Cormac McCarthy – The Road – Comment

 

Avoiding dystopian novels and films is a rule of mine, and has been one, until discovering Cormac McCarthy's 2006 text, The Road. If anything, all I need is to watch and read the news to create a dark mood. Writing about nuclear war over the years is enough for me. Although in The Road, the writing is descriptively sparse, and the images that his prose creates in the mind's eye, anyone interested in serious American literature, should read this book.

The earth, at least in the United States, has turned into a dark, wintry desolation of gray skies and desperate people. We are never told why this is the case, weather from climate change, or the fall out from a nuclear holocaust. Everything across the landscape is covered with ash, and the sun barely lights the sky. This leads me to deduce that they are living in a nuclear winter.

Our two main characters are the Man and his young child, we know as Son. They're on the road headed west toward a warmer climate and the sea. They push a shopping cart filled with blankets and a variety of canned goods, including a pistol that holds only two bullets. Most of the novel is the two coming across abandoned houses and buildings searching for food and anything that will aid their survival.

The young lad has a great amount of compassion and empathy for his fellow human beings. A few times along their journey, they come across another traveling poor soul. While the Man is suspicious and aggressive toward the stranger, the little boy always cries out to his father to help them and share what little food they have left.

The boy constantly asks his father if they are 'the good guys', and those they come across are 'the bad guys.' The Man assures his son they are reasonable, carrying a light. The light is a metaphor for hope in a hopeless existence.

After sometime, they come across a parade of travelers fitted in scarves and gas masks. Despite hiding, they're confronted, where one of the men goes to grab the boy, and the Man shoots him in the head. Now he only has one bullet left – that he uses at the end of the tale. All their supplies have been stolen, and with persistence, over time, they recover a few items. People have resorted to cannibalism to eat and remain alive.

Because of the ash-filled atmosphere, Man's health is deteriorating at a fast rate. As the reader we understand that his time is limited.

To be sure, nothing about this novel provides hope. Unless, perhaps, the boy's instinct for empathy and compassion that sees our future generations hold onto what makes us human – our humanity.  

Cormac McCarthy – Stella Maris – Comment

 

Stella Maris is McCarthy's coda to The Passenger. The title is the name of the mental institution that the protagonist of The Passenger, Bobby Western's sister, Alicia Western admitted herself into with only a toothbrush and grocery bag containing $40,000. We are introduced to Alicia Western in the first novel, visited by a character called the Kid: a hallucination of an individual who is deformed with flippers for hands and a childish, sarcastic sense of humor. The Kid's comments, though idiotic at times, reveal the source of madness in Alicia's mind. We soon discover that Alicia Western has been in this institution twice before, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

Stella Maris reads more like a screenplay because the entire novel is the recorded therapy session between Alicia and her psychiatrist.

One should read The Passenger before embarking on this novel. An astute reader aware of high mathematics, physics, and philosophy would find these discussions fascinating. Anyone with little knowledge of these subjects will have difficulty reading this slim volume.

Alicia Western is a genius whose intelligence borders on the otherworldly. She was accepted to the University of Chicago at the age of 14. However, because of her groundbreaking work in mathematics, she flies to Paris to study with another genius in the field.

The Western family carries a "curse" of sorts, as Bobby and Alicia's father, another physicist, worked with Oppenheimer on the Atomic bomb. Re-reading the text, I don't believe this to be true, but a product of Bobby and Alicia's own minds. Both children are brilliant, and I believe they carry their own guilt regarding the bomb and its diabolical use on Japan in 1945.

The loneliness of genius is well expressed in Alicia and Bobby's behavior in both novels. Particularly Alicia, who writes 3 drafts of her thesis, that only her brother has read. She escapes the academic world, working in some mid-western bar and a grungy hotel. All the while, she continues to work on the mathematics in her mind. At this point, she stops writing anything down because she believes that doing so prevents the ideas from expanding and growing toward any solution or conclusion. Through this time, the Kid and his collection of vaudevillian characters continue to visit Alicia.

In The Passenger, Bobby and Alicia's close and unusual relationship are explored at some length. We see that this deep love between siblings is nonsexual from Bobby's perspective. Although in Stella Maris, the feeling Alicia has for her brother transcends spiritual love, bordering on the physical, that is never consummated.

This relationship and the love these two people have for each other reaches the very core of their being. These two ultra-intelligent people are incredibly lonely, finding a rare solace in each other. A disturbing relationship, certainly not run of the mill, though understandable, and ultimately a genuine tragedy.

If you have read The Passenger, reading Stella Maris is necessary; however one of the saddest tales one can read.

Cormac McCarthy – The Passenger – Comment

 

There are novels that a reader can read, enjoy and move on without a second thought about the story. Then there are Cormac McCarthy novels that, after turning the last page, the characters, ideas, and themes can sometimes haunt you for weeks. The Passenger is one such text. Many had great expectations for the publication of this novel. Mainstream critics mostly had mixed emotions. Comparing The Passenger to his other novels like the masterpiece, Blood Meridian, is a disservice to his current novel. More so, making comparisons to earlier novels reveals a critic's laziness, and a refusal to delve into its embedded propositions and ideas. McCarthy's latest stands alone, and dare I say a masterpiece?

The novel opens strangely. A woman is in bed to awaken to a band of sideshow entertainers led by a character called The Kid. We see that he's deformed with flippers for hands and a childish, sarcastic sense of humor. The woman seems to know these characters and is reluctant to speak with them out of boredom. Only later do we discover that these are the woman's hallucinations as she suffers from Paranoid Schizophrenia. She is also the younger sister of the novel's main protagonist, Robert Western.

It's 1980 in Mississippi, where Bobby Western is part of a diving team hired to salvage sunken ships and planes. The plane lays unusually flat under the water, and the dive team must break into the wreckage, to find 9 bodies strapped in their seats; missing is the pilot's Flight bag and the aircraft's Black Box. More mysterious is the flight manifest recorded 10 passengers – and strangely, there is a passenger missing.

As the plot unfolds, we find out that Western is a physicist, a few months shy of his PhD from Cal Tech. He's an extremely resourceful and intelligent man who has an array of peculiar friends. After the mysterious plane dive, Western is visited by the FBI. Always suspicious, they ask Western if he had taken anything from the wreckage and other vague questions. Later his room is broken into, and his old cat is traumatized, so he moves to another room above a bar down the street.

For reasons that the reader is unaware of, the “Feds” continue to harass Western, and eventually freeze his bank accounts and impound his car. It's then he goes on the lam.

Because Western's father was one of the scientists that created the Atomic Bomb, this could well be a black mark on his family, causing undue attention from “The Feds”.

Over a third of the novel is devoted to Alicia Western and her interactions with her hallucinations. Alicia Western is a mathematical prodigy, accepted at the University of Chicago at the age of 13. It is hinted that the young woman is much more than a genius, almost having an otherworldly intelligence. Connecting to 'normal' people is impossible. Alicia's only real connection is to her brother, Bobby.

The central theme of The Passenger is the intense love that Western and his sister have for each other. One could say this love transcends passion for it consumes Western all through his life. He feels guilty he wasn't there for her when she decided to end her life. The notions of loss and love and the purpose of existence are explored at length in the text.

At face value, the love Western has for his sister is disturbing, because it's unusual. This was not a sexual relationship, but a spiritual connection, that our protagonist feels to his core.

The vast majority of the tale is Western and his many friends in conversation over dinner and/or drinks, discussing all the unanswerable questions regarding society, God, Love, Quantum physics, and the existential questions of life. These dialogues were fascinating, and confusing, especially Quantum theory.

These questions are never answered, yet that dark cloud of nothingness and lack of meaning hangs over us like the never-ending empty void that is life.

McCarthy's signature elegant, no-nonsense prose throughout The Passenger borders on the beautiful.

A pleasure and privilege to read.

Called a "Alarmist" for Warning about Nuclear War.

 

Like other pundits across social media and the publishing world, particularly since the start of the US proxy war with Russia via Ukraine, I've been called an 'alarmist' or the default label, (mainly from ignorant neoliberal warpigs) 'Putin Puppet', On this subject, generally, all my political predilections go by the way-side, because above every other issue facing the survival of our planet today is nuclear war. 

We must take our heads out of the sand. 

It should go without saying, that 99% of politicians, celebrities and journalist who poo poo the possibility of a nuclear winter, are those individuals who've never seen or experienced war first hand. The cliche' is "armchair pro-war-cheerleaders." The vast majority of the unelected neocons running the US government right now have never seen a war they didn't love and promote. They sit around mahogany tables in air conditioned offices in their 'think tanks' figuring out ways for the US to attain world domination at any cost. In every survey I've ever read, asking what country is the most threat to world peace, 80% answer the United States. The reason for this overwhelming majority is obvious: the US has started more wars than any other nation in the last 30 years. 

Indeed, I was a child of the Cold War. In 2nd and 3rd grade, I remember nuclear bomb drills, where we had to hide under our desks to prevent exposure and death. This was absurd, however, the threat of nuclear war was real. One of which was the Cuban Missle Crises, where a low-ranking Russian submarine officer had the sense not to follow orders, believing the order was a mistake. The US, Russia and China have the nuclear capability to destroy our planet in a heart beat. More terrifying, like the Cuban Missle Crises, where it was a FALSE alarm, and someone had the sense to stop armaggedon, next time during this current intense period in Ukraine, we might not be so lucky.

If our world leaders and their political slaves had more sense, choosing diplomacy over perpetual war, would end the Ukranian conflict tomorrow. Ending the war for the US, NATO and Zelenski's fascist government, is not an option because for a few, cutting off Moscow's economic influence and weakening her military power is the goal. As the American's have said: 

"We will win this war against Russia with US bullets and Ukranian blood." The death of the Ukranian people in the 100 of thousands does not fit into the US and NATO's plan. These innocent people are simply collateral damage. 

When one considers the combined forces of the US and NATO against Russia, could well place Russia in an escapable corner. For sure, at some point the trapped bear will feel threatened enough and fight back with unbounded fury. Then. of course, we're all screwed. 

What is so sad and frustrating, a diplomatic solution in Ukraine could have been reached several months ago. The US made treaty's Russia not to spread NATO too close to their borders. The other agreement was Ukraine was off limits in terms of NATO membership. Like all of the treaties America has made over the century, they've broken them. NATO war bases surrounding Russia are numerous and would goad a saint to retaliate. 

Nuclear War is a very real possibility considering US and NATO aggression against Russia. 

Diplomacy is the only answer. 

 

 

Paul Auster - Burning Boy - Comment.

 

Author, Stephen Crane, was once a household name in the US and Europe. The writer's most famous novel, The Red Badge of Courage, continues to ring a bell for most Americans. Strangely, when you ask anyone who the author is: the response is usually a blank stare. It feels like over a hundred years ago in middle school when I was introduced to this pivotal Civil War novel; many comments Red Badge is the quintessential "war" novel of the 19th century - a novel that ranks with Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Paul Auster's biography of Crane is not an effort at literary criticism but a deep psychological dive into the artist and an explanation of 'feelings' towards the writer's entire body of work. Burning Boy, more than anything else, is a tribute from one writer to another. 

In Crane's short life, his literary production is off the charts. As a journalist, he was prolific, covering the Spanish American War and others. From what I can glean, Crane's journalism was to keep the wolves from the door. Throughout the writer's life, money was always a problem. Money was only his primary concern when interfering with his writing. One can connect unscrupulous editors and publishers and Crane's laissez-faire attitude to money. It's a wonder it didn't affect his literary output; on the contrary, it motivated him to write more. 

After 2 years of college, he ended up living with fellow artists (all poor) in New York. They would all chip in for food and the rent, helping each other hone their art form. Crane was described by many to be a bohemian, a disheveled young man with his mind only focused on writing. This bohemian persona seemed to stick with him all his life. Near the end of his life living in the UK, the old photographs show a well-dressed gentleman. By then, he had literary renown, but despite his famous short stories and Red Badge fame, he was only a breath away from poverty. 

Stephen Crane is said to write in the style of 19th-century realism and naturalism, and his works are described as impressionistic. At the time, a few prescient readers and critics placed the writer in a different category - one of the American Modernists.

While living in England, he associated and became good friends with the great or soon-to-be famous writers of the time: Henry James, Ford Madox Ford, H.G. Wells, and Joseph Conrad. It appears that Henry James loved the man, and Conrad believed Crane to be a genius and his best friend. Their letters and comments about the young writer are undoubtedly from the heart. 

I was particularly impressed with Crane as the war correspondent. While Red Badge mostly came from his imagination, his reports on the battlefields of Cuba reveal a journalist of remarkable insight, bravery, or an individual unconcerned with death. Crane indeed had wanderlust and the spirit of an adventurer. He was the happiest abroad, writing about different cultures and the terrors of war. 

This intense biography is an actual labor of love: a 19th-century writer and a 21st-century writer in a strange artistic kinship across time. This connection gave the biography a spiritual connection between the writer, subject, and reader. 

It's obvious why the biography is titled Burning Boy. Like the great geniuses of our time, their creative furor burned hard for a short period, only to see their lives burn out too soon.  

A genuinely outstanding biography of one of the great American writers. 

Stopping the War Pigs and WWIII.

 

The United States of Corporations has been waging war since the mid-19th century. Excluding the revolutionary war, we have the Civil war, the Spanish-American war, and the invasion of the Philippines, excluding WWl and ll, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, and several coups in many countries in Latin America. Iraq l and 2. Afghanistan, and the proxy war in Syria. This is not to mention the NATO destruction of Libya, turning it into a slave state. The US backs the war in Yemen and fights with boots on the ground in Somalia. Currently, the US is involved in a proxy war with the Russian Federation via Ukraine. Many scholars worldwide believe we are not headed to WWlll, but we are already in WWlll's beginning stages. The US and its vast military have China in their sights. If a war with China occurs, this will be nothing less than Armageddon. 

What is most disheartening is our new generation is either blind to the signs, propagandized, or simply doesn't care. Is it our educational system avoiding the humanities and critical thinking methods? On a cursory look, it is a combination of all the above. The vast majority of antiwar activists are over 40 years of age. Confronting the possible end of the planet is a hard fact to face. This is the most important issue on the planet, though no one is protesting and only following what they are told, like so many lambs headed toward their inevitable slaughter. 

NATO is screaming for more weapons to annihilate Russia. The war pigs are screaming for greater confrontations with Russia. Germany is currently sending proficient tanks to Ukraine. I would suggest that the 100 billion worth of weapons sent to Ukraine can't be used because the Ukrainian army has no idea how to operate them. The Ukrainian people, the non-combatants, are dying by the thousands. As a well-known military man said on cable news the other week, we will defeat Russia with American bullets and Ukrainian blood. Why are not more people protesting this vile statement? 

A high-ranking American military man stated, (paraphrased) our war with Russia via Ukraine is 'practice' in preparation for our war with China. This incendiary statement was declared in the open without any world citizen batting an eyelid. I find this astonishing. 

Japan is currently building up its war arsenals like in the 1930s. This is at the behest of the United States government.  Japan has always had a right-wing government. Since the assassination of their last PM, the new one has been pushing hard on manufacturing sophisticated weapons. Japan is preparing for war with China. There are numerous American military bases surrounding China. Taiwan will be the spark that will send the planet to hell. 

To put this in perspective, China is not the country it was in WWll. Their weapons are sophisticated, with the capability to destroy entire islands. China's military is huge and well-trained. Its population is four times the population of the United States. It also has a nuclear arsenal level with Russia and the United States. Undoubtedly, they will use it if pushed into a corner. Added to the fact that China is one of the world's leading trade countries.  A war with China would plummet the world into economic turmoil. An economic depression like the modern world has never experienced. 

The vast majority of the 7 billion people on this planet do not want war. It's only a tiny minority of pigs at the top, managing our politicians, that are pushing the planet into total destruction. This cartel of banks and corporations runs the show. These elite economic war pigs make the Mexican drug cartels look like the peace activists of the 60s and 70s. What can we do?

To be certain, these assholes are moving so fast that it's hard to keep up. Knowing these war pigs exist is the first step to stopping them. A mass labor strike across the planet is the only thing these creeps understand because it will hit them where it hurts - their money. Spreading the truth about war is essential. A simple study of history would change the minds of many against war. This is not enough.

Activists must hit the streets and protest against the war pigs. The people of the United States must protest their politicians' path to WWlll. Forget the two-party system (both are pro-war) and vote outside the party. They will listen if we don't vote for the war pigs and their puppet politicians. This is easy to say but hard to do. As Chris Hedges once said in one of his lectures (paraphrased), the kindling is already here; it will only take a single spark, coming out of nowhere, to start a worldwide revolution against economic oppression and perpetual war. 

The war pigs are preparing for a full-blown WWlll. 

They must be exposed and stopped...or else.

"So that we can Fight Russia over there, and we don't have to fight Russia over here..."

 

After close to a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many people have realized that this is a proxy war between Russia and the US. The reasons for this war come down to pure economics. Russia has a 40% monopoly on gas in Europe. The US desires this market. War is an investment for the US, throwing billions into the Pentagon and weapon manufacturers. As Julian Assange once commented on the Afghanistan War (paraphrased), this war is a money laundering exercise, funneling money back to American business and government. He also commented that these wars are never meant to be won. They are meant to be perpetual - bullets for blood and continued profit. The US has been planning this proxy war with Russia for some time. This was revealed by Adam Schiff in his closing arguments at Trump's impeachment trial:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=adam+schiff+fight+them+over+there

In a previous article, I proposed a long-term propaganda campaign by US politicians pushed by the Security State to posit Russia as the US's number one enemy. This came in the form of Russiagate and other forms of media manipulation. My conclusion was this propaganda worked, and liberals across the board in Congress approved vast amounts of money in support of Ukraine. So far, it is estimated to be well over 100 billion dollars. See article:

http://sychronicity1.blogspot.com/2023/01/musings-on-russian-war-propaganda.html

To see "progressive" members of congress vote for this unhealthy amount of money for the most corrupt nation in Europe reveals the power of the military-industrial complex. This gets a little more serious.

Politicians and high-level military personnel have admitted that the Ukraine people are simply cannon fodder to achieve the American empire's goal of crushing Russia economically and otherwise. 

In fact, a high-ranking ex-military man involved in the now-forgotten Iran Contra scandal (Oliver North) more or less said that our war with Russia would be won with American bullets and Ukrainian blood.  

The US doesn't care about the Ukrainian people as long as they can use them to weaken Russia. 

I invite you to research our politicians' comments and guests on corporate media,  expressing this view on the war in Ukraine. These war pigs don't even attempt to hide this fact anymore. The propaganda has run so deep in the public consciousness that many seem to miss this nefarious point.

The neoconservatives and their corporate media talking-head megaphones, are currently preparing us for a war with China. Occasionally, I'll watch Australian mainstream news and find these "experts" continually spreading lies about China and how we must protect "democracy" and the freedom of Taiwan. A small faction in Taiwan desires to break away from China. These factions have US support in the way of CIA infiltration and propaganda. Before Labour was voted into office in Australia's conservative party last year, a week wouldn't go by without some diplomatic crises and lies coming out about China in the press. 

War with China would be a planetary disaster for Australia and the western world. I heard one politician say that Ukraine is a practice for our next conflict with China. 

As a people, if we can identify this continual war pig propaganda, stop falling for the age-old "freedom" and "democracy" excuses, and see that war is only about profit, perhaps something can change. 

For at the moment, WWIII can become a reality in the notso distant future.