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Sisyphus Press -- P.O. Box 10495 State College, Pa. 16805-0495 The Edge of the Earth: Philosophy and Madness for the Disillusioned by Victor Thorn For Orders in U.S. only $15.99 (free shipping) AIR MAIL: For Canadian + International Orders (U.S. checks, money orders, or currency only - no Canadian checks, money orders, or currency) |
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This is a book of philosophy, theology, social criticism, and the writer’s life. Or should I say this is a book about everything. It’s very much subjective and speculative – and a book reviewer’s nightmare. Not because it’s un-thoughtful or nonsensical (after all, it’s in the Common Sense Series), but there’s very little structure and it is written in a “first thought best thought” style in which any given sentence can be trashed or treasured if taken out of context – and I’m using context for lack of a better word. Contradictions abound, as they inevitably must in a piece of writing which is trying to deal with the whole wide world and beyond. The writer tries to persuade us that instead of cumbersome prudential considerations, that we pursue our goals instinctively by listening to “other voices from other rooms.” It’s said there are no absolutes. But the author emphatically insists there are. I take this to mean he’s saying: it is possible to know the truth. But we all lock ourselves away from the truth by creating Illusions. If there is an operative word throughout this book, it is “Illusion.” Thus our existence turns out accordingly. Why do we make it such? Answer: in order to get by, make due, and enable ourselves to tolerate living under the foot of “Big Brother” – now a popular cliché still used fifty years after Orwell created this sinister image (I might add that Mr. Thorn is not prone to use such tabloid images). His choice is of more serious, scary words employed (mostly figuratively) to illustrate this bleak existence of ours. On page one already is found Camus weighing in on suicide from his book The Myth of Sisyphus. I’m not sure about Camus, but author Thorn doesn’t mean “suicide” in the sense of literally killing yourself dead, but rather killing the old self (with its ‘illusions’) to forge a new person tough as leather and ready to “break on through to the other side” as Jim Morrison used to sing in the good old days. The world is upside-down (true) and we must find a way of breaking out of the Illusions. Clean out the fecal matter between our ears and see with clear eyes the world for what it is. Start getting things right. Go with your instincts, and watch & listen to those voices you hear from who knows where? And go for it – in each life become righter and righter so that you can carry credit forward to the next life and the next. Surely by now the reader knows where we’re going with this: but of course, reincarnation. The soul never dies but lives again and again and will continue to do so until – in the middle of one of these lives surrounded by misery – we have lined up all of our ducks so perfectly that we can jump off this meat-wheel of eternity and be flown to God’s distant shore to live in bliss forever – which lines right up with Christian belief. Mr. Thorn’s roadmap suggests an unusual hybrid belief that I can’t resist calling Hindu-Christianity, and something tells me he can back-up the truth of this concept with chapter-and-verse from the Christian Gospels. Thus, instead of seminal material, we’re looking at a synthesis of already existing and, at first glance, disparate beliefs. Hybrids by-and-large usually don’t work – especially in the arts. This is why, for example, when I hear anything called “fusion” in music, I run the other way. But I’m afraid your reviewer, normally a humble film critic, is in over his head in these higher reaches of philosophy. This atomic pamphlet is engorged with food for thought like meat packed hard in a salami. In order to proceed, we must accept this combo-concept. We’re starting with a man on base, so to speak: this theory of eventual resurrection only after countless reincarnations down through the centuries seems like a torturously long journey if your belief system is rooted in the orthodoxy of the more-or-less mainstream church. Your reviewer is a member of “The United Church of Christ,” no more, no less. I guess you’d have to think of religion – that dirty word – as “The Grande Illusion.” But Thorn is always reverential to Christ Jesus. Is he a Christian? I’m under the impression he is. But he’s one of those chaps who’ve come up with his own formula for salvation and the almighty truth. And here all this while you and I have accepted and practiced the usual standards of church worship: communion, baptism, confession, and a one-on-one relationship with the Savior and his Gospels. We gather together to celebrate the good news of God’s plans for us – Church, the dreaded “organized religion.” This doesn’t seem to me anything overly complicated or sinister. Yet one hears so very often the empty and un-useful expression that goes something like this: “I believe in a supreme being, but not in organized religion” (horrors). My reply, if I’m fast enough to say it before they turn away, is: “Well then, you must prefer un-organized religion”? But I have yet to hear what this is (?): a pinch of this and a pinch of that, one supposes. Or could it merely be a pinch of an excuse not to get one’s self out on a Sunday morning for church and that “boring sermon”? Then there’s the unhappy fellow who tells us he knows those who sin and do evil all week, then make sure they're seen at Sunday services; a hypocrite. Still others believe in nothing at all and are proud of it, and are jolly well looking forward to turning to dust or being eaten by worms. Wait, we haven’t touched bottom yet. And here I speak of the broad masses, the thundering herd who think nothing, nothing at all. They’re here for awhile, long enough to reproduce and go to Wal-Mart and survive – which of course no one can do, and don’t give a fig for pamphlets by Messrs. Luther or Thorn. And that goes for you too, Yogi or Christ or whatever your name is. And this, I think, is partly the meaning of our book title: the image of standing on “The Edge of the Earth” --- and seeing nothing. But in spite of such universal indifference, let’s revisit this marriage of heaven and earth proposed by the author, Thorn. Why? Because he cares. Let us follow him down wrong roads and turn with him to get back on the right road. We’ll chase the white whale with Ahab, step into the dark wood with Dante, and speed across the night in a ’56 Chevy with Dean Moriarty at the wheel. But we’ve been warned, the task is Herculean – like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up a hill; like forging humanity to God. Let’s say the reward is at least partly in the task itself. But the pitfalls are legion along the way. Nietzsche said, "If we knew the real truth we couldn't live." We'd either go mad (he did), or die (he did both). To which Thoreau replied, "Most men live lives of quiet desperation." I take this to mean we've had a glimpse of truth and we don't like it much, and thus live with our "Illusions" - invented or otherwise. Still, the subject is casting out our Illusions and ridding ourselves of the “Big Lie.” What is the Big Lie? Well, it’s almost everything. Our author takes as a perfect example funerals. They’re absurd and outdated, we are told. “The cult of Thanatos. How do we diminish our sadness?” Well, we don’t know how. But somehow they do. I was to a funeral of a beloved one recently and it did diminish my sadness. What do you say to that, Mr. Thorn? My illusions, possibly; but if I could venture an explanation, it’s that rituals and conventions are put in place with good intentions to get us through the eons of our discontent. But that’s just it, replies Thorn. We cloud the issue and use it as a buffer between ourselves and the pain of loss. Adding, “You should have treated the deceased well while he was with us.” But really, none of us do; do we? That’s why we have friends – so we have someone we can treat badly. And I think of my own Irish race who party-down at funerals! But what we have here is a classic circular argument, no better example of which exists than John Lennon's song Imagine. “Imagine there’s no heaven … no hell below us …” and we know the rest. Isn’t Mr. Thorn’s “anti-Illusion” philosophy the same as Lennon’s idealism? But here’s the rub: which is which? Is the way you live now truth? Or are your “imaginings” the truth? And who is the clearinghouse who tells us which is which? All the philosophers had a part of the truth. And it’s fair to suppose Mr. Thorn has his fair share. He says, “We embrace illusions which have been artfully concocted for us long ago to keep us in our places.” Page-after-page we are fire-bombed and hand-grenaded with this theme – with plenty of air-and-tank support. There is no under-abundance of factoids, but it seems to this reader that there’s scarcely any proper summing-up – say more than suggesting a release of the id, and to follow the path of the mad ones in life: Kerouac, Bukowski, Burroughs, and Mr. Hunter “Gonzo” Thompson. Throughout Mr. Thorn’s writing output (he’s the only writer I know who measures his published works by the pound – 65 pounds if you want to know). But if there’s a weakness I’ve noticed that runs throughout his work, it is the lack of strong summations; after a ton of evidence, the rap-up is lacking – say like when Mr. District Attorney winds up his case in front of the jury. But then knowing Victor Thorn, he would reply, “The law is a whore” and your reviewer would agree. (“To live outside the law you must be honest” – Bob Dylan) Thorn tells us Jesus was the ultimate outlaw because he, more than anyone else in history, existed outside the Illusion. Still, questions linger: just who are these villains who “artfully concocted” the Illusion? And when, where, and how long ago? The sameness of the “us versus them” theory of history palls. “To create, one must destroy” – a notion I first heard in Army boot camp. And of course it’s true. But the thought only becomes useful, the author tells us, when we discover our purpose and goals. These words are not new, but what is? How to start: be receptive to occurrences outside the ordinary, like a voice or sign breaking through from beyond, or some parallel universe in which we also inhabit, so to speak. Perhaps it could be a kind of telepathy that is created through great friendship or the vibrancy that grows toward a beloved hero. The author speaks of his younger life, somehow sensing, before anyone told him, the tragic death of baseball player Roberto Clemente. Another example might be a kind of non-verbal message one receives when confronted by unexplained phenomenon such as the blazing sunshine of Southern France shown in few venues other than the paintings of Van Gogh at a museum. Or still more intense, the transfiguration of Christ (Mark 9:2-3). And following these examples, the manuscript turns from the expository into a hell-world, racing narrative of burning intensity – suggesting the writer’s life. For as Hemingway tells us in his deadly Snows of Kiliminjaro, “A writer cannot sit on his ass, but must rove and roam” – and party-hearty while he’s at it. Thus ensues a mad journey fueled by enormous amounts of booze and drugs. Madcap adventuring to the West Coast and back, up and down the Eastern seaboard and back down through the South. And each morning writing 60-pages of his ongoing trip; but soon to take its toll in self-destruction. He speaks of looking in the mirror and seeing a wreck (and his eyesight was perfect). Then suddenly one day, while standing, slurping a beer and idly watching the TV he sees crippled meat-man Larry Flynt being pushed along in his wheelchair. And in a Zen-like flash that voice conveys to our journey-worn traveler to cut the rambling and jump on the stick and come in for the big win. Thus Odysseus stands on the Edge of the Earth! Life is a test. Fail it and you’re in for another cruel cycle … and another and another. Summing up, the Illusions are instilled early-on. Public indoctrination begins with children. (Did you know, for instance, that “Santa” is an anagram for “Satan”?) However, I’m somewhat sure that Christ was not necessarily born on December 25th – not that important in the broad scheme of illusions. Your humble reviewer is “okay” with the 25th. But more importantly continues the author, “This twisted pairing of dominance and submission, of acceptance and subservience to one’s imprisonment is the true sickness of our existence.” And “The Law = the Illusion. It’s the vehicle by which the Controllers operate.” There is truth here. Yes, life is hard – to state things more prosaically. But the reviewer continues to wonder, to hope, to have faith in a less arduous way of escape than the carrying forward of accumulated street cred, goodness, savvy, and resistance to the “Controllers” in life to life … to life. And I here offer a humble Rx retaining the Hindu flavor of things. First by asking for the acknowledgement that time is man-made. You might even say it’s yet another Illusion! And instead of these eternal (and infernal) lifetimes, let’s see each day as a lifetime. “Each day dies with sleep” – Dylan Thomas. And each day we reach a higher place through confession and prayer. For all the Lord is looking for is a fellow who, at the end of the day, will think about, without denial, the wrongs and contemptuous things he’s done to his fellow man since the morning and give himself a good dressing down so that his behavior is improved in the future. That good deed we do today may take on an even greater significance sometime, hence in this way Christ gets you as ready as possible before resurrection. I say, “As ready as possible” because the simple fact is: we’ll never reach perfection – as we are only flesh. This seems to cancel out the reincarnation pathway. Yet I keep thinking this is not an insurmountable difference of opinion. Mr. Thorn’s maverick formula for reaching salvation proceeds toward the same destination as my own: eternal salvation with the Lord Jesus Christ. The formula by which this is reached is of secondary importance. One thinks of John Irving’s The World According to Garp. Garp thought the writer’s life would assure safety for he and his family. Thorn tells us to “forget safety and live dangerously.” Ironically, Garp is long gone, shot dead via the hand of violence, and Thorn is still with us going strong. by Allen Kirkpatrick |
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