Plays Italics Or Quotes

Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering a critical faculty—or indeed any faculty whatever, unless it is one of induced enthusiasm for a plausible consensus President. (We shall see whether it counts as progress for the same parrots to learn a new word.) And my own cohort, the left, shared in the general dispiriting move towards apolitical, atonal postmodernism. Regarding something magnificent, like the long-overdue and still endangered South African revolution (a jagged fit in the supposedly smooth pattern of axiomatic progress), one could see that Ariadne’s thread had a robust reddish tinge, and that potential citizens had not all deconstructed themselves into Xhosa, Zulu, Cape Coloured or ‘Eurocentric’; had in other words resisted the sectarian lesson that the masters of apartheid tried to teach them. Elsewhere, though, it seemed all at once as if competitive solipsism was the signifier of the ‘radical’; a stress on the salience not even of the individual, but of the trait, and from that atomization into the lump of the category. Surely one thing to be learned from the lapsed totalitarian system was the unwholesome relationship between the cult of the masses and the adoration of the supreme personality. Yet introspective voyaging seemed to coexist with dull group-think wherever one peered about among the formerly ‘committed’. Traditionally then, or tediously as some will think, I saw no reason to discard the Orwellian standard in considering modern literature. While a sort of etiolation, tricked out as playfulness, had its way among the non-judgemental, much good work was still done by those who weighed words as if they meant what they said. Some authors, indeed, stood by their works as if they had composed them in solitude and out of conviction. Of these, an encouraging number spoke for the ironic against the literal mind; for the generously interpreted interest of all against the renewal of what Orwell termed the ‘smelly little orthodoxies’—tribe and Faith, monotheist and polytheist, being most conspicuous among these new/old disfigurements. In the course of making a film about the decaffeinated hedonism of modern Los Angeles, I visited the house where Thomas Mann, in another time of torment, wrote Dr Faustus. My German friends were filling the streets of Munich and Berlin to combat the recrudescence of the same old shit as I read: This old, folkish layer survives in us all, and to speak as I really think, I do. not consider religion the most adequate means of keeping it under lock and key. For that, literature alone avails, humanistic science, the ideal of the free and beautiful human being. [italics mine] The path to this concept of enlightenment is not to be found in the pursuit of self-pity, or of self-love. Of course to be merely a political animal is to miss Mann’s point; while, as ever, to be an apolitical animal is to leave fellow-citizens at the mercy of Ideolo’. For the sake of argument, then, one must never let a euphemism or a false consolation pass uncontested. The truth seldom lies, but when it does lie it lies somewhere in between.

One often hears that today’s cultural war is fought between traditionalists who believe in a firm set of values and postmodern relativists who consider ethical rules, sexual identities, and so on as a result of contingent power games. But is this really the case? The ultimate postmodernists today are conservatives themselves. Once traditional authority loses its substantial power, it is not possible to return to it—all such returns today are a postmodern fake. Does Trump enact traditional values? No, his conservativism is a postmodern performance, a gigantic ego trip. Playing with “traditional values,” mixing references to tradition with open obscenities, Trump is the ultimate postmodern president, while Sanders is an old-fashioned moralist.

From an innovative trio of Dutch, Finnish, and German designers comes a unique concept: a typeface with not one, but three italics. First, the roman: a sprightly, monolinear Humanist. Where Cronos feels like careful calligraphy, Auto is quick writing — the clear but energetic marks of a lively pen. The italics — labeled as Auto 1, 2, and 3 — offer increasingly expressive forms. The progression is like the growth of a plant, starting with basic stems that grow from buds into long vines that visibly overlap where they change direction, and that then extend to long swashes. The three options let users choose the level of embellishment while retaining the type’s basic weight and constitution. This is the same character playing

Sooner or later the world must burn, and all things in it—all the books, the cloister together with the brothel, Fra Angelico together with the Lucky Strike ads which I haven’t seen for seven years because I don’t remember seeing one in Louisville. Sooner or later it will all be consumed by fire and nobody will be left—for by that time the last man in the universe will have discovered the bomb capable of destroying the universe and will have been unable to resist the temptation to throw the thing and get it over with. And here I sit writing a diary. But love laughs at the end of the world because love is the door to eternity and he who loves God is playing on the doorstep of eternity, and before anything can happen love will have drawn him over the sill and closed the door and he won’t bother about the world burning because he will know nothing but love.

So look out a window. Take a walk. Talk with your friend. Use your God-given skills to paint or draw or build a shed or write a book. But imagine it—all of it—in its original condition. The happy dog with the wagging tail, not the snarling beast, beaten and starved. The flowers unwilted, the grass undying, the blue sky without pollution. People smiling and joyful, not angry, depressed, and empty. If you’re not in a particularly beautiful place, close your eyes and envision the most beautiful place you’ve ever been—complete with palm trees, raging rivers, jagged mountains, waterfalls, or snow drifts. Think of friends or family members who loved Jesus and are with him now. Picture them with you, walking together in this place. All of you have powerful bodies, stronger than those of an Olympic decathlete. You are laughing, playing, talking, and reminiscing. You reach up to a tree to pick an apple or orange. You take a bite. It’s so sweet that it’s startling. You’ve never tasted anything so good. Now you see someone coming toward you. It’s Jesus, with a big smile on his face. You fall to your knees in worship. He pulls you up and embraces you. At last, you’re with the person you were made for, in the place you were made to be. Everywhere you go there will be new people and places to enjoy, new things to discover. What’s that you smell? A feast. A party’s ahead. And you’re invited. There’s exploration and work to be done—and you can’t wait to get started.

Rose’s dreams are primarily visions of a personal future, but they are linked to a social vision and to a larger mythos of America by an offhand remark Herbie makes. He tells Rose that when he first saw her, she “looked like a pioneer woman without a frontier.”11 The frontier thesis, as articulated by Frederick Jackson Turner, is a particular manifestation of the American Dream in which the continual movement west in the nineteenth century was a means both of personal advancement (owning land, expanding business, starting over, striking it rich) and of societal evolution (claiming territory, controlling it, exploiting it—all justified and mandated by the guiding master narrative of Manifest Destiny). But by the 1920s, when pioneer woman Rose and her brood set out in pursuit of her dream, there is no more frontier—the West Coast, where the action of the play’s first scenes takes place, is settled. It seems significant that Rose’s father worked for the railroad, that key player in the expansion westward, but is now retired.12 No longer able to head west toward a frontier, Rose loops back into already settled America, Manifest Destiny’s straight, east-to-west line now giving way to a circle, the vaudeville circuit. Gypsy makes use of dreams in multiple senses to articulate a vision of an American society folding back on itself entropically and becoming an image—a dream—of its own myths.

How we used to fetishize and differentiate our feelings. Rage! Hatred! Hunger! Pride! Jealousy! Ambition! Lust! We had a name for everything. But that colourful cavalcade of emotions was just a sham. It was all pain—all of it—all along. Rage was pain, hate was pain, pride was pain, lust was pain. All that's different now is that where pain used to have the luxury of being a bit of a drama queen and playing dress up, now it stands out there on the corner of Birchin Lane, quivering and naked.

DENIAL OF SECONDARY CAUSALITY One of the most insidious and toxically shaming distortions of many religions is the denial of secondary causality. What this means is that according to some church doctrines, the human will is inept. There is nothing man can do that is of any value. Of himself, man is a worm. Only when God works through him does man become restored to dignity. But it’s never anything that man does of himself. The theology here is abortive of any true doctrine of Judeo/Christianity. Most mainline interpretations see man as having true secondary causality. Thomas Aquinas, in the prologue to the second part of his Summa Theologia, writes, “After our treatise on God, we turn to man, who is God’s Image, insofar as man, too, like God, has the power over his works” [italics mine]. This is a strong statement of human causality. Man’s will is effective. In order to receive grace, man must be willing to accept the gift of faith. After acceptance, man’s will plays a major role in the sanctification process. The abortive interpretation sees man as totally flawed and defective. Of himself, he can only sin. Man is shame-based to the core.

Truth: When you are writing new words, you are never wasting your time. Never. Here comes a dirty word. Better cover your ears. Practice. There, I said it. Imagine walking up to some poor kid who is practicing a musical instrument and telling that kid he is wasting his time by practicing. He needs to only play concerts or nothing at all. Can’t imagine that? Yet when your critical voice tells you that you might be wasting your time, that’s exactly what you are saying to yourself. You are saying your writing must always be special, that it can’t be done to practice. Yeah, believing every word you write is always special will freeze you down into making writing work and then fairly quickly stop you completely. And again, that’s what the critical voice wants. Critical voice does not want you writing or taking any chances. Period. And writing into the dark? Wow, what a chance that would be. Far too much of a chance to take because your writing is “special.” Your writing must always be perfect and maybe you had better add in just one more rewrite to be sure. And maybe one more rewrite after that, because rewriting isn’t wasting time. That italics part, folks, was a sarcastic attempt to show you just how stupid those thoughts are. If you believe all of that was advice, you are beyond my help. Truth: The biggest waste of time in writing is rewriting. Period.

Piera, who unlike Laura and Itale was seldom at the mercy of overpowering emotions, felt at ease amongst these people. Her feelings were slow-moving, obscure, and mute, beneath a surface play of vivacity.

I don’t like this—she calls it freedom—an affair, a love-affair, secrecy, nothing ever to count on—” “That is her freedom. She’s no fool. If she married you then you’d be free and she’d be the one trapped! Love’s the game where there are only losers. Listen, Itale, I won’t bring this up again, it’s none of my business, I know that. I’ve known Luisa for years, I might have fallen in love with her if I hadn’t met the other one first. She’s like me. She tries to take and choose. She sees you and she can’t let you be—if she can’t own you she will destroy you—you do not know, I hope you never know the envy that eats her, when she looks at you. But I know it. Look out for her, look out for me. We will destroy you if we can, Itale.” His tone was cold and playful.