Private Parts

Breasts are much in the news recently. Remember Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word? Both Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have been trying to deal with upsurge of painted breasts in Times Square and then Sunday August 23^rd was GoTopless Day in which women demonstrated their right to show their breasts in public (“Seeking Equality, Not Tips, Topless Marchers Draw a Crowd in Manhattan," NYT, 8/23/14). The nice thing about breast demonstrations is that there are no reports of violence on the part of the participants or the police (a peaceful situation that would only be interrupted by the intrusion of fringe elements who might try to remove their underpants too). In fact if you look at the expressions on the faces of the police assigned to topless rallies, they tend to be mostly smiling and content. But all these naked breasts bring back  nostalgia for a more innocent time in American history when showing a breast really meant something and in which there was a food chain to undressing with the full sight of the breast and finally the seemingly impossible full view of the naked female genitalia resting at the top or bottom depending on which way you looked at it. Men could be demure since back in those days, before the notoriety of porn stars like John Holmes and Ron Jeremy and before advent of gay rights or women’s liberation, for that matter, the penis was not even considered something that anyone would want to see. Howard Stern may have named his biography Private Parts, but for such an exhibitionist it’s a misnomer. Back in the 50’s the concept of private parts was really taken seriously and there were even marriages resulting in consummation and conception in which the lights were off and  neither the male nor the female ever truly saw what was coming or what tunnel the train was going into. Is the world really a better place now that women are showing their breasts on August 23rd ? Are people happy taking indulging  other liberties which were never heard of in the past, like lovers urinating and even defecating in front of each other? It’s a far cry from the halycon days when a straying satin bra strap or bulging package in Jockey underpants meant something. How are people going to have sex once all the mystery of the other is gone?

Fuck Joy!

The concept of joy naturally has a positive connotation, but it’s really camouflages the need for escape and oblivion. Joy may be associated with so called Dionysiac type experiences in which wine and other substances produce the illusion of oneness with nature and others—an illusion that's quickly dispelled by the path of destruction generally left in the wake of such experiences. Jon Krakauer’s book about Missoula and the Grizzlies reviewed recently in the Times recounts the aftermath of several on campus Dionysiac experiences (“Jon Krakauer’s ‘Missoula” Looks at Date Rape in a College Town,” NYT, 4/19/15) Fuck joy! It’s just materialism in formal dress. The reason so many people are loathe to meditate is that it’s the opposite of a joyous experience and it’s certainly not something that can be attempted if you’re inebriated. Meditation puts you in touch with reality. In this sense it tends to be rather disappointing since it’s not the white light experience which most people anticipate. Rather meditation is a shedding of wishes and desires, culminating in a rather disconcerting and sometimes frightening nothingness which constitutes a form of human truth. Once a session is ended, the meditator returns to the comforting strife of his everyday existence, with its temptations, desires and hallelujahs. Joy is like a popper. It raises the bar too high. Yet get a rush then you crash. Momentary joy may be found in a steak or a great orgasm, but it passes with nothing left to fill the emptiness than the prospect of the next joyous event--or hit. Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (l968) tells the story of one such search for joy by Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.

Bonfire of the Vanities

Puyi,  the last Emperor of China

According to an article in the Times there are seven things Xi Jinping, China’s new leader, wants to eliminate (“China Takes Aim at Western Ideas,” NYT, 8/19/13). Amongst the items included in the mysterious Document No. 9, quoted by the Times are “western constitutional democracy” and “universal values” of human rights.  Plainly Xi Jinping and other higher ups in the party want to have their cake and eat it too. “Even as Mr. Xi has sought to prepare some reforms to expose China’s economy to stronger market forces, he has undertaken a ‘mass line’ campaign to enforce party authority that goes beyond the party’s periodic calls for discipline,” the Times remarked, going on to quote Document 9 to the effect that “Western forces hostile to China and dissidents within the country are still constantly infiltrating the ideological sphere.” Interestingly the trial of the disgraced Bo Xilai, who represented a more leftist stance has not contributed to a lessening of the party’s hold over China. As the Times went on to comment, “Relatively liberal officials and intellectuals hoped the ousting last year of Bo Xilai, a charismatic politician who favored leftist policies, would help their cause. But they have been disappointed.” The irony is that the family of Xi Jinping family has managed to amass a substantial fortune during his rise to power (“Billions in Hidden Riches For Family of Chinese Leader," NYT, 10/25/12) and if Bo Xilai trial represents a purging of an even more radical element then Wang Lijun, the reputed lover of Mr. Bo’s wife Gu Kailai (“Dollop of Romance is Added to Intrigue at Former Chinese Poltician’s Trial," NYT, 8/26/13) Xu Ming and Mr. Bo are hardly the Gang of Four. Xu Ming (“China Boss’s Fall Puts focus on Business Ally,” NYT, 8/21/13) a billionaire and one of the richest men in China, channeled enormous amounts to Mr. Bo in order to that he might live in the style to which he’d become accustomed. So what Document 9 really celebrates is not a leadership that is returning to the ideals of the Long March but the ideals of latter day robber barons, the kind of “masters of the universe that Tom Wolfe documented in The Bonfire of the Vanities. The equation is a familiar one and ideology free, of high level connections equalling preferential treatment. In the name of the party, Xi Jinping is amassing a degree of economic and political power that's reminiscent of the great dynasties that ruled China before anyone had ever heard of Communism or Das Kapital. 

House of Mirth

In Sister Carrie and The House of Mirth, Dreiser and Wharton created heroines that were the cosmopolitan equivalent of Emma Bovary. Self-hatred and aspiration—in short the desire to escape—were the driving forces behind characters like Lily Bart and Carrie Meeber. The seeds of the urban megalopolis had an effect on the romantic imagination that was equivalent to a drought feeding a brush fire. The industrial revolution, with its vast accumulations of wealth leading to both pleasure palaces and eventually to museums like the Morgan Library and the Frick, created a buffet of prospects that became the palette of self-invention. Decades later, in Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, “Brazilian marching powder” would become the drug that fuels ascent, much the way the cocktail of power and money became the drug of choice for Tom Wolfe’s “masters of the universe” in Bonfire of the Vanities. Voyeurism is part of the life of the modern city. As in Rear Window, we all become material witnesses to both crimes and unattainable delights. We are all inadvertent spies as we awaken in the morning and go to sleep at night with views of huge high rises, their facades like little prosceniums in which we witness the despair and exultation of strangers. Ezra Pound famously said, “make it new,” and in a city like New York, the magnetism lies in the perverse notion that there is always something new under the sun that becomes more sought after the more ineluctable it is, and the more it holds the prospect of something that is in danger of being missed. That which doesn’t exist is always more appealing than those people and things whose parameters we know. Said more succinctly, familiarity breeds contempt—an emotion that Anna Karenina also knew something about.