For my weekly reporting on Angus Fletcher’s Masterworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature, I turn to a chapter featuring two of my favorite authors. I specialized in 18th British Literature in graduate school because I figured that any culture that had produced Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones was worth studying. The fact that the century also produced Jane Austen cinched the deal.
Until I read Masterworks, however, I hadn’t really associated the two. Or at least, I hadn’t done so knowingly. In my favorite course, however, Tom Jones and Sense and Sensibility were key texts, and Fletcher has helped me see how they are related. First, some background.
In my course “Couples Comedy in the Restoration and 18th Century,” I looked at how the genre appears to be an oxymoron. After all, love opens the heart whereas comedy creates distance. The latter is especially true of Thomas Hobbes’s theory of comedy, expressed in Leviathan, which claims that we laugh at others to assert our superiority. Even the Earl of Shaftesbury’s gentler theory—that we laugh with rather than at–involves a different emotional engagement than love.
And yet, as we know, romantic comedy is one of our most popular genres. Shakespeare pioneered it with plays like Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night, and As You Like it, and in my course I taught such 18th century plays as Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, Richard Sheridan’s School for Scandal, and Hannah Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem. Hollywood, meanwhile, has produced hundreds of rom-coms.
I placed Tom Jones (1749) at the center of my course, mixing as it does passionate romance (between Tom and Sophia) and comic distancing. Fletcher argues that the novel functions as “valentine armor.” At the same time that we are laughing at Fielding’s comedy, we are rooting for the love of Tom and Sophia. As Fletcher sees it, Fielding alternates between “Almighty Heart” and “lightly satiric narration.”
Fielding’s mixture, as Fletcher sees it, was in response to the way a new genre, the romance novel, was making us vulnerable as only love can. The key work here was Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740), which is about a serving maid who resists the advances of Lord B___, her employer. Ultimately Pamela so impresses him with her virtue that he marries her.
The danger of this new narrative, Fletcher says, is that is threatened women with broken hearts. Women
dashed again and again into love—only to discover to their miserable shock that the world was not, in fact, filled with would-be spouses. It was populated instead with carnal con artists, polite uninterest and mismatched affections. Over and over, [these women] rushed into kissing too fast. And over and over, they got dumped at the altar, their dreams ending in tears.
In an earlier work, Fielding had mocked Pamela in his novel Shamela, in which Shamela is a scheming seductress who takes Lord Booby (as Fielding renames Lord B___) for a ride. Her vaunted “virtue,” which Richardson celebrates, is in Fielding’s eyes no more than a bargaining chip that she uses skillfully to entrap Booby into marrying her.
Fletcher says that, in mocking the sentimental Pamela, Fielding was walking in the footsteps of his favorite novelist, Cervantes, whose great work mocked the way that chivalric romances pulled in a Spanish nobleman. As Fletcher puts it, “Irony had saved the chivalry-addled readers of Don Quixote, and it could now do the same for Pamela’s love-besotted readers.”
But Shamela was nowhere near as successful as Pamela, which is what prompted Fielding to add genuine romance to Tom Jones. The result, Fletcher says,
was a mix of epic-length intimate disclosure and mock-epic irony, a back-and-forth between Pamela and Don Quixote, that elevated our heart while also restraining it.
The 1980’s was a good time to teach Tom Jones because irony was all the rage. In fact, the Italian theorist and novelist Umberto Eco argued that irony was the language of postmodernism. We can no longer make straightforward declarations of love such as are found in the torrid Regency novels of Barbara Cartland, he contended, because language has been devalued. We can, however, express love through irony. The postmodernist attitude, he wrote, is
that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her “I love you madly,” because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still there is a solution. He can say, “As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.”
To further convey this idea, I would often refer to one of my students’ favorite films, which for a while was The Princess Bride (1987). That film does a version of what Fletcher says Tom Jones does, which is alternate between celebrating true love and mocking the true love cliché. Sometimes we are immersed in the world of the romance, sometimes (through the story’s frame narrative) we are watching that world from an ironic distance. Audiences get to have their cake and eat it too.
If we are drawn to romantic comedies, maybe it’s because we too want the love without the vulnerability and get that through Fletcher’s “valentine armor.” I’ll discuss tomorrow how Fletcher thinks that Jane Austen went Fielding one better when, rather than alternating back and forth between sentiment and comic irony, she found a way to convey them simultaneously.
Among the Anglican communion’s Old Testament options this week are fascinating but disturbing episodes from Judges featuring women. I also share a tripartite poem by a woman rabbi, who is just as fascinated and disturbed by these figures as I am.
The stories of Deborah, Jael, and Yiftach’s (or Jephthah’s) daughter appear in the lectionary at a disturbing time, given the horrors we witnessed in Israel and the counter-horrors we are now seeing in Gaza. In the Judges stories, we see historical violence, which raises the question of bloodshed in a sacred text. Which in turn leads me to an interesting essay I just read on the Journey to Jesus website.
In it, the wonderfully sensitive Christian writer Dan Clendenin addresses the question by observing that, in this section of the Bible, “[s]laughtering your enemies and then celebrating it in poetry seems to have divine sanction.”
He points out that first Jael is celebrated for driving a tent peg through the skull of a rival general (!), and then the supposed healing prophetess Devorah does an in-your-face victory dance taunting the man’s grieving mother. First, here’s Jael, presenting herself as loving hostess:
Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Come, my lord, come right in. Don’t be afraid.” So he entered her tent, and she covered him with a blanket.
“I’m thirsty,” he said. “Please give me some water.” She opened a skin of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him up.“Stand in the doorway of the tent,” he told her. “If someone comes by and asks you, ‘Is anyone in there?’ say ‘No.’”
But Jael, Heber’s wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died. Just then Barak came by in pursuit of Sisera, and Jael went out to meet him. “Come,” she said, “I will show you the man you’re looking for.” So he went in with her, and there lay Sisera with the tent peg through his temple—dead.
And now for Deborah and Barak’s victory song, which recounts Jael’s assassination before concluding with the following taunt. The rival general’s mother, they imagine, thinks her son is late because he’s dividing up Israeli plunder and Israeli women:
“Through the window peered Sisera’s mother; behind the lattice she cried out, ‘Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why is the clatter of his chariots delayed?’ The wisest of her ladies answer her; indeed, she keeps saying to herself, ‘Are they not finding and dividing the spoils: a woman or two for each man, colorful garments as plunder for Sisera, colorful garments embroidered, highly embroidered garments for my neck— all this as plunder?’
“So may all your enemies perish, Lord! But may all who love you be like the sun when it rises in its strength.”
As in the current Middle East conflict, no one comes off looking good.
Addressing the appearance of such stories in the Scriptures, Clendenin mentions how some have argued that they’re merely descriptive (he puts “merely” in quotes) rather than prescriptive. The problem is that they were seen as prescriptive by the Crusaders and those who carried out genocide against Native Americans.
One strategy people have used to counter the violence is to privilege certain sections of the Bible over others—say, Jesus’s “Sermon on the Mount” over the stories in Judges. But of course, as Shakespeare reminds us in Merchant of Venice, “the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” Christian, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists—in fact, all kinds of faiths–have used sacred texts to justify atrocities.
Another strategy is to treat the Bible strictly as an historical text reflecting the ideology of the time. Clendenin points out that Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan reads 1-2 Kings as
self-serving imperial records that portray Israel’s kings as they saw themselves and wanted others to see them — God loves us and hates our enemies. He blesses us with their treasure. From that perspective, no war crime is too heinous as a means to these delusional ends…
As Berrigan sees it, these stories are entirely made up. After all, they were written about 500 years after the purported events, and there’s “little to no” archaeological support for them.
Another way that Biblical violence is glossed over is by reading it allegorically, not literally. The enemies are not without but within. Clendenin observes similar reasoning among those Muslims that “insist that the true jihad or holy war is waged in the inner soul rather than against external enemies.”
Quoting Phyllis Trible’s Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (1984), Eric Seibert’s The Violence of Scripture (2012) and Philip Jenkins Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses (2012), Clendenin observes that this too is a dubious way out. After all, people read allegories differently.
To cite a recent instance, new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who has said that the “Bible comes first over the Constitution,” uses the text as a rationale to condemn LBGTQ+ folk, same sex marriage, abortion, divorce, separation of church and state, and certain forms of birth control. A few weeks ago, sounding like an Old Testament prophet, he called America “dark and depraved,” described the culture as “irredeemable,” and said that a “time of judgment” has arrived. My sense is that he elevates the Book of Judges over Jesus’s “Sermon on the Mount” and the command to love our neighbors.
My own take is that the Bible, along with all its editorial background (what has gone in, what is left out) is a rich but flawed document of humanity wrestling with the most profound questions. As also occurs in great literary works, there are parts of Bible that are at war with other parts. Nor should this surprise us. After all, however divinely inspired, it came to us through scores of authors and editors. We should also note that, when we critique religious violence, we often do so from a perspective that has been shaped by this very religion.
We should always keep in mind that, while parts of the Bible have inspired—and been used to justify—human horrors, others parts have led (I’m limiting myself to literature here) to Dante’s soaring vision of “the love that moves the sun and others stars,” to Milton’s version of the creation story, to Father Zosima’s account (in The Brother’s Karamazov) of God’s love as a force that embraces and animates all living things. Much of what is best about our culture and our civilization is grounded in Scripture.
And on that note, I’ll turn to Rabbi Rachel Barenblat of the Velveteen Rabbi website, who does what the best religious leaders do, which is to engage with holy texts in a soulful way. What she sees here is (1) prophetess Devorah who, while focused on justice, also appears to sanction Jael’s tent peg murder of Sisera; (2) Jael, who finds her story appropriated by church patriarchs for their own purposes and who acknowledges—as they do not—the pain of Sisera’s mother; and (3) Yiftach (a.k.a. Jephthah) who follows through on a horrific pledge made to God, one that involves sacrificing his own daughter.
Note that Barenblat searches for God in each of the stories, sometimes without success. In Devorah’s case, words may fall from her mouth like honey but the honey bee still carries a sting. And while, in her victory song, she reports being awakened by the people to come out and celebrate Israel’s victory, we are told that she has been dreaming of the murder, with the tent peg echoing the bee sting.
The Kennites were neutral in the wars, which makes Jael’s action particularly startling. And while the patriarchal rabbis claim her as a “righteous convert,” she knows that—like Sisera’s mother—she will “never be the same.” The rabbis’ simplistic explanation doesn’t do justice to what she did and why she did it.
And with regard to Yiftach’s Daughter, whose story appears later in Judges, Barenblat points out the horrific price that is paid for victory. We are never told whether God, who appears to have granted Yiftach his victory, approves of the sacrifice. The story ends with weeping women.
Where is God in Israel and Gaza at the moment? While some, quoting passages like the ones from Judges, think they know, poets like Barenblat are questioning.
JUDGES TRYPTICH
1. Devorah
Beneath her palm tree, Devorah (the honey bee, her sting intact) judged the acts of the Israelites
the people came with gifts of oil and flour and yearling lambs and she answered them with justice
she sent for Barak in his leathers words fell from her mouth like honey and he yearned to taste her sweetness
come with me, he pleaded I will relinquish my own glory if I can have you by my side
nine hundred iron chariots thundered the Infinite cast panic like a spell and all Sisera’s army was slain
and Devorah slept, and dreamed Sisera stumbles into a woman’s tent Jael’s doors open wide to let him in
he drinks milk fermented in goatskin he slides into sleep: her tent pin rests at his sweaty temple: she drives it home
2. Jael
My husband is a Kenite Kenites don’t take sides so when God told me what to do I kept it to myself
someday the sages will credit me with pluck and righteousness, even if my methods were obscure
but Sisera’s mother wrapped in happy fantasies of her precious son’s return will never be the same
the rabbis say Sisera demanded my body the rabbis say we slept together seven times
but you don’t get to know you can claim me as a righteous convert but my story is my own
3. Yiftach’s Daughter
Israel whored with foreign gods until Yiftach, prostitute’s son, rose up wearing holy spirit like a cloak, saying
deliver the Ammonites into my hands and whatever exits my house to meet me will be sacrificed to You in holy fire
and out came his only daughter bare feet flying to greet him, Daddy! with her tambourine beneath her arm
he rent his garments in grief she bent her head in submission to her father and his God’s demands
two months with her friends in the hills (curve of soft hips beneath her hands, stretch of skin salted with hot tears)
and she returned home, pale but resolute, and bared her neck her father steeled himself to raise his knife
the sun went down early, turning away from the war hero with bloodied hands the mothers wept like the opened skies
when he burned her bones no prophet spoke God’s anger and the maidens mourned alone
Bonus poem
I came across this Nancy Hightower poem about Jael that strikes me as very Margaret Atwoodian. By this I mean that it pushes against sentimental vision of women as caring madonnas or angels in the home. Atwood, as we see in Cat’s Eye (Cordelia) and Alias Grace (Grace Marks), often shows them to have a dark side. Men may think they are dealing with a dove, only to encounter “an eagle, feathers spread,/talons reaching.” They think they see familiar household chores, followed by “quilted comfort,” before experiencing the kiss of a tent pin to the skull. Barenblat too hints at this dichotomy with Devorah, she of honeyed sweetness with “sting intact.”
I’m sharing the poem not so much for this insight but for the unexpected tenderness of the ending. Like Barenblat’s Jael, this one thinks of Sisera’s mother. Like many in Israel and Gaza at the moment, she looks out for her son returning, only to see “nothing/ but red leaves falling/ in the morning wind.
Jael By Nancy Hightower
Then Jael, Heber’s wife, took a nail of the tent, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it to the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died. —Judges 4:21
such a muted sound at first as spike hits skin, then, the skull’s soft crunch. one would think murder made more noise— like a battering ram against the temple, but no, just a simple tent nail and a cup of milk; we women have our ways. had i more time, i would have cooked, made the bed, washed the dishes— scheduled in the killing. but he had come quickly, galloped himself into my sanctuary, heaving breath in muffled gasps and war-weary, as men often are. i became an eagle, feathers spread, talons reaching as i flew out to meet him, and he, thinking i was his dove, his mother hen, came under my wings, shadow-filled. i wrapped their warmth around him with my voice spinning lies, quilted comfort, my hands tucking in the folds of the blanket as he slipped into that dream-quenching slumber. i almost kissed his brow to drive the pin through. his mother, far away, felt the breeze of my hand as it came down, gentle, a loving breath upon her cheek, thought her son had come back early in victory, and opened her arms wide in ready embrace. when she turned, her eyes beheld nothing but red leaves falling in the morning wind.
Cassius (Gielgud) and Brutus (Mason) plot Caesar’s assassination
Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, notify me at [email protected] and indicate which you would like. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.
Friday
I see that my labeling Donald Trump a fascist this past week tracks fairly closely with yesterday’s Atlantic daily essay, written by political science professor and NeverTrumper Tom Nichols. Like me, Nichols was reluctant to apply the term until this past weekend. Then, in a Veterans Day speech, Trump “crossed one of the last remaining lines that separated his usual authoritarian bluster from recognizable fascism” with the following threat:
We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country … On Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible … legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.
Rather than a red line, I see Trump crossing the Rubicon, so get ready for a discussion of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
First, here’s some more from Nichols. In the past, he says, he warned his classes against the indiscriminate use of fascism. That’s because, he explains,
I suspected that the day might come when it would be an accurate term to describe him, and I wanted to preserve its power to shock and to alarm us. I acknowledged in August 2022 that Trump’s cult “stinks of fascism,” but I counseled “against rushing toward the F-word: Things are poised to get worse, and we need to know what to watch for.”
This is what he was watching out for. Nor is it only the word “vermin” or Trump’s description of immigrants as “disease-ridden terrorists and psychiatric patients who are ‘poisoning the blood of our country'” that has Nichols concerned. It’s also “the programmatic changes Trump and his allies have threatened to enact once he’s back in office.” These changes include
establishing massive detention camps for undocumented people, using the Justice Department against anyone who dares to run against him, purging governmentinstitutions, singling out Christianity as the state’s preferred religion, and many other actions—and it’s hard to describe it all as generic “authoritarianism.” Trump no longer aims to be some garden-variety supremo; he is now promising to be a threat to every American he identifies as an enemy—and that’s a lot of Americans.
Now, Nichols is also urging us not to panic. Careful political scientist that he is, he points out that we’re in a better place than were Germany and Italy when fascists there came to power:
[A]lthough he leads the angry and resentful GOP, he has not created a coherent, disciplined, and effective movement. (Consider his party’s entropic behavior in Congress.) He is also constrained by circumstance: The country is not in disarray, or at war, or in an economic collapse. Although some of Trump’s most ardent voters support his blood-and-soil rhetoric, millions of others have no connection to that agenda.
Still, we can’t be complacent, as Shakespeare’s play teaches us. I’m particularly concerned when I revisit Brutus’s famous speech green-lighting the assassination of Caesar:
[W]e have tried the utmost of our friends, Our legions are brim full, our cause is ripe. The enemy increaseth every day; We, at the height, are ready to decline. There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves Or lose our ventures.
Nichols doesn’t mention that there are Brutuses out there who think this is their last shot at taking over America. People like Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, and Stephen Miller see themselves “at the height” and “ready to decline.” They are at the height in that Trump (according to polling) leads Biden in a number of the critical swing states, but they also see themselves “ready to decline.” Trump, after all, is getting old, may be facing jail time, and shows signs of mental stress. He certainly won’t make it to 2028.
In other words, they see themselves on “a full sea.” Either they take “the current when it serves” or they forever lose their ventures.
Brutus and Cassius, to save the Roman republic, choose the assassination route. Bannon et. al. are planning modern day equivalents. After all, look at everything they attempted their first coup attempt: going to court over fraudulent claims of voter fraud, pressuring electors, stealing voter data, pressuring Mike Pence, and finally unleashing shock troops on the U.S. Capitol. And while they didn’t achieve their end that day, they scared a number of senators that would otherwise have voted to convict Trump of insurrection. In Mitt Romney’s biography we hear of legislators who didn’t vote against the former president because they were afraid his supporters would come after them and their families.
Many commentators have warned that the failed January 6 coup was a rehearsal, just as the beer hall putsch was for Hitler, and that the Trump plotters will hold nothing back this second time. In next year’s election, I expect we will see things we’ve never seen before in American elections—shock troops sent to intimidate voters from going to the polls in every heavily populated Democratic districts; election officials in those same districts threatened if they don’t produce pro-Trump results; GOP legislators, attorneys general, and local authorities brought into the process to disenfranchise voters (we already saw that happen on a small scale in Virginia’s 2023 election); X, Fox, and other rightwing media and social media outlets unleashed on the country in ways never before seen; Russian and rightwing billionaire money overwhelming the system; and so on.
If Biden were to be returned to office, these Trumpists already think that “the voyage of their life” will be “bound in shallows and in miseries.” As they see it, they have nothing to lose from extreme tactics.
Of course, our situation is the reverse of what occurs in the play. Rather than safeguard our republic from one-man rule, our conspirators want to establish Trump as Caesar. It is multicultural democracy that they want to stab.
Although Democrats and the FBI were caught off guard by January 6, they now have a clear view of the lengths to which Trump and his followers will go to seize power. Will they heed those warnings as Caesar in Shakespeare’s play does not? Julius may have an inkling of what Cassius is willing to do—”Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look”—but he is unwilling to appear a coward. As he memorably observes,
Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.
Unfortunately for him, his death comes far earlier than it should. Pray that does not happen in our case.
Lila (Nasti) and Elena (Del Genio) in My Brilliant Friend
Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, notify me at [email protected] and indicate which you would like. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.
Thursday
Here’s my weekly update on my incursions into Angus Fletcher’s Wonderworks: The 25 Most powerful Inventions in the History of Literature. The book, which looks at different literary techniques as inventions created by authors to address major life issues, often surprises, which is one of its virtues. I was, for instance, surprised that a work I recently read and enjoyed—Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend—invented a remedy for loneliness. Or so Fletcher claims.
Although he frequently wanders in his book, Fletcher takes a particularly roundabout way with this claim. He starts with the story of Orpheus, moves to the operas L’Euridice and Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, shifts to the bestselling penny dreadfuls of the Victorian era (pulp publications that offered up weekly serial installments of “long romantic sagas, supernatural horror tales, and true crime adventures”), and then it’s on to Varney the Vampire and Sweeney Todd (both originally penny dreadfuls), Mario Puzo’s Godfather (the penny dreadful on a grand scale), and finally Brilliant Friend.
I won’t get into what he says about Monteverdi and opera in general—something about presenting us with discord and then winning our deep friendship through harmonic resolutions—but one can certainly see that dynamic at work in the cliffhangers that sold for a penny in the 19th century.
The example Fletcher uses from The Godfather, which occurs early in the novel, is the undertaker whose daughter is savaged and who goes to Don Corleone for justice. The godfather wins our friendship by giving justice where the courts fail.
And yes, that’s the effect I remember the book having on me. Fletcher comments, “[I]n real life, it might be best to avoid the company of gangsters. But not in fiction. In fiction, the don’s friendship is healthy for our brain.”
Then he explains how:
The first healthy thing about befriending The Godfather is that it wards off loneliness.
After going into all the negative physiological consequences of loneliness, Fletcher explains how books can help. As I read Fletcher’s chapter, I thought of Wayne Booth in The Company We Keep, whose central idea is that we should look upon books as friends, with all the benefits and risks that friendship entails. Here’s Fletcher:
When we connect with a book, we can ease that feeling of aloneness. Even though no one is physically with us, our emotional connection to the narrator’s voice or to the lives of the story characters makes our brain feel like we’re in friendly company, easing the psychological gnaw that contributes to abnormal cortisol. And with pulp fiction, gaining this bonding benefit from literature is easy. The libraries of the world are packed with adventure novels, detective fictions, and romance paperbacks that deftly use the Partial Dopamine to connect with our brain, tiding us over until our flesh-and-blood friends come knocking.
So what’s so innovative about Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, a novel about two working class girls growing up in 1950s Naples? If it is “more powerful than even the Godfather himself,” Fletcher writes, it’s because it gives us an opera through the eyes of a child. Noting that our most powerful friendships usually start in childhood, Fletcher says that My Brilliant Friend catches up “our whole psychology,” “from wonder, to curiosity, to jealousy.”
“To capture this all-consuming experience,” Fletcher continues on, “My Brilliant Friend
treats the relationship between Elena and Lila as a kind of pulp fiction serial: “It was time to go home, but we delayed, challenging each other, without ever saying a word, testing our courage.” Like an issue of Spicy Mystery or Terror Tales, Elena and Lila agitate each other’s heart. Immersing themselves in half-released dopamine, they form an ever-hungry bond that connects Elena and Lila for life; even their lovers and their families fall away.”
And:
Roughing up our emotions, like the two girls do to each other, the novel makes us feel part of their childhood gang.
Fletcher sums up Ferrante’s literary invention as follows:
To draw us into the same hungry friendship as Elena and Lila, Ferrante’s novel dishes up a simple recipe: pulp fiction dissonance from the perspective of a child. The pulp fiction dissonance does its usual work of priming our dopamine neurons. Meanwhile, the childhood perspective increases the intensity and emotional range of the dissonance, making our dopamine bond to the novel feel deeper and more psychologically complete.
Fletcher’s book title–Wonderworks–sums up well his feelings about literature. There’s a perpetual “oh, wow!” in his writing. Sometimes his enthusiasm attempts to carry him through reservations we might have. For instance, I can think of other child narrators previous to Ferrante’s that pull us into similarly deep friendships.
Jane Eyre, for instance, and the narrator of John Knowles’s A Separate Peace come to mind. To be sure, their mood swings aren’t as wild as those experienced by Elena and Lila, but maybe that’s as much to do with national temperament as a new literary invention.
Then again, Brits can go through volatile mood swings—witness Catherine Earnshaw in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. And for that matter 12-year-old Juliet and 14-year-old Romeo.
But yes, this still feels a little different. So maybe Fletcher is on to something with his “pulp fiction dissonance from the perspective of a child.”
Whether My Brilliant Friend has brought a new literary technique into the world or not, Fletcher alerted me to structural aspects of the novel that I had missed and that I missed in The Godfather as well. It’s always good when an essay gives you a new perspective on a work.
And yes, if I had been lonely as I was reading it, it would have made me feel less lonely.
Sawrey Gilpin, Gulliver Taking Leave of the Houyhnhnms (Note: the boat in the background is fashioned out of human flesh.)
Wednesday
Like many people, I have been reluctant to apply the term “fascist” to Donald Trump—”authoritarian” or even “semi-fascist” has seemed less hysterical—but his speech this past weekend has removed any remaining doubts. It also puts me in mind of the most chilling parts of Gulliver’s Travels. More on that in a moment.
In his New Hampshire Veterans Day speech, as you’ve probably heard, Trump pledged to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”
New York University history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, one of our leading experts on fascism, explains the speech’s significance. First, as she points out, Trump appears to be deliberately channeling Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini. ]Hitler in a 1920 speech referred to jews as “the black parasites of the nation” while Mussolini would joke about “rodents who carry infectious diseases from the East: the East that brings us lovely things, such as yellow fever and Bolshevism.”
Drawing on her knowledge of Italian and German fascism, Ben-Ghiat says that the purpose for such characterizations is to “get people to lose their aversion to violence.” In fact, Trump would like to “re-educate Americans to see violence as justified, patriotic, and even morally righteous.
His followers are falling into line. When pressed on the vermin speech, Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said of those making Trump-Hitler comparisons that “their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.” And as Trump talks about undocumented immigrants “polluting the blood of our country,” his 2025 advance team is circulating ideas about deporting millions of immigrants and “quarantining” others in massive camps. Trump even sounds proud of having taken children away from their parents.
So how does Jonathan Swift fit into all of this? In Book IV of Gulliver’s Travels, the 18th century satirist appears to be making Ben-Ghiat’s point that, once people have been sufficiently dehumanized, all kinds of atrocities become possible.
For instance, Gulliver finds reasonable the question that arises in a Houyhnhnm council meeting about “whether the Yahoos should be exterminated from the face of the earth?” Gulliver agrees with “one of the members for the affirmative,” whom he says “offered several arguments of great strength and weight, alleging, ‘that as the Yahoos were the most filthy, noisome, and deformed animals which nature ever produced, so they were the most restive and indocible, mischievous and malicious…’”
Gulliver would like the horses to exempt himself, of course, and is crushed when they lump him together with all the rest. Other than that, however, he has no problem with the Houyhnhnms calling in exterminators.
And now for the ghastly part. In moves that anticipate those Nazi concentration camps where Jews were turned into soap, mattress stuffing, and lamp shades, Gulliver uses humans for shoe leather:
I soled my shoes with wood, which I cut from a tree, and fitted to the upper-leather; and when this was worn out, I supplied it with the skins of Yahoos dried in the sun.
And then there is his boat, which is also made of human skin, as are the sails. These latter, needing to be more supple, require the skin of children:
I finished a sort of Indian canoe, but much larger, covering it with the skins of Yahoos, well stitched together with hempen threads of my own making. My sail was likewise composed of the skins of the same animal; but I made use of the youngest I could get, the older being too tough and thick…
Finally, he stops all the chinks with human fat:
I tried my canoe in a large pond, near my master’s house, and then corrected in it what was amiss; stopping all the chinks with Yahoos’ tallow, till I found it staunch, and able to bear me and my freight…
What is chilling about these passages is how matter of fact they are. In fact, readers might not notice the details, which makes Ben-Ghiat’s point. It’s as if anything can be normalized.
The more we close in on such a reality, the more accurate it will be to call Trump a fascist.
Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, notify me at [email protected] and indicate which you would like. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.
Tuesday
An interesting interchange I had with reader Dennis Johnson about last week’s Biden-as Hrothgar post last week has me thinking further what Americans want in a leader. While in my view Biden is doing everything we should want in a president—I consider him one of the great presidents in my lifetime—I acknowledge in my essay that he doesn’t inspire those who require inspiring. “Build back better” has never had the force of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” Bill Clinton’s “bridge to the 21st century, Barack Obama’s “hope and change” (and “Yes, we can!”) and Donald Trump’s “Make America great again.”
As Beowulf can function as a leadership workshop, I think that how he addresses his troops provides some insight into why Democrats and Independents aren’t more excited by the president. For all his strengths, he is no Beowulf.
Early in the poem, Beowulf has had the challenging task of persuading a group of young Geat warriors to travel with him to Denmark to take on Grendel, who is ravaging the great hall of Heorot. In addition to inspiring his men, Beowulf also has to impress Hrothgar. It’s a little like someone from, say, Jamaica striding into the White House and proclaiming, “I hear you have a troll problem. I’m here to solve it.” Here’s his opening boast:
So every elder and experience councilman Among my people supported my resolve To come here to you, King Hrothgar, Because all knew of my awesome strength. They had seen me boltered in the blood of enemies When I battled and bound five beasts, Raided a troll-nest and in the night-sea Slaughtered sea-brutes. I have suffered extremes And avenged the Geats (their enemies brought it Upon themselves, I devastated them). Now I mean to be a match for Grendel, Settle the outcome in a single combat.
Predictably, not everyone in King Hrothgar’s court is going embraces this young upstart. But when the contentious Unferth challenges him, Beowulf more than holds his own. Note his strategic use of contempt, followed by claims reminiscent of Muhammad Ali’s predictions of victory:
Now, I cannot recall any fight you entered, Unferth, That bears comparison. I don’t boast when I say That neither you nor Breca ever were much Celebrated for swordsmanship Or for facing danger in the battlefield. You killed your own kith and kin, So for all your cleverness and quick tongue, You will suffer damnation in the pits of hell. The fact is, Unferth, if you were truly As keen or courageous as you claim to be Grendel would never have got away with Such unchecked atrocity, attacks on your king, Havoc in Heorot and horrors everywhere. But he knows he need never be in dread Of your blade making a mizzle of his blood Or of vengeance arriving ever from this quarter— From the Victory-Shieldings, the shoulderers of the spear. He knows he can trample down you Danes To his heart’s content, humiliate and murder Without fear of reprisal. But he will find me different. I will show him how Geats shape to kill In the heat of battle. Then whoever wants to May go bravely to morning mead, when morning light, Scarfed in sun-dazzle, shines forth from the south And brings another daybreak to the world.”
In the 2007 animated version of Beowulf, we see the hero’s companions rolling their eyes at their leader’s over-the-top speeches, but I think this is wrong. When you are going to risk your life for someone, you want him to be confident. King Hrothgar is certainly impressed, feeling the kind of hope that many felt when Barack Obama was elected:
Then the gray-haired treasure-giver was glad; Far-famed in battle, the prince of Bright-Danes And keeper of his people counted on Beowulf, On the warrior’s steadfastness and his word. So the laughter started, the din got louder And the crowd was happy…
As Biden’s style is not Beowulf’s, the din tends not to get louder when he speaks.
The problem with promising hope and change, of course, is that disappointment is bound to follow, as it does the following night when Grendel’s Mother attacks. As I noted in last week’s post, Hrothgar is plunged into deep depression, lamenting, “Rest, what is rest, sorrow has returned.” Beowulf’s response is to give him a pep talk:
Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, spoke: “Wise sir, do not grieve. It is always better To avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning. For every one of us, living in this world Means waiting for our end. Let whoever can Win glory before death. When a warrior is gone, That will be his best and only bulwark. So arise, my lord, and let us immediately Set forth on the trail of this troll-dam. I guarantee you: she will not get away, Not to dens underground nor upland groves Nor the ocean floor. She’ll have nowhere to flee to. Endure your troubles today. Bear up And be the man I expect you to be.”
Although it’s a bit unsettling to see Beowulf taking on the king’s role, that’s the job of a leader: when tragedy strikes, one must buoy up one’s people. Obama was very good at this, and Biden too has a gift for speaking to the victims of violence. Trump, on the other hand, was a disaster, whether in consoling widows or rallying the nation to confront Covid.
Beowulf’s words, it turns out, have their intended effect:
With that the old lord sprung to his feet And praised God for Beowulf’s pledge. Then a bit and halter were brought for his horse With the plaited mane. The wise king mounted The royal saddle and rode out in style With a force of shield-bearers.
Beowulf is less effective at the end of his life, and it’s worth examining his final speech to his people to figure out why. The poem grapples throughout with the problem of dragon kings, who are rulers who have lost the ability to lead. Some succumb to depression or sadness, some to paranoia. As I read Beowulf’s dragon episode, the hero is in danger of becoming one of these kings. Part of the problem is that, looking back over his life, everything seems meaningless. All he can see is one damn death after another, with no end in sight.
His speech about the dragon disempowers his men. Essentially he tells them that only he can take on the monster. Or as Trump puts it, “Only I can fix it”:
Men at arms, remain here on the barrow, Safe in your armor, to see which one of us Is better in the end at bearing wounds In a deadly fray. This fight is not yours, Nor is it up to any man except me To measure his strength against the monster Or to prove his worth. I shall win the gold By my courage, or else mortal combat, Doom of battle, will bear your lord away.”
The result of such leadership is the men turning and running when the fight goes bad:
[H]e who had once ruled Was furled in fire and had to face the worst. No help or backing was to be had then From his high-born comrades; that hand-picked troop Broke ranks and ran for their lives To the safety of the wood.
At this point, Wiglaf proposes a different response to hardship, one that involves working together rather than separately:
[N]ow the day has come
When this lord we serve needs sound men To give him their support. Let us go to him, Help our leader through the hot flame And dread of the fire. As God is my witness, I would rather my body were robbed in the same Burning blaze as my gold-giver’s body Than go back home bearing arms. That is unthinkable, unless we have first Slain the foe and defended the life Of the prince of the Weather-Geats. I well know That things he has done for us deserve better. Should he alone be left exposed To fall in battle? We must bond together, Shield and helmet, mail-shirt and sword.
Bottom-up leadership is replacing top-down leadership, and it proves more effective. When Wiglaf goes to the aid of Beowulf, the tide turns. First Wiglaf shouts encouragement to his king:
Go on, dear Beowulf, do everything You said you would when you were still young And vowed you would never let your name and fame Be dimmed while you lived. Your deeds are famous, So stay resolute, my lord, defend your life now With the whole of your strength. I shall stand by you.
Then, together, they kill the dragon:
They had killed the enemy, courage quelled his life; That pair of kinsmen, partners in nobility, Had destroyed the foe. So every man should act, Be at hand when needed…
I don’t know whether Biden’s quiet and cooperative leadership style is guaranteed to get him re-elected, but I know that it gets things done. His cabinet secretaries, who are “at hand when needed,” have been amazingly effective at addressing the needs of the country. Like Wiglaf, they know that working together with their leader is the best way of solving problems. What is seen by many as Biden’s weakness—the lack of a forceful personality—is Biden’s secret strength: he knows how to get people to sacrifice ego for the good of the whole.
So the president resembles Beowulf after all, at least in the way he gives life to his people. In Wiglaf’s words,
Anyone ready to admit the truth Will surely realize the lord of men Who showered you with gifts and gave you the armor You are standing in–when he would distribute Helmets and mail-shirts to men on the mead-benches, A prince treating his thanes in hall To the best he could find, far or near…
If we are do not come to his support, we can expect the future that Wiglaf predicts for the Geats:
Every one of you With freeholds of land, our whole nation, Will be dispossessed, once princes from beyond Get tidings of how you turned and fled And disgraced yourselves.
In short, if you think you can fight for our democracy only if you are inspired by the president, you have already lost the battle. Or as Wiglaf puts it, you are “throwing weapons uselessly away.”
Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, notify me at [email protected] and indicate which you would like. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.
Monday
Since Veterans Day occurred over the weekend, I’m only now honoring the occasion, posting a poem that I really like about how literature came to the aid of one former soldier. In Amorak Huey’s “We Were All Odysseus in Those Days,” a man who survives a battle in which a friend dies looks to Homer to support him in his subsequent life.
The tale of Odysseus and Polyphemus is one that involves violence, tragedy, ingenuity, and trickery. Trapped by the Cyclops in his cave, Odysseus must watch as four of his men are devoured before his eyes.
I remember being haunted by the passage when I encountered it in high school. Here’s the scene in Robert Fitzgerald’s translation:
Neither reply nor pity came from him, but in one stride he clutched at my companions and caught two in his hands like squirming puppies to beat their brains out, spattering the floor. Then he dismembered them and made his meal, gaping and crunching like a mountain lion— everything: innards, flesh, and marrow bones.
I think of how a veteran who has watched a companion die in battle would relate to such a passage.
For Odysseus to escape with his remaining men requires “buying time and making do,” as Huey’s poem puts it. Odysseus’s first move involves what Huey calls a bad pun, made after he has plied Polyphemus with some potent wine:
“Cyclops, you ask my honorable name? Remember the gift you promised me, and I shall tell you. My name is Nohbdy: mother, father, and friends, everyone calls me Nohbdy.’ And he said: “Nohbdy’s my meat, then, after I eat his friends. Others come first. There’s a noble gift, now.” Even as he spoke, he reeled and tumbled back…
Knowing that he and his men cannot move the stone blocking the cave, Odysseus chooses to blind rather than kill Polyphemus. The men then escape by clinging to the undersides of Polyphemus’s sheep as he takes them to pasture the following day. The cleverness of Odysseus’s bad pun becomes clear when Polyphemus attempts to rally the other Cyclopes to his aid: “Nohbdy has blinded me,” he tells them. Here’s the poem:
We Were All Odysseus in Those Days By Amorak Huey
A young man learns to shoot & dies in the mud an ocean away from home, a rifle in his fingers & the sky dripping from his heart. Next to him a friend watches his final breath slip ragged into the ditch, a thing the friend will carry back to America— wound, souvenir, backstory. He’ll teach literature to young people for 40 years. He’ll coach his daughters’ softball teams. Root for Red Wings & Lions & Tigers. Dance well. Love generously. He’ll be quick with a joke & firm with handshakes. He’ll rarely talk about the war. If asked he’ll tell you instead his favorite story: Odysseus escaping from the Cyclops with a bad pun & good wine & a sharp stick. It’s about buying time & making do, he’ll say. It’s about doing what it takes to get home, & you see he has been talking about the war all along. We all want the same thing from this world: Call me nobody. Let me live.
This English teacher and veteran will use Odysseus’s escape from death to stand in for his own experience. It’s a way to distance himself from the horrors he has witnessed, even as it simultaneously acknowledges those horrors. He, like Odysseus, has been on an epic quest and he, like Odysseus, has survived. Now he can live quietly–Call me nobody. Let me live–as he raises a family and gives back to his community.
While my own vet father didn’t directly witness fellow soldiers getting killed, he lost friends in World War II and also witnessed the horrors of the Dachau concentration camp three days after it was liberated. He too believed deeply in contributing to his community, getting me to wonder if there’s something about those who have been in war to commit themselves to a community of life. Not all veterans, to be sure, but many of them.
I think of the scene in Saving Private Ryan where the Tom Hanks character, after in fact saving Ryan at the cost of his own life, tells him before dying, “Earn this. Earn it.” And of Ryan, decades later, saying to his commander’s grave marker,
Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I’ve tried to live my life the best that I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that at least in your eyes, I’ve earned what all of you have done for me.
When he turns to his wife and says to her, “Tell me I’ve led a good life. Tell me I’m a good man,” she replies—and one knows she speaks the truth—“You are.”
The veterans I have known were and are good men and women. To them I say belatedly, “Happy Veterans Day.”
Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, notify me at [email protected] and indicate which you would like. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.
Sunday
Today’s Old Testament reading, which is from The Book of Wisdom (a.k.a. The Wisdom of Solomon), works as a poem in its own right. It also brings to mind the discourse that Dante has with Solomon in Paradiso. Here’s the reading:
Wisdom is radiant and unfading, and she is easily discerned by those who love her, and is found by those who seek her. She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her. One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty, for she will be found sitting at the gate To fix one’s thought on her is perfect understanding, and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care, because she goes about seeking those worthy of her, and she graciously appears to them in their paths, and meets them in every thought.
Wisdom here is not just being smart but being willing to submit our lives to God, who in turn gives us the gifts we need to have rich and spirit-filled lives. The gifts differ from person to person, of course. Solomon, for instance, asked God for wisdom to be able to govern Israel and administer justice. I have always prayed to be a good teacher, with the literature I teach nurturing, guiding and embiggening (Lisa Simpson’s word) my students. It’s always a good exercise to identify our gifts and determine the best ways to share them with the world.
When Dante speaks of wisdom, he adds another component, which is opening ourselves to God’s love. In Paradiso’s final line, Dante speaks of the love that “moves the sun and the other stars,” and this love is so powerful that Dante, upon first entering Paradiso, cannot look directly at it. This fact leads to questions that he directs to Solomon, who resides in the sphere of the Sun.
When we reassume corporeal form on the last day, Dante asks Solomon how we will be strong enough to look upon that love that we commune directly with in heaven.
I’ll explain in a moment why this is an important question, even if you don’t believe that all will rise again in some mystical end time. Let’s first look at how Solomon responds.
It all depends on how humans interact with God’s love, Solomon tells Dante. The more one is able to open oneself to divinity, the brighter one shines. As the prophet king explains it, “the soul’s brightness takes its measure from our ardor,/our ardor from our vision.”
So instead of being overwhelmed by the light of God’s love when we return to earth, we will, as more perfect beings (now that we are rejoined with our bodies), be able to open ourselves to God’s love more fully than we did in our previous lives:
When, glorified and sanctified, the flesh is once again our dress, our persons shall, in being all complete, please all the more . . .
And
[T]herefore, whatever light gratuitous the Highest Good gives us will be enhanced— the light that will allow us to see Him;
that light will cause our vision to increase, the ardor vision kindles to increase, the brightness born of ardor to increase.
In short, we will be able to love more perfectly. In a rather extraordinary vision, Dante shows all the heavenly host longing to be reunited with their earthly bodies, when they can interact again with those they loved on earth:
One and the other choir seemed to me so quick and keen to say “Amen” that they showed clearly how they longed for their dead bodies—
not only for themselves, perhaps, but for their mothers, fathers, and for others dear to them before they were eternal flames.
Dante even goes so far as to say that the flesh that we will regain will overpower the effulgence—the bright light—that surrounds the celestial spirits. It will do so in the same way that the light from a burning lump of coal overpowers the coal itself:
But even as a coal that sends forth flame, And by its vivid whiteness overpowers it So that its own appearance it maintains,
Thus the effulgence that surrounds us now Shall be o’erpowered in aspect by the flesh, Which still to-day the earth doth cover up…
I think of Robert Frost’s line in “Birches,” “Earth’s the right place for love, I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”
I wrote last week about how the early Christian church imagined Paradise occurring on earth, not in some ethereal future, and one can see Dante thinking along these lines as well. Just as one can read Inferno as being more about the hell that we make for ourselves in this world than in the next, I think the same can be said of Paradiso: the more we open ourselves to God’s love, the brighter we will shine and the more we bring God’s kingdom to earth. Or as the Lord’s Prayer’s puts it, “on earth as it is in heaven.”
The 17th century metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan puts it this way in his poem “The World.” (The “fools” he mentions are those who is lose themselves in their own ego-driven desires.):
O fools (said I) thus to prefer dark night Before true light, To live in grots and caves, and hate the day Because it shews the way, The way, which from this dead and dark abode Leads up to God, A way where you might tread the sun, and be More bright than he.
In past posts about Inferno I’ve compared Dante’s damned souls with Vaughan’s account of those who make their own hells here and now. For instance,
The fearful miser on a heap of rust Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust His own hands with the dust, Yet would not place one piece above, but lives In fear of thieves…
So Solomon, in his wisdom, suggests we choose love of God over love of Self. We could tread the sun if we wanted, outshining Dante’s celestial flames. Why do we so often settle for darkness instead?
Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, notify me at [email protected] and indicate which you would like. I promise not to share your e-mail address with anyone. To unsubscribe, send me a follow-up email.
Friday
Washington Post satirist Alexandra Petri has once again hit paydirt by imagining Donald Trump as the protagonist of Kafka’s The Trial. While Trump himself, being a non-reader, would not describe his experiences as Kafkaesque, some of his more literate supporters might.
Of course, the big difference is that K. never discovers what he’s been accused of—that’s what makes the novel so nightmarish—whereas the Trump indictments are clearly spelled out: he stole documents, he defrauded banks, he attempted to overthrow the government, he slimed a woman that he raped. Petri pulls off her satire, however, by showing the whole trial through Trump’s eyes. From that vantage point, Trump is just as confused as K.
In The Trial, K. never finds a firm place on which to stand. It all starts with his arrest:
Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested. Every day at eight in the morning he was brought his breakfast by Mrs. Grubach’s cook—Mrs. Grubach was his landlady—but today she didn’t come. That had never happened before.
Then there’s this interchange with the arresting officers:
“And why am I under arrest?” he then asked. “That’s something we’re not allowed to tell you. Go into your room and wait there. Proceedings are underway and you’ll learn about everything all in good time.”
Later, when he shows up to court, he’s never clear what exactly is happening. The courtroom itself is hard to find and then, when he enters, he’s not sure what anyone’s role is:
At the other end of the hall where K. had been led there was a little table set at an angle on a very low podium which was as overcrowded as everywhere else, and behind the table, near the edge of the podium, sat a small, fat, wheezing man who was talking with someone behind him. This second man was standing with his legs crossed and his elbows on the backrest of the chair, provoking much laughter. From time to time he threw his arm in the air as if doing a caricature of someone. The youth who was leading K. had some difficulty in reporting to the man. He had already tried twice to tell him something, standing on tiptoe, but without getting the man’s attention as he sat there above him. It was only when one of the people up on the podium drew his attention to the youth that the man turned to him and leant down to hear what it was he quietly said.
And then there’s the judge:
[K.] stood pressed closely against the table, the press of the crowd behind him was so great that he had to press back against it if he did not want to push the judge’s desk down off the podium and perhaps the judge along with it.
The judge, however, paid no attention to that but sat very comfortably on his chair and, after saying a few words to close his discussion with the man behind him, reached for a little notebook, the only item on his desk. It was like an old school exercise book and had become quite misshapen from much thumbing. “Now then,” said the judge, thumbing through the book. He turned to K. with the tone of someone who knows his facts and said, “you are a house painter?” “No,” said K., “I am the chief clerk in a large bank.” This reply was followed by laughter among the righthand faction down in the hall…
There is one final interaction with this judge at the end of the chapter when K. defiantly turns to go:
“One moment,” [the judge] said. K. stood where he was, but looked at the door with his hand already on its handle rather than at the judge. “I merely wanted to draw your attention,” said the judge, “to something you seem not yet to be aware of: today, you have robbed yourself of the advantages that a hearing of this sort always gives to someone who is under arrest.” K. laughed towards the door. “You bunch of louts,” he called, “you can keep all your hearings as a present from me,” then opened the door and hurried down the steps. Behind him, the noise of the assembly rose as it became lively once more and probably began to discuss these events as if making a scientific study of them.
K doesn’t manage to maintain this bravado for long, however, and starts obsessing about his situation. It so happens that he never sees the judge again although he searches for him. He also seeks to learn about his legal situation from a lawyer, who never gives him a straight answer. In the end, the only certainty that K. finds is his own death.
Petri begins her piece by riffing on Kafka’s first line:
Someone must have been telling lies about Donald T. because he had done nothing wrong and yet he kept having to be on trial. He was on trail everywhere at once.
No, T. could think of no possible reason this would be happening to him. It was Kafkaesque! He had simply been going about his business like any other man, inflating his assets, demanding more votes to keep him in power, stockpiling classified documents in his bathroom — and now this strange thing was happening.
We soon learn the reasons for T.’s confusion: he thinks he’s at a rally:
T. knew that something was unusual when he arrived at his campaign rally. From the very first moment it struck him as an odd place for a rally. It was inside a Manhattan curtroom. His children had spoken, which was typical for a rally, but their remarks had been strangely confined to their business dealings. Instead of saying how great he was and how wonderful he was going to make America, they had said things about negotiations and used the word “boilerplate.”
In Kafka’s courtroom scene, K. tries explaining that a mistake has been made, only to be confused by the responses. Petri has the same situation play out with T.:
T. thought it best to deliver his rally speech as usual. He would certainly not be the one to admit that something was out of the ordinary. He would tell them about his hatred of windmills (“I’m not a windmill person” and how much he esteemed Mar-a-Lago, a place of incalculable value because it was the most beautiful spot in the world. He would tell them how he would be the next president, though perhaps it would be better not to elaborate on his plans to get vengeance right away. He would rail about witch hunts and judges. He started off quite strongly, but as he went on, he began to feel ill at ease. It was strange to speak like this without his cheering audience, with just the man sitting there at the desk growing visibly irritated.
Unlike Kafka, however, Petri actually shows straight answers being given to the defendant:
And this was not his only rally held in a tiny courtroom. He had to keep appearing in these places. He was on trial everywhere, all the time, and no one could tell him why. “That’s not true,” somebody said. “Everyone has been telling you why constantly. You are on trial in the state of New York for business fraud. You are on trial in Florida for your mishandling of classified documents. And you are on trial in Georgia for trying to overturn the election.”
Because he’s living in his own bubble, however, T. cannot hear what people are saying:
No, he could not understand it. He would simply refuse to understand it, and see what would happen then.
What happens then in The Trial is that K. K. is murdered by two state thugs. While we don’t want that for Trump, we do want some accountability.
Interestingly, for all people’s complaining about living in a Kafkaesque world, Trump is currently in court because America is not the society we see in The Trial. The court system is following a set of clearly set out rules so that everyone knows where they are at all times. For that matter, our electoral system keeps on reflecting the will of the voters, and our institutions of law enforcement, in the main, continue to work. And the mainstream media gets things mostly right.
If Trump gets his way, on the other hand, we really will have a Kafkaesque society where he can hound people who have done nothing wrong and twist the law to suit his own ends. Although The Trial was written in 1914-15, it resembles the world of Josef Stalin or Vladimir Putin, which we know is Trump’s dream. Increasingly we’re hearing about plans to stuff the Justice Department and the Federal Government with Trump sycophants should he regain the presidency.
The Republican House is already doing its part, seeking to impeach Joe Biden for reasons to be decided later. We’re not out of the woods yet.
