I teach “Writing and Presentations” for Engineering Management students at Portland State University.  It’s a course within a graduate program (the Engineering and Technology Management Department) aimed at preparing future leaders for their responsibilities as managers of technology organizations and teams. 

            The program at PSU is internationally renowned, with a reputation as a ground-breaking forward-looking collection of thought leaders who understand that managing the mysteries and vagaries of the technology industry is different from other kinds of management.  Not all the students in this program have engineering preparation, but many do, and helping them get ready for the particular leadership challenges that are unique to leading tech teams, projects and organizations was originally the idea of Dr. Dundar Kocaoglu, our department chairman.

            It was also Dr. K’s idea to include this course, “Writing and Presentations,” in the program because he’s sure (and he’s right) that engineering leaders who can’t handle public speaking and who can’t write proposals, reports, product evaluations or even holiday greetings will struggle, or fail, as leaders.

            It was nearly two years ago that Dr. K and I began talking about this class, about the possibility that I might teach it.  One of the things I said in those early conversations was that I’d like to assign the students a novel to read, a good novel, a great work of fiction.  When he looked at me a little quizzically (reading fiction in an engineering class?), I explained that if students want to learn to write well, they should read the works of great writers—not the works of great engineers. 

            “Who were you thinking you’d assign?” he asked.

            “Hemingway.”

            He rocked back in his seat a bit, smiled, and then said “Sure, I think our students should read more Hemingway.”

            Many of my students are international, for whom English is a second (sometimes third) language.  From the list of novels they can choose, they often select The Old Man and the Sea, probably in part because it’s short.  The others read Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and The Financier, by Theodore Dreiser.  This quarter, 13 of my 18 students read The Old Man, and all but one said they loved it. 

             The young man who didn’t really care for The Old Man said he’d never before in his life read a novel, not in English, not in his native language (Arabic).  He didn’t care for it because Hemingway was repetitive, he thought, and he hated what happened to the fish.  But at least now he can say he’s read a novel, read it closely enough to get mad at it.  When I asked him if he’d read another novel in the future, he said “Maybe.”

            What surprises me every time about the novel-reading assignment in this engineering class is how much the students enjoy it.  They’re supposed to make note of passages that stand out to them, wording that’s different, attention-getting, phrasing that makes them stop and say “I wish I’d said that.”  They’re supposed to track the narrator’s internal monologue (or the protagonist’s view of the world) and see what they get to know about him along the way, how his actions and thoughts compare to their own, and what they learn about him thanks to the private disclosures in the course of the story-telling. 

            It’s “lite” analysis, indeed, but this isn’t a literature class.  In some ways, it’s an exercise in  bridge-building, where engineering students discover something about writing. Maybe it will help to unleash some hidden potential, or at least to encourage future business/technical writers to break out of the doldrums and to write in ways that aren’t predictable and drab, as so much business writing is.  

            If it accomplishes that, I’ll be delighted.

. . . this was the time in our history when the morose novelist Theodore Dreiser was suffering terribly from the bad reviews and negligible sales of his first book, Sister Carrie. Dreiser was out of work and too ashamed to see anyone. He rented a furnished room in Brooklyn and went to live there. He took to sitting on a wooden chair in the middle of the room. One day he decided his chair was facing in the wrong direction. Raising his weight from the chair, he lifted it with his two hands and turned to the right, to align it properly. For a moment he thought the chair was aligned, but then decided it was not. He moved it another turn to the right. He tried sitting in the chair now but it still felt peculiar. He turned it again. Eventually he made a complete circle and still he could not find the proper alignment for the chair. The light faded on the dirty window of the furnished room. Through the night Dreiser turned his chair in circles seeking the proper alignment.

—from E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime (1975)

Scholars at three universities—Iowa State University, Arizona State University, and Sichuan University in China—recently launched Project Yao, a database of American literature translated into Chinese. ASU English professor Joe Lockard explains the appeal of the idea:

“Why, for example, are there so many translations of Longfellow’s ‘Song of Hiawatha’ into Chinese? Since 1930 there have been five Hiawatha translations. What do such translations inform us about the global representation of native peoples in the United States?

“Have there been more recent translations of the work of Native American authors into Chinese? Is the translation economy shifting to acknowledge ethnic self-representation? These are the sorts of questions that one can begin to address by using the Project Yao database.”

The database only includes works of American literature published before 1920, so it’s no guide for what contemporary American writers are being read in China. And the database only covers translations published in China from 1999 on, so it’s not yet a very panoramic snapshot of how the country’s changing political climate affected what got translated. But it’s a fascinating start, and if nothing else shows how the hunger for the likes of Jack London and Theodore Dreiser remains undiminished. (Surprisingly, only one work of Mark Twain’s appears in the database, and even then it’s just a short story.)

According to a 2007 interview with Ha Jin in Guernica, American writers apparently fell in and out of favor rapidly. So when a work by Ernest Hemingway became available, he took advantage of it:

When I was an undergrad in my junior year suddenly American literature became very popular. But at the time many of the books were not available. One book, The Old Man and the Sea, because it was a short book and was written in clear, very lucid, English, had a bilingual edition made just for the English students in China, so a lot of people knew that book. As a result, Chinese readers talked about Hemingway. In that story there’s a fight between a man and a shark. You can conquer but not defeat a man. We were taught a lot of Marxist morals. But this kind of Hemingway American mentality, at least as expressed in that small novel, was fresh to the young people at the time, so we all somehow believed in it. But when I was working on The Bridegroom, I was much older by then, I really wanted to give some comic touches instead of tragic. That’s why I made the narrator unable to remember Hemingway’s name.

If New York had to nominate one street as its most rock-bottom skid row ever, it would probably have to be the Bowery. Not the Bowery of 2009, of course, with its influx of luxe hotels and boutiques.

I’m thinking of the Bowery of 1909, where down-on-their-luck men stood on bread lines and passed time in 15-cent hotel rooms, as these Library of Congress photos show.

If a man found himself on the Bowery, that was pretty much it for him. He’d sunk as low as you could go, and things weren’t going to get better.

Theodore Dreiser understood this when he wrote Sister Carrie. It’s an underrated turn-of-the-century New York novel chronicling the rise of a young, ambitious actress (kind of a Carrie Bradshaw of the 1890s) juxtaposed with the fall of her older common-law husband. 

Sister Carrie ends with the husband, the unemployed, weakened, and abandoned Hurstwood, committing suicide in a Bowery flophouse:

“Hurstwood laid down his fifteen cents and crept of with weary steps to his allotted room. It was a dingy affair—wooden, dusty, hard. A small gas-jet furnished sufficient light for so rueful a corner.

“‘Hm!’ He said, clearing his throat and locking the door.

“Now he began leisurely to take off his clothes, but stopped first with his coat, and tucked it along the crack under the door. His vest he arranged in the same place. His old wet, cracked hat he laid softly upon the table. Then he pulled off his shoes and laid down.

“It seemed as if he thought for a while, for now he arose and turned the gas out, standing calmly in the blackness, hidden from view. After a few moments, in which he reviewed nothing, but merely hesitated, he turned the gas on again, but applied no match. Even then he stood there, hidden wholly in that kindness which is night, while the uprising fumes filled the room. When the odour reached his nostrils, he quit his attitude and fumbled for the bed.

“‘What’s the use?’ he said, weakly, as he stretched himself to rest.”

Have you read any of Theodore Dreiser’s novels?  In his time, which was close to a hundred years ago, he was considered one of the greatest living American writers, but I suspect he is mostly read by English majors today.  Since this is his birthday, I’d like to suggest that you read one of his books.

My top choice would be Sister Carrie, in which a small town girl goes to the big city and is led astray by a traveling salesman.  The results are not what you might expect.

Another remarkable novel is An American Tragedy, based on a true crime, which is a literary relative of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Richard Wright’s Native Son.

Both of these works appear on the Modern Library’s list of the 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century, at numbers 33 and 16 respectively.

Dreiser’s novels are long, intense, and compelling.  He was a prime practitioner of naturalism, which means that pessimism and determinism dominate the novels, and he was outraged by the social and economic inequalities of the day.  Even though it has been many years since I read these books, they have left a powerful impression.

You can find both of these books in the West Palm Beach Public Library in the Classics section on the First Floor or in the Fiction Section on the Fourth Floor, and I hope you will!

Happy Reading!

The Book Goddess

Theodore Dreiser
born this day; best known work  is
based on local tale.

Earlier this week, I mentioned two articles on romantic crime films that I’d written for the current and upcoming issues of Mystery Scene, but I’ve also been thinking about crime films in another direction recently. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been finishing up a course proposal for George Mason University tentatively entitled “Crime Stories: From Page to Screen,” an idea that was first suggested to my by my good friend and fellow writer and teacher John Copenhaver, who will be teaching a similar topic at a local private school this fall. He and I are diverging a little in the books and films we’re considering for our respective courses, but the thrust of the course is the same: to look at film adaptation as an act of interpretation (just as many of our students interpret texts themselves) and to examine both the thematic and stylistic choices that each author or director makes and the different tools available in each form/medium.

The first book/film combo that jumped to my mind for this was The Long Goodbye — Raymond Chandler’s longest book (and some might argue, his best) and then Robert Altman’s delightfully different take on the book, updating a ’50s hero to the early 1970s and making some significant changes not just to the tone and the character but to the plot itself in the process. Another good combo that boasts different treatments of the story is In A Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes, which got a reworking as a vehicle for Humphrey Bogart, and I personally would love to discuss the two different treatments of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley: Rene Clement’s Purple Noon and then the Anthony Minghella version with Matt Damon in the title role. And Memento is a must, of course, looking at how an unpublished short story (from a college course!) became an instant classic. 

Other lists of pairings soon started popping to mind, as John and I talked:

• An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel, and A Place in the Sun, George Stevens’ 1951 film
• The Big Sleep: Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel and Howard Hawks’ 1945 film (and maybe a slightly postmodern treatment of Chandler style stories, Brett Halliday’s 2005 film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, or Rian Johnson’s 2005 film Brick?)
• Strangers on a Train: Patricia Highsmith’s 1950 novel and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 film
• Pop. 1280, Jim Thompson’s 1964 novel, and Coup De Tourchon, Bertrand Tavernier’s 1981 film
• In Cold Blood: Truman Capote’s 1966 book and Richard Brooks’ 1967 film

Even Bonnie and Clyde would offer some interesting possibilities, maybe looking at original newspaper accounts and what the screenwriters did with those “texts” to write Arthur Penn’s 1967 film.

The key, to my mind, is not just to find a book that’s been made into a film — there are a blue million of those out there — but rather an adaptation that does something significantly different in “revisioning” one text into a new medium.

Any other suggestions?

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Dennis Wheatley (ed.) – Uncanny Tales 3 [# 37] (Sphere, 1976)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Playing With Fire
F. Tennyson Jesse – The Canary
Theodore Dreiser – The Hand
Louis Golding – The Call Of The Hand
Hugh Walpole – The Snow
H.R. Wakefield – Lucky’s Grove
Edith Wharton – Afterward
W.W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
Dennis Wheatley – The Snake
Frank Harris – The Miracle Of The Stigmata
Algernon Blackwood – The Trod

Thanks to Bob Rothwell of Dennis Wheatly Info for providing the list of contents.

As I mentioned, the McDaniel College Archives is full of small treasures. In 1955 the New Windsor Public Library of Maryland donated books to the College. The College librarian, Elizabeth Simkins, wrote in her annual report that year, “Another large gift of books was that given by the New Windsor Library and the estate of Mrs. Estelle Williams, of New Windsor and New York. We could perhaps have added even more desirable material from this collection if we had had more time in which to select.” Seven of these books survive in the Archives in the Hoover Library at McDaniel College.

GLOOM
Bertha Estelle Bloom Kubitz Williams
1886-1954

Estelle Williams is a footnote in American literature. Born in Frederick County, Maryland, Estelle’s family soon moved to New Windsor, MD. Here her family did quite well until her father’s suicide in 1898. At age 11, Estelle went off to work first in a creamery her father had owned and when she was sixteen as a telephone operator. She helped her mother, an invalid, at home with cooking and cleaning. When she wasn’t working or cleaning she read dime novel romances popular at the time.

Barely eighteen and filled with wanderlust, romance, and the excitement of the “big city” Estelle left New Windsor for Baltimore. In Baltimore she joined the Enoch Pratt Library where she renewed her love of reading – the one affair that lasted her entire life. It was also in Baltimore she met her first husband Hans Kubitz. Kubitz was from Germany and Estelle saw him as romantic, exotic, and very handsome. It wasn’t to last – in 1913 he abandoned her in Texas and he went off to see the world.

Estelle left for Washington, D.C. where her younger sister Marion was living. Estelle wanted to legally rid herself of Kubitz but it was nearly impossible. She rarely heard from him and when she did, it was often only a postmark that told her where he was. In 1914 she and her sister went to the Baltimore Sun newspaper office to check on a list of victims in a disaster to see if her husband was mentioned. It was on this trip her sister Marion met H. L. Mencken, newspaper columnist, critic, and iconoclast. Soon Marion and Mencken were lovers, an affair that lasted until Marion’s impulsive marriage to another in 1923.

It was while visiting Marion in D. C. that Estelle became friendly with Mencken. This friendship lasted long after Mencken’s relationship with Marion ended. Mencken gave her the nickname “Gloom” referring to the Russian novels she read so avidly. Mencken also introduced Estelle to American novelist Theodore Dreiser. Estelle and Dreiser had a torrid affair that lasted three years. “Gloom” and Dreiser, and Marion and Mencken were reigning literary couples as they socialized in New York and spent summers in New Windsor. As they moved through New York Social circles Estelle realized that Dreiser could not be true to her and she slowly let him go. Dreiser left for California with Helen Richardson, a young actress, who he married just before he died. In 1923 Estelle married Arthur Williams. This marriage did not last after Estelle discovered that Williams was unfaithful.

When “Gloom” moved back to New Windsor in 1937 she was alone and no longer communicating with her sister, however she often went to New York City to visit with friends. In 1945 she found out she had breast cancer and heard the news of Theodore Dreiser’s death. Estelle plummeted into alcoholism and her trips to New York became fewer. She became a recluse leaving her house only to buy books and items she needed. She was found dead by her brother in 1954.

The six books displayed here were given to Estelle by Mencken. Mencken’s last mention of Estelle is in a letter to Dreiser in 1937.

For more information on the Bloom sisters:

In Defense of Marion: The Love of Marion Bloom & H.L. Mencken, Edward A. Martin, editor, University of Georgia Press, 1996

Mencken: The American Iconoclast, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Oxford University Press, 2005

Dreiser-Mencken Letters: The Correspondence of Theodore Dreiser and H. L. Mencken, 1907-1945, Thomas P. Riggio, editor, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986

“Gloom” A Case for Stella, R. Bryce Workman, Fountain Publications, New Windsor, MD, 2007

Dear Gloom, HLM

To Gloom, HLM

Dear Gloom, HLM

For Estelle, H. L. Mencken

Dear Gloom, H. L. Mencken

Dear Gloom, HLM

At 856 pages, An American Tragedy is by no means a fast read.  It took me over two weeks of diligent reading to finish.  At times, I found the prose to be ponderous.  But, Dresier drew me into his story early on and I became invested in finding out what would become of Clyde Griffiths.   

An American Tragedy is based on the Chester Gillette murder case of 1906.  Comparatively the OJ Simpson trial of the early 20th century, it is studied as a model case of getting a conviction via circumstantial evidence. Dresider models his protagonist, Clyde Griffiths, on Chester Gillette. 

Griffiths endures an impoverished childhood with his evangelical street-preacher parents.  As a teenager he goes to work as a bellhop at the Green-Davison Hotel in Kansas City.  Here he interacts with travellers of a much greater means than himself and the reader sees the beginnings of his aspirations to attain a much higher social class for himself.

After a tragic incident, Clyde travels about the country for the next few years in order to evade the law.  Settling in Chicago and securing a position at a high class hotel, he comes into contact with his wealthy uncle who agrees to give him a position at his collar company.  He moves to New York where he starts out in the lowest position in order to learn the company from top to bottom.  A few months later he is given an important position as a department head.  There he falls in love with his subordinate, Roberta. 

Due to a strict company rule against dating employees they keep their love secret.  Clyde uses emotional blackmail to pressure Roberta into having sexual intercourse with him.  The act is secured with his promise that he will help her “get out of it” or marry her if she becomes pregnant. 

Months later, Clyde meets Sondra, the beautiful socialite daughter of an extremely wealthy family.  Other than a few trysts, he abandons Roberta and focuses on making Sondra fall in love with him.  Despite her parents’ objections to their relationship, she agrees to secretly elope with him as soon as she reaches her majority. 

Roberta turns up pregnant and remains so despite attempts at causing a miscarriage and obtaining an abortion.  Clyde grudgling agrees to run away with Roberta after she threatens to expose him, but keeps putting the ceremony off by telling her that he needs to earn a little more money first. 

Clyde reads a newspaper article about a couple who drowned during a boat trip and formulates an elaborate scheme to get rid of Roberta and their unborn child.  He takes Roberta on a pre-wedding trip to a secluded lake.  Although he has a change of heart at the last minute, she drowns due to an accident.  He flees the scene and takes up with Sondra at her summer retreat. 

The police apprehend Clyde and the trial ensues.  The trial was one of my favorite parts of the book.  Dreiser covers it from jury selection to the carrying out of the sentence.  Every aspect is shown from several different points of view making it even more interesting to the reader.

An American Tragedy provides a social commentary on many scandalous topics.  Dreiser was an extremely forward and liberal thinker for his time. 

Dreiser addresses the uneven way society treats the parents of unwed children during the early parts of the twentieth century.  The mother was viewed as a pariah.  People believed that it was the mother’s fault that the pregnancy occurred, since she should have behaved in a more virtuous manner.  In current society, I have noted that it is frowned upon for a woman to be free with her sexuality, but men that have a lot of lovers are almost revered. 

In his introduction, Richard Lingeman notes: 

“Dreiser regarded the dominant religious morality that condemned to disgrace a young woman who was pregnant out of wedlock as harsh and unnatural, a puritanical punishment for expressing normal and natural urges.”

Clyde’s mother, Mrs. Griffiths, is one of the most tragic characters that I have encountered in American literature.  She devotes her life to spreading the word of God, yet she is unable to instill lasting values in her own children.  Like a true Christian, she stands by her children when they are in trouble. 

Religion and the motives of its followers always fascinate me.  Dreiser addresses religion both as an entity forced upon one during childhood and as an entity found upon ones deathbed.  The below paragraph helped to draw me into the story.    

“The truth in regard to Esta was that in spite of her guarded up-bringing, and the seeming religious and moral fervor which at times appeared to characterize her, she was just a sensuous, weak girl who did not by any means know yet what she thought.  Despite the atmosphere in which she moved, essentially she was not of it.  Like the majority of those who profess and daily repeat the dogmas and creeds of the world, she had come into her practices and imagined attitude so insensibly from her earliest childhood on, that up to this time, and even later, she did not know the meaning of it all.  For the necessity of thought had been obviated by advice and law, or “revealed” truth, and so long as other theories or situations and impulses of an external or even internal, character did not arise to clash with these, she was safe enough.  Once they did, however, it was a foregone conclusion that her religious notions, not being grounded on any conviction or temperamental bias of her own, were not likely to withstand the shock.”

Another thought-proking theme in An American Tragedy is social class.  Clyde’s problems come about because he is trying to make his life something that it is not.  He has a lot more in common with Roberta than he does with Sondra.  While Roberta seems intelligent and kind; Sondra is vapid and verging on annoying.  Clyde only likes Sondra because he thinks that marrying her will bring him wealth and power.  In my opinion, the current economic climate is vastly due to the need of people to “keep up with Joneses”, causing them to live beyond their means.  As Clyde proves, this may not be the wisest path to take. 

Although an extremely long novel, I did become engrossed in An American Tragedy.  I definitely recommend putting this book on your to-be-read list.  A Place In The Sunstarring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift was based on Dreiser’s novel.  I have added this film to my Netflix queue.

It may be one of the more grungy parts of Manhattan now. But around 1900, Broadway between 14th Street and Herald Square was one of the centers of the city—a place to stroll, shop, show off, and be seen—lined with fancy hotels and theaters. 

The ritual is chronicled in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, when the title character, new to New York, visits this part of Broadway with a young female neighbor and is enchanted by what she sees:

“The walk down Broadway, then as now, is one of the remarkable features of the city. There gathered, before the matinee and afterwards, not only all the pretty women who love a showy parade, but the men who love to gaze upon and admire them. It was a very imposing procession of pretty faces and fine clothes.”

JANUARY 30, 2009—A PLACE IN THE SUN will be shown in the Community Room at the Riverfront Center on January 30 at 7:00 PM. This 1951 black and white movie, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, is based on Theodore Dreiser’s novel, AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY which depicts the murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. MURDER IN THE ADIRONDACKS is the first complete account of the facts behind the fiction. Popcorn and soda will be available.

FEBRUARY 15, 2009—A book discussion on MURDER IN THE ADIRONDACKS will be held at the Amsterdam Free Library on February 15 from 2:00 to 4:00 PM. Bob Cudmore will be the M.C. and Audrey Kupferberg will lead the discussion.
Refreshments will be served.

MARCH 15, 2009—Craig Brandon, author of MURDER IN THE ADIRONDACKS, will be at the Century Club, 130 Guy Park Ave. from 2:00 to 4:00 PM to present a multi-media presentation about his book. Refreshments will be served.

After three months and four hundred pages, I’m giving up on Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. I don’t want to go into my problems with the book. There are plenty of places on the web where you can read about why people don’t like things; it shouldn’t be too hard to find one for this. I decided when I started this blog that whatever it ended up being, it would not be a place to post negative reviews. I still haven’t figured out what the hell this blog is, but I’m standing by that initial decision. And anyway, I don’t really have many problems with the book. Reading it, I was never not aware of its goodness, if not greatness.

I’m giving up because I just. can’t. be. arsed.

When my friends tell me that they’re not enjoying the books that they’re reading, I always encourage them to give up. I have a whole spiel stolen from half-a-dozen other people about life being too short, about there being too many books in the world, about how reading is supposed to be an act of joy, not one of tedium, about how a person’s free time is too precious to be spent doing things that he or she doesn’t enjoy. I always say it, and I’m pretty sure I believe it, but I definitely don’t practice it.

I love reading, of course, but I also love having read. Well-readness is a quality that I admire in other people, and that I’d like to see in myself. I keep various little lists of all the books I want to read–classics, contemporary fiction, biographies of people I’m interested in, cheap horror paperbacks–and I enjoy crossing titles off. I get that it’s vanity, but so what? No one’s going to look down on a marathon runner for feeling a sense of accomplishment for the races she’s completed, so long as she’s not going around bragging about it. I don’t mean to aggrandize the act of reading, but when you get to the end of a book like, I don’t know, War and Peace, or some shit, you feel like you’ve come a distance. It’s not like I’m going to bring it up at parties–”Ooh, that anecdote your telling reminds me of something that Tolstoy said”–but if someone asks, I’ll answer honestly. “Yes, I’ve read War and Peace.“

To be clear, I’ve never read War and Peace. But it’s on the list!

Anyway, the point of all this is basically that An American Tragedy is a book that I’ve wanted to read and to have read for while. It’s pretty high up on the Modern Library’s Top 100, it was considered smutty at the time, Dreiser himself was kind of a badass, and for fuck’s sake, it’s called An American Tragedy. That’s so ballsy! It might as well be called The Great American Novel. Only not, because that’s sissy shit. This is a tragedy.

But I couldn’t get through it. I started it in October, and since then have manged to put about 400 pages behind me, with another 400 or so to go. I think hitting the halfway point is what made me decide to give up. And maybe that’s where the marathon analogy breaks down (as if it ever held up)–don’t marathon runners usually hit the proverbial wall at mile 20? I didn’t make it that far. I got halfway over the course of three months and realized that that meant I had another three months to go. Unless my rate changed, I wouldn’t be done until March. That’s a lot of time to leave my lists collecting dust.

It’s not even that I didn’t enjoy reading it. I did, and like I said, I was struck by its quality while doing so. It’s that I never wanted to read it. The parts of my day that I usually spend reading–during my commute, on my lunch break, before going to bed–started to get occupied other ways. I listened to my iPod a lot. I joined Twitter. I spent more time than usual staring dumbly into space. Since I started An American Tragedy, I’ve read six other books, simply because I didn’t want to be reading that. Only one of them was as good.

So I’m taking my own preached-but-unpracticed advice. I’m acknowledging the shortness of my own life and moving on. I keep trying to tell myself that I’ll give it another shot later, but it’s bullshit and I know it. If I can’t convince myself to read An American Tragedy when I’m reading An American Tragedy, I sure as shit am not going to be able to convince myself when I’m not.

Sorry, Theodore. Look at it this way: the way I’m leaving Clyde and Roberta, there’s still a chance, albeit a slim one, that things might end up okay for them. I’ll just go ahead and assume that they do.

Last night the Amsterdam Reads 2009 Steering Committee, of which I am part, announced the book that we will be reading this year. Over the past several weeks, 1216 people voted for their favorite among five titles selected by the Book Selection Committee, which I chaired. Murder in the Adirondacks received 481 votes, To Kill a Mockingbird was second with 302 votes, The Orchard was third with 160 votes, A Thousand Splendid Suns received 150 votes, and Enrique’s Journey received 123 votes.

While I voted for The Orchard, I am happy with Murder in the Adirondacks by Craig Brandon. I read it several years ago, and it is a great book. The book is a true account of the 1906 murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. This is the same murder that Theodore Dreiser based his book An American Tragedy on. The film A Place in the Sun, starring Liz Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters was also based on murder.

The Activities Committee is planning several activities based on the book. Plans are not finalized, but book discussions are planned and the author will be visiting Amsterdam to discuss the book.

65 copies of the book have been purchased to sell at cost or loan out, and copies can be borrowed from the Amsterdam Free Library.

Read Daily Gazette coverage of last night’s announcement.

Read coverage of the event by The Recorder. Publisher Kevin McClary is one of the honorary chairs and revealed the selected title last night. Amsterdam Mayor Ann Thane, City Court Judge Howard Aison and WVTL talk show host Bob Cudmore are the other honorary chairs.

Se ha hablado mucho del Harlem de los años veinte y de su poder de catalización. La década más fantástica que haya podido conocer este barrio negro de Nueva York, comienza con el éxito de la comedia musical  negra  y el charleston, para acabar con la caída de la Bolsa en 1929. El Renacimiento de Harlem participa de la exuberancia ruidosa de los años veinte. “Cuando murió A`Leila Walker, rica heredera y diosa alegre de Harlem, el reverendo A. Clayton Powell ofició sobre su féretro. En los funerales de Florence Mills, un aeroplano arrojó pájaros negros sobre los asistentes. Un predicador charlatán, el reverendo Becton, tenía dos ballets y utilizaba una orquesta de jazz para acompañar los sermones. La vida nocturna era desenfrenada. El Cotton Club, en la avenida de Lenox, rebosaba de gansters y de blancos ricos. Los bailarines de Lindyhop se dedicaban a hacer acrobacias cada tarde en Savoy para animar a la clientela y el escenario estaba concebido de tal manera que los bailarines se balanceasen con el ritmo. Gladys Bentley tocaba al piano música hipnótica, durante noches enteras en un pequeño club.

Había también fiestas literarias. De vez en cuando se podía ver a Theodore Dreiser en los clubs de Harlem. La moda se extendió a los libros, a la escultura africana, a la música, a la danza: nombres hoy día célebres comenzaban entonces a ser conocidos: Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington. Los libros escritos por negros se vendían bien y en cada temporada, había por lo menos una obra de éxito en Broadway interpretada por negros”.

 Se cuenta todo esto en la biografía dedicada al escritor Langston Hughes. Es la narración en la que triunfa un barrio elevado de repente a la categoría mundial de la negritud.

Leo todo esto ante la actualidad de las próximas elecciones norteamericanas y del muy posible triunfo de Obama. Como leo y me llegan - nos llegan a todos – las convulsiones de la Bolsa y de la economía de entonces, con aquel balance que Marc Saporta hace de la crisis del 29 en “Historia de la novela norteamericana” (Júcar):

“Las compras -escribe- habían bajado frente a los préstamos garantizados por las acciones en alza; el proceso se detuvo brutalmente cuando las disponibilidades de los bancos y del ahorro se encontraron absorbidas sin remedio. Desde hacía ya mucho tiempo, el dinero líquido en vez de ser invertido en la producción ( la construcción estaba en pleno marasmo) había tomado el camino de la Bolsa. El jueves 24 de octubre de 1929, el punto de ruptura era esperado. Los prestamistas comenzaban a vender las acciones empeñadas. Hacia la mitad de noviembre el total de las pérdidas alcanzaban los 30.000 millones de dólares. Empresas privadas y bancos estaban amenazadas de bancarrota. Los pequeños ahorradores estaban arruinados. Todo el mecanismo económico se desplomó”.

Protagonismo negro y Bolsa a la vez.  Bolsa, y a la vez protagonismo negro.

¿Es un periódico de 1929 ?

¿ O es un telediario de 2008?

(Imágenes: Louis Armstrong/ Duke Ellington en Nueva Delhi, 1963.-foto: Duke Ellignton Collection, Archives Center National Museum of Awmerican History, Smithsonian Institution.-The New York Times/ Louis Armstrong en Nigeria, 1960,. foto: Louis Armstrong House Museum.-The New York Times)

On September 12, the writer H. L. Mencken would be 128 years old. That’s not a particularly noteworthy or auspicious anniversary, I realize. I mention it only because it is around this date that I once again venture over to the shelf, pull down one of his books, and amuse myself.

(This is also the time of year for the gathering of the Mencken Society. Every year, on or around Mencken’s birthday, a small group of professors, scholars, librarians, geeks, geezers, and gawkers, from all walks of life and social strata, get together at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in downtown Baltimore to compare reading notes, brag about rare book collections, sermonize, theorize, and otherwise examine the corpse to find new ways to explain the so-called “Sage of Baltimore” to the rest of the world. In other words, it’s an assemblage of exactly the kind of pecksniffs, idolaters, and ignoramuses that Mencken would have despised. I can say this because I, too, am a devotee of this pecksniffery and have attended the annual meeting off and on for nearly 20 years.) 

In fact, I’ve been reading and rereading the works of H. L. Mencken ever since high school. My father also is an avid Menckenian, and he provided me with my first encounter. He was introduced to HLM in college and decided it would be fun to share his enthusiasm with his young son. So one Christmas he gave me a copy of The American Scene, a collection of writings selected by Mencken’s old pal, Huntington Cairns. (Sometime later I took possession his copy of The Vintage Mencken, compiled by another of Mencken’s cronies, Alistair Cooke. I’m particularly fond of this volume because his class notes are scrawled on the inside front cover). My father also was drawn to Mencken because he shares the writer’s distinctive three initials, as do I.

So, over vacation, riding in the car on the way to visit my grandmother in the Outer Banks of southern North Carolina, I thumbed through this paunchy little volume. I vividly remember the bizarre entry titles, such as “The Divine Afflatus,” ”Criticism of Criticism of Criticism,” or “The Sahara of the Bozart,” puzzling over where to start reading. I can also remember not being able to decipher much of anything at first and wondering who this man was and why, since he seemed so venomously critical, would my father like him so much. Consider this sentence, not even half way into the first paragraph of the essay, “On Being an American,” which opens the book: “It is one of my fiercest and most sacred beliefs, … that the government of the United States, in both its legislative arm and its executive arm, is ignorant, incompetent, corrupt, and disgusting….” Or “the American people constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages….” Then, a little farther down the page, he states, ”Yet here I stand, unshaken and undespairing, a loyal and devoted Americano, … a better citizen, I daresay, certainly a less murmurous and exigent one, than thousands who … hold the Supreme Court to be directly inspired by the Holy Spirit, and belong ardently to every Rotary Club, Ku Klux Klan, and Anti-Saloon League, … and who believe with the faith of little children that one of Our Boys, taken at random, could dispose in a fair fight of ten Englishmen, twenty Germans, thirty Frogs, forty Wops, fifty Japs, or a hundred Bolshevikis.”

I thought: OK, huh? Why is this man saying these things? How can he get away with saying these things? What do all these things mean?

When I asked my father, “Is he serious?” Yes, he answered, “Mencken is always serious. But he is also always funny.” And that’s one of the reasons I continue to go back and read his writings. Mencken was always poking fun to make a point, to draw attention to something he fervently believed in. And, though it took me some years and lots more reading, I have come to appreciate that he is, at the core, a funny, funny man. When I need some comic relief, I don’t have to look far: “It is hard to believe a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.”

Mencken is also very fertile ground, and I could spend many posts discussing the many Menckens — Mencken the newspaper reporter and editor (he helped to create the Baltimore Evening Sun), Mencken the language expert (he wrote a multi-volume treatise on the origins and significance of the American vernacular), Mencken the literary critic (he launched the careers of many of this country’s most famous writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Theodore Dreiser), Mencken the music lover, Mencken the gastronome (he called the Chesapeake Bay “an immense protein factory”), Mencken the satirist (he wrote a bogus history of the bathtub that still gets quoted today), etc.

He was also fascinated with politics, maniacally so, and his writings on this subject are some of his best-loved and most reviled. And this is one of the other reasons I was drawn back to the bookshelf this year. He loved to poke holes in the great windbag of democracy, with a capital D, and the political system it inspires. Especially during convention and election season, which he entered every time, as he once wrote, “like a full-rigged ship before a spanking breeze.” He would have a field day this year, with women and minorities standing in the center ring of what he called the “Carnival of Buncombe.”

Mencken wrote habitually, voluminously, and (admittedly) often just for the sheer joy of loading the chamber of his pen and pulling the trigger, just to hear it go bang! His favorite targets were politicians and lawyers, and his aim was deadly accurate. For example, consider this: “a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.” Or this: a politician is “not one who serves the common weal; he is simply one who preys upon the commonwealth.” Or this: “The politician, at his ideal best, never even remotely approximated in practice, is a necessary evil; at worst he is an almost intolerable nuisance.” It’s hard not to quibble with, let alone laugh at, these sentiments (which, by the way, follow nearly successively from the same paragraph in the essay, “The Politician”).

Although he was always ready for a brawl, Mencken never picked on anyone who couldn’t fight back. And, for the most part, when he swung his fists at a public figure, he kept the gloves on. But occasionally his pieces could be exceptionally cruel. Consider the scathing “In Memoriam: W. J. B.,”which was published the day after Bryan’s death at Dayton, Tennessee. And he found Franklin D. Roosevelt to be a perfectly formed nail and he hammered at him incessantly (and often embarrassingly) for nearly all of his terms in office.

Need your own introduction to Mencken? I think a good place to start is a biography, and there are plenty. I can recommend 2 of the most recently published. I enjoyed The Skeptic, by arts critic Terry Teachout, which provides an insightful, highly readable (if highly opinionated) consideration of Mencken’s place in the literary and journalistic pantheon. And I am still reading Marion Elizabeth Rodgers’ tome, Mencken: The American Iconoclast, which though it delights and moves is almost insurmountable (nearly 650 tightly printed pages) and overwhelmingly factual.

Better is to hear Mencken’s story told straight from the horse’s, er, mouth. His “Days” trilogy is a great romp. Although memoirists are no more trustworthy than biographers, any or all of Mencken’s three autobiographies (Happy Days, Newspaper Days, and Heathen Days) are as entertaining as anything produced in the spirit of the Great American Humorist, like Mark Twain. I have also read and enjoyed Mencken’s posthumous memoirs, such as My Life as Author and Editor and 35 Years of Newspaper Work. Hopkins Press has done a terrific job of keeping many of these works in print, including the posthumously published A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, an eclectic collection of writings selected by the author himself. (You should be able to find the first volume, published during his lifetime, at an online used book retailer, as well.)

So, over this next week, I encourage you to take several actions: pick up one of Mencken’s books, open it at random, read a few sentences, and be prepared to laugh and shake your head. Or, if you live nearby, head to the main branch of Mencken’s beloved Pratt library to attend the Mencken Day festivities. At the very least, on his birthday, follow his wishes as outlined in an epitaph he wrote for The Smart Set magazine: “If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me, and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.”

What a terrible blogger I have become!!

I go in fits and spurts with my blogging, just with my writing. Why is that? I think about blogging and I think about writing…I incubate both a lot, to tell the truth, but there is just something not as appealing as sitting my ass in the chair and putting words to the page.

And yet, the funny thing is, once I start putting words to the page it all flows out so I don’t know why I ever hesitate in the first place.

So here is the roundup of what is going on with me, writing and otherwise.

• My favorite quote of the moment: “”No poem was ever written by a drinker of water.” ~ Horace    I’m not sure how true that actually is but I would guess that for the most part, it tends to be true. We’re talking complete teetotalers here…
• Somewhere nearby there are fireworks going off. I’m not sure why. Some town must be having a celebration of some sort. But on a Monday?
• I am completely rewriting my book in omniscient POV. It’s going terribly in my mind, but that’s what editing is all about, right? I’m ready to start rewriting chapter 7 of 13 already complete–the 13th chapter had me about halfway through, I think. It’s been daunting but I will persevere.
• I’ve been listening to Christopher Paolini’s Eragon as a book on tape. This has its pluses and minuses. The narrator actually does the voices, which sometimes work and sometimes fail (his voice for the dragon is awful IMHO), so that is a big drawback. I’m used to forming my own voices and this one just doesn’t match up. But I like the idea of listening in the car on my way to work and I do find that it resonates. No, I haven’t seen the movie and I probably won’t since it was panned so horribly.  The book is amazingly good and yet amazingly not good.  The not good–predictable in the sense that it draws upon all the old tired fantasy cliches of orcs (ahem, urgols), elves, shades, dragons and their riders, etc. It tends to explain a lot…the training of young Eragon is a bit tedious sometimes. I also find myself questioning things that should be obvious to the characters but don’t seem to be (especially when Eragon was wondering questions about his new dragon and for some bizarre reason just doesn’t ask her directly but has to wait for his aged, magical mentor Braun to answer them). But I have to echo what everyone else always says–if he wrote that when he was 15/16…wow.  The good–I’ve learned a LOT about voice and description. It’s made me think quite a bit about how my own novel is structured and given me good ideas about the rewrites. Paolini has a real gift for these things and I cannot help by feeling jealous that I didn’t have the same talent when I was his age. I find myself very much looking forward to the next book but even more so the future books. If he could write like that at 16 think of what he can do at 25 or 30 or older!
• I have discovered the wonderfulness of a novel critique group. There are only four of us and we strive to get together every other week. Schedules are sometimes tricky but we are dedicated to getting together and talking over our novels be it a chapter, a query letter or synopsis. The feedback is completely invaluable and the moral support is absolutely priceless.  We’re all writing very different things, ranging from literary fiction, chick lit, historical fiction (15th c. India) and my lovely Roman gourmand. Fun, interesting and extra educational.
• I’m reading:
  • War and Peace  -Tolstoy
  • Sister Carrie  – Theodore Dreiser  (a gift from a dear friend and wow, what a surprise!)
  • Sprezzatura: 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World by Peter D’Epiro and Mary Desmond (this is the current bathroom book… a gift from my 2nd gen Italian mother-in-law)
  • Carl Sandburg – Collected Poems
  • Lavinia (talked about previously) is waiting in the wings!
    
• I just created a book for my in-laws 50th wedding anniversary using Blurb.com. The book is done and will be delivered in a week or so but WOW, what a cool service. We’re already coming up with great ideas for xmas presents…cookbook anyone?
  
• I’m going to be starting a third blog soon…yes, I’m crazy. The third blog will be focused on social media and in particular, B2B social media and how companies are breaking through the mold to do interesting things. I’m trying to figure out if I should aggregate my sites–that one for my work, this one for my writing and the other for my casual, fun, social blogging. Perhaps I need a portal after all, with a bio, entrance page, etc., that runs from crystalking.com and links to this site and the others. The thought cracks me up–that I write so much drivel that I may actually need a portal.
• And…I’m twittering if anyone wants to add me:  http://www.twitter.com/crystallyn

I’m going to make a better effort to be around these parts, especially as I plow through more of my novel. Always good to be reporting progress and to stay connected to other writers!

Djuna Barnes was a poet, playwright, and novelist and a key figure in both Modernism and GLBT literature. Her first poems were published in 1915, accompanied by her own illustrations. She moved with her mother to New York City after her family endured financial ruin and there she attended the Pratt Institute and became a member of the Provincetown Players– which was instrumental in the careers of Susan Glaspell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Theodore Dreiser and Eugene O’Neill. In 1921 she was sent to Paris on assignment for McCall’s magazine where she immersed herself in the intellectual and literary life of the West Bank of Paris, associating with such notorious and famous figures as Gertrude Stein, Dolly Wilde and Natalie Barney. She lampooned this legendary salon of women in her first novel The Ladies Almanack, but it is her second novel, Nightwood for which Barnes herself became legend.

Jeanette Winterson, in her Preface to Nightwood, wrote that,

“…the work is an important milestone on any map of gay literature– even though, like all the best books, its power makes nonsense of any categorization of gender or sexuality…Nightwood has neither stereotypes nor caricatures; there is a truth to these damaged hearts that moves us beyond the negative. Humans suffer and, gay or straight, they break thenselves into pieces, blur themselves with drink and drugs…crucify themselves on their own longings, and let’s not forget, are crucified by a world that fears the stranger…And yet, there is a dignity in Nora’s love for Robin…We are left in no doubt that this love is worthy of greatness.”

On the surface, the plot is simple and nearly irrelevant given the sumptuous language and experimental structure of the novel. It is the story of Robin Vote and the people who love her even as she leaves each of them, disheveled and all but destroyed in her wake. The whole is illuminated by the Tiersian seer, Dr. Matthew O’conor, one of the strangest and most brilliant characters in all of literature. Robin marries the Baron Felix Volkbein and they have a son, but Robin cannot endure the confines of marriage and leaves her husband and child for America where she meets her lover, Nora Flood.

“To keep her (in Robin there was this tragic longing to be kept, knowing herself astray) Nora knew now that there was no way but death.”

Subsequently, Robin leaves Nora for another woman, the American, Jenny Petherbridge and the pair return to Paris.

“When she fell in love it was with a perfect fury of accumulated dishonesty; she became instantly a dealer in second-hand and therefore incalculable emotions…She was a ’squatter’ by instinct.”

Jenny and Robin depart for America and Nora, like Felix before her, turns to the good doctor–dressed in drag– for consolation.

“What will happen now, to me and to her?”
“Nothing…as always. We all go down in battle, but we all come home.”

“None of us suffers as much as we should, or loves as much as we say. Love is the first lie; wisdom the last.”

“…what did she have? Only your faith in her– then you took that faith away! You should have kept it always, seeing that it was a myth…the trouble with you is you are not just a myth-maker, you are also a destroyer.”

“The uninhabited angel! That is what you have always been hunting!”

Nightwood is thought to be based on Barnes tempestuous relationship with the artist Thelma Wood whom she met and lived with in Paris in 1922. Published in 1936, the novel was met with acclaim but little financial success. Barnes wrote little journalism at the time, became increasingly ill and more dependant on alcohol and the financial support of Peggy Guggenheim. She eventually moved back to New York and remained reclusive for the rest of her life.

While Nightwood is a centerpiece of gay/lesbian literature, Barnes, who was openly bisexual, was ambivalent about her sexuality. “I am not a lesbian,” she declared late in life, “I only loved Thelma.” But like all great literature Nightwood defies categorization and transcends the boundaries of class and time. As Winterson wrote,

“Nightwood is itself…reading it is like drinking wine with a pearl dissolving in the glass. You have taken in more than you know…From now on, a part of you is pearl-lined.”

Găsesc pe adresa din blogosferă:

http://danutm.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/evanghelicii-intre-liberalism-si-fundamentalism-ii/

articolul purtând titlul: “Evanghelicii intre liberalism si fundamentalism”.

Cred, mereu prea naiv, că toţi aceia care mai scriu pe blogosfera românească trebuie să respecte adiţional,  chiar obligatoriu,  nu doar opţional, Limba Română ! Pentru că titlul acesta de  articol pe care îl scrie  danutm introduce  evidentă confuzie lingvistică, m-am simţit obligat să postez pe blogul domniei sale o corecţie necesară :

“Antonimul fundamentalismului este nihilismul. Vezi si: http://blogideologic.wordpress.com/2007/12/16/urma-drumului-nostru/ Cu stima,/Titus Filipas”

Răspunsul lui danutm a fost unul neobişnuit. Mă învinuieşte imediat că sînt un fundamentalist terorist (sic!). Mai adaugă : “Va rog totusi sa fiti decent si sa nu va mai faceti publicitate aici.”

Pe lângă  “întrebarea retorică”, există şi “invitaţia retorică” spre  citirea unor texte  româneşti  pe un alt blog, domnule danutm. Oricum, “invitaţia retorică” nu este  probă de terorism, it’s a long way to Guantanamo!

Insist totuşi, ca bun ortodox român, să  mai postez un comentariu lămuritor: “Este vorba despre Limba Română corectă. Antonimul de la fundamentalism nu este liberalismul, ci nihilismul. A fost propoziţie sintetică, nu opinie.”

Ce a  a priceput domnul danutm se vede din răspuns:

 “Aparentele inseala, domnule Filipas. Probabil tocmai pe aceasta ati mizat. Ar fi insa naiv sa ne lasam pacaliti de ele.”

Implacabil  acest domn danutm. Conchid şi eu, abia acum,  că evanghelicii manifestă dispreţ faţă de propoziţiile sintetice.

În măsura în care evanghelicii  îi resping pe Sfinţii Ierarhi ai Bisericii Ortodoxe, ei nu au asimilat nici dogma corectă a Sfintei Treimi. Tragedia americană, ne zicea pe vremuri subliminal romancierul Theodore  Dreiser (1871–1945),  se ascunde  în  proliferarea ciclică a sectelor care nu cred în dogma Sfintei Treimi din secolul IV. În finele peliculei Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg  (nu este un evanghelic, ştiu!) comitea un flagrant act de incultură, forţându- i pe oamenii îmbarcaţi pe un starship construit de Aliens  a primi ultima absolvire  de la preoţi de rit vechi. Dar sacerdotul creştin, –impresionant redat de filmul lui  Spielberg–,  trebuia să creadă  în dogma Sfintei Treimi, Holy Trinity de uzăm anglicismul. Aceasta doctrină a cugetării teologice din biserica orientală  a veacului marcat de lucrarea filosofilor cappadocieni   Sfântul Ierarh Vasile cel Mare, Sfântul Ierarh Grigore Nazianzus (Bogoslovul) şi Sfântul Grigore de Nyssa este o teorie a înDumnezeirii, adică a  Spiritului,  Omului şi Creaţiei, o teorie  ce  exclude posibilitatea existenţei unor  ETI, a unor extra – tereştri inteligenţi (Extra Terrestrial Intelligences). Vedem incorporat acelaşi Spirit ce exclude din lume personajele de ficţiune  Aliens, –nu doar ca probabilitate, dar mai ales ca plauzibilitate şi posibilitate!–, într-un principiu  formulat în secolul XX de fizicianul experimentator şi teoretician Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), un om de ştiinţă de confesiune catolică, educat în respectul pentru messa tridentină  - liturghia bazată pe Vulgata călugărului scit Ieronim din Romania Orientală. 

Titus Filipas

Tragedia americană, ne zicea subliminal romancierul Theodore  Dreiser (1871–1945),  se ascunde  în  proliferarea ciclică a sectelor care nu cred în dogma Sfintei Treimi din secolul IV. În finele peliculei Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg comite un flagrant act de incultură, forţându- i pe oamenii îmbarcaţi pe un starship construit de Aliens  a primi ultima absolvire  de la preoţi de rit vechi. Dar sacerdotul creştin, –impresionant redat de filmul lui  Spielberg–,  trebuia să creadă  în dogma Sfintei Treimi, Holy Trinity de uzăm anglicismul. Aceasta doctrină a cugetării teologice din biserica orientală  a veacului marcat de lucrarea filosofilor cappadocieni   Sfântul Ierarh Vasile cel Mare, Sfântul Ierarh Grigore Nazianzus (Bogoslovul) şi Sfântul Grigore de Nyssa este o teorie a înDumnezeirii, adică a  Spiritului,  Omului şi Creaţiei, o teorie  ce  exclude posibilitatea existenţei unor  ETI, a unor extra – tereştri inteligenţi (Extra Terrestrial Intelligences). Vedem incorporat acelaşi Spirit ce exclude din lume personajele de ficţiune  Aliens, –nu doar ca probabilitate, dar mai ales ca plauzibilitate şi posibilitate!–, într-un principiu  formulat în secolul XX de fizicianul experimentator şi teoretician Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), un om de ştiinţă de confesiune catolică, educat în respectul pentru messa tridentină  - liturghia bazată pe Vulgata călugărului scit Ieronim din Romania Orientală. 

Titus Filipas