Categorically Speaking
I'm back to reading Javier Marías who sadly passed away two years ago. Now that I know his body of work is static and limited, I ration the few I have not yet read. This one, like several others, takes its title from Shakespeare... Thus Bad Begins-- ominous words for these times, maybe more so when one considers the quotation ends 'and worse remains behind.'
Not to preface a lecture on Hamlet, but an entrance to one of Marías' mystery narratives which opens with a disturbing comment that truth is categorical. While the old 'me' would balk at such a concept, the quagmire of this political soup in which we find ourselves has broken into my belief system like a thief. I am having trouble maintaining and defending the things we held as self-evident in light of what is dangerously becoming law.
It's not just politics; in this AI era one would think fact-checking was a digital shadow that kept us all honest... but it doesn't seem to be working. We are able to replay basketball points and foul-calls in great detail, from several vantage points, but our justice system does not have this tool. Innocent people are deemed criminal and white-collar criminals are sometimes not just exonerated but rewarded according to the manipulations of legalities. Then again, inside our jails there is another justice system, and an all-too-common abuse of power among prison employees that further obscures the administration of human rights.
It's like a labyrinth of morality. Our government daily shakes the dice and changes the rules. Immigrants who came here pursuing a dream under a democratic regime now find themselves hunted by ICE agents. It's like getting on a train going west and having the sign changed arbitrarily, finding oneself headed anywhere. Liars and cheaters are winning. We have less social motivation to be good and kind, except that most of us, fortunately, are made this way.
I am lucky to have women friends of all ages-- from 16 to 99. Listening to them complain about relationships and the difficulty of finding appropriate partners is one of my constant pastimes. Of course at 99 the options are limited. But for those who are recently divorced or separated, or still single in this city and searching, truth can be categorical. Online profiles and apps are filled with shysters and fibbers... men who are still married or partnered... people who like your profile photo enough to temporarily masquerade as exactly what you profess to want. And then all bets are off. One still, in this digital dating world, goes on analogue dates, develops real attachments and in a city like New York, suffers break-ups and disappointments with someone who can melt back into anonymity in mere hours.
We are confused; we are betrayed, we are like sheep without a proper pasture. Most scenarios, like novels, have a variety of endings; some predictable and some, like the best of mysteries, will end in a shocking twist. I can't help wondering where all of this is going... not even a hundred days into this presidency, and institutions of kindness and generosity are being dismantled, cultural platforms stripped and charitable organizations paralyzed. Public research will be funded according to an agenda which serves not the people but itself.
In the background of most Marías novels is the looming history of the Spanish Franco regime-- the way it persecuted freedom and then sort of deflated and petered out, with its proponents skulking away without much ado, and its victims in a sort of heroic limbo. Like the Third Reich in Germany, there's a residual national guilt that doesn't disappear, despite generations born without memory of these times. Is this going to be the Great American Shame, the darkest era in our young history? Will a national catastrophe or pandemic cause this terrible government to implode? It's hard to find a safe haven; it's hard to sleep when the very foundation of American justice seems like a kind of sport where the rules are constantly being changed by the Great Orange Moderator.
When I was small I had a doll-sized figure of Sojourner Truth my nanny gave me. She fought for Freedom, I was told. I stood her on a special shelf with my favorite shells and rocks. This was a symbol; truth was a solid, provable thing that had to do with freedom and civil rights. It held the world up like an invisible column-- like God. Even science was simply a quest to find the inherent truth of things-- the atomic number, the definition.
So maybe in this era Marías will not see, truth has become simply a category-- an option. Guilt is relative; there are only the jailed and the jailors, the rulers and the ruled, the empowered and the powerless. There is love and there is a great lonely population, I am discovering, in our city which cannot seem to find its footing in these times where its elected leadership is questionably prosecuted but not convicted.
No wonder people are obsessed with March Madness, with television and netflix and instagram and dating apps, with ordering food and cooking competitions-- with anything, really, where there is a kind of winner and loser. We can't even get a proper diagnosis here, because the business of medicine has subjugated science to profit, and prevents physicians from treating patients equally.
As for me I am once again entranced by the skill and astute intelligence of Marías who insisted his many accolades were due to the general dearth of quality literature in our time. While temporally and politically skeptical, he has a way of finding his truth, uncategorically. At this moment it's all the closure I may get.
Labels: betrayal, dating apps, Donald Trump, Francoist Spain, Hamlet, Instagram, Javier Marías, justice, March Madness, Mayor Adams, medicine, politics, science, Sojourner Truth, Third Reich, This Bad Begins