RUDIMENTS, pt. 301
Making Cars
There are thoughts that you
debate with others, and there
are thoughts you debate with
yourself. For me, it was always,
with myself, 'How could I be
such a jerk?' Like the day that
my mother tearfully told me
that Robert Kennedy had been
killed (which of course I already
knew about, and wasn't current,
breaking, news; I forget how it
came up), I turned on her, in her
distress, and just said, 'Good;
maybe it'll teach him to keep
his mouth shut.' Looking back
now, that is about the most brazen
and stupid comment anyone could
make, let alone into the face of
their own sad mother - sad at
the occurrence - and not
deserving the snide swipe
I'd thrown at her. (I noticed,
however, she'd not been sad
in the same way at all, just
previous, when Martin Luther
King went down. I probably
could have used that same
dumb comment then too).
Perfect idiot stuff. And, in
addition, the comment itself
makes no sense. He's dead.
What's it going to 'teach' him,
this 'keeping his mouth shut.'
What an idiot human I was.
So, once realizing that, what
was I then supposed to do?
I never really knew, and when
you're young enough for that
sort of illogic, all options are
presented to you as equally
maladroit. I didn't wish to 'go'
anywhere, after any of them.
There are a few years, when one
is growing up, that life presents
itself to you as nothing but a
string of stupidities and foolishness.
Pranks, bomb scares, crazy riffs
to get attention, squirming in
front of others to be sure you're
noticed. I guess that's what
'college' is supposed to collect
for you in one big place; all that
foolish stupidity, acted out, with
ideas of self-importance enough
to think any of it matters. The
'Keys Of the Kingdom' indeed.
(That was a 1941 book by A. J.
Cronin). It was still a big enough
Catholic deal in 1956 to be among
part of my mothers 'vast' library
(I'm joking) of Reader's Digest
Condensed Books.
-
Those things were crazy -
monthly, by subscription,
faux-important books
truncated and cut down
to size, (I guess because
they were considered so
important and ponderous
that even non-readers
should get a cut-rate
version of them for their
bulging bookshelves. (Joke
again). I used to look at them,
hold them in my hand (usually
there were 4 or 5 'grouped'
together in one monthly
volume), and think of the
poor author - who'd been
evading and fighting with
his pre-publication editor for
months over what to cut
or not to cut, for publication
- and then these Pleasantville,
NY, Reader's Digest people
buy the condensing rights
to the book from your
publisher/agent, and attack
it with a cleaver and, as author,
you get about a dollar and
twenty-seven cents from your
'publisher' for the privilege of
expanding your (deep) audience.
By the end of the 1950's there
were a number of these high
Catholic books about reverential
church things, such as this Pope
and 'Keys Of the Kingdom' stuff.
It wasn't until maybe 10 years
later after it had all collapsed, that
the reverence was gone and people
would just begin to laugh at all
that. Irreverence, instead, became
the catchword of the day. That's
how much things would have
changed. One time, much later,
we went up to Chappaqua, New
York, Millwood, Thornwood,
all these places. I turned a corner
and right before me, there was the
Reader's Digest Company's
Pleasantville Headquarters (it's
all gone now, and turned into
office and other facility commercial
uses), but back when this occurred
it was still in use as their space - a
large, almost important looking,
sprawling campus - greenery,
space, landscaped nicely, parking
areas, and a high, fine-looking
building. At that point the only other
commercial place like this I'd seen
was the campus-like headquarters
of Merck, in Rahway. That too was
fascinating to me - as it was much
like a college campus for some
mid-level organization of learning.
Which it was, but instead this sprawl
couldn't have cared less about the
old Greek philosophers or classical
thinking and learning, books, and
Shakespeare and all that. They made
medicine and drugs. That was their
research, and they made them for
profit, but within the campus there,
like Pleasantville, you'd never know
that.
-
That's where I always got tripped up.
I never understood business. I never
understood why people's drive for money
led them to do the so-many-dumb
led them to do the so-many-dumb
things most people did all day long.
For money. Make bombs and hope
for larger defense contracts. Which
would mean, of course, the bombs
had gotten used up and more were
needed, and the planes to deliver
them with, to their kill-the-people
locations. Or defoliants. Or poisons
and gases. To take home a paycheck
on Friday? How could anyone be
so low? It's not like you're doing
anything good. Working for
Monsanto, making Agent Orange
in the 1960's must have been a real
blast. But that's just the way it was.
Maybe they should have just made
that stuff in 'Pleasantville' and told
Reader's Digest to go stuff themselves
and leave: 'We have better uses for
this nice location.'
-
These sorts of things were my own
debates with my own self. I never
talked much about any of this with
others - my mind usually was off
running on some tangent somewhere
and I often ended up manufacturing
my own facts and figures for the
purpose of the tale. That's called
'controlling the narrative,' and of
course that's something writers
do all the time because that's pretty
much what writing is. Nowadays,
political types call it all 'fake news,'
but they do the same thing constantly.
In order to keep people under your
wing, you MUST control the narrative
- thus censorship, authoritarianism,
and controls. Remember, only the
victors write History. If Native
Americans had triumphed, their
version of what had occurred
would be totally different than
what we'd ever been exposed to
before. They would, let's say, no
longer have to keep their damned
mouths shut.
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