Alexis Rockman: A Fable For Tomorrow @ American Art Museum

Big thanks to John Murder for telling me about this exhibit, which is filled with post-apocalyptic tableaus that include the drowned Brooklyn Bridge, pigs raping geese, and wild pigs making sweet love to nutria in Disneyworld. This one, pictured above, Manifest Destiny, is 24 feet long and 8 feet high.

I can't remember an art exhibit I've enjoyed more in the last ten years. Big thanks to Alexis Rockman for creating it. Big thanks to the Smithsonian for being in Washington, DC, and for being Free. The exhibition will be up through May 8. You should go. You should see these in person. If you want more info/slides/lectures/whatever, there's plenty more info here.

Left Behind: Chapter Eleven

The action

Ray leaves the house! Ray and Chloe drive to New Hope church and meet with acting pastor Bruce Barnes.

Dramatis Personae, novum:

Loretta: As per the enlightened tradition of the Left Behind Series, Loretta needs no surname. It is enough to know she's "an older woman" who looks "sunken eyed and disheveled, as if she'd come through a war .... She's the only person in her whole clan who is still here .... They're all gone, every one of them."

The chivalrous impulse

Pastor Barnes, making small talk with Ray and Chloe, tells them "[f]olks, Loretta there looks like I feel."

The litany of complaint

Bruce Barnes relates his tale of sub par Christianity, replete with confessions of having "read things I shouldn't have read, looked at magazines that fed my lusts."

Bruce lays it all out

"There is no doubt in my mind that we have witnessed the Rapture .... I had heard people say that when the church was raptured, [g]od's [s]pirit would be gone from the earth. The logic was that when Jesus went to heaven after his resurrection, the holy spirit that god gave to the church was embodied in believers. So when they were taken, the spirit would be gone, and there would be no more hope for anyone left."

But Bruce, is there hope? Is there any reason for this series to continue for 16 more volumes?

"[S]omebody remembered Pastor's Rapture tape .... You can't know [my] relief when Pastor's tape showed me otherwise .... Our senior pastor loved to preach about the coming of Christ to rapture his church, to take believers, dead and alive, to heaven before a period of tribulation on the earth .... the pastor used that sermon and ... videotaped [himself] ... speaking directly to people who were left behind [and] put it in the church library with instructions to get it out and play it if most everyone seemed to have disappeared."

Will Ray and Chloe make the leap of faith?

"'No?' Bruce was clearly surprised. 'Need more time?' .... '[L]et me leave you with one little reminder of urgency ... people die every day in ... plane crashes -- oh, sorry, I'm sure you're a good pilot.'"

Ray "appreciate[s] your time and ... will watch the tape."

The takeaway

I am pretty disappointed in the quality of salvation denying sinning thus far. End of times riots of passion shouldn't be about pudgy pastors sweatily thumbing through dirty magazines. My imagination wants this.

Previous posts: Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10
Next post: [Coming soon]

Hadestown

The Post-Apocalyptic Book club was fortunate to catch a performance of this original bluegrass opera at the historic Sixth & I Synagogue last night. Wittily written and fetchingly sung it transports the story of Eurydice & Orpheus from the Hades of ancient Greece to a "post apocalyptic Depression era company town hell." Shows will be performed in VT & CO, a CD featuring Ani DiFranco as Persephone and Anais Mitchell as Eurydice (pictured) is available.

Question 2: What Must We Know?

The second (and much more concerning) question that arose as I read A Canticle for Leibowitz: If I woke up tomorrow and the World had lost its Modernity, would I be able to re-create any part(s) of it on my own?

[Alexis Rockman, The Conversation,]

  

The Answer is, basically, NO. John Murder pointed out that we WOULD retain our knowledge of the existence of Viruses and Bacteria, which would give us a few millenia's headstart in the Hygeine and Health Departments. But machinery, industry, technology, electronics, thermodynamics? Clueless. This is Unacceptable. I plan to compile a short list of books and/or pamphlets that I will make certain that I both Own and Know. Please add any suggestions as Comments below. 

For starters: 

1) SIMPLE MACHINES: one of the first things I thought of was that in grade school i learned the "Seven" Simple Machines, of which I could only remember Lever and Pulley. Seven is in quotes because today I looked it up and learned that it was/is actually only Six. These are: Lever, Wheel and Axle, Pulley, Inclined Plane, Wedge, and Screw. We can get lots of things done if we know how to employ these machines, and combinations thereof, properly. Me, right now, I can't figure out what the difference is between a Lever and a Wedge. Hence, a book on this topic, written for children and fools, with pictures, would be helpful. I'm going to research this.

2) BASIC STUFF: Knot-tying, fire-building, first aid, all that stuff. Boy Scouts' Handbook. Seems like this should cover plenty of those basics.

Question 1: Abbey Living

 

I enjoyed A Canticle for Leibowitz, and have had two questions running through my head since I finished it a couple of weeks ago. 

Question 1: Do I belong in a Monastery? And would it be an Ideal Place to live out one's post-apocalyptic life?

  

I have visited Abbey of Gethsemani in New Haven, Kentucky.

It's America's oldest Trappist monastery, and has been there since the 1800's. Thomas Merton was One of Them from 1941 until his death in 1968. He's buried there. They farm, they garden, they carve wood, they pray, they bake brownies, they sing their vespers, they do not have a mandatory dress code.

They do have a website--apparently they got their Interwebs act together early (or I'd imagine paid some good money later), because they are in fact the owners of http://www.monks.org.

I think I might be cut out for this kind of living. Routines and Rituals have a calming effect on my brain. I might have trouble with the Religion part, but it's possible that the benefits of this kind of life would outweigh that. As for its location in the beautiful hills of Kentucky, it'd probably be low on the list of nuclear warfare targets, and its agriculture, skilled residents, and solid buildings would make it an excellent place to stage one's post-apocalyptic life.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Jr.

 

The only novel written by Mr. Miller and published (1959) during his lifetime--a sequel was posthumously written/published, supposedly based on his own writings and outlines...I will not be reading it.  It won the Hugo in 1961, and is a three-part story that spans a couple of thousand years, beginning in a post-nuclear-holocaust world circa 2600, wherein most of Earth's inhabitants are illiterate stone age types. Although plenty of educated and technoliterate folks had survived the holocaust of 2000-something, over the next hundred years or so they were hunted down and killed by less literate survivors, the logic being that Smart People and Their Machines got us into this mess, hence, kill 'em all so we don't end up with Electricity and Engines and, eventually, Atom Bombs ever again. 


When Literacy equals Witchcraft, it becomes Unfashionable and a Liability To One's Survival...hence, it gradually faded out of Humanity's toolbox. The exception to this rule was one ex-engineer named Leibowitz, who set about saving books when and where he could, and founded a society of Bookleggers, whose purpose was the finding and hiding/burying of literature. Leibowitz ended up being burnt at the stake by an Illiterate Horde. 600 years later, the book opens in southwest Arizona, in a monastery whose monks live out the tradition of Leibowitz, preserving whatever books and manuscripts they've managed to hang onto, and petitioning the new world church for Leibowitz's canonization. It's a New Stone Age, essentially...the book moves on from there, through a New Dark Ages growth period and all the way up to a New Modern Day period (aroundabouts 4600 A.D. or so). The monks and their literate monastery are the focal point of all three sections. The book is fun and, more important, made me think about a couple of practical concerns/issues, both of which I'll detail in a separate post.

Left Behind: Chapter Ten

Dramatis Personae, novae

Bruce Barnes the "visitation pastor" at New Hope Village Church in Mount Prospect, Illinois. Former parish of Irene, location of the post-Rapture explanation video tape. Barnes promises a discussion of the tape. Rayford "[tells] him he and perhaps Chloe would come by that afternoon."

Alan Tompkins "a midlevel operative at Scotland Yard. Puts to lie my theory that characters with first and last names are important to the story, unless there's a need for a resurrected and thoroughly inept "midlevel operative" in the army of the saved in Volume 16.

What passes for action

Buck, "phony passport" in hand, flies from LaGuardia to Heathrow. Meets Tompkins at Scotland Yard. They "[drive] quickly to a dark pub a few miles away." Tompkins proceeds to tell Buck that Dirk's death has to be a suicide (right handed self inflicted gun shot wound on a left handed man), then further relates a harrowing encounter in the offices of Brit puppet-master and Dirk Burton conspiracy fixation Todd-Cothran, wherein: Tompkins is permitted to eavesdrop on a conversation between Todd-Cothran and Tompkins's Scotland Yard supervisor (Sullivan), wherein: he learns that his supervisor will have him killed if he pursues the matter of Dirk Burton's death any further.

Naturally, when a waitress at the pub informs Tompkins (in the midst of relating the foregoing to internationally renowned journalist Cameron "Buck" Williams) that he appears to have left the dome light on in his car, he assumes that he must be "[g]ettin' daft in my old age" and leaves the pub to turn it off. The ensuing explosion draws Buck's attention. Despite having quickly downed his pint, and, noticing that Alan hadn't touched his pint "switched his empty mug for Alan's full one and downed it too," Buck "[knew] his limit" and had ordered a soda. Which doubtless gave him the presence of mind to chuck his real passport into the flaming wreckage in the hopes of faking his death. I'm not an apologist for Scotland Yard but I reckon they should be able to suss out that: (1) that there's only one corpse in the wreckage; and (2) it's one of their employees. Buck manages to escape to Heathrow airport and flies back to the U.S. (via Germany) under the assumed identity of a Polish businessman. And leaves behind all of his notes. Which may be an important plot element that makes him a target of gathering dark forces, or may be a pointlessly wasted detail.

Thinking about events thus far

Time moves either freakishly fast or freakishly slow in this novel. In the amount of time it's taken for Buck to fly to New York, fly to Heathrow, fake his death, fly to Frankfurt, and fly back to New York, Ray has merely managed to think about the Rapture, and make a call to his wife's church. Without leaving his house. I'm starting to think the bottle disposal episode was a dream sequence, and Ray is gripped by a Faulknerian fit of alcohol driven reverie.

Previous posts: Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9
Next post: Chapter 11

Left Behind: Chapter Nine

The state of the world, 2 days after the event

"[A]mazing progress [had] been made at clearing the roadways ... [b]ut the landscape would appear tacky for months."

What about the Jews?

Back at the offices of the Global Weekly, we learn that "Jewish Nationalists ... are warming to one world government .... [This] idea is so revolutionary. Most Israeli Nationalists think the Holy Land has gone too far with its bounty already." Jonathan "Diamond John" Stonegal also is involved.

What about Chloe?

Returns home. Father and Daughter have heart-to-heart about the Rapture. Chloe mentions that "in California they're actually buying into the space invasion theory." Ray remembers that as a teenager, "Chloe had come home from more than one party drunk enough to spend the night vomiting."

Thoughts turn to missing Wife/Mother Son/Brother

Ray: "You want to know where I think they are? I believe they are in heaven ... if the Christians are gone and everyone else is left, I don't think anyone is a Christian."
Chloe: "Daddy, what does that make [g]od? Some sick, sadistic dictator?" "Who wants to go to heaven with a [g]od like that?"

End times A/V Club to the rescue

Fortunately Irene's Church has a tape. "Dad! A tape for those left behind? Please!" Ray and Chloe make plans to pick up the tape the next day.

What about Dirk?

Still unable to get through, Buck tries Dirk's office. Speaks with Dirk's supervisor, Nigel Leonard, who informs Buck that "Mr. Burton .... suffered a bullet wound to the head .... suicide has been determined." Convinced that it was not a suicide, Buck books a flight to Heathrow out of LaGuardia.

Coincidentally?

Carpathia will be flying into LaGuardia that same day.

The wrap

Diamond John and the Jews are meeting in New York and may have plans for a new world order. Carpathia is flying to New York to address the United Nations. Buck is flying to England to uncover the truth about Dirk's putative suicide. Ray is turning to true Christianity, and is determined to take his skeptical daughter with him. The landscape will appear tacky for months.

Clearest sign yet that the end times have arrived

LaGuardia has international service

Previous posts: Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8
Next post: Chapter 10