds, NYC fashion sensitive retroheads and pop-art geeks, anyone who wants to get their groove on in style.

W"'$ T"%& D# L+,%: !eir live shows, in which they appear as the high priests of club music, .ll huge venues and cast a mythic aura around their DJ-performance theatrics. Justice’s music, however, is a bit darker and more irreverent, like dance-punk. !ey artfully cra, their signature sound by mixing pointillistic arrangements of really short samples to create rhythms and melodies. !ese are combined with unadulterated pop vocal samples.

H#- W% D'*0%: A trancey bump-and-grind that’s a bit too self-con-sciously cool to really get down.

Simian Mobile DiscoW"# T"%& A(%: A two man electro act (James Shaw and James Ford)

revived, phoenix-like, from the ashes of a four-man DJ tribe called Simian (2000).

W"%(% T"%&’(% F(#): London, England W"%* T"%& G#$ T#/%$"%(: 2005W"'$ T"%& H',%: Turntables, mixers, computers, samplers.W"'$ T"%&’(% K*#-* 1#(: 2007 album Attack Sustain Decay Re-

lease, which co-opted pop to give indie rockers something to really dance to.

W"#’. L+.$%*+*/ T# T"%): 17–21 yr. olds, fashionistas, teenage girls, post-ravers.

W"'$ T"%& D# L+,%: Simian Mobile Disco’s two DJ’s rely heavily on samples (o,en refrains from hip-hop or pop songs), and add a fair amount of their own synth playing, usually accompanied by an ambient or transy beat. !ey also provide an incredible programmed light show, featuring six towers of lights surrounding their equip-ment.

H#- W% D'*0%: Hip-hop style, like you might in Paces on a Saturday night.

THE MUSIC SCENE

HEALTHW"# T"%& A(%: A neon-clad West Coast noise rock quartet (Jake,

John, Jupiter and BJ) whose output runs the gamut from crooning ghost rock to robotic, cacophonous noise to schizoid disco. !eir music could be called an acquired taste.

W"%(% T"%&’(% F(#): Los Angeles, CAW"%* T"%& G#$ T#/%$"%(: 2006W"'$ T"%& H',%: Heavily distorted guitars, bass, synthesizers,

sequencers and samplers; tribal drums and chants, ethereal voice.W"'$ T"%&’(% K*#-* F#(: !eir back and forth remix battles with

Crystal Castles, a Toronto based electro-noise band.W"#’. L+.$%*+*/ T# T"%): LA hipsters who go to !e Smell (the

most ironically pretentious venue in town), holier-than-thou noise-heads, people who wear the loudest-colored American Apparel, 20–24 yr. olds, the “edgy.”

W"'$ T"%& D# L+,%: !eir live shows are notably di-erent from their recorded demos, and should be seen to appreciate this band. HEALTH’s performance seemingly brings their members to the brink of transcendence or blackout; they release a truly masochistic quantity of energy, which is mirrored by their frenzied and entranced audiences.

H#- W% D'*0%: a mix between rhythmic thrashing and zoned out…

Team RobespierreW"# T"%& A(%: A poppy, aggressive post-punk band (Rex, Ty, Tomasz, mikehouse, Jim).

!ey’re like the evil cousins of Matt and Kim (who played at Swarthmore last spring.) !ey are fallout from the decline of Hardcore.

W"%* T"%&’(% F(#): Brooklyn, New YorkW"%* T"%& G#$ T#/%$"%(: 2006W"'$ T"%& H',%: Standard rock setup, plus two shitty keyboards.W"'$ T"%&’(% K*#-* F#(: Being colorfully obnoxious, belligerent drunks. W"#’. L+.$%*+*/ T# T"%): Assholes, disillusioned proponents of Hardcore, dudes, 21-

27 yr. olds, people who value performance over music quality.W"'$ T"%& D# L+,%: Team Robespierre’s plays as a pretty simple mix of synth, ragged

drums and sloppy guitar ri-s. !eir singing tone has an anthemic and youthful quality, but can degenerate into drunken rambling, yelling and mumbling. When I saw them at CMJ, they were completely inebriated. !e front man, Ty, told his bandmates that they were “fuck-ups” and that he was going to .re them. !ey then proceeded to have a totally raucous performance, throwing beer on the audience, pushing small fans around, .st .ghting with bigger fans, and swinging like chimpanzees on the ceiling pipes. !is insanity culminated in their last song, when Ty invited some of the audience, (myself included) to rush the stage and mosh. In the process, the crowd spilled beer everywhere, jumping on the amps and drums and toppling one over onto a band member’s open MacBook Pro.

H#- W% D'*0%: Violent moshing, verging at times on actual bellicosity.


DV D A R C H I V E

THE LOST REBELLION

By Eli Epstein-Deutsch

A)<2 $9 S&"3$'(, the recently restored 1969 work of auteur Jean-Pierre Melville, is an unusu-

al cinematic gem and a must-see for .lm bu-s and Francophiles. It tells the story of men who are furiously awake, trapped deep in the crevices of the darkest night-mare Europe has ever dreamt. !e opening scene is a long shot of Nazi storm troopers marching down the Champs d’Elysee during the start of the 1940 occupation of Paris. Shortly there-a,er, the enigmatic protagonist is some-how betrayed and interred in a camp for political prisoners. !e guards treat him with wary respect be.tting an in/uential enemy. Upon the prisoner’s escape, he is revealed to be Phillip Gerbier, a high-ranking agent in the French struggle against the Nazis, charged with coordi-nating cells of partisan saboteurs. !e .lm follows him in the course of his daily operations as he confers with co-conspir-ators in rural hideaways, steals away by submarine to England in an essentially futile quest for funding, exchanges coded signals with informants on street corners, and deals mercilessly with traitors to the cause. He is an intensely engaging char-acter, with understated morbid wit and zeal that simmers quietly but steadily.

Melville’s cra, draws us into every tense exchange and breathless rebel ma-neuver—each room Gerbier enters en-closes the viewer totally. One scene, in which the resistance leader barely wills

himself to parachute out of a prop .ghter in the midst of fog and antiaircra, .re, is so intimate and palpably human that it inspires nervous laughter. At times the cinematic quality almost seems like some kind of incredibly futuristic CGI (computer generated imagery); there is a

vividness to the images that goes beyond realism. !e director constructs his shots like photo portraits, with detailed care for composition and visual form—even, it seems, carefully positioning the balls on a pool table that is glimpsed for only a second. !is could make Melville’s world feel contrived, but instead it gives the be-lievable impression that everything falls strangely into place in dire times. And throughout the .lm, a claustrophobic sense of foreboding builds. Embattled and outgunned at every turn, Gerbier and his compatriots are never able to do any real damage to the Nazis. !ey are always too busy looking over their shoulders, continually hatch-ing plans to rescue or sacri.ce their own captured members before the Gestapo extracts information from them or tor-tures them to death. At some point the realization hits: the “army of shadows” is not a true army, the engagement is not real. !ose who are looking for a war movie are bound to be disappointed. But for me, this is what makes the .lm so compelling: Gerbier’s tale is not the tale of a war hero, but that of a determined man .ghting a battle to arrive at meaning in absurd and impossible circumstances.

Revisiting an avant-garde classic of postwar France

PHO T OJ O U R N A L

ACTION IN ACTION

By Robin Lipp

On April 29th, 2007, 300 people gathered in Washington DC to protest the geno-cide in Darfur. Robin Lipp’s candid visual narrative presents an unexpected face of

social action.

“Look Ahead”


PHOTOJOUR NA L

“Tambourine”

“Private Protest”

PHOTOJOUR NA L

“Waiting”


E S S A Y

I CANNOT REMEMBER the .rst time that I was brought to church, presumably because I was too busy napping or

vomiting on something consecrated to pay much attention to my surround-ings. From the beginning, you see, it was decided that I would be raised Catholic. So every Sunday my younger sister and I were dressed up in some-thing presentable and dragged to St. Eulalia’s in Winchester. !is proved dif-.cult. Brought up on cartoons and video games, our ability to comprehend spiri-tual matters was limited. We might have been able work up some interest in the Garden of Eden, with its cute animals and gratuitous nudity, but a sermon on the nature of the human soul was right out. And so our parents had decided that we would be placed in the balcony

in back of the church with the other chil-dren.

!is was, a carved wooden sign warned, “A Place to Pray, Not a Place to Play.” !is was a warning that was wisely ignored by my family. We were given little notebooks to draw in, and on Christmas we were allowed to bring toys, and so like any good American Catholic child I developed a Pavlovian association between Jesus Christ and plastic transforming dinosaurs. All it took was the sight of a lone cruci.x to send my devout little hands a-twitching with material lust. !is connection was reinforced at my .rst Holy Communion, when I was given the particularly appro-priate gi, of a Nerf foam-ball bazooka. !oughtfully, my parents forbade me from aiming this gi, at anyone’s face,

thus reinforcing the Christian values of nonviolence and groin damage. !e result was that, as a child, I came to as-sociate the Catholic Church with two things; new toys, and endless, soul-crushing boredom. !e Lord giveth, and the Lord talketh. A lot. Usually about things that were not particularly inspir-ing, like exactly which dead Jewish man begat which other dead Jewish man, or the eternal salvation of man.

Eventually, however, I started to ac-tually pay attention to what was being said in those masses, and the words of the priest awoke in me a deep and uniquely religious sensation. I became confused. !e whole Genesis business, for example, seemed to unravel the more I thought about it. !e world created in seven days, the woman produced from

BOY VS. GODBy Fletcher Wortmann

A Catholic boyhood provokes nagging questions: What is Sin? How does God feel about me? And where were all the dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden?

ESSAY

the body of the man, the complete, dis-appointing lack of any dinosaurs. !ere was no way they could expect me to ac-cept this sort of thing literally. I mean, they said that there were no dinosaurs, for Christ’s sake. !ere were fossils, and carbon dating. Certainly God would have explained the dinosaurs to the writers of the Bible? And indeed, wouldn’t the religious rami.cations of the existence of these creatures make for compelling parables? Dinosaur spirituality, dinosaur redemption, red-hot dinosaur tempta-tion; certainly such matters would be of importance to the Catholic Church. !e

Church’s ignorance of scienti.c discov-eries, and its shocking lack of dinosaur related content, upset me. I had had it, I decided, with this church and its igno-rant, dinosaur-denying ways. But if I was through with Catholicism my mother was not, and so I was dra,ed into religious education. It was here that I was convinced of the tragic error of my heretical, dinosaur-loving behavior. Catholicism, it turned out, was pretty serious stu-. !is God fellow was not to be messed with. God was always watch-ing us, and God was judgmental and full

of wrath, and God had very particular ideas about what one could and could not do with his or her genitals. To cross God had dire consequences. Because if God was su4ciently angry with you and your vile, sinful genitals, you could wind up in Hell.

I should make it clear that, even without Catholicism, as a child I had a very strong sense of right and wrong. I set clear moral boundaries for myself, because it seemed far easier to live in a simplistic world than to contend with all of those ugly moral complexities. Still, my exposure to the teachings of

the Catholic Church did little to help me develop a healthy and sophisticated system of ethics. Alcohol? Never! Jesus Christ never drank alcohol, and sure-ly not before he was of legal age. Swearing? Certainly not!

Jesus Christ would never

have used language that might have upset or chal-lenged his superiors: Jesus was a good Catholic boy. Sex? Under no circumstances whatsoever. Jesus Christ would never, say, fake his own death in order to cultivate a dis-torted messianic image of himself and his teachings, then run o- with some strumpet to father a divine bloodline that would be protected through millen-nia by the Knights Templar.

It is unclear to me how much of this was Catholicism in/uencing my per-

spective, and how much of this was my perspective in/uencing Catholi-cism. But I do remember that as a child I came to hold myself to ungodly high standards. When I as much as heard an-other child swear in elementary school I would feel uncomfortable until I could go home and confess this exposure to my parents. When my mind wandered to other subjects during my religious education classes, I would sometimes break down a,er realizing that I was setting idols before God. I /atly refused to drink even a sip of alcohol for years, even when my parents tried to get me to taste it, even when it was o-ered to me as part of my .rst Communion. Indeed, due to a botched sexual education class I somehow became convinced that any contact between my hands and genitals, however indirect, was a form of mas-turbation, and so many a ruinous itch went unscratched for fear of the mighty

crotch-watching wrath of the

vengeful Lord.But what confounded me most was

the fact that I was told over and over again that God loved me, and that God would forgive me for what I did wrong. I was told that I was supposed to love


ESSAY

God, more than anyone else, more than even my own family. How could I love something so cruel and distant? God didn’t love me. God hated me. He hated me the same way he hated everyone, and with good reason, because we were all disgusting sinful people. And so, as a child, I hated God back. I hated him, but I respected him and I was afraid of him, and I prayed that this was enough.

Even as I struggled to appease God, I still couldn’t practice Catholi-cism with complete conviction. I could never shake those early linger-ing doubts. My mother, still Catholic but not an especially spiritual person, compared the Church to a salad bar. You only had to pay attention to the things that you believed in, and you could ignore the rest. I respected how my mother could be moderate and even-headed about such complex is-sues, but I couldn’t agree with her on this. Religion isn’t salad. I believed in a world without moral complexities.

* * *

AN INSTITUTION is right, or it is wrong. One that cannot accept dinosaur bones, or even the

proper age of the universe, is one that cannot be trusted on more important

matters. Later I would .nd other grounds on which to question Catholicism and its in/uence over me. But this was what .rst caused me to doubt it; an organiza-tion that cannot accept the physical re-alities of our world is not one that I am

comfortable accepting spiritual counsel from. Everything must be true, because otherwise anything could be a lie. !ere is no room for error when one claims to possess the word of God.

Still, old habits die hard. I still feel a little twinge of guilt when I wake up late on Sunday mornings, stumbling to breakfast in my paja-mas. For a long time, I continued to say a silent “Our Father” every night before I went to sleep, lying in bed with my eyes shut and my hands pressed together. I wonder sometimes who exactly I was pray-ing to. Yahweh? Allah? Buddha or Vishnu? !e great god Cthulhu who lies in R’leigh dreaming? !e mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex? De-lirium of the Endless, celestial pa-tron of the eternally confused? Or to nothing? Out into the darkness and the emptiness. I don’t know why I continued to pray. But I did,

for some time, and every night my last moments before sleep were .lled with anxiety: worry that my words were without purpose, that no one could hear them; terror that somewhere someone or something did.

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Contributors

Staff

J#." C#"%* ’23 has been published on the Internet and performed.

E4+ E5.$%+*-D%6$.0" ’72 edits !e Night Café. He writes plays, essays and .ctions, and moonlights as a .ddler for the electro-folk band !omas Mantell and the Folk Implosion. He is the co-creator of !e Gloaming, an online multimedia concept. He salutes the spring of Frank Sinatra.

L#6+. J'(/#- ’72 is a potential Honors !eater major Political Science minor. As far as music is concerned, Louis is the Facilities Director of Olde Club, an avid mu-sician/songwriter, and an over-enthusiastic (not really) WSRN DJ. Beyond the mammoth world of music, Louis is currently directing a production of !e Maids by Jean Genet for the Department of !eater.

R#8+* L+55 ’72 has studied photography at the Interna-tional Center of Photography in New York City. He has had his work exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Museum and the E3 Gallery in Manhattan.

N+0#4% S+*/%( ’72 is a Studio Art major and Education minor. Her cartoons have appeared in Spike Magazine, various publications at Buck’s Rock Camp and in Stuyvesant High School’s newspaper, the Spectator. She also served as the Art Editor of the Spectator for most of high school. When she grows up, she plans to become a ceramics teacher, live in a box, and be very happy.

J#*'$"'* S$'1.$(#) ’72 is a serious bicyclist, a vegan, a fount of knowledge, and an enigma. (the Eds.)

M'(+*' T%)5%4.)'* ’72 is a big fan of Workbox. She also thinks you should submit your writing to !e Night Café.

B(%*9'* W#(: ’72 is an English major with a pro-spective minor in World Literature. Although writing is his lifelong passion, he remains a Delta Upsilon frater-nity o4cer and member of the rugby team, Boy Meets Tractor sketch comedy group, and two committees.

F4%$0"%( W#($)'** ’72 is an English major at Swarthmore College. He once had a story printed in his high school literary magazine. He also worked at a record store for a while. He is reasonably certain, despite his statements otherwise, that he does not really hate God. He does like dinosaurs, however.

A4+0% X+'*/ ’72 is an international student who’s spent most of her life hopping between continents, cities and schools. For now, “home” is the noisy, messy, overcrowd-ed magni.cence that is Beijing. She intends to major in Comparative Literature (she’d minor in Doodling if she could), and is currently inordinately fond of green umbrellas.

N'$"'* W'+*.$%+* ’77 is tall, handsome, and following in the steps of Hemingway. (the Eds.)

E9+$#(-+*-C"+%1Eli Epstein-Deutsch

S%*+#( E9+$#(Alyssa Work

E9+$#(+'4 A..+.$'*$Ambar La Forgia

P(+*$+*/Professional Duplicating

M'*'/+*/ E9+$#(Marina Tempelsman

D%.+/*%(Jimmy Jin

A9,%($+.+*/ R%5(%.%*$'$+,%Selmaan Chettih

A9,+.#(Je- Lott

T H E N IGH T CA FÉ / M A RCH 2 0 0 832

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