Lonely Are the Brave

David Miller’s Lonely Are the Brave (1962), recently revived as part of the The Sag Harbor Cinema’s 60’s Western series, is a predecessor to John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969). The difference is social consciousness versus stylized, albeit sublime anomie. Here Kirk Douglas on his horse finds himself mowed down by the oncoming traffic. In Midnight Cowboy a young Texan (Jon Voight) dresses up as a cowboy to become a Times Square hustler.The movie also stars Gena Rowlands of Cassavetes fame, Walter Matthau as the sheriff and Carol O’’Connor aka Archie Bunker as the ill-fated trucker who unwittingly becomes the representative of ugly modernity. The movie is hard to gauge at first. Who is this character riding saddle in traffic and choosing solitude over the chance for love? Then suddenly the pieces fall into place. A signature scene where Douglas in flight from a posse of cops literally drags his rambunctious horse up a mountain pass attains a mythic grandeur. Taken literally, the movie makes no sense. There are still cowboys today but they're too busy herding cattle to challenge the conventions of modernity. However, that’s the point. Lonely Are the Brave is Death of a Salesman meets The Lone Ranger. Speaking of the depredations of capitalism, the screenplay is by Dalton Trumbo, one of the blacklisted Hollywood 10. Two civilizations on a collision course is ultimately the source of the drama.

Ezra Klein

On Fareed Zakaria’s GPS Ezra Klein iterated the theory that opponents can’t counter one sally, if another is leveled right after. According to him, the idea, "muzzling," originates with Steve Bannon and comprises the playbook of the administration. In the world of fisticuffs you have "brawlers" and “boxers.” Mike Tyson who famously said, "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face," is the type to mix it up. You level a flurry and the fight is over. Lennox Lewis was a champion who won all his fights counterpunching with a brutal jab. MAGA people never let the opposite side get a word in edgewise. Listen to Steve Miller or any other of Trump's henchmen as they talk to a CNN anchor. A barrage of words follows every question. The interviewer is hard put to interrupt and point out the subject is off topic when they veer off the point--or their rocker, in fact.

Interiority

"The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali (1931)

Interiority has never been popular—despite Proust. Belly button gazers was the accusation by those who  attended the Communist Internationals. You could put The Interpretation of Dreams in your backpack if you joined the Lincoln Brigade but Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? would go over better with your comrades. The mind resembles a toilet which works on the principle of the siphon. Vacuity is the aim. Think of it. Most people complain of emptiness in the aftermath of the stimulations of food or sex. You're always going against the grain when you risk solitude. But in today’s virtual reality universe where bytes of data comprise the lingua franca, the dendrites and axons which guard the synapses where neurotransmitters flow are chemically challenged. It’s akin to what green gases are doing to the environment. Stimulation is addictive; it’s no surprise that the turbulence of this moment of history is a juggernaut. It’s hard to get one’s breath back when one's always having to duck the next oncoming wave.

Ilse Koch and Kristi Noem

Only their hairdressers know for sure

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem bears some comparison to Ilse Koch, the infamous Bitch of Buchenwald. One of her most notable moments was an appearance at the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. There she paraded around in her signature revealing outfits, as tattooed inmates packed into cages, looked on. One knows what happens to prisoners in such facilities who get erections during the visits of dignitaries. Koch made lampshades out of human skin and used prisoners to build a riding ring. By comparison five-year olds are detained in ICE facilities, like the Dilley Family Detention Center, with untreated diseases.  Ghislaine Maxwell is being held at "Club Fed" in anticipation of her prospective release--which is likely to be one of the last pardons Trump gives before leaving office. {Editor's Note: The New York Post reported Noem was having an affair with Corey Lewandowski. Melania Trump and Noem ought to rent CECOT for a Victoria's Secret fashion show in honor of Jeffrey Epstein associate Leslie Wexner }

The Secret Agent

The title of Kleber Mendonca Filho's The Secret Agent cites the Conrad novel after which it is named. In the eponymous work, the main character is a rather ineffectual spy. The same tone of irony is at work in the current production. In the opening scene, a corpse is covered by cardboard, but when the police arrive, it's to shakedown the main character Armando (Wagner Moura). Lucky he has the required fire extinguisher in the glove compartment of his car. Armando's yellow beetle is an iconic presence in the film, a Beetles "Yellow Submarine" bobbing through an atmosphere of impending doom as the main character tries to skirt a pair of assassins during the l977 Brazilian Carnival in Recife. The atmosphere of joy, with masked revelers and public sex, alternates with constant fear and terror. Armando's father-in-law, Sr. Alexandre (Carlos Francisco) is the projectionist in a theater where Jaws is being shown while Chicago's l976 hit "If You Leave Me Now" provides the soundtrack. Armando takes refuge in a safe house in Recife, but he's given a job in an agency which creates government identity cards and where he spends his free time searching for information about his late mother, who he barely remembers. Throughout the movie there are continual cuts to the present time in which, Flavia a researcher working to identify victims of past brutality, visits Armando's son Fernando, who works in a blood transfusion unit situated on the site of Sr. Alexandre's old movie theater. The film creates its own internal atmosphere which is timeless even as it moves from past to present. Industrial espionage and fascism bookend the action, but the style is one of cinematic magical realism in which history and memory create their own timeline and tapestry.

JE

                                                      

One hesitates to even employ the name. The ubiquity is the issue. The only comparison is Covid from which no society is immune. Was it passed from Dennis Rodman onto Kim Jong-un. Were those in solitary infected? Did Rex Heuermann, the Gilgo Beach murder have dealings even after the first conviction in 2008.  Did artificial intelligence become superficial? People are earnestly abhorrent but what to think of something that crosses state and party lines? BTW how did the eponymous JE vote. Was it a democrat? Or did it move right just as a thermometer moves up? Soma was the drug employed in Huxley's Brave New World to drug the populace. Corruption is by definition value free. Beria and Thomas Jefferson were both corrupt and would both have been prone to JE? The DOJ harbored millions and millions of documents, but why and when did it start? Say Door Dash delivered to JE townhouse one night in 2009 then to you? As is evident with ISIS or Hamas, it's impossible to extinguish an idea.  JE Wanted Dead or Alive. 

Ogen Nash

Nash and Dagmar 

Are you tired of the monotony of politics? Ideology is another matter since it’s a form of thinking. Who would you listen to? Tommy Tuberville, Joseph de Maistre or Ogden Nash? Stupidity can be colorful. Don’t count on the world of poetic discourse for a respite from the culture wars. There are 9 circles of Inferno at every Dante conference. If you entertain the belief that Gilles Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus has anything to do with mental health, you may be in for a surprise—ditto trying to explain why you still have to pay the full fee for a Lacanian 50 minute session, that’s cut off. If you're an event organizer, you may have to juggle Turning Point America, The Eulenspiegel Society and the Right to Die. Spoiler Alert: it's all someone else's fault. Sure go listen to the annual Moby Dick reading in Sag Harbor but don’t think the world of Melville scholars isn’t riven by a Unified Executive.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star