Sketch: Extreme Reading!

CAST

NARRATOR: guy with a TV announcer voice

GUY FILETTI: the Guy Fieri-like host of Extreme Reading

CANDICE: librarian of the Special Collections room of the New York Public Library

TILDA: a well-read spectator

SETTING: The Special Collections Room of the NYC Public Library.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

From the producers who brought you Extreme Eating, the Discovery Channel is proud to bring you this season’s new hit: Extreme Reading!          

           

We see GUY FILETTI emerge from behind a stack of books spinning a dictionary and a

phone book on each of his index fingers.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Follow Guy Filleti as he hits the road in his flame-decaled Volvo station wagon in search of America’s biggest, craziest books to see if he has what it takes to be a truly… Extreme Reader!

GUY FILETTI

Gimme your juiciest, your spiciest, your most rockin cowabunga book-a-reeno, and I’ll read it! The bigger the better!

NARRATOR (V.O.)

This week’s episode: The White Whale.

GUY FILETTI and CANDICE THE LIBRARIAN stand in the reading room of the NYCPL special collections.

GUY FILETTI

So here we are in the Big Juicy Apple, NY Cit-ay, in the Special Collections room of the Public Library, home to a whole lotta books and the old stompin’ ground of America’s most extreme, big bad daddy-o of American letters, the golden tuna himself, Herman Melville. You might have heard of one of his books: MOBY DICK? Uh, yeah, that Herman Melville. Dude knew how to get his word crank on, am I right?

CANDICE THE LIBRARIAN

Uh… yes. I suppose you could say that. Mr. Melville was quite prolific, although…

GUY FILETTI

So for those of us, those people that is, definitely not me, who haven’t read Moby Dick, what’s it all about? Just plot, no spoilers!

CANDICE THE LIBRARIAN

Well, in terms of plot, it’s rather simple: It is about a young man’s journey aboard a whaling ship, The Pequod…

GUY FILETTI

Oooh, Spicy!

CANDICE THE LIBRARIAN

Yes, well, and the Captain, Captain Ahab’s obsessive and ultimately doomed quest to hunt the white whale, Moby Dick.

GUY FILETTI

You’re making my Moby Dick hard just talkin about it! Reading boner!

CANDICE THE LIBRARIAN

Well, we have the 1854 first edition in our collection. I suppose you are welcome to…

GUY FILETTI

Nice try, darlin’. But this is “Extreme Reading.” And we’ve heard that Melville wrote a book so big, that it makes Momo Dick look like a little kiddie’s cocktail weenie.

CANDICE THE LIBRARIAN

Well Moby Dick was certainly the longest book Melville published, though perhaps The Confidence Man or Pierre were more formally experimental and challenging than…

GUY FILETTI

I love it when you talk dirty to me, you old dust box. But, seriously, which book is that?

            GUY FILETTI points to a huge set of hand-bound folio volumes on the bottom shelf.

CANDICE THE  LIBRARIAN

Oh, those are the log of daily reports that Melville made in his twenty years as customs officer for the Port of New York. But I don’t think anyone in their right mind would consider reading it…

GUY FILETTI

Challenge accepted!!

            GUY leaps up and grabs the folios from the shelf. He brings them to the table and starts

furiously turning the pages.

GUY FILETTI

Whew! This book packs some serious heat!

            Crowd cheers.

GUY FILETTI

But all in all it’s a bodaciously tasty book.

GUY FILETTI lifts the book up to show the audience.

GUY FILETTI (CONT)

We got a solid cover that holds everything together, keeps your hands clean. Then this finely sliced yellow paper is where all the action is. See how all the pages are laid evenly on top of each other so you don’t have break your momentum. And we got little numbers in the corner so you can keep track of where you are, in case you need to go grab another brewsky to help wash it down.

Then these words here—marbled with a lot of nouns and verbs, some sneaky little adjectives, and a whole lot of big numbers—that’s where the spice kicks in. This guy Melville definitely knew what he was doing. And he wasn’t afraid to bring the hurt!

The librarian looks like she’s never seen someone so idiotic.

            GUY turns the final page and closes the book. The crowd goes wild.

GUY FILETTI

Whoooo! That was one rockadelic peener-poppin cheese-o-licious brain-bomb of novel!

GUY makes devil horns sign and sticks his tongue out to mug for the crowd.

CANDICE THE LIBRARIAN

Actually, it’s not a novel at all. And there is definitely no cheese on it.

GUY FILETTI

Not impressed, huh? Alright, you old bookworm tease, what’s your greasiest, bacon-wrapped jumbo-tron of a novel that you dare me to demolish in under an hour?

CANDICE THE LIBRARIAN

Uh.. well that question is almost too idiotic to merit an answer, but I’m quite certain you couldn’t read Proust’s six-volume novel In Search of Lost Time in anything less than a month.

GUY FILETTI

Challenge accepted!

CANDICE shrugs and fetches the volumes of Proust. She drops it on the table in front of GUY.

GUY FILETTI

Alright, start the clock!

CANDICE THE LIBRARIAN

I fear I’ve just done irreparable harm to Proust’s legacy.

            GUY starts tearing through the pages.

GUY FILETTI

I tell you what, this bad boy ain’t messin around. My man Marcel can sling some serious book hash!

An excited spectator TILDA edges her way to the front of the crowd.

TILDA THE SPECTATOR

Mr. Filetti, Mr. Filetti, which episode from Marcel’s childhood is your favorite so far?

GUY FILETTI

Oh man, they’re all some totally tasty bites, sister. Gnarly, but mad tasty! 

TILDA THE SPECTATOR

Are you alluding to Proust’s use of taste to trigger memory?

GUY FILETTI

Yeah, it reminds me of that wicked nacho chili cheese dog I ate this morning for breakfast.

            (Burps)

You feel me?

TILDA THE SPECTATOR

What did you think of Charles Swann’s love affair with Odette?

GUY FILETTI

I think it was mucho spicy! A love affair with a swan— now that’s rock n roll!

            TILDA looks very confused and disappointed.

TILDA THE SPECTATOR

Are you even been reading the book?

GUY FILETTI

Uh, duh! What do you think I’m doing here, lady? I’m taking this sucker down, one page at a time!

CANDICE THE LIBRARIAN

I’ve been watching you. You move your lips like a remedial reader, but you’re not even mouthing the words that are on the page.

GUY FILETTI

What? No. That’s not true!

TILDA THE SPECTATOR

I bet you can’t even read!

GUY FILETTI

            (flustered)

Can’t read? That’s ridiculous. I’m Guy Filetti-- extreme reader!

CANDICE THE LIBRARIAN

Then prove it. Read the beginning of that page aloud.

GUY FILETTI

(visibly nervous)

Um….fine. No problem.

           

Guy looks down at the book and pretends to read aloud.

GUY FILETTI

“Well, Charlie the Swan,” said Ornette, licking the grease from her lips. “You sure make one rock ‘n roller-tastic peener-poppin double mushroom bacon cheeseburger!”

            Blackout.

Sketch: What the King Likes

CAST

THE KING: a bored and lazy king

THE VIZIER: the king’s advisor

COURTIER: a messenger with a kitten

RAVENSMEISTER: the master of the ravens

A royal medieval court with a throne.

Trumpets blare. The king enters his hall looking groggy, carrying a cup of coffee and a half-eaten danish, and takes his throne.

VIZIER

Hail your Grace! If your Grace is feeling up to it this morning, perhaps you would like to review the annual reports for battlements upkeep and trebuchet maintenance? Or perhaps the pirate attacks on the…

KING

First, I shall receive the royal feed.

VIZIER

Very good, your Grace.

(pulls out a scroll)

The Royal Feed shall commence thusly. First comes news from Castle Ethermore. Good Lady Constance has given birth to her third child, a boy. It is a miscreant.

KING

Hmmm, a miscreant boy, eh? Doth she send any sketches of the child?

VIZIER

She does, your Grace.

           VIZIER hands a drawing to the KING. He studies it.

KING

Mmm, yes, he is horribly misshapen. Well, tell her I… (makes thumbs up gesture) like it.

VIZIER

Very good, your Grace. I’m sure Lady Constance will be thrilled for your support. (Beat)

Next, I have news from the Abbey…

VIZIER unveils a plate of food.

VIZIER (CON’T)

Prelate Torvig has butchered a hog, cooked it himself according to a “super simple recipe” in the codex, and plated it with sprigs of thyme and a ration of garlicked tubers. He has pronounced it “amazing.”

KING

Well it doesn’t look appetizing to me, not on that plate. I do NOT like it. Next.

VIZIER

Very good, your Grace, moving on. Ah, here we are: The Earl of Blasterberry reports that he has just arrived at a brothel in Wormswood.

KING

Haha! That old rogue! I should have known Blasterberry would be wiggling his worm in Wormswood! Haha! Tell him I like it.

VIZIER

Right away, your Grace!

KING

Oooh, ooh—and tell him “What happens in Wormswood stays in Wormswood!” He’ll like that.

VIZIER

Yes, your Grace. A masterful comment.

Enter COURTIER, holding a kitten and a paper sack.

VIZIER

Your grace, the next matter on the Royal Feed comes via a courtier from the Duchy of Barrington.

COURTIER

Your Grace, The Duke of Barrington likes watching this kitten get his head stuck in a burlap sack.  His sister Lady Harriet, upon viewing the spectacle, has remarked, “Oh my God, this kitten is so F-ing adorable!”

          

COURTIER sets the kitten and the burlap sack on the ground. KING watches kitten get its

head stuck in the sack.

KING

Hmm. Oh.  Ahahaha. Oh my. That IS adorable.  I like it. And I like Lady Harriet’s pronouncement. In fact, I like it so much I’m going to save this silly kitten in my royal archive!

GUARD enterS and removes COURTIER.

VIZIER

Next up your Grace, an update from Squire Gladby Selvington…

KING

Gladby Selvington? Who the blazes is that?

VIZIER

He is the boy who was suckled on the same wet nurse as you thirty years ago, your Grace. I don’t believe you have ever met him. 

KING

Oh right. Him. Continue.

VIZIER

Squire Selvington is pleased to inform you that he has just been accepted to study canon law at the University of Salamanca next spring. He reports being “stoked.” He also inquires whether anyone happens to know of lodging in the vicinity.

KING

Ugh. Who cares? Next!

           Enter RAVENSMEISTER, out of breath.

RAVENSMEISTER

Your Grace, I’m sorry to interrupt...

KING

Well, what is it?

RAVENSMEISTER

Your Grace, I have just received word by raven that the Earl of Blasterberry likes your adage: “What happens in Wormswood stays in Wormswood.”

KING

Haha! I knew he would, that rascal.

           Exit Ravensmeister.

KING

Pray, continue.

VIZIER

Your Grace, your conservative uncle, the Count of Crackerjacks, wishes to let it be known that holy matrimony is between a man and woman, or a man and a girl, or a clergyman and his catamite, or a shepherd and an ungulate, but NEVER, under NO circumstances between a woman and a woman, because our holy savior and redeemer the lord god…

KING

Ugh, enough of that trash! I don’t get it--  I keep having my uncle’s messengers locked in the dungeon and yet they still keep popping up. So annoying. Maybe I should banish him. Can he tell if I have banished him?

VIZIER

Not if you lead him into the woods first, your Grace, and then unfollow him from the woods.

KING

Good, do that.

VIZIER

Yes, your Grace. I’ll see to it. Would you like me to continue with the Royal Feed?

KING

No, I’ve had all I can bear for now.

VIZIER

Well, then, would your Grace perhaps like to go over those plans for minimizing deaths from next year’s plague?

KING

Not yet. I think I need to clear my head first with the witnessing of several sex acts.

VIZIER

Very good. And will your Grace be going incognito?

KING

Yes, of course.

           The VIZIER hands the KING a burglar mask and a fedora.

VIZIER

           (Shouting)

Send in the royal MILFS and the long-penised delivery boy!

           Blackout.

Donald Trump and the Revolt of the Masses

  Donald Trump has risen to power by cultivating people’s contempt for the most basic ideals of liberal democracy: equal rights in recognition of universal human freedom and dignity, the pursuit of truth through free and rational discourse, and the rule of law to protect these ideals. Now he is in a position to erode them not just in the minds of his supporters but in the very institutions of our government.

   This may be unprecedented in modern American politics, but a popular revolt against the ideals of liberal democracy is not new to the world. And while it is irresponsible to reach for the fascism stamp whenever an unsavory political phenomenon rears its head, it is equally irresponsible to ignore the analogical power of history when the comparison is apt. 

   Consider the cases of Germany, 1918-1933,  Spain, 1931-1936, and, now, sadly, the United States of America, 2009-2016. Different beasts, to be sure, but in each case a pioneering, progressive, and contentious democratic government served as the incubator of a radical right-wing, authoritarian politics of despair. Civil discourse and respect for the rule of law deteriorated. In their place swarmed apocalyptic visions, accusations of illegitimacy, the use of dehumanizing rhetoric to tar political opponents, the targeting of scapegoats and foreign enemies within, nostalgia for a non-existent past defined by racial purity and national glory, the invocation of states of emergency, and threats of violence. 

   As in the cases of Germany and Spain, everyone was aware of this threat, yet not enough took serious action to stop it until it was too late.

   The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset was one of those who saw the European revolt against liberal democracy coming (even though he failed to defend it when the uprising happened in Spain). He saw that beneath the rise of anti-democratic politics in the interwar period, in the form of both fascism and bolshevism, lurked an even more troubling cultural phenomenon— one that appears to be as rampant in America today: the revolt of the masses. 

   In The Revolt of the Masses (1930), Ortega diagnosed his age with an acute sense of ‘taking for granted’ that had come to characterize people’s attitude to the entirety of civilization. The “mass-man,” as Ortega called him, was not just the average man in the crowd or part of the proletariat. He was a specific psychological type, characterized by “the sovereignty of the unqualified mind.” He could be found amidst all strata of society, and was as likely to be a real estate mogul as he was an unemployed factory worker. 

   The mass-man treated the fruits of modern liberal society—its educational values and institutions, its system of legal rights, its bodies of knowledge and technological instruments— as natural resources that existed solely for him to exploit. He failed to understand how they had come into being and how his existence was conditioned by them. Unconcerned with methods of inquiry and argument or in recognizing a social reality beyond his own, the mass-man could believe his own ideas were good as anyone else’s, his version of the truth as valid as the next guy’s, and his sense of injustice as demanding of redress as any other.

   The revolt of the masses, as Ortega defined it, was essentially a mental revolt. It entailed a refusal to accept responsibility— for one’s own existence, one’s circumstances, one’s history, and one’s future. That’s why it makes perfect sense that Trump and his supporters deny climate change and due process alike. Just as they refuse to acknowledge that the earth is vulnerable to corporate recklessness and rapaciousness, so they refuse to understand that the precarious project of liberal democracy cannot endure if half the country dismisses the distinction between truth and falsehood and shows gleeful disdain for human rights. 

   It is here, in the twin contempt for rational discourse and the universality of human dignity, that the mass-man’s mental revolt of willful irresponsibility becomes explicitly political and politically destructive. It attacks the most fundamental ideals— not just the practices that fall short of those ideals but the ideals themselves— by which we have pursued life in common for nearly two and half centuries.

   Ortega saw that democratization could actually undermine democracy. Throughout the nineteenth century, the ideal of liberal democracy had inspired groups of elites to make it a reality. But, rather than continue to motivate people to reform and protect democratic institutions, this ideal had become a wholly internalized psychological state, turning “aspirations and ideals into appetites and unconscious assumptions.” The democratic spirit had become unconscious and preponderant to such an extent that it now motivated people to exercise their democratic right to “attack and castigate institutions by which those rights are sanctioned.” Ortega called this self-negating political attitude “hyperdemocracy.”

   If we consider Trumpism in light of Ortega’s diagnosis, then suddenly the reality of a populist revolt spearheaded by New York billionaire makes sense.  What more fitting mascot could the mass-man have than Donald Trump, a man who refuses to take responsibility for anything, from his business dealings and duties as a citizen to his public utterances and private actions. “The spoiled child of human history” Ortega explained, in reference to the mass-man mentality, “is the heir who behaves exclusively as a mere heir. In this case the inheritance is civilization.” Trump is nothing if not a spoiled child. A spoiled child in the hulking frame of a 70-year-old, eating happy meals with gilded cutlery, reaching up girls’ skirts, and bullying people on the schoolyard of Twitter. 

   Many of Trump’s supporters who recognize his odiousness and incompetence emulate his ethic of irresponsibility. This applies to those who voted for him as a nihilistic prank, as well as those who voted for Trump in spite of what they knew and reviled about him, as though they didn’t have a choice and had been coerced into doing something against their better judgment.

   For Ortega, the mass-man’s irresponsible attitude toward civilization and his hermetic sense of self-satisfaction was due to an ignorance of history. By historical ignorance, he meant that the European of 1930, as true of the American of today, lacked historical consciousness. And we shouldn’t confuse nostalgic appeals to the myth of past national glory with an actual sense of history. These myths are seductive precisely because the mass-man ignores the historicity of his own existence and the society in which he lives.

   “There is no hope for Europe,” warned Ortega, “unless its destiny is placed in the hands of men really ‘contemporaneous,’ men who feel palpitating beneath them the whole subsoil of history, who realize its present level of existence, and abhor every archaic and primitive attitude. We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.” The same might be said of America. Our past — with its legacies of slavery, genocide, and the oppression of women and minorities — is a burden of inheritance that we must acknowledge and accept, so that we may overcome it. Until we can collectively agree upon that as a country, we will remain a nation of spoiled children.

   Now is the time for us, we slightly-more-than-half-of the American voters, to show Trump and his supporters that they do not have the monopoly on the politics of rage. We must show them that it is possible to mount an angry, popular dissent in an ailing democracy— not just against Trumpism but against the very real indignities and injustices of global capitalism that Trump exploited to his advantage— without declaring war on the ideals that form the basis of the liberal democratic project. 

   Over the next four years, we must redefine what we mean by the revolt of the masses. 

Warning: Trigger Warning

-->

Dear Class, 

  I thought it might be helpful, given last week's discussion of The Decameron, to say a few words about this week's reading. There are some places where certain language might have a (WARNING: USE OF A WORD THAT HAS POSSIBLE CONNOTATIONS OF GUN VIOLENCE) triggering effect. 

    I just want to warn you in advance and to make sure you know that I in no way endorse the activities you'll encounter in the text. Well, some of the activities I might endorse-- theatrical performance, for instance. And searching for the truth. And introspection. And maybe a few other things, but not the activities that might have a-- here's that word again-- triggering effect on those of you who have experienced trauma. Unless of course you experienced trauma in the context of a theatrical performance, or discovered something awful while trying to get to the bottom of things, or were traumatized by the fruits of your own introspection. If so, then please understand that I do not endorse those activities insofar as they led to trauma. 

   As for the other activities discussed below, I universally do not endorse them-- though please do not mistake my lack of endorsement for condemnation. Granted, in certain instances, I do condemn what I don't endorse but not always (extra credit for anyone who can construct a sound syllogism for this). Here are just a few cautionary notes in hopes that they allow you to engage with this text in as meaningful and enjoyable way as possible and avoid some of those pitfalls we encountered in the Decameron.

     First, in Act One there are several allusions to the possible (WARNING: GRAPHIC VIOLENCE IN THE NEXT WORD) murder of the protagonist's father. Our hero has to first determine whether his father has passed away due to foul play before he can decide if he should pursue revenge, which may, word of warning, consist of a similarly aggressive act of physical violence. 

     There are also depictions of supernatural beings, namely (WARNING: UNSETTLING PARANORMAL PHENOMENON) ghosts. Though it is unclear whether said supernatural being actually exists. It is possible it is only a figment of the protagonist's mind. If this is the case, then it is possible the protagonist is suffering from a (WARNING: IMBALANCED PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE) mental illness.  However, it is entirely possible that the protagonist is only (WARNING: POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE GLIB PORTRAYAL OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN NEXT PHRASE) pretending to be mentally ill as part of his strategy to learn whether his uncle did in fact commit a transgressive act of physical assault, resulting in the father's (WARNING: REFERENCE TO HUMAN MORTALITY) death.

     Since the father was the king, and his untimely passing was at the hand of his brother, the play deals with potentially unsettling issues of  (WARNING: TYPES OF TRANSGRESSIVE PHYSICAL ASSAULT RESULTING IN MORTAL INJURY) regicide and fratricide. Accordingly, there are insinuations that (WARNING: REFERENCE TO POLITICAL TURMOIL AND ARMED CONFLICT) the Kingdom of Denmark is in crisis and may face a Norwegian invasion. Also, (WARNING: REFERENCE TO A HISTORICALLY VICTIMIZED NATION) things go badly for Poland.

     Another thing you should know: because the protagonist's uncle marries his deceased brother's wife, a fact the protagonist dwells on at some length, this relationship is imbued with hints of (WARNING: REFERENCE TO A TRANSGRESSIVE SEXUAL RELATION) incest. The same may be said of the protagonist's (WARNING: MENTION OF AN ABNORMAL, EROTICALLY-CHARGED FILIAL ATTACHMENT) creepy preoccupation with his mother.

     In Act Four there is a reference to a character's (WARNING: EXPIRATION DUE TO EXCESSIVE WATER INTAKE IN THE LUNGS IN THE NEXT PHRASE) death by drowning, which may be the result of (WARNING: INTENTIONAL PERFORMANCE OF MORTALITY AT ONE'S OWN HAND) suicide. If the latter, possible motivations for such an act could have been her (WARNING: REFERENCE TO MENTAL ILLNESS) severe depression due to the (WARNING: TRANSGRESSIVE PHYSICAL ASSAULT RESULTING IN MORTAL INJURY) slaying of her father at the hands of her lover, which may or may not have been an accident.  Or she could have experienced an onset of mental illness after her lover (WARNING: REFERENCE TO VERBALLY ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP) callously dumped her and told her to move to a (WARNING: REFERENCE TO A RELIGIOUSLY AFFILIATED HOLDING PEN FOR WOMEN) convent. Thankfully, the convent matter is dropped after that, sparing us many of the sensitive issues we ran into with The Decameron.

     Finally, in the last act, there is a potentially disturbing scene in a graveyard where the protagonist (WARNING: INAPPROPRIATE CONDUCT WITH A CORPSE) converses with a skull shortly before engaging in a wrestling match in an open grave.  And of course, this play being a (WARNING: REFERENCE TO A GENRE PRONE TO UNHAPPY OUTCOMES) tragedy, the end is something to be prepared for. I doubt it will take any of you by surprise when you get to it, but the penultimate scene does feature malevolence in the form of a poisoned goblet, a poison-tipped (WARNING: USE OF A WORD THAT MAY CONJURE IMAGES OF VIOLENCE OR TWO MEN CROSSING URINE STREAMS) swordfight, and (WARNING: REFERENCE TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE PASSED AWAY EN MASSE) a pile of dead bodies.

     That should take care of most everything, but for anything potentially triggering that I neglected to mention, please remember that I did not write this play and I am in no way legally or morally responsible for the disturbing ideas, images, and language you find therein. As I mentioned during our conversation last week about Boccaccio's depiction of the lonely monk and the fourteen-year-old virgin, please keep in mind that we are reading this text in an academic context, which means the purpose of reading it is to teach you to think critically and better prepare you to get a tech job.

     With that said, I hope you all enjoy Shakespeare's Hamlet!

Sincerely (hoping we can make it through the syllabus without getting the university ombudsman involved),

Professor R. Scovering

p.s. Please don't forget to check your email later this week before you start next week's reading: The Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. I'll likely have a few cautionary words to say about that one too.

Schiele: Memories and Genitals (Postcard #2)

The first time I recall seeing an Egon Schiele work in the flesh was in Copenhagen in 2002, at a mesmerizing exhibition of Klimt's and Schiele's erotic drawings. I remember encountering there a hunched man, of otherwise sophisticated bearing, awkwardly sloping through the gallery in a vain attempt to conceal the erection in his pants. At that moment, I arrived at a philosophy of aesthetic experience: Art should viscerally affect the viewer; if it doubles him over with a debilitating boner, even better.

I recently picked up this postcard of Schiele's "Lovers" (1914) after seeing the painting at the Neue Galerie in New York.  It could have just been the six dollar cup of coffee I had in the museum cafe-- so high-class they only fill the tasse 3/4 of the way--or the brief apoplectic fit it inspired, but I was in an exalted mood. Staring at this colossal painting in the cool, wood-sconced gallery while the city outside melted in its own summer soup, I was flooded with memories of my past Schiele experiences.

For me, this is one of the great, though admittedly self-absorbed, pleasures of coming across the work of a familiar artist in a gallery. The work serves as a kind of thematic memory portal. I can see my own biography strung together by a series of vignettes consisting of those particular moments in which Schiele was in my mental orbit. The postcard is the souvenir, the reminder of not just one visit to a particular museum but of an entire catalog of memories in which the creations of this strange mind from a strange time embedded their way into my life. There's my initial memory, the one captured by the postcard, and then there's my deeper memories branching off that memory, and all these memories are wrapped like ivy around the trunk of this foreign object called Egon Schiele.

My first Schiele vignette dates from sophomore year in college, a course called "Freud's Vienna." A ruddy-cheeked professor of German literature, a nervous, tweed-clad cherub wrapped in a bow tie, lecturing in fitful sentences about the fin-de-siècle anxiety of sex. Me, silently calibrating which of my classmates would, without clothes, best approximate the languid femme fatales of Klimt's paintings, while, at the same time, feeling more of an artistic affinity for the rough expressiveness of Kokoschka and Schiele.

There was my own crude copy, executed that year, of Schiele's "Seated Female Nude with Black Stockings" (1910). I had captured the unnerving aged-girlish face, but had not left enough room for the bottom half of the figure, which contained the two key ingredients of the work: the eponymous black-stockings and the trademark vermillion vagina (though that phrase sounds far too delicate and Latin for Schiele's brute, Germanic portrayal of genitals; 'red gash' would be more accurate). I solved my spacing problem by incorporating both the black stockings and the wiry-haired labia as font graphics into some homespun, highly ungrammatical German text beside the figure's face. A thorough disaster, fit for the dorm-room wall.

I later learned that Schiele's 'red gash' approach to female anatomy had an empirical basis.
He had spent the better part of 1910 drawing studies of patients at a Viennese gynecological clinic, an apprenticeship that no doubt colored his pathological depictions of the human form. Can you imagine: "Good morning, Frau Blücher, itchiness and discharge for the last five days, eh? Well, hop up in the stirrups and let's have a look. Oh, yes, I nearly forgot, this is Egon. He will be painting your vagina."  

Schiele was notoriously unorthodox in his selection of models. In addition to gynecology patients, he frequently did nude portraits of his sister Gertrude. Even more controversial was his practice of painting the sons and daughters of his neighbors-- particularly the young adolescent working-class girls whose lithe gauntness fit his ectomorph ideal. Needless to say, this did not go over well in small town Austria, where in 1912 the local court sentenced Schiele to 3 days imprisonment for showing erotic material to minors.  Lucky for us he is not a contemporary artist and this is all the fascinating lore of history, or else we would be gazing at Schiele not in museums but on the latest episode of "To Catch a Predator."

After college, while living in Prague as an apathetic teacher of English and aspiring artist of some kind, I made a Schiele pilgrimage to the fairytale Bohemian town of Cesky Krumlov-- the artist's onetime home (he knew it as Krumlau) and current home to the Egon Schiele Art Centrum. We stayed in a tapestried hotel that served a four-course breakfast with coffee that made my forehead sweat. I bought a fancy graphite pencil at the Schiele Centrum that I used the rest of that Czech autumn to draw naked ladies and write ideas for grandiose literary projects that I was too lazy and afraid to start.

Schiele started fast right out of the gates. By sixteen he had been accepted to Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts-- the same school that would deny Adolf Hitler admission the following year. At seventeen, he befriended Klimt, the high priest of Austrian modernism, and quickly became an associate of the Secession movements throughout Central Europe. It's a good thing he started early, because by 1914 he was scooped up into the Austro-Hungarian imperial army. Drawing his way into cushy clerical posts, Schiele made it through the war unscathed, only to be cut down by Spanish flu in 1918, three days after watching his pregnant wife succumb to the sickness. He was 28.

Schiele's art, like that of his contemporaries Max Beckmann and Otto Dix, occupies the bleeding borders of aesthetic categories, where the beautiful and the sublime converge at the grotesque. One senses this confluence even in his landscape paintings. The trees, the village, the land--all have the look of affliction, that distinctly haunting beauty that marks his diseased figures. I remember visiting the Belvedere in Vienna and realizing that "Cardinal and Nun" (1912)-- a painting of a man and woman of the cloth locked in erotic ecclesiastical embrace, another Schiele postcard in my collection-- evoked the same tense and morbid eroticism of some of his tree landscapes.

These days I'm slightly less moved and titillated by Schiele's penchant for shock than I was upon my first encounter with him in college. My jaw drops more over his sense of color and composition than it does over two clergymen making out. But I still appreciate the irreverence of a painting like "Cardinal and Nun," and it's easy to see it, along with Schiele himself, as a synedoche for the anxiety-charged cultural climate of Europe, especially Vienna, in the twilight years before World War One. Like his fellow Austrian and near doppelgänger, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Schiele marks a new breed of man for the twentieth century, agonizingly self-aware and attuned to despair.

Wittgenstein

Schiele

For that reason, the perverse embrace of "Cardinal and Nun" remains a good antidote to the all-too-palatable and ubiquitous image of Klimt's "The Kiss" plastered onto the coasters and lunch boxes hocked in museum gift stores. And Schiele remains a valuable image in my collection of postcards and memories.

Postkarten

After a year of online coma, Waxworks and Roustabouts is resurrected. And I'm playing a new angle: I'll be taking you on a virtual tour of my postcard collection-- a hodgepodge of historical photographs, artworks, and oddities I've acquired over the years. With each image, I'll include a short essay, a historical anecdote, a personal recollection, or, as in the case below, an imagined dialogue.  Hope you enjoy. 

How many minutes since the last shelling?

Too long.

Shall we have another?

I told you. I am not thirsty.

One for your friend, then. He must be thirsty. Where did you say you got him?

I heard a wailing from inside the collapsed bunker of the colonel. It was the colonel’s cat.

She was pregnant?

Her head was staved in. All her kittens were dead, except this one.

How did you feed him?

On a wheel of Camembert, hidden in the colonel’s desk drawer, along with a bottle of Armagnac.

The cat drinks Armagnac?

He is not a beer-swilling slob like you. Baudelaire is an aristocrat.

Baudelaire?

Oui.

Aren’t we supposed to be fighting the French? And you name your trench mascots after their poets?

We are not fighting anyone. I am fighting. You are turning a profit.

 Someone has to, or else you’d all be killing each other for nothing. Was Baudelaire the one who said “je suis l’Empire à la fin de la décadence”?

That’s Verlaine. “If rape and deadly poison, daggers and the flame have not embroidered some diverting scenery upon the boring canvas of our destiny, the slackness of our souls, alas! must be to blame." That’s Baudelaire.

Verlaine’s better.

Says the philistine. Drink your beer and be quiet.

When was the last time you were with a woman?

I despise women.

Sure, don’t we all, but that doesn’t stop me from plugging their holes.

Vulgarian.

Queer.

Don’t swear in front of Baudelaire.

The last time I was with a woman was in St. Pauli.  A great plump lump of a woman. With a tangle of blonde hair down below and a dirty ass.

Stop it.

I told her there was twenty extra marks for her if she spread her cheeks and—

I’ve already warned you.

Oh, come off it. You need a drink. It’ll take your mind off your dead boyfriend.

Don’t worry, Baudelaire, when he falls asleep, I’m going to gut him.

What did you say?

Nothing.

The war has changed you, Stefan.

The war has remade me. I resonate at a higher cosmic vibration now.

A higher cosmic vibration! That is priceless.

Your vision of reality is obscured by a thick coat of convention, but I see right through it.

I see a man with shot nerves who shakes so bad he’s one involuntary reflex away from breaking that cat’s neck. I see a man who’s staggering shame and self-contempt has fooled others into thinking he’s some kind of a stoic hero when really he’s just an aspiring suicide. How’s that for a thick coat of convention?

You are hurtling toward the abyss, Georg, only you’re too stupid to take notice.

Shall we play another round of skat, Stefan? Until the next shelling?

Yes, I suppose so. It’s Baudelaire’s turn to shuffle.


*Note: Further research reveals that this photograph is by the Berlin artist Heinrich Zille, and these are not men in a World War One bunker but German gravel-pit guardsmen from the early 1900s. That explains why one man is not wearing a uniform and one is. In fact, in light of this discovery, very little about this picture recalls World War One.  Oops.