Lest We Forget

I’m getting to the point in reading Great Expectations where Pip is starting to settle into his new life as a gentleman and to forget his days as a blacksmith’s apprentice back near the misty marshes and the working class. Having recently returned to Paris, I am beginning to wonder if a voluntary amnesia is something we come down with from time to time when we’ve left one world behind in order to immerse ourselves in a new one. Like Pip, I’m not purposefully forsaking my old life, but I do feel as though there is some sort of portal hovering over the Atlantic that serves as a gate between two completely different worlds. There’s the quiet, pastoral existence I’ve led in Vermont, which I love, and there’s the more cosmopolitan life here in Paris full of hustle and bustle and steeped in history, literature, and the culture of a millennium or two. At first glance, it seems like these two modes of operation are so incompatible that it would take two different people to lead them, but evidently not. After all, here I am.

This somewhat forced memory loss, this redefinition of self at the drop of a hat, is apparently more common in our culture than I had once thought. After an enjoyable birthday dinner for my father, it became clear to me that, as a society, we have largely forgot the foibles we have committed in the past in favor of the more easily digested claptrap that is taught in basic history classes. I know that history is written by the victors and that there’s a lot more story there than anyone would like to admit, but in many high school classrooms, the history that is taught borders on outrageously one-sided. It might not be propaganda if the only sin you commit is omission, but it still sways the hearts and minds of the next generation in a questionable direction.

What am I talking about? Well, it all started with that bomber from Yemen that ended up blowing off more of his junk than any part of the plane while landing in Detroit. Surely these terrorists are just God obsessed nut jobs who are completely off their rockers and take some sort of masochistic pleasure in offing themselves for Allah, right? Well, maybe so, but I think it’s important to realize that it wasn’t really all that long ago that we people of the “modernized” West were waging our own holy wars. Just look at the speech that Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor during the Renaissance, gave to the pope when his nemesis (there is a GREAT, quasi-epic story here which you really need to learn if you don’t already know it) François 1er teamed up with some Turks to foil his imperialistic plot. This great Christian king talked about “killing the infidels” and fighting to restore the righteous rule of God, who he served with every breath (naturally). Actually, not that long ago, it was quite fashionable to send troops into the Middle East to kill off the “heathens” who had done nothing to provoke we “civilized” Christians. It seems we were not only doing the same thing a few centuries ago, but we were using the same language as the terrorist groups are now. If it works, don’t fix it, right?

Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t condone terrorism in any form, whether it’s Christians killing Jews or Muslims during the Renaissance or if it’s al-Qaeda trying to kill off the West nowadays; killing to forward religious or political ambitions (which often amount to the same thing) is always, always wrong. I just think it’s important to realize that this type of “lunacy” which the American media vilifies (and rightly so), is one of the skeletons in our closet too. We’re no better, we’ve just moved on to new tricks.

It’s also important to remember where we all came from. Many people in America have clenched their teeth and set themselves steadfast against immigrants, illegal or otherwise, that are “invading” their country. Not only does this not make sense financially as immigrants do a lot of the work that must get done but Americans are no longer willing to do, but it wasn’t so long ago that many of our ancestors were those immigrants coming to the U.S. looking for a better life. In fact, in the middle of the last century, it was common for French Canadians to come down to the U.S., much as Latin Americans do through Mexico these days, in search of work. America was founded by those who were persecuted in their home countries and who sought to create a more perfect union. Identifying oneself now as a “real” American as opposed to one of the “invaders” is the truly un-American thing to do. We are a nation built to welcome the downtrodden and oppressed, a policy which has been largely responsible for ensuring our success as a country, and yet one we so easily forget about when we go to vote (or, more often than not, don’t go to vote).

Maybe amnesia is the only way to move forward. Maybe the weight of history is just too great and there’s just too much to know (God knows every time I learn something new, I realize I know far less than I should). But, as frightfully dull as learning dates and royal family trees can be, there are lessons to be learned there, tucked in dusty tomes on dark shelves in the back of libraries. As humans, we tend to repeat ourselves instead of inventing new tricks, so while the technology might be different, we seem to have been using the same strategies to get what we want for centuries. Learning these patterns means being able to outsmart them.

All of this build-up brings me to what I really wanted to talk about: a little movie called Enemy of the State starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman. It’s a decent action-suspense type film where a senator is murdered because he tries to block new legislation that forwards the political ambitions of a sinister director of an Orwellian agency, blah, blah, blah. It’s entertaining, but we’ve seen this sort of conspiracy theory before. What makes this movie interesting is that, at first glance, it looks like a writer took what the Bush Administration did after 9/11 to civil liberties with the Patriot Act and made a film: a director of the NSA has bypassed the legal process necessary to get phone taps, and is using the full brunt of network technology to track and destroy anyone that gets in his way. Screw warrants and judges, let’s just let the government listen to any conversation they’d like. After all, friendly Uncle Sam would never abuse the privilege, right? Terrifying.

The whole thing seems so obviously based on the Patriot Act and the results of 9/11 that when the bad guy’s birthday is 9/11/1940, it just seemed intentional. I mean, he is destroying civil liberties with his legislation, and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers on 9/11/2001 was the beginning of the same erosion of rights in America. It’s just a semi-transparent allegory, right?

Wrong. What sent shivers down my spine is that this movie was released three years prior to 9/11. Cynthia and I were both shocked since when we found out on IMDB as we both had drawn the same conclusion about the movie. It made us wonder if, like airplanes, submarines, and videophones, the plot of this movie went from fantastic fiction to reality when the time was right. No, I’m not suggesting that someone took this movie and said, “Gee, what a great way to bypass those pesky rights Americans have! Let’s use this movie as a blueprint for a totalitarian regime!” (though if anyone was going to do something so obvious, it would have been our former president), but it does make you wonder: what else is lurking out there in the past that explains the present and possibly the future?

[poll id="2"]

Tags: 9/11, al-Qaeda, America, amnesia, Bush, Charles V, Christianity, Dickens, Enemy of the State, François 1er, Gene Hackman, Great Expectations, Islam, Judaism, Mexico, Orwell, Patriot Act, politics, Quebec, terrorism, Will Smith

Ding Dong!

11th grade English was memorable for many reasons, not the least of which was our excentric English teacher, Mr. Keane. The books we read, such as Animal Farm by Orwell (or was that 10th grade?), Moby Dick by Melville, The Great Gatsby (still one of my favorites) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, among many others were pretty fantastic and though some of them were quite simple (e.g. The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway), they were almost all mind blowingly good. I think it was Mr. Keane’s English class at Harford High School that really started to make me think more deeply about literature in some sort of meaningful, more-important-than-getting-an-A sort of way.

Whether it was his vocal gender-bending as the sexy woman in red in Death of a Salesman or his heart-stopping outbursts during particularly important passages whose meaning seemed to elude us, Mr. Keane had a way of really making you stop and think about what you were reading and examine it in microscopic detail. One of the most important moments in any book, he taught us, is the mention of the title in the work, which is clearly true, but to make sure we never missed it, he would always shout, “DING DONG!” whenever one was mentioned. While watching a video snippet of Moby Dick, as the whale breaches, Captain Ahab’s ranting would be drowned out by Mr Keane’s deafening exclamation, “DING DONG!” And so it went throughout the rest of my junior year and through AP English the next year.

Mr. Keane’s technique was so effective and so memorable, in fact, that it has become some sort of autonomic response during my further studies in literature. Reading Notre-Dame de Paris in my apartment in France, Victor Hugo’s rendition of Quasimodo’s handiwork wasn’t the only chorus of bells I heard: “A whole chapter named ‘Notre-Dame de Paris?!’ DING DONG! DING DONG!” Reading Upton Sinclair’s (isn’t that a great name?) The Jungle in a double-wide in Hutto, Texas (piqued your curiosity, have I?), the hammers smashing in the cow’s heads before turning them into sawdust filled steaks wasn’t the only clattering I heard. In short, like it or not, Mr. Keane is always with me when I’m reading.

So today while reading Great Expectations by Dickens, imagine the cacophony in my head when I got to the chapter when the lawyer comes and tells Pip about his new enriched life as a gentleman at the expense of a mysterious benefactor (you’re not fooling anyone Dickens, we all know Miss Havisham is behind it); the silly solicitor must have said “great expectations” ten times in two pages! All the ding dongs risked giving me a headache, but not before working precisely as designed and making me realize how fundamentally important the passage was to the book. Pip not only has tangible “great expectations” coming to him in the form of a substantial fortune, he has them of his new life as a gentleman including the possible wooing of Estella. Joe, Biddy, and to a much lesser extent, Pip’s now feeble sister have “great expectations” of what Pip will accomplish and how far he’ll go in life. His mysterious benefactor certainly has “great expectations” of what he’ll do as a gentleman, and probably expects him to do some pretty “great” favors in return. The weight of what’s happening is palpable and nearly crushing, like the first day at a college that is costing a fortune or the first day on the job that you got based on a stellar recommendation from your previous employer. There are moments in life when you have a lot to live up to or when fate has to be exceptionally kind to fulfill a vision you’ve dreamt up for your life, and from this theme has Dickens so deftly chosen the title of his work. Ding dong! He’s a genius.

This chapter also got me thinking about the Miss Havishams in life. How many wealthy benefactors are out there making dreams come true while remaining in the shadows like this aged despondent bride? The federal government and scholarship foundations are allowing underprivileged youth to get a higher education every day and yet these unseen and generous entities go largely unthanked and unknown. It’s very encouraging to think that people with real amounts of money (far exceeding the meager $25/month I send to my little Andrés in Mexico) get something more than a tax deduction out of giving a chance to the less fortunate. Enriching the general populous is a truly altruistic gesture, and both restores my faith in humanity and helps strip away the villainous and miserly reputation the empoverished have of the more affluent. Money might not be able to buy happiness directly, but giving it away can. I’ll find out if Miss Havisham’s gift allows any happiness to creep into her dank shadow-filled existence in a few hundred pages, but in the meantime, I’ll just relish in the happiness the imaginary sounding of a bell can inspire.

Tags: Andrés, Dickens, English, France, Great Expectations, Hartford High School, Literature, Mr. Keane

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

It’s another Vermont Christmas and I’m reading Dickens. Though I’m reading Great Expectations instead of A Christmas Carol, it actually feels quite appropriate. You see, I see myself a bit of Pip in myself of late. In case you haven’t read the book, Pip is a young common boy in England who finds himself beckoned to play at Miss Havisham’s, the wealthy spinster who lives “up-town” in his town. You see, before playing at Miss Havisham’s, Pip is somewhat blissfully unaware of how “common” he is with his thick-soled shoes and his coarse hands, yet after Estella gets done with him after his first visit, he becomes self-conscious of his station in the society of the small town. After my return from Paris, I have have a similar revelation about my place in the world.

I’ve been lucky enough to have traveled since a tender age and I’ve seen a lot more of the world than many people, from the East Coast of the US to the West, from North to South, through most of the provinces of Canada, a smattering of countries in Europe and yes, even a good deal of China, but coming back from France feels different somehow. Normally, I come back to Vermont and can only think of how picturesque my state is; how returning here is somehow like coming back to a place that exists somewhere between the paintings of Normal Rockwell and the poetry of Robert Frost. But this time it feels different. This time, after spending so much time in a city which feels tailor-made for me, Vermont feels diminished, like the beautiful forests I remembered have been replaced by trees and overgrown underbrush. What was once a cute country general store is now just overpriced. The snow covered roads lacking sidewalks aren’t rustic but impinging my ability to exercise comfortably. In short, Paris has killed off my romantic vision of what was and has shone a garish light on my home state, allowing me to see it through what may be a more objective lens.

In short, I think that I’m not only a city mouse now, but one that is having a hard time readjusting to the country, albeit just for a little break and not a life there. This is pretty natural it seems after reading the Facebook statuses of all the other Parisiens now back in the States for Christmas who are ready to go back to France. For those that love her, Paris beckons us back with her cinemas, pastry shops, and vibrant culture which is equaled in no other place on Earth, at least not one that I’ve ever seen. Maybe what’s making me feel uneasy isn’t so much the countryside of Vermont, but instead the fact that I’ve realized that I can never come back. The Vermont I once knew is an old knit sweater that I’ve outgrown and whose pattern has gone out of fashion, and that’s frightening because it means that I’m homeless, in a larger sense if not literally.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the Green Mountain State dearly, and I might call it home again someday, but until I’ve realized my career ambitions and am really ready to settle down, it’s just no longer for me.

On another note, I’ve picked up a copy of the 2009 addition of America’s Best Essays and I think I’ve finally found a genre that fits my writing style between the essay and the short story. Beyond that, after watching one of Mom’s Christmas presents, Julie & Julia, I think I need to set a deadline for myself to get published because, seriously, if I end up back in a cubicle doing data analysis after my year in Paris, no matter how well paid I am, I will flip my shit. I promise. One of the keys to Julie’s success was surely her deadline as, like me, it seems like she had great ideas but poor follow-through. So, like her, if I’m going to get my words out of cyberspace and in print on crisp glossy pages (or even better on woody matte ones between two cardboard covers), I’m going to need to actually finish something. As I know breaking into the published world isn’t easy and that my studies and work will make it necessary to stop banging out essays and shorts from time to time, I’ll give myself until my 27th birthday (February 23rd, 2011) to get my words in print.

What do you think, blogosphere, can I do it? Is my writing good enough to get published in print somewhere (I’m not talking about the New Yorker for starters, mind you)? If so, help me find an appropriate audience by posting a comment on the following question:

In your opinion, in which publication would Jonathan’s writing fit best?

Tags: A Christmas Carol, Christmas, Dickens, goals, Great Expectations, home, Paris, publishing, Vermont