Philip Roth: Our Gang

Science, for instance, doesn’t know what life is yet, and in a recent Gallup Poll did you know that five percent more Americans believe in life after death now than they did some twenty years ago? So science doesn’t have all the answers, but it has provided us with many wonderful breakthroughs. Let’s try this scientific experiment. Let’s try the phrases for an ordinary man on this extraordinary man. And you tell me if you don’t agree that as applies to him who lies here in his baggie, they are hollow to the ear and false to the heart, and vice versa. Let’s see if when this experiment is over, you don’t say to me, “Why, Billy, you’re right, they don’t describe him at all. They describe one who or one that which leads, but not him who was emphatically himself and no other.”

I’m going to ask that we bow our heads now. Every head bowed and every eye closed, and listen. They say of an ordinary leader, when and if he dies, of course — he was a man of broad outlook; Or, he was a man of great passion;

Or, he was a man of deep conviction;

Or, he was a defender of human rights;

Or, he was a soldier of humanity;

Or, he was scholarly, eloquent and wise; Or, he was a simple, peace-loving man, brave and kind;

Or, he was a man who embodied the ideals of his people;

Or, he was a man who fired the imagination of a generation.

They say of an ordinary man, when and if he dies, that the loss is incalculable to the nation and the world.

They say of an ordinary man, when and if he dies, that all will be better for his having passed their way.

Need I go any further? There was an article in a current magazine last month by a professor who is an authority on human behavior, and he writes that you can tell when a crowd of people is in agreement with you. Well, the professor is correct. Because I know that you are all saying to yourselves, “Why, Billy, you’re right — in vain do I listen for the words or word that describes he who lies here in this baggie; for these are phrases that summon up the image of an ordinary leader, not the extraordinary leader we have lost.”

What word or words then will describe this extraordinary man? I was in an African country one year ago this July and I heard a top political expert there call him “The President of the United States.” The President of the United States. In another African country I heard about a teenage girl who called him “The Leader of the Free World.” The Leader of the Free World. And a lawyer friend of mine, a well-known judge, who lives in South America wrote me a letter not too long ago and he had an interesting thing to say. He said he heard a man in an elevator in a top hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, call him “Commander-in-Chief of the American Armed Forces. Commanderin — Chief of the Armed Forces.

Yet are these the words in which he lived in the hearts of his fellow countrymen? Perhaps that is what he was to the rest of the world. But to we who knew him, nothing so majestic or formal could begin to communicate the kind of man he was and the esteem in which he was held. Because to us he was not a leader in the ordinary sense — he was a leader in the extraordinary sense. And that is why we who knew him think of him by a name as unpretentious and unceremonious as the name you might give to your own pet, a name as homey and familiar as you might bestow upon a little puppy. I’m going to ask that we bow our heads again. Every head bowed and every eye closed, while we all share in the remembrance of the name by which he was known to we who knew him best, the name by which we called him in our hearts, even if we were too shy or too timid to speak it with our lips while he walked among us in a business suit. And how appropriate that it is a name even a puppy could bear, for we all remember as much as anything about him, the deep reverence he had for dogs.

The name was a simple one, my friends. The name was Tricky. Yes, to you, to me, and to all Americans for generations to come, Tricky he was and Tricky he shall be.

And now, all heads bowed and every eye closed, let us pray. Oh God, who alone art ever merciful in sparing of punishment, humbly we pray Thee on behalf of Thy servant, a man called Tricky…

My fellow Fallen:

Let me say at the outset that I of course agree with much of what Satan has said here tonight in his opening statement. I know that Satan feels as deeply as I do about what has to be done to make Wickedness all that it can and should be in the creation. For let there be no mistake about it: we are engaged in a deadly competition with the Kingdom of Righteousness. There isn’t any question in my mind but that the God of Peace is out, as He Himself has said, “to crush” us “under His feet,” and that He and His gang of angels will stop at nothing to accomplish this end. I could not agree more with Satan when he says that our goal is not just to keep Wickedness for ourselves, but to extend it to all creation, because that is Hell’s destiny. To extend it to all creation because the aim of the Righteous is not just to hold their own, but to extend Righteousness. But we cannot be victorious over Righteousness with a strategy of simply holding the line. My disagreement with Satan then is not about the goals for Hell, but about the means to reach those goals.

Now Satan has said that we are ahead in this competition with Righteousness. I cannot agree with that appraisal of the situation. As I look at Hell today, I believe that we are following programs of an outdated leadership. I believe we are following programs many of which have not worked in the past and will not work in the future. I say that the programs and leadership that have failed under Satan’s administration are not the programs and the leadership that Hell needs now. I say that the damned and the doomed do not want to go back to the policies of the Garden of Eden. I say that the Sons and Daughters of Disobedience deserve a Devil of consummate depravity, a Devil who will devote himself not to old and worn-out iniquities, but to bold new programs in Evil that will overturn God’s kingdom and plunge men into eternal death. What we need down here is not just high hopes. What we need is crafty wiles and untiring zeal. In the field of executive leadership, I believe it is essential that the Devil not only set the tone, but he also must lead; he must act as he talks. Frankly, I don’t think this is the kind of leadership we have been getting. Now since my arrival I have traveled to the very edges of the outer darkness. I have been down to the bottom of the bottomless pit. I have been burned in the unquenchable fire and have joined you in the comfortless gloom. I have talked to sinners from all walks of life. I have eaten with degenerates and blasphemed with the impious. I have looked into the eyes of the depraved and the malicious. I have familiarized myself with viciousness and baseness of all kinds. And one thing I have noted as I have traveled from one end of Hell to the other is the wonderful belief our people have in Wickedness. I tell you, with great pride, that I have never seen anything to equal our corruption. And that is why I don’t think we have to settle for second best. I don’t think we have to settle for anything less than a Devil who is the very embodiment of malice. And I humbly submit to you, the denizens of the greatest infernal region in all creation, that if elected, I would be that kind of Devil.

I was fortunate enough to hear an awful lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth on my trip around Hell, and I think the strongest impression I came away with was this: that you lost souls out there are just as sick and tired as I am of hearing the Devil downgraded and Hell itself dismissed as “old-fashioned” and “out-of-date.” Well, maybe it is “old-fashioned” in some circles, but to those of us who live here, Hell happens to be home. And dating back as it does to the beginning of time, it happens to have been home to some of the most illustrious names in history. And I think that with that kind of history and that kind of record, it is high time we put Hell back on the map, and high time the Devil was given his due. Now I can only say, in this regard, that maybe Satan is satisfied with the fact that at least one half of the people presently on earth — and I know this because I just came from there — at least one half of those people no longer believe in the existence of Hell, let alone its influence in world affairs. And maybe Satan is satisfied that the Devil, the highest official in the underworld, once the very symbol of nefariousness to millions, is considered in the upper regions to have absolutely no power at all over the decisions made there by men. And maybe Satan is satisfied when at least two thirds of the children in the world go to bed at night without any fear of fire or brimstone, or an undying worm gnawing at the heart. Incidentally, in that connection, they don’t even fear the pitchfork. And maybe that’s all right with Satan, too. However, let me make my position very clear. It’s not all right with me.