RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,144
(consider Huck Finn)
The westernmost ends of
the 1967-era streets I lived
amidst were the prime areas
of then NY's still most retro
places; retro meaning 'original
leftover state.' Most of it all
was still a reeking 1940's
decomposition, inhabited and
frequented by noir characters
out of some foul, dangling-the-
lit-cigarette, moment. Westies
killed for fun, it seemed, and all
above the w38th area was - there's
and no telling twice about it -
their world, right then. A haven.
The word 'Irish,' and the word
'docks' both have 5 letters, so
it was a natural fit. And it fit
like a hook fits in a fish's mouth.
What didn't 'fit' got jammed
in anyway. At the same time,
let us remember, desperado has
9 letters, and desperation has 11.
-
There was, everywhere, an urban
version of the Huck Finn thing
always going on. The Huck types
always survived, whittled their
ways past problems and dilemmas,
navigated the Mississippean shoals
of damage or difficulty. It was the
Tom Sawyer types who always
lost out; and I was glad for that.
Maybe that's the best lesson to
be learned from those first 16
chapters of that book, which,
after chapter 16, turns into
twaddle and finally does end
after being given back over to
the idiot maneuverings of Tom
Sawyer - planner, rationalist,
manipulator, cruel and stupid
master. Now, you would think
that in dire situations such as
the area I was in, those are the
very sorts who would thrive - the
Tom Sawyer manipulators. BUT
they always failed because their
planned rigidity always made
them followers, not leaders. They
were not malleable, and neither
were they flexible enough to
survive. On the other hand, the
looser-steeping Huck Finns of
the day always managed to keep
a step ahead somehow, and wiggle
through as well. As much as was
needed; they did.
-
Formula and the prosaic, neither
of them ever work well. Any idiot
can tell a story, or weave a tale. But,
much like the book in question here,
after Chapter 16, it all turns into
sentiment and the usual, traditional
drivel that drives society. That's a
failure. I learned long ago that those
are the things a writer must avoid.
Those easy paths are deadly; maybe
they sell, and maybe they bring in
the coin, but in the end they are
already dated and useless. One of
the problems with this stuff now,
50-plus years later, is that all these
sorts of 'books' have now been
picked up as, instead of as 'books,'
as 'official duties' - by those
mandatory morons who now claim
ti rode herd over everything we
know, hear, think, or see. We've
achieved our own version of Brave
New World, or living like Morlocks
in The Time Machine.
-
I realize this is all pretty inconsequential
for those who 'think' in today's world;
it matters little now, but I did used to
think about this a lot. I'd walk the docks,
see the men (the only women ever seen
were either the diner waitresses or the
whores and hookers on break, or AT
work, for that matter). The black guys
were usually the heavers and throwers
of bales and cargo and freight, most
often - it all still held to the earmarks
of cotton plantation work; just a different
locale, and maybe a different river. (Or,
as Huck would say, 'Jes' a diff'ernt locale
and mebbe' a diff'ernt river too').
-
Just as you can't put a rat's tail on a
rabbit and call it a hen, the convoluted
reasonings of what went on along the
piers and docks on the westside had a
life and a feeling all of their own, and
a big part of that was crime, and 'reality'
too. Simple reality, not the kind of crap
one can gloss over and pretend about.
It was raw, and it was rugged, and it
had few niceties and little finesse. Like
Lyndon Johnson, the President back
then, said - which most of the nation
thought hideous but which I treasured
for the sensible realism of the Twain-talk
type utterance - "When I appoint a
nigger to the Supreme Court [Thurgood
Marshall, the first Negro justice], I want
everyone to know he's a nigger.' Like
Johnson, so Mark Twain, and so Huck
Finn - if we 'release 'Huck Finn' the
book from its 'official' duties... then
every part of the ideological tangle of
representations and liberations created
by generations of teaching it [but we
DON'T do that any more] to millions
of American schoolchildren badly or
well could be unknotted.'
-
Another facet of all this is that NO book
has 'official' duties. Anyone who thinks
that is a moron and a fool as well. A
writer faces the open universe, not a
wall, and a writer does NOT write to
prescription or direction, ideologically.
The very fact of taking the pen is an
anarchic act beyond all the bounds
of everything but creative impulses.
If that's the way it runs, if it somehow
takes off in errant directions and
runs rampant with some other form
of thought or structure, then let it
and the public be damned. There
are no rules and there are no
'teaching moments.' That's
all part of the lie.
-
As a people and as a nation, we used
to give things a chance. Now 'we' (in
which I no longer include myself), no
longer give anything a chance, and have
become so rigidly flavored and controlled
as to walk in lockstep to each new diktat
sent our way. We've allowed the very
typical Tom Sawyer 'Whitewash' (Twain's
very best symbolism ever) to coat that
fence of everything that contains and
limits us into the deadly corral we now
allowed ourselves to be out in. And I
have people here who 'enjoy' that -
all those factors of pleasure they take
from being controlled. It's a putrid
fantasy of take and give.
-
Let Huck Finn live!!!!
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