Works Cited, Tolerance Is a Wasteland

Here is how Benny Morris himself works through this conundrum, albeit at an earlier historical moment than the one addressed by Lieberman today: faced with the overwhelming Palestinian presence in Palestine in the early twentieth century, the Zionist movement, Morris says, could have pursued four paths toward the establishment of a Jewish state in a country that started the twentieth century with a population that was 93 percent non-Jewish. The first option, Morris says, was further Jewish immigration; but this would not have worked because the indigenous Palestinians would have gone on outnumbering the immigrant European Jews. A second option was apartheid—a Jewish minority lording it over a Palestinian majority; but this would have been bad for public relations with the West. A third option was partition; but there was no way to partition Palestine without leaving too many Palestinians behind in the territory of the putative Jewish state.5 “The last, and let me say obvious and most logical solution to the Zionists’ demographic problem lay the way of transfer,” Morris concludes, using the euphemism that Zionists have used since the 1920s to signify the forcible expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland. “You could create a homogeneous Jewish state, or at least a state with an overwhelming Jewish majority, by moving or transferring all or most of the Arabs out of its prospective territory. And this is in fact what happened in 1948.”

Makdisi, Saree. Tolerance Is a Wasteland (pp. 3-4). University of California Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

It is impossible not to place a certain share of the responsibility for what followed upon Largo Caballero. On the first of May he had led a huge procession through the streets of Madrid. More than 10,000 workmen, saluting with clenched fist, bore banners declaring: ‘We want a Workers’ Government. Long live the Red Army!’ Intoxicated by the enthusiasm of his followers, entirely confident of success, he shut his eyes to the dangers of the course he was following. He was sixty-eight, an age when one must hurry if one wishes to see the Promised Land. Proud and stubborn by nature, not easily influenced by others, he had spent all his life within the framework of a trade union. He therefore lacked a wide political vision. Otherwise he would have seen that the disposition of forces in Europe – to consider nothing else – would never tolerate the creation of a dictatorship of the working classes in Spain. As it was, the only effect of the Socialist policy of undermining the Republican Government instead of collaborating with it was to render it too weak, morally and materially, to resist the blow that was about to fall upon it. It was the mistake which the exaltados had made in 1823 and the last Cortes of the First Republic in 1874. One may call it the national mistake, Spanish history being made up in large part of the ruins left by such acts of inebriation and over-confidence.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 511-512). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

But was the predestinarian frame of mind which the dialectic of materialism bestows upon its devotees altogether of advantage to them? It seems more likely that, in this case at least, it only served to put them to sleep and to blind them to the dangers of their situation. Spaniards are by nature all too prone to an easy optimism which encourages them in their desire to put off immediate action. They are inveterate procrastinators with sudden bouts of impatience. For whilst the Socialists were drawing up plans of what they would do when power fell into their hands, the Army officers and the Falangists were, almost publicly, preparing a rising and negotiating with Mussolini and Hitler for assistance. Mucho sabe el rato, más el gato is a Spanish proverb. The rat knows a lot, but the cat knows more. Had Caballero been indeed the Spanish Lenin, that is, a man with a sure instinct for power, he would have made terms with Azaña and allowed the Socialists to enter the Government. It was because he was at heart a social democrat playing at revolution that he did not.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 499-500). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Sword and the Stone

“If I were to be made a knight,” said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, “I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.”

“That would be extremely presumptuous of you,” said Merlyn, “and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it.”

“I shouldn’t mind.”

“Wouldn’t you? Wait till it happens and see.”

“Why do people not think, when they are grown up, as I do when I am young?”

“Oh dear,” said Merlyn. “You are making me feel confused. Suppose you wait till you are grown up and know the reason?”

“I don’t think that is an answer at all,” replied the Wart, justly.

Merlyn wrung his hands. “Well, anyway,” he said, “suppose they did not let you stand against all the evil in the world?”

“I could ask,” said the Wart.

“You could ask,” repeated Merlyn. He thrust the end of his beard into his mouth, stared tragically at the fire, and began to munch it fiercely.

White, T. H.. The Once and Future King (pp. 174-175). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.  

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

There, however, the analogy ends: discipline was lax, for there was no real bond of union. They had no military feats to their credit, for the Army and the Carlists did all the fighting and the Old Shirts, who alone could have given it some cohesion, had been swamped by the new arrivals. There was not even a real führer, for Franco was merely one general among many who had come to power through an accident and who was singularly lacking in all führer-like qualities. Their own leader, José Antonio, had met his death in a Republican firing squad. Thus the Falange never succeeded in becoming a coherent Fascist party, but remained an amorphous flock of job hunters united to a disreputable but vociferous Iron Guard. But it had no rivals, for the Army, divided as it was between pro-Falangists and Monarchists, pro-Germans and those who were jealous of the foreigners, and taken up with the waging of the war, tended to withdraw from politics.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 539-540). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Sword in the Stone

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn—pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics—why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.”

White, T. H.. The Once and Future King (pp. 176-177). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.  

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

The great difference in the degree of humanity shown on the two sides may be judged from the fact that from the beginning of the Civil War to the end not a single protest appeared on the Nationalist radio or in its press or in the books published at Burgos and Salamanca against the atrocities that were taking place. The British Fascists and neo-Catholics visiting Franco denied that there had been any irregular executions, yet in private conversations the Falangists never concealed what was happening and during the first months bodies were exposed to view everywhere. On the Government side, on the other hand, the radio almost every night during August and September contained strong denunciations of the executions that were going on: not only the Government authorities but members of the U.G.T., F.A.I. and Communist party spoke in this sense. Posters were put up ordering the summary execution of the gangsters who were engaged in these murders. How far the rank and file of the U.G.T., C.N.T. and F.A.I. supported these protests may be doubted: for a time humane opinion among them was silenced and it was dangerous for anyone to protest too much, but the leaders of the Left parties often protected people who were in danger and facilitated their escape. The Communists, who to annoy the Anarchists had adopted a protective attitude towards the Church, took on themselves the task of sheltering priests. And there were some outstanding exceptions to the general acceptance of the terror. Juan Peiró, the well-known Anarchist and editor of Llibertat, denounced almost every day in his paper the crimes of certain elements of the C.N.T. He did not stint his language. They were ‘modem vampires’, ‘fascists in a latent state’, ‘thieves and assassins, guilty of a crime against the honour of revolutionaries’. His paper was not suppressed and he was not interfered with. Can one imagine even a tenth part of this outspokenness being possible on Franco’s side?

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (p. 540). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

However it is characteristic of Spaniards to be satisfied with gestures and with petty acts of defiance and courage and to neglect the real heart of the matter. The Arabs conquered the whole of Spain in two years. It took the Spaniards eight centuries to get rid of them.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (p. 444). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

If, unlike other revolutionary parties, Anarchists cared little for strategy, that was because they believed that revolution would come spontaneously as soon as the workers were morally prepared. Their main effort was therefore directed to this preparation: it was not sufficient for them to gain converts: every worker must endeavour to put into practice at once the anarchist conception of life. From this it followed that their leaders could not, like the Socialist bosses, occupy a comfortable flat in a middle-class quarter: they must remain at their jobs in shop or factory like ordinary workmen.

In strikes and armed risings they must always be at the point of greatest danger. No paid bureaucracy could be allowed to direct their huge trade union: the workers must manage their affairs themselves through their elected committees, even though this meant a sacrifice of revolutionary efficiency. Better that the revolution should fail than that it should be founded on a betrayal of principle. This severely moral attitude was in striking contrast to the behaviour of the Socialists. For three years they had enjoyed the fruits of office: a host of new trade-union officials had grown up and many of their leaders received substantial salaries. Yet little good had come to the working classes from it. During this same time the Anarchists had been giving proof of their devotion to the workers’ cause by heroic strikes, by bold if useless risings, and in prison cells. The reproach was evident. Even those who disagreed with their politics were fired by their example. The U.G.T. wavered. After more than fifty years of strict reformism, the Socialist party began to turn revolutionary.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 445-446). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

One must be careful, however, not to exaggerate the scope of these remarks. In spite of a certain emphasis, which was due to the new preoccupation with social questions, they are really nothing more than a restatement of the classic view of the Church – the old, ever repeated, never fulfilled hope that the rich would some day be generous. According to this view, as expressed by St Thomas Aquinas, the ‘communication’ of superfluous riches to the common use should be based on Christian feelings of love and generosity and not on compulsion. For compulsion took away the merit.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 551-552). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

One of the chief distinctions between the social philosophy of the Middle Ages and that of modern times lies in its attitude towards utopias. The mediaeval utopia lay in the past. ‘In the beginning’, said Grotius, ‘all things were common and indivisible: they were the patrimony of everyone.’ The Biblical Eden and the classical Golden Age were merged, and the corruption of human nature made return impossible. The discovery of America did something to shake this view, partly because it opened to the mind such unimagined prospects, but also because it showed a civilized race, the Peruvians, living in a state of communism which seemed to be almost as perfect and as ‘Christian’ as that of the Golden Age. Perhaps indeed these Indians were survivors from that happy period! Certainly the missionaries, charmed by their simplicity and by the readiness with which they imbibed Christian doctrines, did not hide their opinion that they were less ‘corrupted’ than Europeans. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, which was widely read in Spain, and the new translations of Plato helped to provide the literary and philosophic background by which the State communism of the Incas might be interpreted.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 552-553). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Spanish Labyrinth

I would suggest then that the anger of the Spanish Anarchists against the Church is the anger of an intensely religious people who feel they have been deserted and deceived. The priests and the monks left them at a critical moment in their history and went over to the rich. The humane and enlightened principles of the great theologians of the seventeenth century were set on one side. The people then began to suspect (and the new ideas brought in by Liberalism of course assisted them) that all the words of the Church were hypocrisy. When they took up the struggle for the Christian utopia it was therefore against the Church and not with it. Even their violence might be called religious. The Spanish Church, after all, has always been a Militant Church and down to the twentieth century it believed in destroying its enemies. No doubt the Anarchists felt that if only, by using the same methods, they could get rid of all who were not of their way of thinking, they would make a better job than the Church had done of introducing the earthly paradise. In Spain every creed aspires to be totalitarian.

Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth (Canto Classics) (pp. 309-310). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Tristram Shandy

A negro has a soul? an' please your honour, said the corporal (doubtingly).

I am not much versed, corporal, quoth my uncle Toby, in things of that kind; but I suppose, God would not leave him without one, any more than thee or me— 

—It would be putting one sadly over the head of another, quoth the corporal. 

It would so; said my uncle Toby. Why then, an' please your honour, is a black wench to be used worse than a white one?

I can give no reason, said my uncle Toby— 

—Only, cried the corporal, shaking his head, because she has no one to stand up for her— 

—'Tis that very thing, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby,—which recommends her to protection—and her brethren with her; 'tis the fortune of war which has put the whip into our hands now—where it may be hereafter, heaven knows!—but be it where it will, the brave, Trim! will not use it unkindly. 

—God forbid, said the corporal. 

Amen, responded my uncle Toby, laying his hand upon his heart.

Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (pp. 394-395). Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Ragtime

In the bright floodlit street the black man was said by the police to have made a dash for freedom. More probably he knew that all he must do in order to end his life was to turn his head abruptly or lower his hands or smile. Inside the Library, Father heard the coordinated volley of a firing squad. He screamed. He ran to the window. The body jerked about the street in a sequence of attitudes as if it were trying to mop up its own blood.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (p. 175). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Ragtime

When the trial of Harry K. Thaw began, Evelyn was photographed arriving at the courthouse. In the courtroom, where no photographers were allowed, she was drawn by artists for the illustrateds. She could hear the scratching of the steel pens. She took the witness stand and described herself at fifteen pumping her legs in a red velvet swing while a wealthy architect caught his breath at the sight of her exposed calves. She was resolute and held her head high. She was dressed in impeccable taste. Her testimony created the first sex goddess in American history. Two elements of the society realized this. The first was the business community, specifically a group of accountants and cloak and suit manufacturers who also dabbled in the exhibition of moving pictures, or picture shows as they were called. Some of these men saw the way Evelyn’s face on the front page of a newspaper sold out the edition. They realized that there was a process of magnification by which news events established certain individuals in the public consciousness as larger than life. These were the individuals who represented one desirable human characteristic to the exclusion of all others. The businessmen wondered if they could create such individuals not from the accidents of news events but from the deliberate manufactures of their own medium. If they could, more people would pay money for the picture shows. Thus did Evelyn provide the inspiration for the concept of the movie star system and the model for every sex goddess from Theda Bara to Marilyn Monroe. The second group of people to perceive Evelyn’s importance was made up of various trade union leaders, leaders, anarchists and socialists, who correctly prophesied that she would in the long run be a greater threat to the workingman’s interests than mine owners or steel manufacturers. In Seattle, for instance, Emma Goldman spoke to an I.W.W. local and cited Evelyn Nesbit as a daughter of the working class whose life was a lesson in the way all daughters and sisters of poor men were used for the pleasure of the wealthy. The men in her audience guffawed and shouted out lewd remarks and broke into laughter. These were militant workers, too, unionists with a radical awareness of their situation. Goldman sent off a letter to Evelyn: I am often asked the question How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them. Carrying his newspaper with your picture the laborer goes home to his wife, an exhausted workhorse with the veins standing out in her legs, and he dreams not of justice but of being rich.

Evelyn didn’t know what to do with such remarks.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (p. 51). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Ragtime

Back home a momentous change was coming over the United States. There was a new President, William Howard Taft, and he took office weighing three hundred and thirty-two pounds. All over the country men began to look at themselves. They were used to drinking great quantities of beer. They customarily devoured loaves of bread and ate prodigiously of the sausage meats of poured offal that lay on the lunch counters of the saloons. The august Pierpont Morgan would routinely consume seven- and eight-course dinners. He ate breakfasts of steaks and chops, eggs, pancakes, broiled fish, rolls and butter, fresh fruit and cream. The consumption of food was a sacrament of success. A man who carried a great stomach before him was thought to be in his prime. Women went into hospitals to die of burst bladders, collapsed lungs, overtaxed hearts and meningitis of the spine. There was a heavy traffic to the spas and sulphur springs, where the purgative was valued as an inducement to the appetite. America was a great farting country. All this began to change when Taft moved into the White House. His accession to the one mythic office in the American imagination weighed everyone down. His great figure immediately expressed the apotheosis of that style of man. Thereafter fashion would go the other way and only poor people would be stout.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (p. 50). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Ragtime

The Esquimo families lived all over the ship, camping on the decks and in the holds. They were not discreet in their intercourse. They cohabited without even undressing, through vents in their furs, and they went at it with grunts and shouts of fierce joy. One day Father came upon a couple and was shocked to see the wife thrusting her hips upwards to the thrusts of her husband. An uncanny animal song came from her throat. This was something he could not write in his journal except in a kind of code. The woman was actually pushing back. It stunned him that she could react this way. This filthy toothless Esquimo woman with the flat brow and the eyes pressed upwards by her cheekbones, singing her song and pushing back. He thought of Mother’s fastidiousness, her grooming and her intelligence, and found himself resenting this primitive woman’s claim to the gender.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (p. 46). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Ragtime

There, at an underground footbridge, a guide motioned the others back and took Freud’s elbow. Let the old fellow go first, the guide said. The great doctor, age fifty-three, decided at this moment that he had had enough of America. With his disciples he sailed back to Germany on the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. He had not really gotten used to the food or the scarcity of American public facilities. He believed the trip had ruined both his stomach and his bladder. The entire population seemed to him over-powered, brash and rude. The vulgar wholesale appropriation of European art and architecture regardless of period or country he found appalling. He had seen in our careless commingling of great wealth and great poverty the chaos of an entropic European civilization. He sat in his quiet cozy study in Vienna, glad to be back. He said to Ernest Jones, America is a mistake, a gigantic mistake.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (p. 27). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, The Sword in the Stone

Later in the afternoon a scouting ant wandered across the rush bridge which Merlyn had commanded him to make. It was an ant of exactly the same species, but it came from the other nest. It was met by one of the scavenging ants and murdered.

The broadcasts changed after this news had been reported—or rather, they changed as soon as it had been discovered by spies that the other nest had a good store of seeds.

Mammy—mammy—mammy gave place to Antland, Antland Over All, and the stream of orders were discontinued in favour of lectures about war, patriotism or the economic situation. The fruity voice said that their beloved Country was being encircled by a horde of filthy Other-nesters—at which the wireless chorus sang:

When Other blood spurts from the knife,
Then everything is fine.

It also explained that Ant the Father had ordained in his wisdom that Othernest pismires should always be the slaves of Thisnest ones. Their beloved country had only one feeding tray at present—a disgraceful state of affairs which would have to be remedied if the dear race were not to perish. A third statement was that the national property of Thisnest was being threatened. Their boundaries were to be violated, their domestic animals, the beetles, were to be kidnapped, and their communal stomach would be starved. The Wart listened to two of these broadcasts carefully, so that he would be able to remember them afterwards.

The first one was arranged as follows:

A. We are so numerous that we are starving.

B. Therefore we must encourage still larger families so as to become yet more numerous and starving.

C. When we are so numerous and starving as all that, obviously we shall have a right to take other people's stores of seed. Besides, we shall by then have a numerous and starving army.

It was only after this logical train of thought had been put into practice, and the output of the nurseries trebled—both nests meanwhile getting ample mash for all their needs from Merlyn—for it has to be admitted that starving nations never seem to be quite so starving that they cannot afford to have far more expensive armaments than anybody else—it was only then that the second type of lecture was begun.

This is how the second kind went:

A. We are more numerous than they are, therefore we have a right to their mash.

B. They are more numerous than we are, therefore they are wickedly trying to steal our mash.

C. We are a mighty race and have a natural right to subjugate their puny one.

D. They are a mighty race and are unnaturally trying to subjugate our inoffensive one.

E. We must attack them in self-defence.

F. They are attacking us by defending themselves.

G. If we do not attack them today, they will attack us tomorrow.

H. In any case we are not attacking them at all. We are offering them incalculable benefits.

After the second kind of address, the religious services began. These dated—the Wart discovered later—from a fabulous past so ancient that one could scarcely find a date for it—a past in which the emmets had not yet settled down to communism. They came from a time when ants were still like men, and very impressive some of the services were.

A psalm at one of them—beginning, if we allow for the difference of language, with the well-known words, "The earth is the Sword's and all that therein is, the compass of the bomber and they that bomb therefrom"—ended with the terrific conclusion: "Blow up your heads, O ye Gates, and be ye blown up, ye Everlasting Doors, that the King of Glory may come in. Who is the King of Glory? Even the Lord of Ghosts, He is the King of Glory."

T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone

Works Cited, Ragtime

Despite such experiences Houdini never developed what we think of as a political consciousness. He could not reason from his own hurt feelings. To the end he would be almost totally unaware of the design of his career, the great map of revolution laid out by his life. He was a Jew. His real name was Erich Weiss. He was passionately in love with his ancient mother whom he had installed in his brownstone home on West 113th Street. In fact Sigmund Freud had just arrived in America to give a series of lectures at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and so Houdini was destined to be, with Al Jolson, the last of the great shameless mother lovers, a nineteenth-century movement that included such men as Poe, John Brown, Lincoln and James McNeill Whistler. Of course Freud’s immediate reception in America was not auspicious. A few professional alienists understood his importance, but to most of the public he appeared as some kind of German sexologist, an exponent of free love who used big words to talk about dirty things. At least a decade would have to pass before Freud would have his revenge and see his ideas begin to destroy sex in America forever.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (pp. 24-25). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Middle C

Bartók never carried a gun or felt the shame of defeat on the field; but you should remember that Béla von Bartók was a Hungarian whose birthplace had been cut from its country like a side of beef from its carcass, and, by its political butchers, given to Romania to devour in 1920. In protest, he dressed like a Hungarian, however that would be. He vowed to speak only his native tongue. Hungarian isn’t easy for anybody, so if you know how to speak it, you tend to brag.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 369). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Middle C

But history can hold up for our inspection many different sorts of wars, and World War Two was made of nearly all of them: trade wars—tribal wars—civil wars—wars by peaceful means—wars of ideas—wars over oil—over opium—over living space—over access to the sea—whoopee, the war in the air—among feudal houses—raw raw siss-boom-bah—so many to choose from—holy wars—battles on ice floes between opposing ski patrols—by convoys under sub pack attacks—in the desert there might be a dry granular war fought between contesting tents, dump trucks, and tanks—or—one can always count on the perpetual war between social classes—such as—whom do you suppose? the Rich, the Well Off, the Sort Of, the So-So, and the Starving—or—the Smart, the Ordinary, and the Industriously Ignorant—or—the Reactionary and the Radical—not just the warmongers for war but those conflicts by pacifists who use war to reach peace—the many sorts of wars that old folks arrange, the middle-aged manage, and the young fight—oh, all of these, and sometimes simultaneously—not to neglect the wars of pigmentation: color against color, skin against skin, slant versus straight, the indigenous against immigrants, city slickers set at odds with village bumpkins, or in another formulation: factory workers taught to shake their fists at field hands (that’s hammer at sickle)—ah, yes—the relevant formula, familiar to you, I’m sure, is that scissors cut paper, sprawl eats space—Raum!—then in simpler eras, wars of succession—that is, wars to restore some king to his john or kill some kid in his cradle—wars between tribes kept going out of habit—wars to keep captured countries and people you have previously caged, caged—wars in search of the right death, often requiring suicide corps and much costly practice—wars, it seems, just for the fun of it, wars about symbols, wars of words—uns so weiter—wars to sustain the manufacture of munitions—bombs, ships, planes, rifles, cannons, pistols, gases, rockets, mines—wars against scapegoats to disguise the inadequacies of some ruling party—a few more wars—always a few more, wars fought to shorten the suffering, unfairness, and boredom of life.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 368-369). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Middle C

Koussevitzky was a faithful and genuine supporter of the music of his own time, an almost reckless thing to be, especially if you were the conductor of a significant American orchestra, because patrons were customarily twenty-five years off the clock and, like the busy noses of the bees, went for nectar and its sweetness, not newness however savory. For further information on the numbskullish nature of audiences and the even greater tin eardrum of critics, try to remember my earlier lectures. […​…] Das Lied von der Erde may have opened the door for Bartók and Schoenberg—it took some pushing and shoving to hear who would get through first—but it was melancholy—a downer, do you say? [… ya? …] We did “Das Lied” two weeks ago. Remember? “The Song of the Earth.” Maa … ler. He died of a sore throat. I find it interesting that Mahler, Bartók, and Schoenberg changed their religion, not quite the way we change clothes, but as the occasion dictated nevertheless.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 366-367). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Middle C

All right, class, we return to our sheep: who is—Koussevitzky—did I call him: commissioner? […​…] I call him the Commissioner because he suggested and funded compositions from contemporary composers: for instance he asked Maurice Ravel to orchestrate Mussorgsky’s piano suite “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Listeners have forgotten that it was originally scored for the piano. For most folks only the full orchestra version answers to the name. Ravel’s version is a wonderful piece to test your loudspeakers with. Sorry. It is a good piece with which to test your speakers. [… um …] As colorful as Joseph’s coat. [… um …] A few good musical jokes about Jews. Listeners have forgotten about them, too.

You have to drive these gentlemen—Mussorgsky—Ravel—Koussevitzky—into the same corral, get them used to the smell of one another. Koussevitzky, Ravel, Mussorgsky. Up hands! Come on, don’t you remember the Great Gate? Cymbal crash! […​…] Palms aplenty? Well, several. We are blessed. Mein Gott. 

The Commissioner badgered work from Ravel—a piano concerto, not just the aforementioned orchestration. He encouraged a couple of operas: Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe, and Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes; then squeezed from Copeland, let’s see, Symphony no. 3. Next, what? [… um …] He gave Olivier Messiaen’s T-S symphony a push into the light of day, as well as Bartók’s Concerto. […​…] No, it doesn’t mean what you gigglers think. […​…] TS to you, too. It stands for Turangalîla-Symphonie. I shall write the title on the board. It is not easily spelled. […​…] The news about Koussevitzky is not all positive. He led the Boston boys in one of the earlier recordings of Ravel’s Boléro. […​…] I’m disappointed none of you groaned.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 367). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Middle C

March 16, 1968. My Lai Massacre. Nearly five hundred people in the Vietnam villages of My Lai and My Khe were murdered by members of Charlie Company. The Americans demonstrated their skill in such matters (although for some it was their first time) by dropping many victims, like a line of cardboard targets at a carnival, into a handy drainage ditch. Babies were dispatched by gun and grenade, animals and women as well. There were no plants in pots or they’d have been shot. This riot of killing was observed by helicopters. The helicopters snitched.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 365). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Middle C

1639–1651. Cromwell’s army invaded Ireland to deny Royalists their farms and to put many of these properties in Protestant hands, at the same time preventing them from serving as a base for the return of the Crown to England. Colonization was indeed a British habit. When the French explored the New World they built outposts to facilitate trade; when the Spanish did so, after the initial slaughter, they settled in among the natives, often marrying them; but when the British arrived they drove the Indians away and built houses for themselves and handsome sideboards for their manners. This was not a new strategy but a successful one, except in Ireland’s case. Nazis were no doubt similarly inspired to repopulate Poland, as the Israelis to enlarge Zion. The Irish were encouraged to remain bitter by British behavior during the potato famine of 1845–49. The Brits outpaid the Irish for their own crop, vesseled the potatoes away, and left the people to starve. Stupid, stubborn, slippery: the British do not own these qualities, but in England’s case, they built an empire with them. The Irish moved to big-city America where they became cops. In their spare time, some rioted with German immigrants over saloon hours.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 359-360). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Bob Barker

 Today, I learned Bob Barker was a Sioux.

Works Cited, Middle C

The library doesn’t carry Jacques Barzun’s book on Hector Berlioz. In the winter, the damn steam radiators clang and clatter in the midst of my class listening to “Clair de Lune.” By the way, you don’t have David Oistrakh’s violin version. You never liked Schoenberg. I did so. At least two-thirds of me did. That’s more than most people.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 355-356). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.  

Works Cited, Middle C

Here, in this place, Schoenberg could not have begun the least measure of a career. Here, no one minds if you prefer Delius, a man who caught syphilis in Florida where he tried to grow oranges, and with whose work Thomas Beecham insisted on waxing the public ear. Once, when I pretended to be a fan, one of my colleagues, whose name I shall protect better than he will mine, followed me into this absurdity like an antelope fleeing danger with his flock, grateful to believe I had finally given up on Maestro Twelve Tones, because, had I maintained my interest, the copycat would have had to sustain his … an unpleasantly taxing fate. Was not my Delius period a generous gesture?

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 355). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Krono Kross

Need to get this off my chest.

When I was tennish, I was in the car with my dad, doing what I always did in the car: fooling with the radio. (We may be listening to a good song at the moment, but what if there's a great song on another station? Let's make sure.) 

All the sudden, the static cleared and began the pinnacle of 80s yacht rock: Sailing. And I was happy cause that was just my speed.

My dad turned to me, sagely nodded, and said, "Kris Kross." The we were silent, as those dreamy arpeggios took us to paradise, which wasn't far.

Now, let's go back in history: Kris Kross was a(n) American pre-teen hip hop duo, consisting of Chris "Mac Daddy" Kelly and Chris "Daddy Mac" Smith, best known for their smash hit Jump in 1992. Which, when I was tennish, was rocking the middle school non-stop.

So I had two distinct and thunderous thoughts when my dad told me they were also responsible for the pinnacle of 80s yacht rock, Sailing.

One. My dad is hip! He knows who Kris Kross is, and apparently their catalog, and he can recognize it from a few seconds of airplay.

And two.

Damn! Kris Kross got range! Sailing is a very different song from their 1992 smash hit, Jump. Also, how long have they been around? I thought they were my age.

And for years, I accepted this. What're the chances there would be two musical acts with the exact same name?

So, in sum, there are times in my life I wish I had ventured a follow-up question.

Works Cited, Middle C

What he really wanted the world to see, were his lifelong ruse to be discovered, was the equivalent of Moses’s tablets before they got inscribed: a person pure, clean, undefiled, unspoiled by the terrible history of the earth. So he could rightly say to his accusers (and accused he would be): When you were destroying yourselves and your cities, I was not there; when you were debasing your noble principles, I was not there; when you were fattening on lies like pigs at a trough, I was not there; when you were squeezing life from all life like water from a sponge, I was not there. So see me now! Untarnished as a tea service! I’ve done nothing brave but nothing squalid, nothing farsighted but nothing blind, nothing to make me proud, yet never have I had to be ashamed.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 321). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Middle C

During his studies, Joseph had run across reproductions of Schoenberg’s paintings: there the great composer’s soul was, as it couldn’t be shown in music, naked as if flayed: furious, frightened, intense, unforgiving. If he honored you by doing your portrait, at the end, there he was, staring out of your eyes, glaring with every wild strand of hair, each vertical line like an asylum bar, each curl a coil, and Schoenberg himself behind the painted face just far enough not to notice his sitter’s terror and chagrin but certainly hoping for it. Even in his wife’s portrait, where she is surrounded by a swirling halo of hat or hair, his temperament reddens the lips of her almost soft mouth. But the painting that followed Skizzen from chair to bed like a guilty conscience was called The Red Gaze, because it was that formerly obscured face, with its bullet-eyed look, brought out into the open, as if the pulp of a fruit had taken the place of the rind.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 306). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Middle C

Germans also picked on Polish intellectuals and after killing both of them (the joke ran) turned their attention to washerwomen. The wounded are never counted as carefully as the dead, but it has often turned out that being wounded was the worse affliction.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 282-283). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Middle C

The crucial problem facing any parasite is the health of the host upon which it feeds, whose substance it steals, and whose balance it upsets, because on the day that the host becomes a husk, sucked dry as dust, the parasite must be prepared to live on small bites bitten from itself, something the tapeworm may not be prepared to do but which the human worm has practiced its entire span, gnawing on the sweet knuckles of its young, cutting into small squares many of the members of its presumptive community.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 282-283). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Works Cited, Middle C

In the alleged state of nature, Joseph would begin, it is said to be a war of all against all. I know you are teasing, Joey. No one can go against gardens. So let me be with my beauties, at peace with nature and all this world’s tossing and yearning. Despite a pledge to cease and desist, Joseph heard himself repeat to his mother how unnatural gardens were, how human-handed every rose was, how thoroughly the irises were trained, how the prizes plants won in their competitions were like those awarded after a proud parade of poodles, each clipped like a hedge. She should not ignore the size of the industry whose profits depended upon fashions in flowers and fads that were encouraged by the press or those ubiquitous catalogs which provoked fears of diseases, worms, and insects that could only be controlled by the poisons, hormones, and fertilizers they recommended. Nor should she make light of the myths extolling the harmless healthiness of gardening, even alleging its psychological superiority to every other avocation. She should notice how the seed companies’ bankrolls grew more rapidly than their marigolds, despite extensive artificial breeding; she should also admit the plants’ reputations were puffed and as pretentious as their adopted stage names—moonglow, for instance. The garden, he felt compelled to suggest, was like a fascist state: ruled like an orchestra, ordered as an army, eugenically ruthless and hateful to the handicapped, relentless in the pursuit of its enemies, jealous of its borders, favoring obedient masses in which every stem is inclined to appease its leader.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 271). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Works Cited, Middle C

He had once thought that the many terrible deeds of men might be understood by positing some underlying evil working away in the dirt of each life like the sod webworm. Perhaps there was an unrequited urge at the center of the species, a seed or genetic quirk, an impulse, bent for destruction, a type of trichinosis or a malignant imbecility that was forever ravenous. It might be just possible that we were killing off the weak to make the species strong. The young men can shoot one another. Those left standing can rape and murder the enemy’s mistresses, whores, and wives. Dead men cannot fertilize, or dead women bear. Then maybe our wars worked to keep our increasing numbers in check. But that hope turned out to be Heinrich Schenker’s doing, who had put these ideas in Skizzen’s head by insisting that for every harmonic composition there ought to be such a hidden center—a musical idea from which the notes that would be heard emerged, and were thereby governed, the way words issue from a mouth when the mouth moves on account of a consciousness that is formed, at least in part, by a nature as obdurate as an underground god at his forge hammering the white-hot blades of his weapons.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 268-269). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Middle C

Begetting was so inevitable, Joey thought, it was as routine as dying, consequently it could be safely left to nature, and otherwise ignored, the way Portho’s presence was ignored even when he slunk indoors, even when he scattered magazines donated by doctors’ offices on one of the polished tables, even when he dropped off, even when he snored. In due course people were born, in due course they managed to walk, they learned to talk, they attended school, they got a job, partied, married, had kids, sold stuff, bought more, overate, drank to be drunk, were relieved to be regular, labored in order to loaf, lived that way a spell—its passage sometimes stealing years—coasting down due’s course—while they lost their hair, sight, hearing, teeth, the use of limbs, the will to live, until, in due course and as their diseases desired, they took to bed; they laughed their last; they said good-bye to the ones they said were loved ones—they curled up in a fist of aches—said good-bye to the ones they said were closest to them—complained about their care—said good-bye to the ones who came to kiss them off, said good-bye to comfort themselves with the sight of another’s going, said good-bye while the designated goer complained, complained of neglect, complained of fear, complained of pain, and disinclined going, but would go, go over, cross Jordan, nevertheless. They uttered last words that no one could understand; they curled up like a drying worm; they cried to no avail because weeping begot only weeping, wailing was answered with wails; they repented to no one in particular; they died as someone whose loss was likely to be felt no farther than the idler’s door, and dying, quite often, in debt for a cemetery plot, the service of a funeral parlor, in the pursuit of a false ideal. Joey didn’t see much to interest him in any of this. It was what was done between times that fascinated him, when due course was interrupted by dream or discovery, murder or music, though wars were, he had to admit, due course to a faretheewell. And he thought, more and more, that death, assuredly dire, was also something due.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 257). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Works Cited, Middle C

Yes, it is true, this music will be keyless, but there will be no lock that might miss it. Atonal music (as it got named despite Arnold Schoenberg’s objection) is not made of chaos like John Cage pretended his was; no art is more opposed to the laws of chance; that is why some seek to introduce accidents or happenstance into its rituals like schoolboys playing pranks. Such as hiccups. Miss Rudolph’s cough. No, this music is more orderly than anybody’s. It is more military than a militia. It is music that must pass through the mind before it reaches the ear. But you cannot be a true-blue American and value the mind that much. Americans have no traditions to steep themselves in like tea. They are born in the Los Angeles of Southern California, or in Cody, Wyoming, not Berlin or Vienna. They learn piano from burned-out old men or women who compose bird songs. Americans love drums. The drum is an intentionally stupid instrument. Americans play everything percussively on intentionally stupid instruments and strum their guitars like they are shooting guns. But I have allowed myself to be carried away into digression. Digressions are as pleasant as vacations, but one must return from them before tan turns to burn.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 244-245). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Works Cited, Middle C

They … who are they, you ask? they are the chosen few, chosen by God, by Geist, by the muse of music: they are Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton von Webern. They chose, in their turn, the twelve tones of the chromatic scale and thought of them as Christ’s disciples. Then they sat them in a row the way da Vinci painted the loyals.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (p. 244). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Works Cited, Middle C

Liszt, a fellow Hungarian, was an enormous early influence on Bartók. The man traveled the piano, coast to coast, like a coach. Late Liszt, my young friends, anticipates almost everything including the whole-tone scale. [……] Did you know one of his kids, Cosima, married Wagner? [……] She was a notable bitch. Isn’t that how you say it? Liszt made an enormous contribution to the very notation that composes a score, but I cannot take time for that here, or offer you juicy stories about his girlfriends though there is a shelfful, along with a lot of books.

Now listen to what he says—von Bartók, I mean—the words he uses: “The outcome of these studies was of decisive influence upon my work, because it freed me from the tyrannical rule of the major and minor keys.” “Tyrannical rule” indeed. Blame it all on the diatonic scale. Worse than an electric fence. What was at stake? Freedom, first off. From an imaginary limit. From the tyrannical State of Music. [……] Got that? 

Equality, second. For the composer, the instruments, the notes. “This new way of using the diatonic scale brought freedom from the rigid use of the major and minor keys, and eventually led to a new conception of the chromatic scale, every tone of which came to be considered of equal value and could be used freely and independently.” I won’t let anyone tell me that music isn’t political: this is the dictatorship of democracy. Down with the subordinate clause.

You all know how the freedom sought by the French Revolution—revolutionaries take note—or was it carnage? revenge? was it bloodlust?—was usurped—was reversed by Napoléon’s emperorship, and [……] ah, you don’t know, do you? [……] Well, good for you, you have nothing to forget.

So now we have to cope with the smarty-pants atonalists—Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern—Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern—Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern—who opposed the very romanticism that energized them—Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern—it’s only a scratch—to deal with their more specific dislike of Stravinsky’s eclectic modernism, et cetera. Lastly, nearing our station, we observe how the music of the folk as espoused by Bartók and Kodály got handballed from wall after wall of indifference: by the romantic music of Mahler, the intellectual regimens of the Viennese crowd—Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern—the turncoat classicism of Stravinsky, and the clangorous pauses of Cage and his crew. [……] You may make notes but not pass them. This isn’t kindergarten.

I could say simply that the Concerto for Orchestra is an appeal for peace, but that would make it sound simpleminded, and this piece is anything but. It is a mingling and clashing of competing kinds of music, the instruments that play them, and the totalitarian contexts within which large ensembles necessarily require their musicians to perform. A violin or cello concerto brags that, for a change, the rest of the world revolves around this one violin or cello and its simplest string. [….…]

This is only true of the genre, of course, instances vary. [….…] So, in the Concerto for Orchestra, various instruments enjoy their moment in the sun; turn and turn about, they are allowed to lead; and an ideal community is, in this way, imagined; one in which the individual is free, has its own unique voice, yet chooses to act in the best interests of all others. [……] The problem is: how to save Difference without making its members only frivolously different, like taking your tea in a glass instead of a cup.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 371-373). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Works Cited, Middle C

Jesting! Jousting, rather. You heard the bray—the hee-haw—the yawp—and then the fairgrounds music? pretending to be a rodent running down an alley. Now, just because the second movement is designated, by the composer, “a game of pairs,” we mustn’t confuse it with boarding Noah’s ark—you know—bassoons two by two, oboes as twins, clarinets a pair, next two flutes, and, lest they be too overbearing and brutish, trumpets with mutes. Nor should we allow ourselves to be misled about the seriousness of these blurts. I was told that, while Bartók was composing the concerto, he heard a performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony on the radio and laughed when one of its subjects announced itself. He said it sounded like a Viennese cabaret song. This theme was so vacant of any real energy or significance that Bartók promptly borrowed it to use for an interruption he might ridicule. Why would he do that? Hands. [……] Hopeless. In the middle of a serious sermon, why would the preacher stick out his tongue? [… um …] Rather, my young friends, why would he stick out someone else’s tongue?

What was happening around him when he wrote this work? Sorry—when he composed this work. [……] Well, yes, he was ill. He was dying. [……] Okay, he was also a pauper. But he had more important things on his mind. [……] What? His family I suppose. [……] Nothing more? [……] The world was at war, sillies. Everywhere. It was a very large war, deserving the name of “World.” It contained countless smaller ones, and the smaller ones were made of campaigns and battles, deadly encounters and single shootings, calamities on all fronts. But history can hold up for our inspection many different sorts of wars, and World War Two was made of nearly all of them: trade wars—tribal wars—civil wars—wars by peaceful means—wars of ideas—wars over oil—over opium—over living space—over access to the sea—whoopee, the war in the air—among feudal houses—raw raw siss-boom-bah—so many to choose from—holy wars—battles on ice floes between opposing ski patrols—by convoys under sub pack attacks—in the desert there might be a dry granular war fought between contesting tents, dump trucks, and tanks—or—one can always count on the perpetual war between social classes—such as—whom do you suppose? the Rich, the Well Off, the Sort Of, the So-So, and the Starving—or—the Smart, the Ordinary, and the Industriously Ignorant—or—the Reactionary and the Radical—not just the warmongers for war but those conflicts by pacifists who use war to reach peace—the many sorts of wars that old folks arrange, the middle- aged manage, and the young fight—oh, all of these, and sometimes simultaneously—not to neglect the wars of pigmentation: color against color, skin against skin, slant versus straight, the indigenous against immigrants, city slickers set at odds with village bumpkins, or in another formulation: factory workers taught to shake their fists at field hands (that’s hammer at sickle)—ah, yes—the relevant formula, familiar to you, I’m sure, is that scissors cut paper, sprawl eats space—Raum!—then in simpler eras, wars of succession—that is, wars to restore some king to his john or kill some kid in his cradle—wars between tribes kept going out of habit—wars to keep captured countries and people you have previously caged, caged—wars in search of the right death, often requiring suicide corps and much costly practice—wars, it seems, just for the fun of it, wars about symbols, wars of words—uns so weiter—wars to sustain the manufacture of munitions—bombs, ships, planes, rifles, cannons, pistols, gases, rockets, mines—wars against scapegoats to disguise the inadequacies of some ruling party—a few more wars—always a few more, wars fought to shorten the suffering, unfairness, and boredom of life.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 368-369). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Works Cited, Middle C

 So, Bruno Schulz—you wonder what is the connection?—he was a writer and a draftsman after all, not a musician—so you should wonder at my claim to relevance. He wrote great Polish prose. He drew nudes—you naughties would like that. One of his drawings depicts a dwarfish man and a hurdy-gurdy—that exhausts his relationship to music. As far as we know. And how far do we know? Anyhow, Schulz is another example of what happens to greatness in this world of ours. Like Webern—shot as a dark marketer by some stupid corn-fed pop-singing assassin who at least had the decency to drink himself to death during the years that followed, from guilt, we may like to imagine. Only the Pole’s case was worse and more so. It happened—Schulz’s life—the lesson of his life, our lesson for today—it happened in Drohobycz which was a small provincial town like Webern’s Mittersill, but located in Galicia, not Austria—you know where is Galicia? nah, no hands—well, it is now the western Ukraine, a region also rich in composers, artists, scholars, and oh yes influential Jews including the founder of Hasidism, a movement of which you know? how many? show hands? nein? with a name like Bruno sewn on him you’d never think … of Jews. They slid slowly away from their faith, the Schulz family, in evidence of which I cite Bruno’s mother, who changed her name from Hendel to Henrietta, though what would be the use? what? well, I spare you Schulz’s low-level life, except he wrote wonders, pictured domineering women, drew men down around the women’s ankles like sagging socks.

Misfortune would not leave Bruno Schulz alone. Early in World War One—eh? … many hands for World War One …? six, twelve … congratulations … his house and the family store were burned, as they say, to the basement. In the middle of the thirties, his brother-in-law suddenly died, and Schulz became responsible for the welfare of a bereft sister, son, and cousin. But let us skip the merely syrupy third movement to enjoy the finale. In 1939 Poland is eaten by the two hogs wallowing in their sties nearby. The Nazis devoured the eastern half, and the Reds swallowed what was left in the west, including a little morsel called Drohobycz. This annexation ended Schulz’s publishing career, as meager as it was, for the Soviet Union specialized in propaganda and hero worship, neither of which our writer had any talent for. Two years passed—one wonders how—and the hammer and sickle was raised to affront the dawn and claim ownership of each dismal day.

Then the Nazis invaded Russia and the Huns came. They were far worse for the Jews than the Reds had been because the Gestapo sat behind the city’s desks and made dangerous its streets and corners. Among these minions was a man with a murderous past, a man alas from Vienna, a man named Felix Landau … one of many but one to remember … Happy Landau … called by some Franz, more acceptably German, Franz is … well … how fluid names were, then as now—people, places, identities, owners—no matter … whether Franz or Felix he was a man who eliminated Jews the way he moved his bowels. For a slice of bread and a bowl of soup, Bruno Schulz painted the walls of this art lover’s villa, including the nursery … Landau had commandeered the house from another Jew … it was later known as the Villa Landau, isn’t that—as you say—a hoot … and there he had multiplied himself, imagine … now his son had a room with a crib and a wall full of happy Felix-like scenes from the brothers Grimm … actually a princess, a horse-drawn carriage (Schulz had done a lot of those), two dwarfs (a lot of misshapen souls as well) … anyway, do not let the nursery be a surprise, they always do this—barbarians do—they go forth, they occupy, they consume, they multiply. Moreover, Felix bragged among his thuggish friends about the talented little slave who colored walls for him, a miserable painter who must have wondered what it meant to be actually a submissive man rather than a dreamed and drawn one.

Political criminals require accomplices—their power is based upon obedience, obedience upon dependency, upon bribes, threats, promises, rewards—consequently: so that his sister might live, Schulz acquiesced; so that her son would survive, Schulz said sir; so that a cousin could continue, Schulz kowtowed; and so that Schulz should gain a brief reprieve for himself as well, he took care to please his captor with his painting. On walls stolen from a Jew, another Jew depicted reassuring fairy scenes for the child of a man who murdered Jews and thereby earned a smidge of notoriety; moreover a man who, not as merely an afterthought, had a nice family he considerately looked after. Meanwhile, the Polish underground had not been idle. They provided the highly valued Bruno Schulz with forged documents designed to facilitate his escape from Galicia. He was to become an Aryan. His papers so described him. He was to leave Drohobycz, where he was known, and hide away someplace—someplace elsewhere—in the guise of a person of good blood and docile character who would therefore not write or draw or dream of washing a woman’s feet. Meanwhile, a German officer—a genuine Nazi, too, another Gestapo goon, with his Luger handy at his hip, a man whose name we know as Karl Günther—unlike the GI whom the Americans hid in anonymity—had grown envious of Landau’s gifted lackey, and, during a roundup of leftover Jews on November 19, 1942, shot Schulz in the head while he was bearing home a loaf of bread.

I have heard it said: All dead are identical. Do not choose but one to mourn. Broken toys are broken toys, and useless legs aren’t legs. 

Thus Bruno Schulz—born an Austrian, raised a Pole, and about to become a Gentile—though a freethinker—died a Jew.

Gass, William H.. Middle C (Vintage International) (pp. 216-218). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.