“The Moon in Its Flight” by Gilbert Sorrentino

Note: This essay is written by a new guest blogger, Therese Säde, Stockholm, Sweden.

An Unconventionally Conventional Love Story

In the introduction to the short story collection My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, Jeffrey Eugenides argues that love stories give love a bad name. In support, he recounts the story of the Latin poet Catullus and the poems he wrote for Lesbia. Eugenides is particularly interested in Lesbia’s sparrow. The love of the sparrow prevents Lesbia from giving all of her love to Catullus, who therefore wishes that the bird would fly away. However, when the sparrow dies, the poet realizes that even though nothing is keeping Lesbia from giving all her love to him now, she is in mourning and does not love him the way he desires. The sparrow is dead, yet it still constitutes an obstacle. Eugenides argues that in each of the love stories in the collection, either there is a sparrow or the sparrow is dead. In Gilbert Sorrentino’s “The Moon in Its Flight” the sparrow is the love story itself. The characters of Arnie and Rebecca are trapped within the structure of the literary conventions of the love story, and their love is thus beyond rescue.

The protagonist and the object of his love are not in possession of their own story, they are at the mercy of the “America that [owns] them” (184) and the time in which their love story takes place. The significance of the time and place is emphasized in several passages. For instance, Arnie and Rebecca are “kissing with that trapped yet wholly frenzy peculiar to American youth of that era” (180) (emphasis added). The word “trapped” (180) further suggests that they are indeed held captive by the setting of the story. That it all takes place “in 1948” (177) is mentioned in the very first sentence of the short story. The second time the year 1948 is mentioned, it supports the notion of the character’s love being beyond rescue, or impossible. The narrator declares that “in 1948, the whole world [seems] beautiful to young people of a certain milieu, or let me say, possible” (177-178). However, “this idea” (178) of a possible world only “[persists] until 1950, at which time it [dies], along with many of the young people who [hold] it” (178). The quotation has the Korean War in view, but more importantly that the seemingly possible world is in fact impossible. The third time it is mentioned that the story takes place “in America, in 1948” (181) it is explicitly stated that “not even fake art or the wearisome tricks of movies can help them” (181), thus leaving Arnie and Rebecca on their own, in the hands of the conventional love story. On Christmas Eve, “they [walk] aimlessly around in the gray bitter cold … watching the people who own Manhattan” (183). Later that evening, Arnie sees “a drunk … carrying their lives along in a paper bag” (184). This observation suggests that Arnie and Rebecca do not own their own lives, and this is contrasted by them watching “the people who own Manhattan” (183), people in control of their lives and stories. Furthermore, the night they meet for the first time is described as a “late June night so soft one can, in retrospect, forgive America for everything” (177). Already four sentences into the story, the word “forgive” (177) provides the leader with a clue about the blame for the thwarted love.

Many love stories are based on unequal births or feuding families, and heritage is in fact another thing that makes the love between Arnie and Rebecca impossible. She is a “Jewish girl from the exotic Bronx” (178) and to Arnie this “vast borough [seems] a Cythera”. According to Greek mythology, Cythera is the birthplace of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Arnie thinks of Bronx as a Cythera, since it can “house such fantastic creatures” as Rebecca (178). He wants “to be Jewish” (178) himself, but he is “a Roman Catholic, awash in sin and redemption” (178). Arnie is very concerned about this from the beginning. “He [hates her] school” (179) and “all her fellow students” (179) and asks himself why he does not “at least live in the Bronx” (179). He continues longing “to be Jewish, dark and mysterious and devoid of sin” (179). They meet in the summer, their families have houses in the same lake resort community in New Jersey, and some time after they both have left for New York again, another girl gives a reunion party in her parents’ apartment. At this party, Arnie sees Rebecca talking to a couple who are soon to be married and he reflects on how “they [are] Jewish, incredibly and wondrously Jewish” (182) while he himself “[skulks] in his loud Brooklyn clothes” (182). At this party, Rebecca tells Arnie that “she still [loves] him, she [will] always love him” (182) but that she finds it “hard not to go out with a lot of other boys” (182) because she has to “keep her parents happy” (182). Rebecca’s parents are “concerned about him” (182) since they do not “really know him” (182) and he is not Jewish. After they have parted that night, Arnie is desperate:

It’s not my fault I’m not Marvin or Shelley. I don’t even know where CCNY is! Who is Conrad Aiken? What is Bronx Science? Who is Berlioz? What is a Stravinsky? How do you play Mah-Jongg? What is schmooz, schlepp, Purim, Moo Goo Gai Pann? Help me. (183)

When he gets off the train in Brooklyn and sees his friends, “he [despises] them as he [despises] himself and the neighbourhood” (183) and he fights “against the thought of [Rebecca] so that he [will] not have to place her subtle finesse in these streets of vulgar hells, benedictions, and incense” (183). Since they come from different backgrounds, and given the setting of the story, the love between Arnie and Rebecca are doomed from the very beginning.

Fairly early in the story, the narrator makes the following statement: “of course this [is] a summer romance, but bear with me and see what banal literary irony it all turns out – or does not turn out at all” (178). This foreshadows what the love between Arnie and Rebecca is destined to be, and what it is destined not to be. In another passage, the narrator argues that “any fool can see that with the slightest twist one way or another all of this is fit material for a sophisticated comic’s routine” (179) and that “these picayune disasters” (179) could be recorded “as jokes” (179). Although admitting that it is merely a summer romance, the narrator still tells the reader things by which it is understood that the story relates a consuming, passionate and painful love. One day, Arnie buys Rebecca a ring, an “innocent symbol that [tortures] his blood” (179). The reader learns that “of course [Arnie is] insane” (179). The frustrated teenagers “flay themselves, burning” (179). The description of their love contradicts the idea that it is simply a summer fling. Even though it all easily could be turned into a joke, “all that moonlight [is] real” (179, emphasis added). Their love is not to be neglected or diminished. Apparantely, it is more than a summer romance after all. It is just as cruel as any love can be. The narrator explains himself by saying that “the maimings of love are endlessly funny, as are the tiny figures of talking animals being blown to pieces in cartoons” (179). Perhaps there also lies some critique of the conventional love story and its popularity in this observation. This presumption is somewhat confirmed by the narrator sarcastically requesting the reader to “turn that into a joke” (180, emphasis added) after a passage in which Arnie, three years later, “[ravishes] the whores of Mexican border towns in a kind of drunken hilarity” (179). Towards the end of the story, the narrator shares some thoughts about this matter with the reader again: “of course, life is a conspiracy of defeat, a sophisticated joke, endless” (184) and therefore finally establishes that the love between Arnie and Rebecca is “a joke after all” (184), the cruel joke that is life and love.

The characters do not own their own story and are left without control, but not even the narrator, who also plays the part of the author, can change anything. The author cannot control the story, and Arnie and Rebecca are thus prevented by the literary conventions of romance. The author’s inability to change things is especially displayed through the numerous times he asks the reader or other people to help the characters. For instance, the last week before they have to return to New York, Arnie and Rebecca are kissing each other in the rain, and the author reaches out for somebody to help them:

Isn’t there anyone, any magazine writer or avant-garde filmmaker, any lover of life or dedicated optimist out there who will move them toward a cottage, already closed for the season, in whose split log exterior they will find an unlocked door? … All you modern lovers, freed by Mick Jagger and the orgasm, give them, for Christ’s sake, for an hour, the use of your really terrific little apartment. (181)

The notion that there is not any other way for Arnie and Rebecca than the destined one is also emphasized by the author several times throughout the story. He poses questions like “where [are] they to go?” (179) and “what [are] they to do?” (179) without expecting any answers. In addition, he highlights the fact that he is not in charge of every turn the story takes, for example by expressing how “it would be a great pleasure for [him] to allow [Arnie] to meet [Rebecca]” (179-180) in one of the Mexican brothels “in a yellow chiffon cocktail dress and spike heels, lost in prostitution” (179-180). However, he is not in control of the story and thus unable to make it happen. In other words, the love story writes itself, regardless of the narrator and the characters.

The last part of the story is a “postscript” (185) that “offers something different, something finely artificial and discrete” (185). The author explains that he now “[comes] to the literary part of this story, and [that] the reader may prefer to let it go and watch [Rebecca’s] profile” (185) as she walks away, “since she has gone out of the reality of narrative, however splintered” (185). He also grants the reader that “it will be unbelievable” (185, emphasis added). If the story has been in the hands of itself this far, the postcript is the author’s final attempt to take control of the story and give Arnie and Rebecca a happy ending. It is evident that the author is pulling the strings, trying to make the puppets act according to his intentions. He puts “the young man in 1958” (185). Arnie has served in the army and married “some girl” (185) after his discharge. The author asks the reader: ”let me give them a sunken living room to give this the appearence of realism” (185). He reveals his literary tricks to the reader. For instance, Arnie’s mother dies in 1958 and leaves the lake house to her son and the author admits that “this is a ruse to get [Arnie] up there one soft spring day in May” (185). When Arnie and Rebecca finally meet again after ten years, the author claims that “it’s too impossible to invent conversation for them” (185). As Arnie and Rebecca drive to her parents’ house “for a cup of coffee – for old times’ sake” (185-186), the author adds: “how else would they get themselves together and alone?” (186). He gives some advice to the reader concerning the credibility of this:

You will do well if you think of the ambience of the whole scene as akin to the one in detective novels where the private investigator goes to the murdered man’s summer house. This is always in off-season because it is magical then, one sees oneself as being somehow existing outside time, the yearround residents are drawings in flat space. (186)

When Arnie and Rebecca enter the house, the author points out that “they now have the retreat [he] begged for them a decade ago” (186) and “if one has faith all things will come” (186). When they undress, the author asks for “a mist of tears in [Rebecca’s] eyes, of acrid joy and shame, of despair” (186). The postscript is clearly separated from the rest of the story, it appears “artificial” (185) and as an obvious creation by the author. The contrast between this “literary part” of the story” (185), as the author puts it himself, and the other part is sharp. The other part of the story is perceived as authentic and real. The reader believes it. This far, the story of the postscript has been in the hands of the author, but his attempt to rescue the love between Arnie and Rebecca is still twarted by the conventions of the love story. When the couple have driven back to New York, Arnie feels “his heart rattling around in his chest in large jagged pieces” (186). His heart is “rotten for everybody” (186-187), and so is their love: “it [is] rotten but they [will] see each other, they [are] somehow owed it” (187). Although their love is doomed, the literary conventions of romance owe them an attempt to a happy ending. However, being trapped by the love story, they are not in control of it. As the author observes: “these destructive and bittersweet accidents do not happen every day” (187). Although Arnie puts Rebecca’s phone number in his address book, “he [will not] call her” (187). “Perhaps she [will] call him, and if she [does] they [will] see” (187). “But he [will] not call her” (187). Arnie leaves it up to fate which might seem strange to the reader, but he does not have an actual choice since their fate is controlled by the love story. The author’s attempt to rescue the love betwen Arnie and Rebecca fails, as it was destined to do. The author recognizes this and tells the reader that he or she is “perfectly justified in scoffing at the outrageous transparency of it” (187), but “art cannot rescue anybody from anything” (187).

Arnie and Rebecca are held captive by literary conventions. They do not own their own story. Not even the author can change their fate. Their love is destined to be impossible, as a cause of the setting of the story, their different backgrounds and the love story as a concept. When they meet ten years later, they are both married with families. The love story ruined their chances from the beginning. It constitutes an indefinite obstacle. The love story is in control. However, it could be said that love always makes people lose control. Even if you are in control of your actions, this can never fully be the case with your feelings or thoughts. In addition, on some level or another, you are always at the mercy of the object of your love. Thus, when you are in love, you are not in control. Perhaps this is the reason why people read love stories. They offer some sense of being in control over something that cannot be controlled. A book can be put down; a film can be turned off. Yet, if you are not able to control every thought, a love story, the love story, stays with you.

Works cited
Sorrentino, Gilbert. “The Moon in Its Flight”. My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead. Ed. Jeffrey Eugenides. London: Harper Perennial, 2009. 177-187

“Lars von Trier’s Gift” By Adnan Mahmutovic

Note: this essay was published by Literary Magic Magazine in January 2009.

Originating in diverse religious thought, the problematic of “gift” has for centuries been present in art as well as in philosophical discourse. Most recently the question of gift was taken up by the continental philosopher Jacques Derrida in his book Given Time I: Counterfeit Money. Basing his argument on the century old work by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss, Derrida went on to stress the “poisonous” nature of any “gift-giving” (playing on the German word “Gift” which means poison). Put differently, this entails that any giving of a gift is never simply an act of generosity but always carries an element of economic exchange within itself. There is no such thing as an altruistic gift to Derrida. When we give or donate something the receiver feels indebted to give something back in return. What is more, we automatically expect re-payment, at least in form of symbolic return such as gratitude, respect, being acknowledged as the donor and thus as some kind of a beneficiary sovereign.

Therefore, it is no mere chance that the theme of “gift-giving” permeates the work of our most important artists today, especially those who deal with both philosophical and theological aspects of human condition. This is true for any kind of artistic expression.

One of the central figures in modern filmmaking currently preoccupied with the problematic of “gift” is the Danish director and screenwriter Lars Von Trier. His production boasts with several thematic trilogies: Europa, Golden Heart, The Kingdom (unfinished), and the planned USA – Land of Opportunities trilogy of which the first two films have been released so far, Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005). Von Trier is known for his principal “rock in the shoe” premise of experimental filmmaking. He was one of the founders of the school of filmmaking called Dogme 95, and a production company Zentropa, independent of the Danish state.

Von Trier’s filmography has always born elements of gift-giving problematic. This is in particular true of his latest films, which bear more overt theological overtones than his early work. Even though the “gift” is an abstract idea and an umbrella term for assorted types of phenomena, Von Trier narrows his focus to one particular gift, in fact the gift of freedom, independence or rather individual sovereignty.

One can begin with his major feature, Breaking the Waves (1996), which broadened his reputation as an innovative, important and groundbreaking artist. Already in this film, the religious aspect of grace that is central to his latest production has started to swell up. Young, pious Bess marries Jan, an oilrig worker. She prays that he return to land, which he does, yet due to a horrible accident that leaves Jan crippled. This “gift” of retrieved husband bears a bitter aftertaste. It is as if Bess is being punished, or made give something in return for her husband.

Feeling guilt and obligation towards her husband, Bess gives in to his absurd request that she have intercourse with other men and tell him about the experience. One could claim that the bizarreness of Jan’s demand is a disguise of his gift to her, a secret gift of freedom from a life under social constraints that oblige her to tend a physically handicapped husband, as much as the constraints of her deep love to him. However, given Derridean analysis, if Bess does not see this as a gift, is it really a gift. If she cannot understand Jan’s demands as a means of setting her free, is she really free? Not even the objective eye of an outsider can focus on only one option. In a sense, Bess is being liberated in this uncanny psychological process staged by her depressed husband. Furthermore, she is also mercilessly manipulated by Jan’s pragmatic thinking, and his inability to receive her gift of love because he can never even hope to return it. Does his goal justify the means? Is his gift an act of his egotism or pure generosity? Does Bess have to go through an ordeal, or even a strange kind of purgatory to find out she has always already been free as an individual, religious or not? Von Trier leaves us with no easy answers. There are no clear dichotomies between good and evil, gift and sheer exchange. As Thomas Beltzer suggested, Von Trier’s “work cannot be reduced to anyone’s message, not even his own.” Von Trier cannot be simplistically classified as a Christian zealot on the basis of his professed Catholic sentimentality. His films have that rare ability to implode in themselves and thus prevent closure, obstruct our ability to decide upon the only correct interpretation.

Waiting for the final chapter in the USA trilogy, we can so far conclude that the nature of gift is the main theme of Dogville and Manderlay, apart from the overarching exploration of the American class systems. In fact, it seems that the sociological as well as phenomenological nature of “gift-giving” is fundamental in any analysis of class, racism, systems of rule, statehood, then also the question of sovereignty of individual, family, community, and finally state.

In Dogville, the woman called Grace is “bestowed” like God’s gift upon a small community. She is welcomed and sheltered as a fugitive yet eventually nearly every citizen takes advantage of her, and eventually rapes her. In the end, her mighty father arrives and offers Grace a possibility to punish the entire community because they mistreated her, because they did not pay enough respect to the gift of Grace/grace.

Emblematically, this brings into question the purity of the Christian idea of bountiful grace of God. In other words, one could almost think that Von Trier only pushes the old question of hell. Yet still, why are there injustices? Do we deserve hell, be it in afterlife or on Earth, because we mistreat the gifts of God, because we use them and perhaps do that inappropriately? Maybe we are ungrateful for the gifts and therefore ought to be punished like the inhabitants of Dogville. Still, if gifts, be they divine or mundane, are acts of generosity why the demand at return, why insist on punishment in the closing act? In an allegorical sense, why is Grace not turning the other cheek but strikes back with a vengeance? Again it seems impossible to settle on only one simple alternative.

Moving onto Manderlay, Von Trier stays with his protagonist Grace, this time plunging her into a small town seventy years behind the rest of the U.S. in terms of human rights, civil rights movement, integration of slaves, etc. Once again, Grace perceives herself as a gift to this Godforsaken place. She sees all the errors of the past, all the crimes of white population still lingering with this group of black slaves. In Grace’s own simile they are like “caged birds”. Not even after the death of their owner do they dare leave the farm and go outside the steal gates.

In a bout of empathy, Grace rebels against her “what-is-in-there-for-me” father, a cruel gangster who only believes in immediate profit and cannot care less about mercy and gifts. Grace decides to bring enlightenment, freedom and democracy to the “negroes” as well as the whites, all of them mummified in another era. Upon freeing them all from their bonds, Grace is offered thanks. She is pleased with her inceptive contribution, yet emphasises that they do not need express gratefulness for what is so fundamentally human: freedom. Freedom is not hers to give. It has already been given to each and every one them upon birth. It ought to be considered the ultimate gift of God, of which no man can bereave any other. Still, Grace goes on to believe that she is a kind of saviour and a teacher who takes action into her hands: she liberates the black community from slavery and re-educates the bigoted white working-crew at the farm.

As he does with Dogville, Von Trier ends Manderlay rather appropriately with a series of photographs, this time from American history of slavery and civil rights movement. In fact, the last picture in this slide show is that of the giant Abraham Lincoln statue in white marble being cleaned by an African American. One cannot but wonder whether there could be a statue of Martin Luther King next to Lincoln’s, perhaps in black marble.

How far have we really come since Lincoln, this reformer of America? This question is the central theme of the film. It is evoked through every element of the narrative and overemphasised by the rather condescending voiceover (though beautifully read by John Hurt). Time and again, Von Trier reminds us that we have forgotten this and he slips it like a rock into our too comfortable shoe. Perhaps we rather conveniently think there should be no prejudices in the modern world and oftentimes choose to pass on with our eyes closed.

Furthermore, it is the problem of “gift” that lies underneath everything, especially any discussion of injustice. As we pinpointed earlier, the gift of freedom is to Grace the most essential and unquestionable part of being-human, which is always the case even when it appears differently. There is no doubt that slavery, torture, and social injustices are old evils that keep scourging the world, today certainly as much as ever. But morally speaking, what exactly should we do about that? We have to act, as Grace shouts at her father, we have to free people, spread democracy, even when it means taking to doubtful measures. The connection to the American enterprise in Iraq and the idea of pre-emptive warfare is clear.

When we act we mean to give a gift. Grace claims freedom is natural, and that she as a white woman “made” the black people what they are. Therefore, it is her responsibility to return what “her” people bereaved them of. In other words, she feels guilty, like the two gentlemen from Baudelaire’s story “Counterfeit Money” (used by Derrida) who feel indebted to give alms to the anonymous beggar they encounter on the street. Somehow the logic of social equality forces these men and Grace to realise that they have profited from the unfortunate lot, and in a just society they need to give back. The alms giving is originally a religious institution, yet the basic philosophy behind it has become a fundamental element of socialism as well, hence we have institutionalised forms of donation at the level of state.

In the end of Manderlay, nearly the same scenario from Dogville repeats itself. Grace finds out she has been deceived, but what is more she does not understand that she has all along had prejudices against black people herself, that she has all along believed in the seven categories of “negroes” recorded in the red “Bible” of the deceased slave-owner.

It is, however, true that from the very beginning Grace has despised the red notebook as an example of sheer evil, a blueprint of slavery and oppression. Yet, she has nevertheless abided by its prescriptions when reorganising the community and leading them into freedom and democracy. In the end she thinks her crucial error lies in misclassifying one man under the wrong category.

The moment Grace believes she has accomplished her plans and paid the African Americans back more than they bargained for, she feels ready to leave and let the community lead their own lives in democracy she has taught them.

However, the former slaves reveal to her that it was not the old slave owner who wrote the red book of rules and categories, but one of them. Moreover, most of the others were aligned with him as well. Suddenly, and to Grace’s immense chagrin, they want her to reside at the farm and ignore everything she has given them: counterfeit democracy and spurious human rights. They demand that she stay and act as their new white leader, a merciful one yet who understand the evil structure of the world. The world is simply not ready for them, they claim. It is still a jungle too dangerous for birds born in cage, which is a fairly common though subtle use of the wilderness metaphor in the critique of a modern civilised Western world.

Once again, Grace is furious. She takes a whip and lashes one of the men, the “proud negro” from category 7, whom she saved from flogging in the beginning when she first arrived at the farm. Now she does what she could not imagine any civilised human being would do. But she feels justified, they have betrayed her, deceived her, they did not acknowledge her bountiful gift of freedom. In fact, they seem to have resented her gift all along while only pretending they were appreciating her presence and help. In fact, they all seem to classify into category 1, the ambivalent, i.e. face shifting “turncoat negroes”. Therefore, she has to punish them. Only this time her father is not there to give her a hand. He looks at her from a safe distance thinking she has finally understood how things work in the world.

The end has for some reason been the payback time in Von Trier’s latest films. At this point, Von Trier, like Derrida, seems to paint a dismal picture of goodness, grace and gifts in this if not in afterlife. Yet the ambivalent nature of his art remains, and as Beltzer maintains, Von Trier might be working in the heritage of T.S. Eliot, “depicting the wasteland and then transcending it with faith”.

Rather than attempting one final judgment of Von Trier, it might therefore be appropriate to finish with a caution note that the reason for writing this whole article may be a kind of repayment for the gift of insight, or at least food for thought that Von Trier has given us as over the years

GAZA ON MY MIND II

The other day, I deviated from the main purpose of this blog (to review literature) and posted my initial thoughts about the piles of dead and wounded children in Gaza. I will in a week or so try to post my translation of a story by a Bosnian writer Melika Salihbeg Bosnawi from her book Catharsis-Dreams, the dream number 7, about Gaza. The story is quite excellent in that it embarks on an imaginary journey with the revered and beloved Anna Frank all the way to Gaza and back to her little room just before the monsters take her. This is one of my examples of the fiction telling the truth by putting you on an extended journey, not merely facing the facts like those of today’s bloodbaths in Gaza, but a journey beyond to good morals, ethics, compassion, will to help etc. The dream suggests that the phrase “gas chambers” does not merely signify actual cells in concentration camps but also Anna Frank’s room, and indeed the entire Gaza, an open area but so closed, suffocating, “the perfumery of rot”, as the author suggests, which resembles Ben Okri’s description of Nigerian ghetto in The Famished Road. The suggestion is not to equal the Jew with the Nazi, or to wash anyone’s hands, but rather to point out that the suffering is the same, Anna Frank did not suffer less than Palestinian civilians. I lived like they for two years and it was quite enough. I don’t know what would have happened with my mind if everything stayed the same for decades. Shakespeare’s Shylock famously asked whether or not a Jew has a soul, and bleeds like the next man. Remember his lesson. Some Jews went out protesting against the military actions and the continuing occupation as you can see here.

When I wrote my book Illegitimate (which will be out any time), and it’s prequel Thinner than a Hair (to be published in 2010), I tried to show between the suffering of European Jews and Bosnian Muslims, and how both suffered in Bosnia, which was the place in the heart of Europe where the Jews found shelter when they were expelled (together with the Muslims) from Spain centuries ago. Most of Bosnian Jews left during the war, and some went to Israel. I felt really sad seeing that one of them, Ivan Ceresnjes, who was in fact R Karadzic’s candidate for the President of Bosnia sent a number of pictures depicting Palestinian children as the military, dressed as suicide bombers etc. as some kind of reason, justification for the slaughter of kids in Gaza. Two pictures were particularly ridiculous. Here they are:

Ivan Ceresnjes obviously means to say: Look these are dangerous Palestinian kids, stone-throwers, they attack our fences and soldiers like beasts. This is so bizarre you don’t know whether to cry or laugh out of anguish.

This to me is fiction that tells lies, ideology at its purest, the exact opposite of fiction as the undermining of ideology, fiction that draws attention to ideological brainwashing. This reminds of the story told by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek about the film of an Israeli soldier barging into a family home and taking pity of a Palestinian kid because he too has a kid with the same name. Zizek says this is ideology at its purest because the footage does not serve to show the war should stop, that the occupations must cease, but rather “Look we are all humans and make human mistakes”. What happens in Gaza today is an awfully enduring mistake, or rather not a mistake at all but calculated program. It is human because beast do not organize slaughter parties of their kind. (Remember the image from Kubrik’s 2001, where the monkeys and HAL 9000 become intelligent and immediately start murdering. A wonderful critique of reason. I wonder how would this iconic Jew make Middle-East 2009.)

In my essay section I posted my old essay entitled “Literature on my Mind” which was partly inspired by Rushdie’s essay on the bloodshed in Bosnia called “Sarajevo on my Mind” where Rushdie, to my surprise, actually had nice things to say about Muslims and seemed anguished about their suffering and slaughter. He likes raising his voice when it comes to banished and prosecuted writers, so I’d very much like to hear him raise his voice now, over and again, otherwise, like I said before, his supposedly critical mind produces mere idle talk.

Below I copied an article by Mark LeVine, a Jewish academic who criticizes Israeli politics that turn Gaza into a gas chamber (see the phosphorus rain on BBC) and brings to light some recent development in the West, the ways different communities are reacting to the horror not even Conrad can exhaustively describe. LeVine’s article is copied from Al Jazeera.

Who will save Israel from itself?
By Mark LeVine

One by one the justifications given by Israel for its latest war in Gaza are unravelling.

The argument that this is a purely defensive war, launched only after Hamas broke a six-month ceasefire has been challenged, not just by observers in the know such as Jimmy Carter, the former US president who helped facilitate the truce, but by centre-right Israeli intelligence think tanks.

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, whose December 31 report titled “Six Months of the Lull Arrangement Intelligence Report,” confirmed that the June 19 truce was only “sporadically violated, and then not by Hamas but instead by … “rogue terrorist organisations”.

Instead, “the escalation and erosion of the lull arrangement” occurred after Israel killed six Hamas members on November 4 without provocation and then placed the entire Strip under an even more intensive siege the next day. According to a joint Tel Aviv University-European University study, this fits a larger pattern in which Israeli violence has been responsible for ending 79 per cent of all lulls in violence since the outbreak of the second intifada, compared with only 8 per cent for Hamas and other Palestinian factions.

Indeed, the Israeli foreign ministry seems to realise that this argument is losing credibility.

During a conference call with half a dozen pro-Israel professors on Thursday, Asaf Shariv, the Consul General of Israel in New York, focused more on the importance of destroying the intricate tunnel system connecting Gaza to the Sinai.

He claimed that such tunnels were “as big as the Holland and Lincoln tunnels,” and offered as proof the “fact” that lions and monkeys had been smuggled through them to a zoo in Gaza. In reality, the lions were two small cubs that were drugged, thrown in sacks, and dragged through a tunnel on their way to a private zoo.

The claim that Hamas will never accept the existence of Israel has proved equally misinformed, as Hamas leaders explicitly announce their intention to do just that in the pages of the Los Angeles Times or to any international leader or journalist who will meet with them.

With each new family, 10, 20 and 30 strong, buried under the rubble of a building in Gaza, the claim that the Israeli forces have gone out of their way to diminish civilian casualties – long a centre-piece of Israel’s image as an enlightened and moral democracy – is falling apart.

Anyone with an internet connection can Google “Gaza humanitarian catastrophe” and find the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Territories and read the thousands of pages of evidence documenting the reality of the current fighting, and the long term siege on Gaza that preceded it.

The Red Cross, normally scrupulous in its unwillingness to single out parties to a conflict for criticism, sharply criticised Israel for preventing medical personnel from reaching wounded Palestinians, some of whom remained trapped for days, slowly starving and dying in the Gazan rubble amidst their dead relatives.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has flatly denied Israeli claims that Palestinian fighters were using the UNRWA school compound bombed on January 6, in which 40 civilians were killed, to launch attacks, and has challenged Israel to prove otherwise.

War crimes admission

Additionally, numerous flippant remarks by senior Israeli politicians and generals, including Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, refusing to make a distinction between civilian people and institutions and fighters – “Hamas doesn’t … and neither should we” is how Livni puts it – are rightly being seen as admissions of war crimes.

Indeed, in reviewing statements by Israeli military planners leading up to the invasion, it is clear that there was a well thought out decision to go after Gaza’s civilian infrastructure – and with it, civilians.

The following quote from an interview with Major-General Gadi Eisenkot that appeared in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth in October, is telling:

“We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective these [the villages] are military bases,” he said.

“This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorised.”

Causing “immense damage and destruction” and considering entire villages “military bases” is absolutely prohibited under international law.

Eisenkot’s description of this planning in light of what is now unfolding in Gaza is a clear admission of conspiracy and intent to commit war crimes, and when taken with the comments above, and numerous others, renders any argument by Israel that it has tried to protect civilians and is not engaging in disproportionate force unbelievable.

International laws violated

On the ground, the evidence mounts ever higher that Israel is systematically violating a host of international laws, including but not limited to Article 56 of the IV Hague Convention of 1907, the First Additional Protocol of the Geneva Convention, the Fourth Geneva Convention (more specifically known as the “Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949″, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the principles of Customary International Humanitarian Law.

None of this excuses or legitimises the firing of rockets or mortars by any Palestinian group at Israeli civilians and non-military targets.

As Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur, declared in his most recent statement on Gaza: “It should be pointed out unambiguously that there is no legal (or moral) justification for firing rockets at civilian targets, and that such behavior is a violation of IHR, associated with the right to life, as well as constitutes a war crime.”

By the same logic, however, Israel does not have the right to use such attacks as an excuse to launch an all-out assault on the entire population of Gaza.

In this context, even Israel’s suffering from the constant barrage of rockets is hard to pay due attention to when the numbers of dead and wounded on each side are counted. Any sense of proportion is impossible to sustain with such a calculus.

‘Rogue’ state

Israeli commentators and scholars, self-described “loyal” Zionists who served proudly in the army in wars past, are now publicly describing their country, in the words of Oxford University professor Avi Shlaim, as a “rogue” and gangster” state led by “completely unscrupulous leaders”.

Gazans inspect the damage after an air strike hit a mosque [GALLO/GETTY]
Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University, has declared that Israel’s actions in Gaza are like “raising animals for slaughter on a farm” and represent a “bizarre new moral element” in warfare.

“The moral voice of restraint has been left behind … Everything is permitted” against Palestinians, writes a disgusted Haaretz columnist, Gideon Levy.

Fellow Haaretz columnist and daughter of Holocaust survivors, Amira Haas writes of her late parents disgust at how Israeli leaders justified Israel’s wars with a “language laundromat” aimed at redefining reality and Israel’s moral compass. “Lucky my parents aren’t alive to see this,” she exclaimed.

Around the world people are beginning to compare Israel’s attack on Gaza, which after the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli forces and settlers was turned literally into the world’s largest prison, to the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Extremist Muslims are using internet forums to collect names and addresses of prominent European Jews with the goal, it seems clear, of assassinating them in retaliation for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Al-Qaeda is attempting to exploit this crisis to gain a foothold in Gaza and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria, as well as through attacking Jewish communities globally.

Iran’s defiance of both Israel and its main sponsor, the US, is winning it increasing sympathy with each passing day.

Democratic values eroded

Inside Israel, the violence will continue to erode both democratic values in the Jewish community, and any acceptance of the Jewish state’s legitimacy in the eyes of its Palestinian citizens.

And yet in the US – at least in Washington and in the offices of the mainstream Jewish organisations – the chorus of support for Israel’s war on Gaza continues to sing in tight harmony with official Israeli policy, seemingly deaf to the fact that they have become so out of tune with the reality exploding around them.

At my university, UCI, where last summer Jewish and Muslim students organised a trip together through the occupied territories and Israel so they could see with their own eyes the realities there, old battle lines are being redrawn.

The Anteaters for Israel, the college pro-Israel group at the University of California, Irvine, sent out an urgent email to the community explaining that, “Over the past week, increasing amounts of evidence lead us to believe that Hamas is largely responsible for any alleged humanitarian crisis in Gaza”.

I have no idea who the “us” is that is referred to in the appeal, although I am sure that the membership of that group is shrinking.

Indeed, one of the sad facts of this latest tragedy is that with each claim publicly refuted by facts on the ground, more and more Americans, including Jews, are refusing to trust the assertions of Israeli and American Jewish leaders.

Trap

Even worse, in the Arab/Muslim world, the horrific images pouring out of Gaza daily are allowing preachers and politicians to deploy well-worn yet still dangerous and inciteful stereotypes against Jews as they rally the masses against Israel – and through it – their own governments.

What is most frightening is that the most important of Israel’s so-called friends, the US political establishment and the mainstream Jewish leadership, seem clueless to the devastating trap that Israel has led itself into – in good measure with their indulgence and even help.

It is one that threatens the country’s existence far more than any Qassam rockets, with their 0.4 per cent kill rate; even more than the disastrous 2006 invasion of southern Lebanon, which by weakening Israel’s deterrence capability in some measure made this war inevitable.

First, it is clear that Israel cannot destroy Hamas, it cannot stop the rockets unless it agrees to a truce that will go far to meeting the primary demand of Hamas – an end to the siege.

Merely by surviving (and it surely will survive) Hamas, like Hezbollah in 2006, will have won.

Support for the war remains high in Israel[GALLO/GETTY]
Israel is succeeding in doing little more than creating another generation of Palestinians with hearts filled with rage and a need for revenge.

Second, Israel’s main patron, the US, along with the conservative Arab autocracies and monarchies that are its only allies left in the Muslim world, are losing whatever crumbs of legitimacy they still had with their young and angry populations.

The weaker the US and its axis becomes in the Middle East, the more precarious becomes Israel’s long-term security. Indeed, any chance that the US could convince the Muslim world to pressure Iran to give up its quest for nuclear weapons has been buried in Gaza.

Third, as Israel brutalises Palestinians, it brutalises its own people. You cannot occupy another people and engage in violence against them at this scale without doing even greater damage to your soul.

The high incidence of violent crimes committed by veterans returning from combat duty in Iraq is but one example of how the violence of occupation and war eat away at people’s moral centre.

While in the US only a small fraction of the population participates in war; in Israel, most able-bodied men end up participating.

The effects of the latest violence perpetrated against Palestinians upon the collective Israeli soul is incalculable; the notion that it can survive as an “ethnocracy” – favouring one ethnic group, Jews, yet by and large democratic – is becoming a fiction.

Violence-as-power

Who will save Israel from herself?

Israelis are clearly incapable. Their addiction as a society to the illusion of violence-as-power has reached the level of collective mental illness.

As Haaretz reporter Yossi Melman described it on January 10, “Israel has created an image of itself of a madman that has lost it”.

Not Palestinians, too many of whom have fallen prey to the same condition.

Not the Middle East Quartet, the European Union, the United Nations, or the Arab League, all of whom are utterly powerless to influence Israeli policy.

Not the organised Jewish leadership in the US and Europe, who are even more blind to what is happening than most Israelis, who at least allow internal debate about the wisdom of their government’s policies.

Not the growing progressive Jewish community, which will need years to achieve enough social and political power to challenge the status quo.

And not senior American politicians and policy-makers who are either unwilling to risk alienating American Jewish voters, or have been so brainwashed by the constant barrage of propaganda put out by the “Israel Lobby” that they are incapable of reaching an independent judgment about the conflict.

During the US presidential race, Barack Obama was ridiculed for being a messiah-like figure. The idea does not sound so funny now. It is hard to imagine anyone less saving Israel, the Palestinians, and the world from another four years of mindless violence.

Mark LeVine is a professor of Middle East history at the University of California, Irvine, and is the author of Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam and the soon to be published An Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989.

The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.

Literature on my Mind (essay) by Adnan Mahmutovic

When Salman Rushdie wrote, “I, too, like all emigrants, I am a fantasist” (Shame, 1983), he must have thought of me. He must have used that authorial, though migrating, first person “I” to describe none but me. A rude and immodest claim, I admit. For a literary critic, one would need a magnifying glass to find so egotistical and scandalous an interpretation. In fact, before I even penned this thought, I could already smell fire and brimstone in the form of my professor scurrying down the corridor. Yet, I heard no huffing and banging at my door, so I resisted the fear and typed the beginning, the migrant’s alpha.

Salman’s text continued, “I build imaginary countries and try to impose them on the others that exist.” Again my neat, analytical power gave up on me, and I claimed out loud that Salman was not talking about Pakistan, or any other country imagined into existence in his fiction. Ultimately, he was speaking of the country of Being – literature. Already at that stage in his life, his concern was not with the imaginary countries with “real world” referents, but with literature as the imagined world space that comprises everything, an oasis fraught with fatality, like the Italian Villa in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. And, if he and you the reader will excuse my insistence on first names, it is Michael whom I will presently use to prove my point in a correctly scholarly fashion, of course.

The migrant Salman lost his country, his nativity, and his faith and found literature. I, the migrant, lost my country and my nativity, and found faith. Yet I also found literature or put more poetically, it found me. It followed me, shadowed me, caught me up, walled me in, “enhoused’ me, “encountried” me. Phantasmagorical or not, like nation’s state, this country of literature has it’s borders. I trespass these borders in my proper readings and misreadings proper. Last year I wrote obsessively about rape. To use that infamously strong word, I could perhaps suggest that I ravished a lot of literature, but also that it violated me like two kids in a sandbox or two grizzled politicians. My country and I are daily arguing about who started the quarrel, the conflict, the war. All good literature is a fight with something at stake. All good criticism is by the same token an elaborate quarrel, some kind of damsel always needs to be saved and lots of things are damaged in the quest. Yet to me, this utter war zone is founded on intimacy, which I believe is brimming with, for instance, Michael’s work. Violence is no doubt present, but only because of the great intimacy I have with this imaginary homeland. This violent intimacy, then, grounds the problematic marriage between literature and scholarly work.

To further expand this claim, I will now take recourse to an anecdote. Once (upon time), a professor told me I had to fall in love with an author (not several, only one), meaning I needed to stay focused, but he also implied the one author of which he would approve. I found this demanded love undeliverable because I was already in love with an author. In fact, I was cheating on that one with a whole range of other authors. That same day, as a member of the Swedish PEN, I was asked to suggest a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize, and everything started to clear up. It was a most kind invitation and an opportunity for an aspiring researcher, and therefore, a demand on my skills as well. For two months, Iwas lost in a state of inadequacy to propose anyone. My fear was as equally justified as anyone else’s, no matter how well read one was and I was basically confined to English literature. Yet, my immediate choice was Michael. I was at the time most violently intimate with his books. To me, he comprised seriousness and lightness, profound familiarity and strangeness, poetry and prose (besides, it is about time that a poet gets the prize, don’t you think).

In addition, I knew my candidate would be just a needle in a haystack. I had no illusions that my word would in any near future put the writer before an applauding crowd dressed in the same old, important-looking attire. In fact, this suggestion was aimed at the Swedish PEN, which has the right to propose a viable candidate. The PEN picks the best option out of some dozen presentations made by scholars, journalists, artists etc., and conveys it to the Nobel committee, which then stacks it under its own hay.

At the warm PEN meeting on a freezing January night, many were there to listen and vote, old and young literature lovers, fantastic people. An old fan and translator of Michael’s poetry into Swedish was present, as well as Michael’s Swedish publisher. To say the least, they were excited and enthusiastic even before I began to speak. Still, the wretched thing remained – justification. My scholarly incisors dulled, though not because I had dull news to convey. It was like choosing the capital of a homeland that belonged to all and no one, the one everybody wanted to live in and felt most intimate with. To put it dramatically, it was like dividing Jerusalem between the claimers of primal belonging.

As much as I felt some kind of learned reverence for this powerful and nearly irresistible award, my imaginary homeland of literature seemed violated by this accolade as much as it was put on the sacred pedestal of protection. Somehow this upheaval of literature through the emphasis on one of its parts flattened it. It posited the capital as the country and the country as the capital, be it the largest city or not. “India is Indira and Indira is India”, as Saleem Sinai keeps repeating in Midnight’s Children (1989), ironically or not.

A country is not its capital. Whoever writes and reads in a genuinely intimate (also inevitably violent) manner knows that literature pulled into political premises of grandeur can no longer hold ice cubes, let alone water. The laureate, the temporary capital, becomes a mined oasis, a city under shelling like Sarajevo in Salman’s “Bosnia on My Mind” (Index on Censorship 23:1/2, 1994). The ephemeral and also (partly) imaginary capital is heaved above all other cities, towns and villages. In this process, to put it even more dramatically, it is burnt while rising out of the cinders of oblivion, like some desperate Phoenix forced to enact all its essential characteristics at once. Many an honored writer has lamented the devastating effects of this gift, and few have been able to go back to being regular and functioning cities and villages. The Nobel Prize thus seemed pointless and detrimental, yet its power was irrefutable and I wanted to be in the game.

I asked myself why do we so violate this imaginary country that we have built from scratch and which perhaps gives birth to us, like a real mother(land). Rationality does not seem to help in the equation, because we would have rid ourselves of the prizes a long time ago. To wrap the whole thing up with one of my far-fetched and violating interpretations, I think it is because we feel such great intimacy with literature that we sometimes find it unbearable. It is like the English Patient’s intimacy with the desert, its winds and oases. Still, inadequate and violent as I may feel, I am finding literature, and it is finding me. It shadows me, catches me, and “enhouses” me. It “encountries” me, the migrant.

This essay was a Guest Blogger entry at Roses&Thorns Blog, and Literary Magic.