August 2002
I am reading Martin Amis, and finally I must say that he stands almost alone in my moral education as an adult. On this occasion, it is 'Koba the Dread' that I am reading, and as I learn lessons I've only heard in abstractions before it occurs to me that something I have written quickly requires my attention. Somewhere along the line in my creation of my anti-racist opus, I declared that racism has been a greater threat to African American freedom than communism ever was. In so doing, I implied that we could all use a bit of anti-racist purging. Now that I have come to recognize the wrenching and catastrophic details of what purges have actually taken place in the 20th century, I feel strongly that my rhetoric should be recontextualized.
Never having determined the difference between Leninism, Stalinism and Bolshevism, never having understood exactly what a Trotskyite was, I was enthralled to find the film 'Reds' at its release in the early 80s. All my young life I have listed it as one of my all time favorite films. Now I should find that what I have come to loathe about Warren Beatty's "Bulworth" I may have the opportunity to apply retrospectively to the actor himself. This is small comfort in my world of ignorance, but it is a start to grasping a perspective lost to a generation without its own war. My very existence as a writer owes much to the grace of not having been old enough for Vietnam, not young enough for Iraq and not directly touched enough to become involved except in rhetorical battles. Even in this battle for clarity, I skirmish with my own past words and deeds. And my mind is moving towards looking at the whole of all evils far beyond of those particular flavors reserved here in America for my own caste. I am humiliated by my selfish patriotism, but I am still in its grip. How I wish that Amis were an American. It would be so much easier for me to associate with his scathing of Beatty, and I might have known how small and wrong I was a lot sooner.
Alas it falls to me in my own middle age to approach death more wisely. In so doing, I will inevitably watch friends die and wrestle with decline and failure on a more regular basis. How to prevent it without sodding down the vivacity of others? How to measure silly ignorance without becoming pedantic? Perhaps pedantry is my proper role as I ripen. We shall see. In the meantime, I mean to re-edit and footnote my own narrow perspective and come to understand more fully the joyless and dank underbelly of human existence throughout its history of oppression. And as I take comfort in the same ease which led me to this vast ignorance, I will find ways to keep myself from being dulled by its false protection, and yet secure in that which it does offer. Perhaps this means the end of being an organic for me. The world is my brother, and that which is civil and safe lingers on not only in cowardice, but in confident exercise. I think I owe it to the world to participate in and defend its bourgeois matrix, its collaboration of law and order, its institutions of comfort and liberal recreations. I am somewhat frightened of hearing too patriotic words coming out of my mouth. Ha! Such fears!
This I know. Great hands in great movements often make great mistakes, and their ability to create and perpetuate suffering is far beyond what I've imagined. I don't know what has made all this possible, but I hope that I can come to recognize it in human character and affairs. As I reorient myself these days and dedicate myself to setting up my own little rock, health and insurance, I will not be so harsh on the ordered mendacity of American middle class life. It is life.