CREATIVE EXTREMES

James had loved her passionately as a youth, when they had worked in thesame office for a time, but only from a distance, because her love had beenbestowed on someone else, a fellow-worker who was either quicker off theromantic mark or just less inhibited than himself. He suffered hisunrequited love for her throughout the years following her departure fromthe firm, and when he also departed to become an apprentice author, his lifehad grown accustomed to solitary nights and friendless days. Being alonein his lodgings was no great burden on him. On the contrary, it was alogical step from his previous loneliness.And so he wrote for years, throughout the greater part of eachweekday, until the number of typescripts – writing first, typing later – piled
up in his room, and his notebooks, in which the works were drafted, grewto fill a large drawer. He considered himself, above all else, a philosopher,
a seeker after the Truth, a pioneer of new insights into life and the world.He was too serious-minded to be content with fiction, his solitude andunrequited love not having conditioned him to become an artist in the usualobjective sense. He was resigned to philosophy, even when he realized thatit was the most intellectually-demanding mode of writing and the leastcommercially viable. Better to be a philosopher, he thought, than to haveremained a clerk. Besides, I’m no ordinary philosopher. More arevolutionary pseudo-philosopher than a traditional type…. Not that hediscovered this fact all at once, but only when the time was ripe. A pseudo-philosopher was somehow superior to a genuine, or academic, philosopher,more a man of essence than of appearance, a metaphysician as opposed to aphysicist, an original writer rather than ‘a chair’. In similar vein, a pseudo-
state was somehow superior to a genuine state, a matter of the people ratherthan either the land or country considered from a nationalist point of view.Pseudo-democracy could likewise be considered superior to genuinedemocracy, giving maximum representation to the electorate – a qualitativeabsolutism.Yes, James Riley realized all this and so much else as, year after year,he scribbled the time away in his single room and noted the progress of hiswork from a bourgeois relative stage to an early petty-bourgeois relativelyabsolute stage, and even, in due course, to a late petty-bourgeois absolutestage of creative and ideological integrity. If he had begun as a philosopher
or, more correctly, a philosophical novelist and essayist, he had progressedquite some way beyond that point by the time he came to evaluate theideological/creative status of his various stages of philosophical endeavour.  Read the rest of this entry »

 

FREE-ELECTRON SEXUALITY

“I must say, I’m fascinated by this theory of yours, Terry, thathomosexuality corresponds to a pseudo-electron equivalence,” theprofessor remarked, turning a pair of seemingly enlightened eyes in mydirection. “A kind of higher materialist petty-bourgeois sexuality.”The professor’s wife smiled deferentially through prim lips. “And onethat apparently compliments the higher spiritual petty-bourgeois sexualityof pornographic indulgence, which corresponds, by contrast, to a free-electron equivalence,” she averred, showing herself to be no mean learnereither.I nodded confirmatory encouragement and waited for one or other ofthem to continue.”A homosexual materialist and a pornographic spiritualist,” theprofessor mused, smiling to himself. “Why, one might alternatively expecthomosexuality to appeal more to LS D trippers and pornography, bycontrast, to the practitioners of transcendental meditation, seeing as one can
distinguish, in each case, between a pseudo-electron and a free-electronindulgence!”The professor’s wife cast me an admiring and vaguely expectant look.”Then one ought to argue that anti-artists who produce a pseudo-electronliterature would be partial to homosexuality, while their free-electroncounterparts, the pure poets, would prefer pornographic sexuality,” sheremarked, as though it were an everyday occurrence.I nodded again, this time, however, in an attempt to express the mostunequivocally tacit endorsement of the good lady’s argument.”Well, if that’s the case,” the professor responded, turning towards hiswife, “one ought to equate avant-garde classical music with a homosexualbias, since Terry tells us that such music conforms to a pseudo-electronstatus, while reserving for modern jazz an equation with a pornographicbias in view of the fact that it conforms, so we are told, to a free-electron
status.”The professor’s wife smiled her guarded approval of this suggestionthrough newly moist lips. “And one might just as well contend that avant-garde painting pertains, in its pseudo-electron status, to the homosexualside of things, in contrast to light art which, through its free-electronintegrity, suggests an affinity with pornography.”I nodded my affirmation of this further contention and remarked:”Yes, there is definitely a logical consistency about all this; though oneshouldn’t forget that in a relatively post-atomic civilization things are also Read the rest of this entry »

 

A PERMANENT CROSS

He remembered his doctor looking at him in sceptical surprise and saying:”Why, you’re not a nutcase! You’ve got musical taste and culture and …!”Michael had discussed classical music with his doctor on a previousoccasion, but had gone along to the surgery, this time, for some anti-depressants in order to combat a depression the doctor knew all about, andthe latter had kindly scribbled out a prescription for tryptizol or dothiepin
or some such soothing drug. But he hadn’t been encouraged to pay a visitto a specialist at the nearest mental hospital. Indeed, he had been dissuaded  Read the rest of this entry »

 

FIVE SPEECHES SUCCEEDED BY THEIR SPEAKERS' THOUGHTS,PRECEDING FIVE THOUGHTSSUCCEEDED BY THEIR THINKERS' SPEECHES

about these animal cartoons, and doubtless the speaker has enjoyed them inthe past, even if they only signify a relative transcendence of animals, asapplying to the substance rather than to the form. Still, the absolutetranscendence of pets isn’t something that I, for one, would greatly regret,since I don’t own any. In fact, I’m fairly confident that the implementationof a banishment and/or destruction order on dogs, cats, horses, etc., wouldconstitute an aspect, by no means the least important, of the LastJudgement.

First Speaker
“Atomic weapons correspond to a later stage of petty-bourgeois militarydevelopment, the ‘barbarous’ preceding the ‘civilized’ in terms of atomicbombs preceding nuclear missiles, the former dropping to earth from alarge bomber, the latter hurtling through space once fired from their launchpads. Thus a distinction, in effect, between the mundane and thetranscendent, which accords with that between lower and higher phases oflate-stage petty-bourgeois evolution.”
What makes atomic weapons petty bourgeois is the fact that theycorrespond to a relatively post-atomic status, a negative dualism implyingthe splitting of the atom, the severance, through nuclear fission, ofelectrons from protons and neutrons – an evolutionary stage betweenbourgeois atomicity and proletarian electron freedom, a kind of transitionbetween the relative and the absolute, part mundane and part transcendentin constitution. Consequently atomic weapons are the weapons of the late-twentieth century, appropriate to a later petty-bourgeois age on both itscivilized and barbarous sides, as mainly applying to the Americans and theRussians respectively. Because the late-twentieth century corresponds to a’civilized’ phase of higher petty-bourgeois development, it follows thatmissiles rather than bombs are the relevant weapons.
Second Speaker
“Just as late petty-bourgeois evolution passes through two phases, soproletarian evolution will do likewise, beginning in a ‘barbarous’ phase andproceeding, in time, to a ‘civilized’ phase, which will entail a distinctionbetween the mundane use of laser weapons and, eventually, theirtranscendent use, meaning primarily that whereas during the lower phase ofproletarian evolution laser beams will mainly be fired on the ground, eitherfrom guns or tanks, they’ll be fired from satellites and such-like’transcendent’ phenomena during its higher phase. Thus we aredistinguishing between laser guns and laser satellites.”
Read the rest of this entry »