Writing the Wrong
Blurry German Lines
I am a writer. I can say that now without feeling like a fraud because I am going by award winning and prolific author, Stephen King's idea of when someone can call herself a writer. It goes something like this: when you pay your electric bill with something you have written, then you can call yourself a writer. I got paid for a short story recently. My electric bill was 156 dollars and I was paid just enough for my story. But I don't get paid enough, and I still get rejected sometimes (by wildly misguided editors. It's really amazing how many of them are out there!) so I have to teach and take freelance writing work on the side.
My most recent assignment involved reading the 524 page tome, Dr Faustus by German author Thomas Mann and giving a 5,000 word account of the novel, its major themes and motifs and where it placed on the modern novel scoreboard compared to James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon. I avoided reading Pynchon in college and am still trying to do it now because I am too intellectually lazy these days, and I never would have picked up Dr Faustus if another electric bill did not loom.
Dr Faustus is an allegory. It's a first person account of a genius composer, Adrian Leverkuhn, by his friend, the somewhat wimpy Serenus Zeitblom. AL as Leverkuhn shall be known, is the human personification of German sentiment and nature and his decline into narcissistic madness is an allegory for the rise of the Nazi party after WWI. But get this, this AL makes a deal with the DEVIL: 24 years of genius artistic output as long as he eschews love and intimacy and basically his humanity. Mann essentially posits that that is what the German people did. In order to be the most dominant presence in Europe and eventually the world, they traded in their morality, humanity and ability to love. In a strange twist, AL gets syphilis ON PURPOSE so he never has to worry about falling in love or getting close to anyone because his disease will keep him abstinent and prevents him from getting distracted by that most carnal creature, woman. Talk about commitment to his art. Well Germans are nothing if not focused.
I have had to burrow deep into the bowels of the German psyche pre WWII, and I do not recommend any one do this without the proper equipment: a large mug of very strong coffee, and at least three appointments with your therapist. The author Mann is telling me that the rise of Nazism was inevitable, that Germany's very nature destined it to ruination and moral bankruptcy. The fact is, I am way over my head. I have had to harness what analytical ability I have, which is not saying much. And this Mann guy LOVES to get into details about every bloody thing. But he does, through his narrator, actually apologise to his reader for his long winded chapters, which is considerate of him. He knows he is testing your patience and attention but he is also saying, well this is important: we must understand what the pathology of a nation is so we understand what led us to precisely where we are, good or bad. So it got me thinking, is there a national character? And what is Bangladesh's? I know what America's is right now. It's contentious and bickering. Sounds familiar, huh? The US government is on hartaliday apparently. But you can still shoot someone if you are a cop, which a DC cop did recently, killing an unarmed woman with her toddler in the back seat after she rammed her car into barriers in front of the Capital building. He just didn't get paid for it. So I am getting paranoid because I am reading about Germany and her gradual descent into Fascism, and I see elements of this in the US today; narcissism, the pull to dominate and exploit more vulnerable countries and people, to indulge in hedonism and indulge one's base appetites. The number one song in the US this past summer was “Blurred Lines” which brazenly celebrates sexually objectifying women and suggests rape is acceptable. I'm no feminist—I'm a personist—but if this is not a sign of how base the American psyche is then I don' know what is. Robin Thicke, the singer, can now retire on how much money he has made on this one song alone. The thing is I was humming it one day in the grocery store and a skinny, sanctimonious blonde woman says to me, “Do you know what that song is about? It's about rape.” I snorted and ignored her. But at a party a couple of us looked up the lyrics and the blonde self righteous woman was absolutely right. Some of the lyrics are: “I know you want it. The way you grab me, you wanna get nasty.” And meanwhile I hear Americans decry India's arguably misogynistic culture. Our economy is in shambles and the sophomoric standoff between the Democrats and the Republicans has led to the cutting of funds for imperative social programmes. No one is backing down. The rich are getting richer and the poor are languishing while the political posturing and foot stomping continues…wait this DOES sounds familiar, does it not? In fact many countries are like this, not just Bangladesh, or the US, we all have the same weaknesses and foibles, it's easy for most nations to dissolve into moral decrepitude if we are not vigilant. I think that's what Mann is saying, which leads me to my ultimate conclusion: we are all German, circa 1912-1945.
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