E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

I tried to distinguish the sound from any one radio or record player, near or far. It was impossible. Music came from everywhere, it was like an electrification of the air, a burning up of it.

amazing grace, amazing grace, there is still in this evening on the fire escape floating in the potsmoke like an iron cloud over Avenue B someone who knows what he says or does is important With importance his life or self concerned, and the surroundings are suddenly not obscure and the voice is amplified and a million people hear and every paint chip of the rusted fire escape its particular configuration and archaeology is truly important

The friends leave and Artie picks up his rap as we stand at the fire escape railing in the hot September night. “So how do you bring change to something this powerful. How do you make revolution. The same way a skinny little judo freak throws a cat three times his size. You don’t preach. You don’t talk about poverty and injustice and imperialism and racism. That’s like trying to make people read Shakespeare, it can’t be done. Look there, what do you see? Little blue squares in every window. Right? Everyone digging the commercials. That is today’s school, man. In less than a minute a TV commercial can carry you through a lifetime. It tells the story from the date to the wedding. It shows you the baby, the home, the car, the graduation. It makes you laugh and makes your eyes water with nostalgia. You see a girl more beautiful than any girl you’ve ever seen. Giants, and midgets, and girls coming in convertibles, and knights and ladies, and love on the beach, and jets fucking the sky, and delicious food steaming on the table, and living voices of cool telling you how cool you are, how cool you can be. Commercials are learning units. So like when the brothers walk into the draft board down in Baltimore and pour blood all over the induction records — that’s the lesson. And the Yippies throwing money away at the stock exchange. And marching in the parade on Flag Day and getting the Legionnaires to chase you and the pigs to chase you and tearing up your flags, American flags, on Flag Day! You dig? Society is a put-on so we put on the put-on. Authority is momentum. Break the momentum. Legitimacy is illegitimate. Make it show its ass. Hit and run. You got forty seconds, man. The media need material? Give them material. Like Abbie says, anyone who does anything in this country is a celebrity. Do something and be a celebrity. Next month we’re going to Washington and exorcizing the Pentagon. We’re gonna levitate the Pentagon by prayer and incantation and blowing horns and throwing magic invisibilities at the Pentagon walls. We’re gonna lift it up and let it down. We’re gonna kill it with flowers. Be there! We’ll be on television. We’re gonna overthrow the United States with images!”

I have an idea for an article. If I write it maybe I can sell it and see my name in print. The idea is the dynamics of radical thinking. With each cycle of radical thought there is a stage of genuine creative excitement during which the connections are made. The radical discovers connections between available data and the root responsibility. Finally he connects everything. At this point he begins to lose his following. It is not that he has incorrectly connected everything, it is that he has connected everything. Nothing is left outside the connections. At this point society becomes bored with the radical. Fully connected in his characterization it has achieved the counterinsurgent rationale that allows it to destroy him. The radical is given the occasion for one last discovery — the connection between society and his death. After the radical is dead his early music haunts his persecutors. And the liberals use this to achieve power. I have searched and searched for one story from history that is invulnerable to radical interpretation. I mean it is harder than it sounds and if you think not give it a try. Here is one from the AMERICAN HERITAGE HISTORY OF FLIGHT — I found it today and it might just stand up: In 1897 three Swedes decided that the way to get to the North Pole was by means of a free balloon flight. They set off from Spitzbergen, floating up in a northerly direction, and they were never heard from again. Then, thirty-three years later, in 1930, a party of Norwegian explorers came upon a camp in the frozen Arctic wastes and there were the three ice-cake bodies of the Swedish balloonists. Also in the camp was a camera and in the camera was film. The thirty-three-year-old film was developed and yielded snapshots of the balloonists in their last camp standing over a bear they had hunted, raising a flag, etc—

Ascher’s homburg was pushed back on his head like a cowboy hat, and his overcoat was open. His hands were clasped behind his back under the overcoat. He tilted back on his heels and forward again, while the children’s Aunt Frieda sat on the couch weeping.

“I’m a widow, I have no one,” Aunt Frieda said. “It’s too much of a burden. I live in three rooms. Where can I put them? I stand on my feet twelve hours a day. I get up at six-thirty every morning. On my day off I haven’t got the strength to get out of bed. How can I afford to do what you’re asking me.”

“Mrs. Cohn, I’m not asking you to do anything. Paul is your brother, not mine. I am the lawyer. Whatever you decide, that determines what I will do.”

“And what does my sister Ruth say?”

“I have discussed the problem with her only on the phone.”

“Listen, don’t waste your time. Selfish? The word wasn’t invented till Ruthie.” Aunt Frieda dismissed her sister with a wave of the hand. The gesture caught Daniel’s eye. His Aunt Frieda sat with her feet planted on the floor in lace-up shoes with thick heels. He turned quickly back to the TV set, having seen more than he wanted to of Aunt Frieda’s stocking above the knee. He found her repulsive. She had that hairy mole over the corner of her mouth. She looked like his father around the jaw, the mouth. She wore thick horn-rimmed glasses.

“I understand her husband is a diabetic, a very sick man. In any case I somehow feel that you would know better how to handle the situation than your sister.”

Aunt Frieda nodded. “God help me, I was always the responsible one. From the time we were children. If you didn’t watch Paul he would destroy himself. He never learned how to cross the street. If you didn’t put the food in front of him he wouldn’t eat. If you didn’t hold his money he would lose it or let someone take it from him. I couldn’t count on Ruthie. Ruthie was always a lazy thing. It was Frieda who solved the problems. It was Frieda, that good-natured slob, who was always there to get them out of trouble.”

“You are the oldest?”

“By eight years. And when I was twenty my father followed my mother to the grave and I was now the mother and father. It ruined my life. I’m telling you, Mr. Ascher, my life was never my own.”

Her tears flowed. Ascher turned his attention to the television console shining in the corner. The children were sitting on the floor, too close he thought. Too close. He made no move to interrupt their attention. If they could get inside the television they would be better off still. On the screen that Hopalong Cassidy threw his lasso through the air. Hopalong’s horse reared up and braked to a stop. The lasso pulled the crook off his horse. The crook looked up sullenly from the dust with his arms pinned to his sides by the rope. From his white horse Hopalong laughed down at him. Ascher thought: We are a primitive people.

“They seem to enjoy the television,” Ascher said. “Maybe we should make an exception. Do you have a television, Mrs. Cohn?”

“What? No, no — who can afford a television?”

“It is an expensive appliance,” Ascher said. “The man will be here soon to assess the belongings. I will tell him not to include the television.”