Caro Carlos: Sobre Francis

Caro Carlos:

Nessa postagem concordo com você. O aspecto mais absorvido do marxismo acaba sendo, paradoxalmente, um certo elitismo, um certo prazer em ser vanguarda politicamente. Escrevi sobre posições semelhantes de um ex-professor, o José Chasin, num outro artigo nesse blog. Chasin dizia que a universidade deveria fazer ensino, pesquisa e revolução e apoiou loucamente FHC em 94 e depois, acreditando que ele ia fazer as reformas que o país precisava (e ainda precisa). O FHC até fez reformas aqui e ali, mas justamente para não ter que fazer nenhuma depois, para poder engessar todo o sistema político e econômico no neoliberalismo.

Francis nunca se preocupou em ser vanguarda em arte. Duvido que ele assistiu Terra em Transe. Nunca comentou; ele viu Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol, quem sabe; no final da vida ele disse que só a segunda metade prestava. A segunda metade é quando o povo toma ferro: o jagunço Antônio das Mortes mata o cangaceiro e os beatos.

Ele, que não teve filhos, multiplicou-se em filhos espirituais pela internet. Um deles é o Júlio Daio Borges, de um site bem badalado, o Digestivo Cultural. Júlio me disse em e-mail recente que posso desistir de receber dinheiro por conteúdo, "foi-se o tempo". Ele anuncia, sem mais, assim, que nem futuramente remunerará colaboradores. Pobres colaboradores! E pensar que eu cobrei dele que os remunerasse.
Pobre Pilar Fazito, mas ela é uma moça rica e pode escrever de graça, para aparecer, para ser chique, para fazer o tico e teco funcionarem. Pobre Rafael Rodrigues, com seu blog irrelevante, telhado de vidro, atirando acusações de irrelevância enquanto se diverte com o Horas Podres de Jerônimo Teixeira, campeão do compadrio, segundo Luís Nassif. Depois Rafael dos Podres que venha reclamar do compadrio na área de literatura, para ele ver...

E o moço anunciou que a inclusão digital do Lula vai acabar com a sensação de que existe uma elite na internet, blogando e escrevendo...No futuro, diz ele, seremos uma civilização gone with the wind.. Ora, se Júlio fosse de outra geração, exageraria no latim como ele gasta hoje seu inglês chique. Eu quis publicar um artigo com o Júlio, ou seja, eu também quis ser escravo rái téqui. Mas ele não aceitou. Tudo bem. Que a alma do Francis o proteja das guerras civis do ser!

Sobre Francis e o Marxismo

deixou um novo comentário sobre a sua postagem "Paulo Em Transe: Marx & Papai Noel": Pois é: uma coisa que um futuro biógrafo do Francis deve sublinhar é exatamente o fato essencialmente trágico de que ele de uma certa forma preparou o próprio fim. Nenhum dos seus amigos políticos de Direita, de fim de carreira, se daria ao luxo de soltar aquele insulto absurdo sobre os diretores da Petrobrás, e se o fizessem e fossem processados, se retratariam imediatamente, e ao diabo as conseqüências disto para a reputação! O Francis não, morreu roxo sem perder a pose...De certa forma, o Francis acreditava em tudo que dizia; ele era a caricatura extrema do intelectual brasileiro de Esquerda renegado, que quando vê o povo agir politicamente de uma maneira que contradiz suas ilusões idealistas (como quando ele adere ao populismo varguista, ou ao pragmatismo do Lula) vira as costas a ele. Na década de 60, bem ou mal, ele teve ainda a coragem de ser companheiro de viagem do Brizola; mas 30 anos depois, deslumbrado em NYC, errou feio. Aqui entra um problema constante do intelectual de Esquerda brasileiro: sua tendência a tirar do marxismo apenas o lado elitista, de um leninismo em que a vanguarda é o único sujeito histórico, esquecendo da frase da "Ideologia Alemã" que diz que o Comunismo é o _movimento real das coisas_ - coisa que Lenin, com todo o elitismo da sua teoria política, jamais esqueceu. A questão aí é entender que, para o marxismo, o ponto de partida é a realidade material, mas também a _contradição_ que ela contém em si mesma; o estado real das coisas, mas tb. a sua superação possível.ass.Carlos Rebello (crebello@antares.com.br)

Para Lobato & Bill Gates: Um Poema

Um país se faz com homens e livros.Meus filhos terão computadores, sim, mas antes terão livros.
Um país se faz.Meus computadores terão filhos.
Antes, homens,
livros
país.
Filhos, computadores, se faz. Mas antes, sim, homens.
Meus livros terão homens, sim, mas antes.
Antes, livros.Sim, computadores.
Computadores, homens, livros, meus filhos se fazAntes, com país.
Homens-livros
Computadores se faz. Sim. Terão.Terão.
Faz. Terão. Terão. Terão.

Chasin, Luiz Bicalho e Álvaro Vieira Pinto


O marxismo em Minas é um tema difícil de abordar, nunca vi um artigo sobre o assunto. Acontece com freqüência que dentro de nossas universidades a bibliografia internacional seja bem mais valorizada que o conhecimento da realidade nacional e regional. Isso leva a distorções enormes. Acho que vale lembrar a frase de José Martí: “ao mundo pela aldeia!”, uma clara e sintética formulação, que sintetiza os conceitos de particular e universal.
Dentro do Brasil colonizado, coube a Minas uma posição desconfortável, principalmente porque a relação desigual entre os países ricos e pobres do mundo acaba se repetindo no interior do Brasil. O marxismo produzido em Minas Gerais não escapa de ser influenciado por esse contexto. O filósofo isebiano Álvaro Vieira Pinto dizia que uma consciência ingênua era uma consciência destituída do sentido do ser nacional, e que toda filosofia estrangeira tem de passar por uma radical depuração antes de ser aplicada a um país subdesenvolvido. Para Álvaro:

É lícito, pois, falar em graus de clareza das consciências, distingui-las por serem umas mais esclarecidas que outras, mais incultas...Desde que não saiba do seu condicionamento, ou o negue, estará excluída da condição crítica, e assim poderá enriquecer-se do mais vasto conteúdo de erudição e sapiência, cogitar as mais profundas teorias científicas ou filosóficas, que nem por isso deixará de ser ingênua. (Álvaro Vieira Pinto. Apud: GUIMARÃES, Aquiles Cortes, 1997, p.122)

Apesar dessa posição ponderada, Vieira Pinto foi duramente atacado por um dos mais importantes tradutores de Hegel no Brasil, o mineiro Padre Henrique Claúdio de Lima Vaz, no final dos anos 70, num artigo na Revista Civilização Brasileira, por querer elevar a uma alta categoria da consciência o conceito de nação e defender o “estado totalitário fascista”, ou seja, o estado novo getulista. De outra feita, numa entrevista para um jornal local, Lima Vaz proclamou que o marxismo é apenas uma província turbulenta do hegelianismo. O jesuíta ficaria, portanto, sendo uma consciência das menos esclarecidas, um hegeliano puro em pleno século XX, um liberal que utiliza o conceito de totalitarismo para rotular seus oponentes, sejam eles o marxismo-leninismo ou o nacionalismo desenvolvimentista. O simples fato de que Vieira Pinto escreveu numa revista onde intelectuais simpáticos ao regime varguista escreviam bastou para comprometê-lo, no artigo supracitado de Aquiles Cortes. Por uma avaliação sumária como essa, Lima Vaz podemos dizer que Lima Vaz se alinha numa vertente católica reacionária, udenista, anti-getulista ao mesmo tempo que anticomunista.
Num outro pólo, também interessado na herança hegeliana, esteve o professor Luiz Bicalho. Esse professor narra, em seu discurso de professor emérito, que buscou o marxismo devido a uma crise religiosa: “Procurei esta casa, seu curso de Filosofia, tentando sair de uma crise, a que os conhecimentos especiais vigentes não atendiam. Acresce que, de formação familiar católica, Deus afinal, se revelava uma ausência.” (BICALHO, 1993, p.24) No mesmo texto ele comenta que a maioria dos professores da Filosofia da Universidade de Minas Gerais “em sua quase totalidade (era) de formação escolástica em seminários católicos, deixava muito a desejar. (...) Aquele humanismo em que o latim era a pedra de toque, de uma vaga espiritualidade, me parecia longe da realidade da vida, quase um ornato.” (BICALHO, 1993, p.24) Luiz Bicalho foi perseguido pela ditadura de 64 por ter militado no partido comunista, mas definiu sua entrada no partido assim: “Foi uma opção política, não filosófica. Com isso, renunciava a tudo que antes tentara ser. Era uma postura niilista, quase uma religião laica, conseqüência da decepção filosófica.” (BICALHO, 1993, p.25) Em seu discurso em 1994, Bicalho explica que rompeu com o stalinismo, mas que nada publicou a respeito posteriormente, pois temia assim auxiliar a ditadura militar de 64. Aí tocamos num ponto importante: a interdição que o regime militar produziu às críticas à esquerda. Esse travo foi agudamente combatido por Glauber Rocha nos últimos anos de sua vida, e o desgaste psíquico que lhe adveio é tido como um dos motivos de sua morte precoce. No outro lado, na URSS, a última polêmica dentro do marxismo foi a de Trotsky e Stálin, vencida por esse último, que foi denunciado como criminoso após sua morte, no famoso relatório lido por Kruschev. Como o professor Bicalho bem observa, não ocorreu polêmica nem confronto de posições, a condenação de Stálin por “culto à personalidade” era um psicologismo vulgar que nada explicava. O que contava, e que não se modificou, foi o esterilizante monopólio do PC sobre o marxismo, reiterado em 1963 com a subida do líder Brejnev. A partir de Brejnev se acentuou o conflito com a China, mas o PC chinês nunca aceitou a exclusão de Stálin, pois as avaliações que esse líder bolchevique fez sobre a questão colonial chinesa tinham sido essenciais para a realizar a revolução nesse país. O acerto de contas com Stálin nunca foi realmente realizado na URSS, redundando na repetição de erros, como a invasão da Tchecoslováquia, flagrante violação do direito de autodeterminação nacional, e ainda reafirmação brutal de um marxismo burocratizado, caminhando a largos passos para o abismo. Outra seqüela foi o abandono dos países subdesenvolvidos à sua própria sorte, como foi o caso do Chile em 1973. Brejnev decidiu se acomodar com o capitalismo norte-americano, contentando-se com uma posição de inferioridade diante da revolução tecnológica americana. Essa acomodação posteriormente se mostraria fatal para a União Soviética: uma vez levada ao extremo por Gorbachev, resultou na destruição da federação em 1991, com o renascimento dos nacionalismos conservadores nas várias repúblicas.
Pelo que posso subentender de sua trajetória, Luiz Bicalho continuou com o PCB ao tempo em que este se aliava a Vargas, mas sem se atar a essa herança trabalhista; logo, quando o PC acertou e se aproximou do movimento real da sociedade brasileira, Bicalho pouco deu pela coisa. Quando foi perseguido, no pós-64, essa linha reformista do PCB caíra em grande descrédito. Bicalho foi mais feliz em buscar a explicação sartriana, que apontava um dos principais problemas, a transformação do marxismo numa espécie de idealismo: se o subsolo de Budapeste não comportar um metrô, é porque esse subsolo é contra-revolucionário. Ocorre, no entanto, que Bicalho chega a desconsiderar de maneira generalizada o comunismo: “O que marca então a sociedade comunista mundial e particularmente a sociedade soviética é a visão coisificadora do homem”. (BICALHO, 1993, p.28) Seria melhor dizer que se tratava de um estado operário burocratizado, que tornou-se dogmático, e seu reflexo nos países subdesenvolvidos foi que a estrutura leninista e hierarquizante do partido fez com que a crítica filosófica ao marxismo-leninismo- stalinismo não fosse possível. Por outro lado, uma autocrítica profunda foi interditada pelo regime militar, que punia violentamente a esquerda. Esse o dilema que tornou Luiz Bicalho um “homem dividido”, como depõe ele em seu último discurso.
Caso à parte no marxismo mineiro, porque de formação na analítica paulista, é José Chasin. Tendo se formado na USP nos anos 60, Chasin se criou próximo de Caio Prado Júnior e Florestan Fernandes, ambos desde muito rompidos com Stálin, sendo porém intelectuais dotados de traços de antipatia pelo getulismo e pelos isebianos cariocas. Sua pouca simpatia por Jango se exprime na afirmação de que, após 64, existia a possibilidade da criação de uma nova esquerda. Ora, 1964 foi a mais terrível derrota da esquerda, iniciando um período de perseguições e tortura para os militantes e de sofrimento e exclusão para o povo brasileiro. Não abriu portas para uma renovação; inovador mesmo foi um professor uspiano como Oliveiros S. Ferreira, hoje editor do Estado de São Paulo, que à época defendeu os golpistas com argumentos marxistas. Creio que, longe de ser um ato isolado de um louco perverso, Oliveiros iniciou uma senda pela qual seguiu boa parte da esquerda paulista: a justificação da ordem estabelecida através da distorção sistemática do marxismo. O próprio Chasin chegou a esse ponto nos anos 90, mas antes passou por todo um trajeto, que irei discutir rapidamente aqui.
Nos anos 60, Chasin finalizou seu curso de filosofia em 1962 com uma monografia sobre a idelogia em Karl Mannheim, autor trabalhado também pelos isebianos. Posteriormente, Chasin afirmou que data do pré-64 seu interesse pelo integralismo –suspeito que a presença de ex-integralistas no ISEB, convertidos à esquerda, motivou bastante essa pesquisa. Mas somente no fim dos anos 70 Chasin produziu o seu trabalho de fôlego sobre o Integralismo de Plínio Salgado, Forma de Regressividade no Capitalismo Hiper-Tardio. O trabalho atacou o conceito de totalitarismo usado por liberais como supracitado Lima Vaz (que ele não cita) e consegue mostrar a especificidade do discurso do integralismo, diverso do nazifascismo. Mas o trabalho é também um ataque ao nacionalismo, que é repudiado como um todo, e aliás um ponto final na polêmica em torno do nacionalismo travada pela intelectualidade brasileira nos anos 60, polêmica esta que terminou, para o meio intelectual e artístico brasileiro, com o descarte do nacionalismo e do trabalhismo derrotados em 1964.
No final dos anos 80, Chasin passa por outro momento decisivo em sua trajetória, e escreve em seu artigo A Sucessão na Crise e a Crise na Esquerda, uma previsão de que, se Brizola não fosse para o segundo turno na disputa com Collor, a esquerda seria derrotada. O argumento é que Brizola é mais carismático e que o PT está vidrado no “mito do partido”. Essa é quase a mesma posição do professor Gilberto Vasconcellos, pedetista convicto, lançou em 1989 no livro Collor, A Cocaína dos Pobres, tentando justamente acabar com a cisão esquizofrênica na esquerda trabalhista, que de fato colaborou para sua derrota neste ano. Mas Gilberto Vasconcellos, dando continuidade ao pensamento de Glauber Rocha, consegue denunciar os responsáveis pela derrota trabalhista: o poderio onipresente da telenovela na sociedade civil, o desprezo pela alternativa audiovisual representada pelo Cinema Novo, o monopólio das comunicações de massa, configurando um capitalismo “videofinanceiro”. Já Chasin mantêm de pé, em linhas gerais, a teorização da USP e do CEBRAP, enquanto Vasconcellos a desconstrói e demonstra suas deficiências. Chasin continua seguindo numa trilha inexistente, sem denunciar a televisão dominante, excluindo conceitos como colonização e o imperialismo. Suponho que, ignorando esses dados, permaneceu uma consciência ingênua pois alheia à realidade nacional.
Ocorreu, porém, que Chasin mudou de lado a partir dessa derrota em 89. Mas a virada mais drástica ocorreu a partir de 94, quando da subida de FHC ao Planalto. Chasin chegou a dizer em sala de aula que hoje em dia (1996) o mundo era “governado por mequetrefes, sendo FHC uma das figuras de maior densidade”. Prefiro, não aplicar a essa afirmação os conceitos de particular e universal e aceitá-la como uma “solidariedade de geração”.
Será que, como FHC, Chasin foi um esquerdista que escondia o seu direitismo, conforme escreveu em seu último texto, citando Nelson Rodrigues? Acredito que o que determinou sua pane intelectual nos últimos tempos foi uma formação uspiana, anti-nacionalista e anti-varguista. Daí sua esquizofrênica defesa das privatizações, seu combate à greve dos professores na UFMG, protagonizando atitudes extremadas, como o momento em que disse aos colegas que o comando da greve era o “comitê central sem os sovietes” e o seu último texto, chamado Rota e Prospectiva de um Projeto Marxista, em que ele avança espinafrando Roberto Schwarz, Paulo Arantes, Tarso Genro, o PT em geral, poupando FHC e Gianotti. Produz para a universidade um bizarro slogan: ensino, pesquisa e revolução. Em meio a essa delirante esperança de uma revolução a partir das universidades, Chasin afirmou que o politicismo sem alianças (PT) é pior que o politicismo com alianças (PSDB-PFL). Porém, digo eu, como FHC é continuador civil de 64, assim como Collor, eis que surge a sombra de Oliveiros S. Ferreira. Chasin terminou como Paulo Francis, defendendo os continuadores do regime militar que o perseguiu, distorcendo argumentos marxistas, assumindo a perspectiva dos vencedores de 1989, negando com veemência o nacionalismo progressista:

Ao fim da Segunda Guerra, na Ásia e na África, (o nacionalismo) foi esteio na luta anti-colonialista e, assim, base do vasto processo de constituição de nações politicamente independentes, mas economicamente subordinadas por inteiro às antigas metrópoles, ou seja, objetivamente, aqui o nacionalismo político redundou em via do neocolonialismo. (CHASIN, 1999, p.51)

Nada existe de objetivo nessa conclusão, onde o nacionalismo fica sendo responsável pela dominação externa que ele combateu. É uma perversão de conceitos, fenômeno mais visível, inclusive, em Paulo Francis, intelectual colonizado que morava em Nova York. Para o derrotado e ressentido Chasin pós-marxista:

Hoje, pensar a partir do nacionalismo é pensar não apenas a partir das forças extenuadas de uma perspectiva vencida, mas de um cadáver, em especial e especificamente para a esquerda, pois é pensar contra a lógica do irreversível movimento histórico atual, é ser esquerda às avessas, não se guiar pelas possibilidades reais de futuro, mas a partir de uma lógica esgotada do passado, que no próprio passado se mostrou inviável e impossível. (CHASIN, 1999, p.52)

Embora, em tese, Chasin acreditasse mais na profecia socialista da revolução social, creio que ele acreditou nela às avessas, concordando (sem citar) com a teleologia criada por Fukuyama para justificar o triunfo da democracia liberal. Esse posicionamento do pensador marxista também revela a profundidade da cisão que desde sempre existiu entre a esquerda paulista com o nacionalismo do ISEB, de Jango, Brizola e dos cepecês. Trata-se, aqui, do apodrecimento social de uma esquerda imatura, tendo o malogro do socialismo de estado no Leste Europeu como principal álibi.
A nova direita, anunciada por Oliveiros Ferreira em 64, tornou-se hegemônica nos anos 90, agregando Gianotti, José Serrra, José Chasin e muitos outros. Justiça seja feita, até Roberto Schwarz, que chamou Oliveiros de fascista, dele se aproximou ao afirmar, em 1994, que FHC era coerente com seu passado de esquerda, apesar da flagrante contradição que representou a aliança do PSDB com o PFL, partido dos signatários do AI-5.
Concluindo, parece-me que, com a conversão desses intelectuais paulistas ao neoliberalismo, precisamos retomar a associação marxismo-nacionalismo, retomando pensadores como Darcy Ribeiro e Glauber Rocha. Será o primeiro passo para reparar um engano que permanece desde 1964 trazendo conseqüências para a vida intelectual e artística brasileira.

O Tropicalismo: Antropofagias, Canibalismos & Seus Dilemas


Caetano e Gil se tornaram uma unanimidade. Vitoriosos na música popular, a arte mais valorizada e economicamente mais atraente no Brasil, viraram artistas multimídia, políticos, escritores, poetas. Discutiram suas sexualidades em cadeia nacional.
Caetano e Gil, quando jovens, atingiram um rasgo profundo, um ponto sem volta, um Zabriskie Point, como no filme de Antonioni. Assim foi toda a geração que vivenciou o marxismo simplificado de Che Guevara e Mao Tsé, farreou com o maio de 68, desbundou e virou hippie e freak e depois da explosão caiu numa bocejante sensação de futilidade. De experiência de “abertura de cuca”, a droga passou rapidamente a uma praga social, um flit paralisante. O que fizeram Caetano e Gil, foram atualizadores de modas? Segundo Arnaldo Antunes, o Tropicalismo foi feito para ser o último movimento--e acabou sendo. Nossa época é de individualismo exacerbado e de silêncio sobre os debates culturais. Jimmy Hendrix, um dos inspiradores do Tropicalismo, canta em sua música “If Six Turn to Nine”: “Se o sol se recusar a brilhar/ Não me importo (...) Se todos os hippies cortarem seus cabelos/ Não me importo/ Tenho meu próprio mundo para contemplar.” O personagem da música fala de um recuo para um mundo interior, da fuga para a contemplação de si mesmo - o que fica subentendido é que a droga é que favorece esta introspecção. Os efeitos destrutivos - que o próprio Hendrix sentiu na pele--não são citados nem discutidos.
O filme Easy Rider, de Dennis Hopper e Peter Fonda, narra o choque da nova cultura pop da América pós-moderna com a antiga cultura agrária norte-americana da qual são oriundos os rednecks (caipiras) que asssassinam os dois hippies no fim do filme. Este final dramático simboliza que esta América agrária já apresenta sinais de morbidez e desespero homicida, enquanto observa que os hippies eram inocentes apóstolos de uma ética do consumo, de um hedonismo exacerbado que explodiria o esquema básico de valores da sociedade, sem conseguir colocar algo consistente em seu lugar. Perplexo, um dos “malucos” repete: “We blow it”, diz ele, o que significa em bom português, “Nós arrebentamos com a coisa toda”, uma observação melancólica e perplexa.

O excesso rococó, o floreio e a exuberância do barroquismo davam o tom no estilo visual daquele final dos anos 60 e começo dos 70. Alguns traços Art-Nouveau, típicos da eufórica Europa pré-1914, ressurgiam em pôsteres, em cartazes promocionais e capas de disco. Posteriormente, a crise do petróleo traria uma depressão econômica incompatível com este estilo exuberante e amante do supérfluo, e o que marcaria sua queda em desuso seria a ascensão dos punks e darks, inspirados no visual sadomasoquista e no agressividade negativa dos skinheads e das gangues como os Hell’s Angels.

Caetano propunha, nos anos 60, que assim como a bossa nova se associara ao jazz, o Tropicalismo se associaria ao rock, dando continuidade a uma linha evolutiva na música popular brasileira. Num esforço de modernização, Caetano e Gil traziam as guitarras elétricas e o ié-ié-ié importados, misturando-os com ritmos mais tradicionais, roupas e cabelos compridos que remetiam aos modismos da juventude americana e européia.

O nacionalismo de esquerda da época vaiou os tropicalistas, ao passo que eles responderam com uma retórica irada e inúmeras frases de efeito. Eles aderiam ruidosamente à ruptura dos padrões comportamentais patriarcais e rejeitavam a esquerda brasileira, que colocava como prioridade a tomada do poder, e estabelecia como secundária a reflexão sobre as mudanças de valores, a chamada “Revolução Sexual”. Caetano, Gil, Mautner, Tom zé, Torquato e outros tinham diferenças, mas o que os uniu tão firmemente, como os modernistas de 22, foi a crítica adversa. Eles queriam “entrar na estrutura do festival e fazê-la explodir” e também ousavam “entrar em todas as estruturas e sair de todas”. Com o visual hippie e o desejo de se alinharem aos rebeldes de maio de 68 numa avassaladora “revolução cultural”, os tropicalistas se indispuseram tanto com a ditadura obscurantista da época quanto com a esquerda nacionalista. O período em que o movimento explodiu foi sucinto, de 1966 a 1968. Embora não pretendessem uma ruptura política, os tropicalistas foram expulsos indistintamente pela ditadura que em 1968/69 destruiu a hegemonia cultural que a esquerda mantinha desde o governo Jango.

Assim, artistas que não tinham colocado como prioridade a contestação política tornaram-se da noite para o dia mártires do obscurantismo e da brutalidade dos militares. Eles bem que souberam capitalizar isso a seu favor posteriormente, pretendendo uma imunidade à quaisquer críticas.

Nos textos enviados para o Pasquim, do exílio, Caetano se definia como um “Nelson Rodrigues Prafrentex”. Isso quer dizer o seguinte: Caetano pretendia uma ruptura cultural, comportamental, não fazia contestação política. Esta postura é, em geral, a de todos os tropicalistas. Nelson Rodrigues foi um conservador político e comportamental. Nelson defendera a ditadura, chamando-a de “Revolução”. Mas era também oposto à “Revolução Sexual”.

O diferencial é que Caetano se confessa de direita em matéria de política, mas adepto do progressismo de esquerda em matéria de costumes. Postura semelhante tomou também a da esquerda norte-americana, que abdicou da transformação das estruturas sociais para defender apenas interesses particularistas.

Com a volta à democracia, em 1984, esta postura é aos poucos tornada hegemônica. Em plenos anos 90, temos Caetano e Gil consagrados, defendendo e fazendo apologia do governo de centro-direita de FHC. Como notou o sociólogo Gilberto Vasconcelos, a aliança entre FHC e ACM é um enclave tipicamente tropicalista, bem ao gosto do vale-tudo que eles instauraram. E quem começou com o termo “tropicalista” foi Gilberto Freyre, mas nem é citado quando falam neste movimento artístico; Freyre é considerado defensor da democracia racial brasileira, postura conciliadora que atenua o peso do racismo e da escravidão no Brasil. A postura de conciliação dos contrários é característica tanto da sociologia de Gilberto Freyre quanto do descentrado movimento tropicalista.

Paulo Em Transe: Marx & Papai Noel

Num artigo da Folha de dezembro de 96, Marcelo Coelho chamou Paulo Francis de “Carmen Miranda do Caos”. Ilustrando o texto, uma figura híbrida entre Karl Marx e o bom velhinho. Uma boa definição.
Francis teve a fase esquerdista, depois a niilista, e por fim morreu defensor radical do liberalismo econômico e feroz conservador cultural.
Em 1966, ainda na fase marxista/ trotsquista: “o problema (dos EUA) é defender seus interesses e, ao mesmo tempo, anestesiar as aspirações dos destituídos que pagam por eles.”
Em 18 de janeiro de 1971 atacava Roberto Marinho no Pasquim, pois o jornal O Globo publicou o nome de Francis e de outros jornalistas do Pasquim junto com os nomes de subversivos que iriam ser trocados pelo embaixador alemão: “Roberto Marinho nos honrou com a preferência. Quer nos banir do país porque representamos uma ameaça para ele. Apesar de seu poder nacional de corrupção -- a metástese Globo de TV se estende progressivamente pelos estados...”
Paulo Francis sobreviveu à sua época e se tornou um símbolo vivo de um tempo morto. Ele acabou por atacar os princípios que antes defendera. Passou a descontar nos mais fracos o seu descontentamento com o presente. Repudiou a esquerda , ele que elogiara Che Guevara.
Com o passar do tempo, Francis foi se tornando cada vez mais conservador, abandonando o marxismo, o comunismo, a esquerda e chegando ao extremo de apoiar Collor em 1989. Tornou-se um sucesso de mídia no programa Manhattan Connection, no canal a cabo GNT. Do final dos anos 80 em diante ele se alinhou claramente à direita. Na Globo ele criou seu personagem e um estilo de falar que influenciou muitos na televisão brasileira.
A revista Veja lançou uma reportagem sobre Francis quando de sua morte, uma matéria de capa. Exaltou o lado mais preconceituoso do jornalista, ignorou o escritor, escrevendo que seus romances foram lançados nos anos 60, quando Cabeça de Papel (1977) e Cabeça de Negro (1979), entre outros, são do final dos anos 70, quando Francis os lançou e constatou que é impossível viver como escritor no nosso país. Consta nas suas memórias que chegou a pensar em suicídio.
A Veja destacou as frases que mais se identificam com ideologia dela própria. Ela, como Francis nos últimos tempos, tornou-se neoliberal e politicamente incorreta. Nas frases destacadas temos o lado cafajeste de Francis, com racismo, ressentimento e desprezo à democracia.
É evidente que nem mesmo o “francista” Daniel Piza apreciou tanto estes seus ditos a ponto de selecioná-los para o livro Waaal, O Dicionário da Corte. Vários deles não constam da seleção.
Minha conclusão é de que Francis aderiu à ideologia preponderante no país ultimamente, o neoliberalismo, que aqui na América Latina vêm mesclado com mau-caratismo e apelos ao autoritarismo à la Fujimori. A ideologia dá mostras de desgaste no continente, com Argentina, México, Peru e Equador envoltos em crises onde o neoliberalismo é o pivô. A revista Veja falou pouco de sua trajetória e não enumerou nem que livros lançou nem sequer trouxe novidades sobre sua trajetória. Narrou o seu fim, atribuído por alguns à maldosa Petrobrás, que quis exercer seu direito de defesa contra o complexado compatriota. É verdade que morto só tem virtudes? Pelo menos para a imprensa brasileira. Francis foi de esquerda no passado, mas num dado momento as coisas se inverteram em sua cabeça.
Ele terminou se conciliando com a burguesia que anteriormente execrou. Adotou sua ideologia, sua pose e retórica, escancarou preconceitos que os donos de jornais, revistas e da esmagadora maioria dos meios de comunicação têm mas não falam abertamente. Preferem o racismo cordial; Francis não. Chegava a ser irresponsável ao defender a ideologia que compartilhava com a Rede Globo. O final foi triste e lamentável, mas Francis já estava tecnicamente morto, como dizia para os amigos. Estava morto também moral e espiritualmente, na prática, como os valores morais da burguesia brasileira. Estava morto como o jornalismo do passado, como o Brasil pré-64, morto como o stalinismo, como os liberais clássicos sepultados pelo neoliberalismo.

Renato Russo, Estrangeiro Para Si Mesmo


No Brasil, passamos muito rapidamente para a era do audiovisual, o que fez com que as massas passassem da oralidade direto para o coloquialismo da mídia massificada.
Renato Russo, nascido em 1960, letrista e compositor, era da nossa geração que viu o fim do regime militar entre 1978/84 e a viveu basicamente enquanto identificação com a indústria cultural e internacionalização. Renato tentou viver ao estilo do rock and roll como seus ídolos, querendo viver a vida do outro, sonhando ser um loiro Eric Russel em suas fantasias. Uma estrangeirice bem brasileira, como disse José Carlos Avellar.
Quando perguntado por suas influências, só citava modelos estrangeiros: The Smiths, The Cure, Gang of Four, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Public Image e outras bandas. A sonoridade da Legião Urbana tinha muito de folk, rock e pop, e nela a MPB era apenas música incidental, ficando em algum lugar entre a Jovem Guarda e uma tropicália bastarda. Bem que o músico Sérgio Ricardo afirmou que Brasília terá de ser reconquistada pela cultura brasileira, pois, desprovida de uma cultura local, agora é praticamente uma colônia americana; não é à toa que Renato Russo admirava os Menudos e criticou o autor de Quem Quebrou Meu Violão sem ousar citar o seu nome, no encarte do disco Dois. Os problemas de identidade eram patentes em suas letras, agravados pela inversão sexual e o comportamento extravagante, sob medida para chamar a atenção da mídia: “Eu sou igualzinho ao Axel Rose”, disse ao se referir aos hotéis que quebrava. Isso o tornava, inclusive, um americanófilo de plantão.
A Legião me marcou como o hino cantado na primeira pessoa do plural, Geração Coca-Cola. O termo se refere à geração dos filhos da geração 68, dita dos “filhos de Marx e da Coca-Cola”. Russo, adolescente profissional, ao falar costumava alternar graves e agudos, como se estivesse mudando de voz. E isso aos trinta e tantos anos! Gostava do cineasta Pier Paolo Pasolini, mas tampouco o compreendeu, aliás achava que os dialetos italianos e sotaques estaduais brasileiros eram a mesma coisa. Pasolini era basicamente um poeta marxista; já Renato Russo, um subproduto imperialista nos trópicos.

Entrevista com Burroughs em 92

Deep in Kansas, darkly dressed, William S. Burroughs, a man who shot his wife in the head and waged war against a lifetime of guilt, who has sucked up every drug imaginable and survived, and who has made a fine career out of depravity, can't on this particular afternoon take another moment of a simple midwestern housefly buzzing around his head. ``I can't stand flies,'' grumbles the seventy-seven-year-old author in that distinctively sepulchral voice, which retains a vestige of his St. Louis roots despite his many years on another planet. The fly swoops down onto Burroughs's plate of cookies. ``Terrible,'' Burroughs exclaims, exasperated, attempting to backhand the fly into oblivion.
``William, that's my pet fly!'' cries David Cronenberg, a man who may love insects but not necessarily people, the director who is perhaps best known for turning Jeff Goldblum from scientist into bug in the 1986 remake of ~The Fly~.
``Now, Julius, I told you not to bother people,'' Cronenberg commands the fly. ``Not everyone likes flies.''
Not everyone likes giant meat-eating Brazilian aquatic centipedes either, but they're featured prominently in Cronenberg's current film of Burroughs's chilling masterpiece of a novel, ~Naked Lunch~. Now that the movie is in the can and Burroughs is out of the hospital after having undergone triple-bypass heart surgery, Cronenberg has showed up in Lawrence, Kansas, Burroughs's hometown of the last ten years, to pay his respects to the laconic sage. With two examples of evil incarnate wandering around town at the same time, Lawrence suddenly seems like a haven for drug-crazed refugees escaping the Interzone, the fictional horrorscape of Burroughs's ~Naked Lunch~.
In the Interzone, we are told, ``nothing is true, and everything is permitted.'' In Lawrence, however, not nearly so much is permitted, but if everything I've heard about William Burroughs and David Cronenberg is true, then the next couple of days will severely test my capacity for revulsion. Burroughs's books, for example, are phantasmagorias of buggered boys, bloody syringes, talking assholes, and vaginal teeth. The old gun-toting geezer himself has been referred to as ``a green-skinned reptilian'' by no less an authority on manhood than Robert Bly.
``Well, I don't think you'll find him to be that bad,'' said Cronenberg, the forty-eight-year-old Canadian director who has known Burroughs for seven years. Of course, this is David Cronenberg talking, the creator of such lyrical films as ~Scanners~ (exploding heads), ~Dead Ringers~ (gynecological horror), and ~Videodrome~ (sadomasochistic public-access TV), who last night giggled while telling me, ``I would like it if you could say that I was the embodiment of absolute evil.''
But with both Cronenberg and Burroughs in the same town, let alone the same room, and with so many disgusting, revolting visions between them, how's a woman to choose? No, perhaps it is better to simply enumerate their revulsions, because if William Burroughs and David Cronenberg are aghast at something, then the odds are the rest of us will be a little queasy, too.
Revulsion No. 1: Shooting Joan
In 1951 Burroughs was living in Mexico City with his wife, Joan, and young son, Billy Jr., after a heroin and marijuana possession charge against him back in the States had been dropped. One September afternoon, Burroughs and his wife dropped by to see an acquaintance and a few other friends who had gathered to enjoy some drinks. Burroughs was packing a Star .380 automatic. At one point in the festivities, he said to his wife, who was sitting in a chair across the room, ``I guess it's about time for our William Tell act.'' They'd never performed a William Tell act in their lives, but Joan, who was drinking heavily and undergoing withdrawal from a heavy amphetamine habit, and who had lived with Burroughs for five years, was game. She placed a highball glass on top of her head. Burroughs, known to be a good shot, was sitting about six feet away. His explanation for missing was not that his aim was off, but that this gun shot low. The bullet struck Joan in the head. She died almost immediately.
The judge in Mexico believed the shooting to be accidental, as the other people present in the room asserted that this was the case. And so after paying a lawyer $2,000 and serving thirteen days in jail, Burroughs was allowed to post $2,312 and was freed.
Eight years later; Burroughs's first novel, ~Naked Lunch~, was published. One of the last books in America to be the cause of an obscenity trial, it is a biting, hallucinatory work that Norman Mailer described as having been composed by a genius. But Burroughs might never have written a word of it had he not shot his wife in the head. ``I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death,'' Burroughs has said, ``and to the realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the ugly spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle in which I have had no choice except to write my way out.''
This is exactly what the film ~Naked Lunch~ is about. It's not so much a re-creation of the book itself, but a story of how William Lee, played by Peter Weller, came to kill his wife (Judy Davis) and write a novel called ~Naked Lunch~. ``It's Joan's death,'' explains Cronenberg, ``that first drives him to create his own environment, his own Interzone. And that keeps driving him. So in a sense, that death is occurring over and over again.'' We both look at Burroughs, relaxing in his modest Kansas house, years away from the charged tropical dream of Mexico City. Although the home seems at first glance fit for a preacher, a quick look around reveals a human skull sitting stolidly in a bookcase and a drawing hanging on the wall of Burroughs throwing a knife. Burroughs considers Cronenberg's theory. How many times has he gone over this same, excruciating terrain? He says only, ``That seems quite valid.''
``What caliber of gun was it exactly?'' I find myself asking. An abrupt transition, maybe even horrifying, but it's practically a relief to bring up the grotesque particulars, and indeed, with these two such a query actually seems to lighten the mood.
``A three eighty,'' Burroughs shouts out, speaking of the actual event. At the same time, Cronenberg blurts out ``a thirty-two!'' referring to the movie. It's a confusion of real life and fiction, not unlike the film itself.
Revulsion No. 2: Cobras, Puffers, and Blue-Spotted Octopuses
Burroughs leads the way into his backyard, using his cane to rustle weeds, flip over likely rocks or boards while I stand poised to grab whatever might slither out. Earlier he'd displayed the cane as proudly as a schoolboy at show-and-tell. Inside it is hidden a sword. ``I just had it sharpened,'' he said. ``Feel that edge!'' He reinserted the blade into the cane. ``Don't want it to come apart in the supermarket,'' he said.
Now he is stirring at something in the grass with the cane. I ask him what we are likely to turn up.
``Garter snakes,'' he says.
At one point in the snake hunt, Cronenberg sees some sort of insect hovering over nearby tall grasses and cups his hands to try and gently catch it. Burroughs waves it away with his cane.
``William, are you interested in insects?'' says Cronenberg, mostly for my benefit, a question that causes Burroughs to regard the two of us warily. ``Not entirely,'' he finally says. After a few minutes of completely addled discussion, Burroughs exclaims, ``Oh, insects! I thought you said ~incest~.
``The most awful creature to me is the centipede,'' he says. A number of them crawl slimily through the movie version of ~Naked Lunch~. ``I don't go into hysterics or anything, but I look around for something to smash it with. I used to live out in the country when I first moved here, and there were a lot of centipedes in the house, and I set out to kill them all. A program of genocide. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and I'd know there's a centipede in this room. And there always was. And I couldn't go to sleep until I killed it.'' Although he never hunts mammals and is even somewhat of an animal activist, Burroughs is quite an expert on killing bugs, having once held a job as an exterminator.
``William's use of insects as metaphors is generally negative,'' Cronenberg points out. ``When he says someone has insect eyes or an insect voice, it's not a compliment. Now, in my movie, you can tell I'm a little more well-disposed toward insects, because the typewriters, which are insects, are almost like cats, really. They came about because when I write at night with the light on, insects come and land on the page.'' This is clearly a fond memory. ``They're relating to you somehow. People are obsessed in a public way with life on other planets,'' he says, a subtle reference to Burroughs, who is so interested in the idea of alien visitation that he has struck up a friendship with ~Communion~ author Whitley Strieber. ``I'm saying that right here on earth we have the most alien life-forms we'll find anywhere, and most of them are insects! How they survive and what their life cycles are like is incredible.''
Burroughs is unmoved by this aria for bugs. ``Your insect typewriters are kind of fun,'' he concedes. But touching bugs in general is not his thing at all. ``I hate the touch of spiders,'' Burroughs says. ``A biology teacher at school had a tarantula, and I couldn't touch the thing, even though tarantula bites are not dangerous. The most deadly spider is the funnel web spider of Australia.'' This leads to the two trying to one-up each other on ghoulish facts of nature.
``There's a spider in Virginia called a brown recluse,'' says Cronenberg. ``And when you're bitten, the tissue just starts to deteriorate and spread. It's very dangerous.''
``Brown recluse!'' says Burroughs as we continue our stroll through the yard. ``There are cases of people who have these huge lesions down to the bone. I'd much rather be bitten by a black widow. They make you desperately sick, but at least it's not deadly for a healthy adult.'' As long as we're on the subject, I ask them to choose the best method of death in the animal kingdom.
``Well, you'd want it to be quick,'' says Cronenberg, ``and as painless as possible. So, what, a Gaboon viper?''
``I wouldn't choose a viper at all. Any of the vipers are apt to be painful, they have both hemo- and neurotoxins. Cobras have neurotoxins.'' Burroughs indicates that this is preferable. Cronenberg shakes his head.
``Cobras are not very good at getting it into your bloodstream,'' he says. ``They don't have injector fangs.'' His hand mimics a snake repeatedly biting his other arm. ``They actually chew, and dribble it into the cut.''
``They have plenty to dribble, believe me,'' says Burroughs. At this point, I've stopped looking for snakes. ``With the blue-spotted octopus, people are usually unconscious.''
``That sounds good,'' says Cronenberg, beaming.
``It's a tiny little thing only about that big. No one's ever survived it. DOA in one hour. Puffer fish have the same venom, and it's also used to make zombies. The flesh of a puffer fish is supposed to be an aphrodisiac and a gourmet sensation, but one tiny part of the liver, one milligram.. there are several accidents a year.''
``Well, that's the obvious choice then,'' says Cronenberg. ``Strangely enough, we have puffer fish in our movie. Hanging there in one shot.''
As long as we have death by nature settled, I ask them by which weapon they would choose to die. ``I don't think about dying by a weapon,'' Burroughs says as we walk back to the house. ``I think about killing someone else with a weapon!''
``I guess that's the difference between an optimist and a pessimist,'' says Cronenberg with a giggle.
Revulsion No. 3: Sucking on Mugwumps
The film that would showcase addicts hooked on insecticide, lizardlike aliens known as mugwumps who suckle humans on mugwump jism, and Roy Scheider, had its genesis when the director and the writer met in 1984 at Burroughs's seventieth birthday party in New York City. Cronenberg visited Burroughs a few times in Kansas, discussing how to approach their project. ``I wanted William's blessing, because basically, there was nothing he could do for me, I had to do it myself'' Cronenberg finally wrote the script in 1989. ``I sent it [to Burroughs] to see what his reaction would be. He hated it and threatened to sue.'' Burroughs smiles indulgently. He actually liked the script, but a Japanese backer pulled out after reading a translation of the screenplay. ``It could have been something as simple as talking assholes,'' says Cronenberg with a shrug.
For years there have been other attempts to get Burroughs's books, including the notorious Junky, to the screen. Among the people rumored to star in earlier incarnations of ~Naked Lunch~ were Mick Jagger, Dennis Hopper (who also wanted to direct), Jack Nicholson, and David Bowie. Chuck ``The Gong Show'' Barris wanted to produce; Terry Southern was supposed to write the screenplay. While these projects fell through, ~Naked Lunch~ had nevertheless penetrated the public consciousness in one way or another long before now.
``One of the problems I had when I said, `Okay, how am I going to do this movie,' '' says Cronenberg, ``was that a lot of the book, and Burroughs's writing in general, has been absorbed into the culture.''
Indeed, he has revealed that when he wrote his first commercial horror film, ~They Came from Within~, his favorite book was ~Naked Lunch~.
Originally released in 1975 in Canada as ~Shivers~, the film concerns a venereal parasite that infests an apartment complex, causing some rather grisly deaths. Burroughs has lately been credited for graphically predicting in ~Naked Lunch~ what is now known as AIDS, when he wrote of a venereal disease that would originate in Africa and afflict homosexuals. ``Males,'' he wrote, ``who resign themselves up for passive intercourse to infected partners like weak and soon-to-be purple-assed baboons, may also nourish a little stranger.'' Cronenberg in his own right earned the title of ~King of Venereal Horror~.
``It's a limited kingdom,'' Cronenberg says with a proud smile, ``but it's mine. One of the reasons Burroughs excited me when I read him was that I recognized my own imagery in his work," he says. ``It sounds only defensive to say, `I was already thinking of a virus when I read that!' But there is a recognition factor. That's why I think you start to feel like you're vibrating in harmony with someone else. It's the recognition, not that they introduced you to something that was completely unthought of by you.
``Here's my conceit,'' says Cronenberg. ``Burroughs and I have been fused in the same telepod together,'' he says, referring to ~The Fly~, where Jeff Goldblum and a housefly are fused at the molecular genetic level. ``And what you've got now is the Brundlething, which is my and his version of ~Naked Lunch~. It's a fusion of the two of us, and it really is something that neither one of us would have done alone. Now I don't know which of us is the fly and which is human.''
Revulsion No. 4: Jerry Lewis
There's not much in this world left to horrify William Burroughs, but being told at the same meal that he, Cronenberg, and Jerry Lewis have each been elected members of the French order of Arts and Letter is nearly enough to send him on another heroin jag. ``We need to vote him out, then!'' shouts Burroughs.
``Yeah, we can all get together and expel him from the order,'' says Cronenberg, ``because everyone always says, `Yeah, but so is Jerry Lewis.' It's an embarrassment to the order. And what about this: Jerry Lewis's movies are dubbed in France, and no one ever heard his real voice. When the guy who always dubbed his movies died, the next three movies of Jerry Lewis bombed in France because it was the wrong voice! So it isn't even the real voice they're responding to!'' They both shake their heads.
``And,'' Burroughs adds disdainfully, ``they loooove Damon Runyon over there. Now, good God!''
Revulsion No. 5: Yage Till You Puke
It's been half a day and no one has taken a hit of anything stronger than the vodka and Coke Burroughs is nursing. These days, at seventy-seven and post-triple bypass, Burroughs is taking a break from the opiates. The conversation, however, is free to range where Burroughs no longer does. It takes a brave man to try and trade drug stories toe-to-toe with William Burroughs, and Cronenberg makes only a perfunctory attempt. ``I tried opium once, in Turkey, and there I felt like I had a hideous flu, you know? It was like I was sick.''
``You probably were! It can be very nauseating. You had just taken more than you could assimilate.''
``I did take LSD once,'' Cronenberg responds. ``It was a great trip. It was a very revealing experience to me, because I had intuited that what we consider to be reality, is just a construct of our senses. It shows you, in no uncertain terms, that there are any number of realities that you could live, and you could change them and control them. It's very real, the effects it left.''
Burroughs nods patronizingly, although he was more of an opiate man. ``Yes. I've taken LSD, psilocybin, mescaline. My experiences with yage were'' -- he thinks of the South American medicine-man drug mixture that caused him to puke violently, suffer seizures, and almost die -- ``mixed, but on the whole, good.''
Talk then shifts to over-the-counter drugs one could abuse, which included the availability of codeine in Canada, opium cold-and-flu tablets in France, and ``in England,'' says Burroughs, ``they used to sell Dr. Brown's Chlorodine. It was morphine, opium, and chloroform. I used to boil out the chloroform.''
``I was chloroformed once,'' says Cronenberg, ``as a kid, when they took out my tonsils. I still remember what happened when they put this mask over my face. I saw rockets shooting. Streamers of flame, rockets.... I can still see it. And that sickly smell.'' He makes a face. After discussing insects, gunshot wounds, and snake bites all day, we're finally onto something that can gross out Cronenberg.
``I hate general anesthesia,'' says Burroughs. ``Scares the hell out me. I had to have it when they did the bypass, but I knew where was. I knew I was in the hospital having an operation, and there was this gas coming into my face like a gray fog. When I cracked my hip, they put a pin in with a local. A spinal. Of course, it ran out and I started screaming.''
``I was in a motorcycle accident where I separated my shoulder,'' says Cronenberg. ``They took me into the operating room and gave me a shot of Demerol.''
``Demerol,'' says Burroughs, brightening a bit. ``Did it help?''
``I loved it. It was wonderful.''
``It helps. I had a shot of morphine up here somewhere,'' he says, pointing to the top of his shoulder near his neck, ``from my bypass operation. She said, `This is morphine.' And I said, `Fine!' '' Burroughs drags out the word in a sigh of bliss. He closes his eyes in an expression of rapt anticipation. ``Shoot it in, my dear, shoot it in.'' I ask Burroughs if the doctors and nurses at the hospital knew who he was. ``Certainly,'' he drawls. ``The doctor wrote on my chart `Give Mr. Burroughs as much morphine as he wants.' ''
Revulsion No. 6: Possession by Demons
There's no question that in one way or another both men are absolutely possessed, but only one of them believes in evil as an actual presence, in fact, in demons themselves. ``I would have to say yes, evil exists, definitely,'' says Burroughs. ``I'm very interested in the whole matter of possession and exorcism.'' He's said in the past that he felt that the dark presence that possessed him on the day he shot his wife has never left him. ``I asked myself,'' he goes on, ``why do these demons have such necessity to possess, and why are they so reluctant to leave? The answer is, that's the only way they can get out of hell -- it's sort of like junk. They possess somebody and they want to hang onto it because that's their ticket out of hell.''
``Do you believe in a literal hell'' asks Cronenberg somewhat incredulously. He is, as he puts it, ``not just an atheist, but a total nonbeliever.''
``Certainly,'' says Burroughs, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. As to the existence of a literal heaven, Burroughs says ``Heaven is the absence of hell.'' Earlier in the day he had remarked that pleasure was the absence of pain and that pleasure in morphine lies in the absence of the pain of withdrawal.
Revulsion No.7: The Horror of Female Genitalia
Mary McCarthy once wrote a review comparing Burroughs to Jonathan Swift because of, among other things, their shared. ``horror of female genitalia.'' It was a phrase that naturally came to mind as I watched some of Cronenberg's films. ``I'm interested in the aesthetics of revulsion,'' Cronenberg explains. ``I'm showing not only female genitalia but the equivalence of male genitalia also, insects and diseases, gooey icky stuff, and I'm saying -- or as I had Elliot Mantle [in ~Dead Ringers~] say -- We are so unintegrated, we have not yet developed an aesthetic for the insides of our bodies. It's my attempt to say, What is ugly and what is repulsive?''
Burroughs is looking tired this evening. In this, his era of clean-living, it's his habit to turn in early. He sees Cronenberg and me out and as we drive back to Cronenberg's hotel, we see Burroughs, frail and courtly, waving from the front porch. In his suite, Cronenberg continues his defense. ``I find the whole idea of revulsion quite strange, actually,'' he says. ``I could easily imagine a human species where revulsion was not a response to anything. It's a specifically human thing. Does your dog have that response?'' he asks.
And in which scene, Cronenberg wants to know, does he actually show a horror of female genitalia I point to ~Videodrome~ when James Woods looks on in fear as he grows an enormous vaginalike slit in his abdomen. ``He seems to like it!'' Cronenberg laughs. ``It's almost like he's proud of it and happy to have it!'' Yeah, and then he loses a gun in it? Isn't that highly symbolic of a well-known male fear? ``Well, I've known some women who thought they lost their Tampax and were just as freaked out as anybody else.''
He tells a story from the making of ~Videodrome~, when Woods is forced to spend days with rubber appliances glued to his chest to attain the previously mentioned orifice. ``And he turns to Debbie Harry and says, `When I first got on this picture, I was an actor. Now I feel like I'm just the bearer of the slit.' And she said, `Now you know what it feels like.' So I'm forcing him to be the bearer of the slit! Reality is what he perceives it to be.''
Cronenberg is becoming increasingly unnerved by the topic. His rebuttals grow more animated. His chief concern is that his art might be seen to reflect his life. ``If you buy into an autobiographical thing between the filmmaker and a character that he portrays, you then make it impossible for an artist to create characters that are literally not him,'' pleads Cronenberg. ``Martin Scorsese was terrified to meet me! He expected to meet a guy who was like Renfield from ~Dracula~, a drooling maniac.'' Scorsese, he points out, would be dismayed if anyone thought he was Travis Bickle. ``I found it hard to believe that the guy who made ~Taxi Driver~ would be afraid to meet me. And that someone in the business himself could still fall prey to the same things that I'm ranting and raving about right now.
``What can I say! It's not true that I have a fear of female genitalia! But how can I prove it without getting into very personal stuff? What level are we talking about, I mean... in the dark, with women...'' He's referring now not to his movies, it seems, but to himself. Here Cronenberg adopts the skeptical tone of a documentary film voice-over. ``Does Cronenberg have this horror of female genitalia or doesn't he?''
If my take on Cronenberg's films is accurate, perhaps we've arrived at the last outrage: female genitalia. Oh, the horror!
But narrowing this particular revulsion to include only women may be too limiting. Given the progression of revulsions we've discussed, I realize that there's something worse, something in Burroughs's estimation that is even more horrible, the final atrocity: humanity. Just a few hours before, Cronenberg, trying to prompt Burroughs for my benefit, had said, ``I once asked William about women. He said something that is in the script, about how it's conceivable that men and women are different species, and they have different wills and purposes on earth. I think it's a very interesting proposition.''
Burroughs sat silently on the couch as his theories were recounted, then nervously cleared his throat. ``Valerie Solanis'' -- the woman who shot Andy Warhol -- ``in her manifesto, gets around to the position that females are almost as bad as males. And that's much closer to my position, where it all a bad idea. Male and female. You know, let's just call the whole thing off.'' I looked at Cronenberg, whose intrigued expression seemed to indicate that he suspected Burroughs might be onto something.
And perhaps, in some perverse, exhilarating way, he may well be. It's a character-building march, that icy trek from misogyny to misanthropy. After all, there's something a little too parochial, too narrow-minded, about hating only one gender. How much better, really, to be disgusted by us all!

Vai Nessa, Althusser, Que Eu Não Vou

Louis Althusser foi um filósofo francês que andou sendo muito discutido desde o final da década de 60 até meados dos anos 70. Vindo após a voga do existencialismo, o althusserianismo veio na esteira do modismo estruturalista. O que Althusser fez foi passar de um dogmatismo católico para um dogmatismo marxista-leninista. Fazendo fumaça retórica e malabarismos teóricos, pouco acrescentava ao marxismo; fazia mais um esforço por vestir as idéias de Marx num modelito mais na moda, sem renovar o marxismo de forma que ele pudesse analisar de forma dinâmica e combativa os fatos sociais. Althusser buscava a “cientificidade” e elogiava Lênin. Acabou por se aproximar do maoísmo, tido como a renovação do comunismo pelo próprio comunismo que os esquerdistas ocidentais tanto esperavam. Mal sabiam eles que o que Mao Tsé Tung fazia era colocar os jovens chineses contra os comunistas de velha guarda que haviam chegado ao poder junto com ele e estavam questionando os desvios do “Grande Timoneiro”.
Os althusserianos, sob influência de Lacan, acabaram se orientando para uma síntese da cientificidade com o Livro Vermelho de Mao. A sabedoria do livrinho vermelho era uma tentativa de passar da prática para a teoria, mas acabava no antiintelectualismo e na redução de um pensamento a um livro de receitas.
Passado o tumulto de maio de 68 e agora que proclamaram a absoluta vitória do neocapitalismo, agora que gente como Francis Fukuyama e José Guilherme Merquior atirou no lixo não só o leninismo mas também o marxismo, agora podemos reconsiderar Raymond Aron, que disse ainda em 68: “Os revolucionários de nossa juventude conhecem, também eles, a impaciência dos puros. Alguns sacam sua pistola quando escutam a palavra cultura, outros quando escutam as palavras liberdade ou democracia.” O que restou do ardor revolucionário dos jovens de 68 foi a dobradinha vale-tudo nas artes/conservadorismo político, já que os revolucionários de então só obtiveram a revolução cultural e não a política. A revolução dos costumes e valores foi corrompida pela indústria cultural. Os valores mudaram por volta de 1975, mas a situação política estagnou.
Raymond Aron, um liberal clássico que lera Marx atentamente, defendeu que o marxismo é um pensamento “equívoco e inesgotável”. Já o marxismo de Althusser ele definiu ironicamente em seu livro De Uma Sagrada Família a Outra: “Pensamento e escrita esotérica, ação violenta (...) Deve-se rir ou chorar? Honestamente, não sei.”

Artigo

As Disfunções do Artista Ou Os Tamanduás Também Amam


O texto A Função do Artista que abre a revista Dimensão de 95 parece tentar se contrapor ao texto homônimo de Ferreira Gullar que data do início dos anos 60 e defende a arte engajada. O editor de Dimensão escreve que: “A finalidade da arte é estética, isto é, de apenas proporcionar prazer estético. A função do artista, desde que o seja, é de produzir beleza.” O texto parece adotar uma postura esteticista e reafirmar uma crença na arte pela arte. Em seguida o editor coloca a seguinte afirmação: “Disso provém, contudo, que não se deve subordinar o específico artístico nem mesmo às suas próprias dimensões políticas, filosóficas, religiosas ou ideológicas.” Ora, é evidente que uma obra de arte deixa pistas sobre o momento social em que ela foi criada e suas pretensões políticas, religiosas ou ideológicas. Ocorre que na capa da revista a palavra “estética” já é usada no sentido apenas de “forma” e não de “filosofia da arte”.
O texto prossegue: “Pode usar (o artista) o material que desejar e tiver. Todavia, como matéria bruta utilizável para fins artísticos. Do contrário, como ocorre comumente com quem inverte os pólos da criação, realizará uma obra que configurará romance, peça teatral ou musical, filme ou quadro, mas, que não terá nenhum valor. Não o tendo, será tudo, menos arte.” Tal procedimento ignora que uma obra arquitetônica poderá usar procedimentos artísticos, ser bela e ao mesmo tempo funcional; a beleza terá sido produzida, mas não gratuitamente e ela então se adequou à finalidade de tal obra. A inversão dos pólos da criação gerará uma obra panfletária, pobre em matéria de forma, conteudista, propagandística. Mas terá, mesmo assim, usado procedimentos artísticos.
O privilégio da forma sobre o conteúdo cria, em contrapartida, obras formalistas, estilo rococó. A importância da obra como conhecimento da realidade será relegada em prol de um experimentalismo que irá desconstruir até a palavra, partindo para linguagens não-verbais. Fica configurada mais uma derrota do pensamento.
Por fim, o texto faz a seguinte ressalva: “O que não está certo é submeter a arte a outros propósitos, princípios e diretrizes que lhe não são peculiares ou tentar impingir isso e, ainda, considerar que é arte a contrafação resultante dessa subalternidade e desorientação. Em suma, não é incumbência do artista, enquanto tal, comprometer-se ou engajar-se em causas estranhas ao intuito de proporcionar prazer estético. Sua atividade, que nada nem ninguém pode legitimamente direcionar, impedir ou limitar (sic), é apenas gerar beleza. Mas, como se tem dito, esse apenas é tudo. Perfaz um mundo grandioso e eterno.(...) Necessário, pois, que se mantenha viva a discussão para que preocupações impróprias não condicionem ou balizem a obra em detrimento e prejuízo da arte. Bastam-lhe, a esta, o isolamento, a marginalização e as dificuldades que a indústria dita cultural lhe ocasionam.”
Mas a própria revista Dimensão exibe a seguinte chamada: “Publicação aberta aos poetas cuja obra esteja de acordo com a linha editorial de modernidade, contenção verbal, rigor, elaboração da linguagem e/ou pesquisa, experimentação e criação de novas linguagens.” Tal chamada, que antecede o texto do editor, restringe quem irá participar. O ponto onde se chega através destes apontamentos do editor: a reflexão e a análise são excretadas em nome do prazer estético, da forma, do trocadilho, do jogo de palavras, do neobarroquismo, do rococó.
O que mais me desgosta é saber que o poder público apóia iniciativas como esta, que perderam de vista o Brasil e desejam passar ao largo de nossa realidade. O que este exagero formal lucrou foi o aniquilamento do significado. A marginalização da poesia em relação à cultura de massas impingida pela indústria cultural realmente acontece, mas Dimensão exala um desejo de auto-marginalização e de auto-flagelação da literatura em nome da pureza da arte.
Não quero com esta carta defender nem o populismo de um Roberto Drummond nem tampouco o catecismo de Paulo Coelho. Quero que Dimensão melhore e se torne menos negligente. Envio também poemas de minha autoria, para comprovar que não só critico mas também ofereço alternativas concretas. Eu declaro aberta a discussão! Evoé!
Abraços! Os tamanduás também amam!

Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)

Background

Language: This is the most famous and widely read Beat novel. Although this work seems dated now, it was important for a number of reasons in American culture, not least of which is language. Consider the following words, many of which came from the Negro ghettos, and the argot of black and white hipsters, but which gained wide currency throughout the Fifties and even after: ball, cat, chick, cool, dealer, dig, flip out, get high or stoned, gone, head, hip, hipster, horse, make it, pusher, split, turn on, joint, reefer, tea, grass, pot, weed, work. Such terminology implies a common culture, a counter-culture in fact, well before this term came to define the youth of the Sixties. The Beat culture is partly defined by its emphasis on drugs and sex as primal experiences (as the words indicate) and the total absence of the protestant work ethic so essential to the “square” American culture of the times. It is significant, for example, that the terms “work” and “making it” in this context refers to having sex and not their usual meanings (to make it = become a success).

Non-Fiction Novel: although the Beats in general and Kerouac in particular were anxious to experiment in prose and poetry and try to create something new, in some ways they were rather traditional, which can be seen if we situate the novel in literary history. Gerald Nicosia has connected On the Road to 19th century American non-fiction novels (though they were not called that) like Mark Twain’s Roughing It and Innocent’s Abroad (108) and one thinks of a number of Melville’s loosely disguised autobiographical fictions. The so-called New Journalism of Tom Wolfe and others is, in this view, a continuation of a fiction based directly on life-experience, a recording as well as a shaping and imagining.
Another writer, whom Kerouac consciously set out to imitate, was Thomas Wolfe, who wrote long, sprawling, autobiographical novels with lyrical and dramatic intensity in the first half of our century.

Naturalism: Frederick Karl relates the beat novel to the fiction of naturalism, a literature in which life is seen as being determined by natural forces like heredity and environment. This definition would seem to be the opposite at least of what is intended in On the Road’s celebration of freedom from restraints, but the connection is clearer in the historical context when one looks backward to the naturalist tradition of the “underside” of American social life, such as is first found in Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and the novels of Theodore Dreiser. More recent works in this line are John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), which relate the adventures of cheerful drop-outs in Monterey, California, from middle-class American culture and values, with characters who value leisure over work. Karl also cites James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonnigan trilogy (1932-35) about Irish Catholic slum youth in Chicago, George Mandel’s Flee the Angry Strangers (1952), about the Greenwich village bohemian culture of the post-war period and Nelson Algren’s The Man with a Golden Arm (1949), which deals with the underground urban drug world, and therefore looks forward to William Burroughs’s novels about drug addicts, Junkie (1953) and the highly unconventional Naked Lunch (1949; US 1953) and the Beats, who also claimed Burroughs as a founding father for his linguistic experimentation, such as the collage technique. These novels, and I include Kerouoac’s here, feature the pursuit of leisure time, as an indictment of a society obsessed by material possessions and wordly ambition. The characters prefer to beg, borrow, or steal rather than work and pay. Their leisure is given over to experimenting with drugs, whether for “kicks” (simple fun) or as way to alternative consciousness, unlogical thinking and ecstatic forms of feeling.

Beat Novel: Frederick R. Karl in his history of the postwar novel lists the following as characteristics of the Beat novel: drugs, booze, sex, talk, frenetic movement, rearrangement of personal connections & reshuffling of lovers or mistresses, the search for some sort of transcendental being, a reliance on cars and spatial fantasies (198). These last two items are interrelated. The wide-open spaces of the American continent contrast with the closed or crowded spaces of European and domestic American fiction and contribute to the individualist fantasy of unbounded freedom (which, however, seems always just out of reach). This is, of course, a theme going back to Cooper and the beginnings of American fiction, which also has its version of the search for the primitive and the questioning of traditional (European) values. Huck Finn, the archetypal American fictional hero, is himself a hobo whose existence, experience, and conscious choices, such as the companionship of a black man, call into question the counterfeit values of 19th century America. The Beats had a cult of the “Holy Barbarian” (the title of a book on the movement), which might be said to have its roots in the figure of Walt Whitman, in which the truth is to be sought in the ecstatic joy to be found in everyday life, and in working-class experience, the suffering and joy of Indians and Negroes, a generalized human solidarity and compassion, and celebration of the American continent as a space for freedom and transcendence.
The word “Beat” has a double connotation: beat (out or down) in the sense of defeated, worn out by life, disgusted by false values and American materialism, and as an abbreviated form of “beatific,” holy, sacred, transcendent, in touch with the divine, a meaning made explicit when Sal describes Dean as “Beat--the root, the soul of beatific” (p.189). This religious aspect is not theological in a Christian sense but closer to Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism, which depends on meditation rather sacred texts, offered the vision of transcendent illumination without gods or priests, and featured non-rational, paradoxical, rather than dogmatic truth. Zen has a spontaneous outlook and method which appealed to the Beats, as does jazz, a music created by blacks which both pulses with primal rhythms and comes into being through improvisation by the performing artist rather than composition. Improvised or automatic writing was a form of experimentation in favor in Beat literature and which Keroauc himself attempted in some of his works.
An early example of the beat novel is Go by John Clellon Holmes (1952), a novel that could also be chosen for analysis since it is more cerebral than On the Road but also more conventional. The title “Go” could be as appropriately applied to Kerouac’s novel where the characters find their reason for being in endless movement; the title was inspired by Neil Cassady, the model for Dean Moriarty, who constantly used the word and who occurs as a character in the novel named Hart Kennedy. The novel was pirated and became a cult book after it went out of print. The hero, Paul Hobbes, resembles Sal Paradise of On the Road, in that both characters are somewhat divided between the spontaneity and immediacy of beat life and their need for stability, order, home life, love, and the usual pursuits of men and women who accept society. Kerouac himself appears in the novel in the character of Gene Pasternak. The existentialist angst of Hobbes, whose name perhaps suggests his need for system and politics that the other characters reject, is transformed into American culture (as here) into defeatism and a concentration on the individual. In both these novels, one might see Beat culture as a rather simple oppositional one to the straight culture. Thus, success/failure, business suit/old clothes & sandals, crew-cut/long hair & beards, cleanliness/dirty bodies, marriage/promiscuity, family life/communal living, whiskey/wine & dope, and in spiritual terms, cheap happiness/exalted suffering, for which a canonical text might be Dostoevski’s Underground man whom Hobbes sees himself as (Karl, 199).

Background of On the Road - the novel was finished by 1951 (its setting, it should be noted, is in the late 1940s; it ends in 1950) but revised and published only in 1957. The first version was written on a 250 foot roll of Japanese paper in one continuous paragraph with no punctuation (Karl 201), a form doubtless intended to suggest the non-stop movement of the novel itself. While the novel deals with the post-war period, what is immediately striking to the contemporary reader is that it pays no attention at all to national politics. There is no explicit notion that we are in the atomic age and other momentous events like the Korean war (1950-51) abroad and McCarthyism at home are taking place. The one casual mention of President Truman (by Dean) is positive. Kerouac himself was a working-class conservative, believing in the family as the source of value. This lack of political radicalism cannot be accidental; unlike the later counter-culture of the Sixties, although it does have some resonance with one branch of that culture, that of the “hippies,” the Beat culture tends to be apolitical by choice, as if there are no ways in which resistance to the reactionary politics of the time can be mounted and the only viable position is to ignore them, to cultivate instead one’s self.

Cultural Context: one might also relate the novel to the culture of the early Fifties: in poetry, the confessional poetry of Robert Lowell, whose (real) madness and instability were explored in print, and beat poets like Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and especially Allan Ginsberg, whose “Howl” is the most famous and typical Beat poem, an angry manifesto; in painting, abstract expressionism, a spontaneous form in which space and shape substitute subjects; in music, jazz, especially bop, developed by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie et al., usually played very fast in small combos and giving scope for individual soloists who created by improvisation. The period, then, may be seen as a search for new form of expression in art and as a reaction against an American consumerism (the post-war economic boom and the advent of television and the hegemony of advertising) and political conservatism. Kerouac’s novel’s publication also coincides with a famous essay by Norman Mailer, “The White Negro,” in which Mailer analyzes the cultural figure of the hipster as alternative to straight culture’s idealization of the businessman.
The tone of the novel at times recalls the detached aimlessness of Hemingway in A Sun Also Rises but the prose is not as lean and spare as Hemingway’s, as it occasionally rises to lyricism in the manner of Thomas Wolfe, or drives relentlessly to a frenetic rendition of the characters’ experience, a kind of “speed-freak” prose (Neal Cassady). Kerouac seems to affect an “anti-style,” an attempt to project the spontaneous onto the inert medium of print. Karl suggests that Kerouac as a writer was preoccupied with finding a distinctive style but never succeeded, either in On the Road (which often does not escape banality or sentimentality) or in other more experimental novels like Subterraneans and Doctor Sax, among others.

Protagonist: Dean, Sal’s hero, is both literally and metaphorically “driven”: literally, because he was born in a car, which is metonymic for his obsession with automobiles and his compulsion to drive fast, and metaphorically, because he is obsessed with movement, is ever restless, never relaxed or content. In this sense, he might be seen an archetype for the American people, rootless, driven, mobile, unable to establish roots. Another term, not applied to him in the novel since it’s from the Sixties but with a similar double meaning is “speedy”: moving fast, never slowing down, and high in the manner of someone strung out on amphetimines (Dean talks incessantly and usually incoherently, the trait of a “speed-freak”; in the novel he doesn’t do these particular drugs but his model Neil Cassady did). Dean also resembles Huck Finn, a good “bad boy,” son of a wino. He spent his early life in Reform School, prison for children, and has been in jail on unspecified petty criminal charges (theft, drugs, most likely) though he is non-violent. He is a “con” man (confidence-man) what would now be called a “hustler,” conning and using people for his own ends and then discarding them without conscience but he is evidently charming enough to get away with it with a large number of friends and girl-friends. It is for me one defect of the novel that this charm does not really come through to the reader. One admires his energy and vitality but he otherwise comes across as singularly unattractive, which would suggest that the autobiographical experiences comprising the novel have not been sufficiently turned into art, the author has not achieved the required narrative distance from his material. Dean has intellectual yearnings (he first comes to Sal to learn how to write, he drops names like Nietzsche, he has a volume of Proust) but the one time we see him reading, aloud, he rambles off into private mutterings. A prolix talker, he usually make little sense and never says anything profound, his usual utterances being exclamations like “yes,” and “go,” and the like, verbal equivalents of his formidable physical activity. Dean is presented throughout as malajusted and manipulative, so in that sense he is not romanticized, but Sal sees him (if he doesn’t manage to show him) as always interesting, a catalyst for the other characters, but in constant danger of burning out. Dean is also important as an intermediate figure between the hobos and bums that are everywhere present in the novel, victims and losers from the capitalist society of success, and the beats, like Sal, who live the hard life of the road by conscious choice. Dean is the son of a bum and nearly one himself (jailbird, frequently jobless, etc.); at the same time, he is the ultimate “hipster,” Norman Mailer’s “white negro,” a man more instinctual than rational who both chooses his chaotic life but at the same time seems to have no choice at all, since he is driven by some undefined inner vision.
In nearly all the features of the Dean-character I have discussed, Dean resembles his real-life prototype, the legendary Neal Cassady who is, if anything, more complex than his fictional counterpart. Cassady knew the underside of urban life as a child, spent time in both reform schools and penitentiaries (where he would read literary classics), and practiced active and socially dubious skills from an early age: he began hitch-hiking and hopping freights with his father at age six, had sexual experience by eight, was adept at seducing women of all social classes and backgrounds throughout his life, had been a male prostitute at sixteen, was an accomplished auto-thief who had stolen five hundred cars and been convicted six times before he was twenty-one. As well as the desperate psychological make-up and social deprivation indicated by all this, Cassady was at the same time athletically gifted, was unschooled but intelligent, intellectually curious and an avid reader, but people did not agree how to take him: he was regarded by turns as both brilliant and intellectually shallow by different acquaintances. He had myriad romances with both men and women: the poet Allan Ginsberg was in love with him, but he preferred women and had a large appetite: several wives, sometimes simultaneously, combined with lovers and prostitutes (in his erotic characteristics, too, he resembles Walt Whitman, and Ginsberg called Cassady “the Whitmanic man divine”). He was said to be both charming (as evidenced by his long-suffering lovers and devoted friends) and also frequently unbearable, owing to his constant exploitation and abuse of these same people, and to his non-stop talking, aided by an amphetimine habit. And yet, Cassady did inspire curiosity and even regard and inspired a great number of young people to look at alternative life-styles and ways of thinking. All these things--with the significant exceptions of the drug-habit, he only smokes m.j., and performs no homosexual acts in the novel--Dean Moriarity is directly inspired by Cassady’s life: the episodes, like the Cadillac trip to chicago and the trip to Mexico, happened pretty much as described.
That Kerouac, however, may have idealized his friend becomes clearer when Cassady’s own writing, which is uneven and mainly autobiographical, is examined; Kerouac always claimed it was superior to his own but it may be fairly said that Cassady’s inspiration derives mainly from his fabulous but at the same time very American life, as seen in his astounding energy and endless attempts to make himself over. Cassady may even be seen as a bridge between the 50s and 60s counter-cultures, since he was the driver of the legendary day-glo bus (in which capacity he was nicknamed “Speed Limit”) in which Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters roamed America and was part of the group at Kesey’s retreat at La Honda, in which a number of people tried through drugs and ecstatic experience to forge new ways of life and consciousness. It was Cassady, finally, who made Kerouac realize that he might use just the material from his own life without needing to invent anything outside it. Cassady died in Mexico in 1968 from a lethal mixture of nembutals and alcohol. (Nicosia 92-114 for this paragraph). There is a biography of him, called The Holy Goof (William Plummer, 1981).

Vehicles - There is a certain symbolical significance to the vehicles employed on the road. Trains are never used (Sal says at one point he doesn’t know how to jump a train, which freight-car is best, which direction they are going, etc.) as trains are the means of transporation of the true hobo, as in fiction of the Thirties. In the novel, hobos like Dean’s father are seen going south in the winter on freight-trains and then returning when the weather gets warm. Buses are occasionally resorted to when money is available, which isn’t often. The car is the novel’s supreme means of movement, whether driving or hitchhiking. In the post-war years the culture of the car, especially with regard to youth, had its great moment: the industrial boom fueled by war production and the low price of gasoline made the big fast american cars a world export. Socially and culturally, the car for youth meant freedom and sex (you can get away from the prying eyes of parents and with a large vehicle you have what is in effect a mobile bedroom). A whole youth culture developed around the car: cruising the main drag was the principle pastime (cf. “American Graffitti”); here, too, going nowhere was a means of pleasure. It is to the point that Dean is the character most closely associated with cars, about which more later.
The cult of instinct - there is, in this novel and most other Beat literary productions, a certain anti-intellectual strain, which might go back to Walt Whitman himself (“When I heard the learn’d astronomer”) for a more naive, direct approach to life, a life of action as opposed to thought, the “natural” as opposed to the non-genuine, yea-saying as opposed to critical statement. [Quote p.13, “Dean’s intelligence”] where we have to take Sal’s word for Dean’s intellect since it is nowhere much in evidence but it is clear that Sal reveres instinct over abstract thought, and even Dean’s criminal acts are signs of affirmation. Note, however, the allusion to Shelley and the citation from the Bible, as if in a fictional text “literary” culture cannot be denied after all.

Women - The passage quoted above also illustrates Dean’s rather predatory attitude toward women. He romances them constantly but it is on the level of conning them; they exist for the satisfaction of an appetite. One might contrast the descriptions of Dean in this first chapter as a unique and interesting character with the rather cursory one of Dean’s first wife, Marylou, who is stereotyped as a dumb but pretty blonde. Women throughout the novel are given short shrift, invariably described as sexually enticing but offering nothing else of interest. Like Ed Dunkel’s Galatea or Dean’s several wives, they are cheerfully masochistic: they are routinely humiliated by their husbands or lovers but come back for more. This, of course, is the male fantasy of a proper woman, and in fact the women tend to be seen as accessories--whether for sexual gratification or domestic labor--to the men rather than characters in their own right, and except for their names we shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them. They are also, even as in classic American fiction (again, Cooper and Twain may be cited) emblematic of everything the men are trying to escape: order, society, responsibility, family, a stable domestic life, and they are especially the impediment to unbridled freedom (they always seem to be crying or complaining). Dean has a number of wives but can’t make up his mind which one he will stay with, which is understandable since they all seem interchangeable. Sal on this point is more complex than the other characters. He goes along on the parties but has less success with women than Dean and, crucially, he longs for love and the woman that will make him happy in familiar terms (he finds her in the end, a “happy ending,” which makes his story more conventional than the author might be conscious of).

Genre - The novel is formless, episodic in nature, another version of the “picaresque.” Sal, however, does not quite fit the role of the “picaro,” or rogue, since he is not so clever or street-wise but constantly robbed or conned by real rogues, thrown over by women, etc. Sal has presumably been in the war and at sea, so he should have learned something from those experiences but he presents himself as a naif, a Candide. The novel might also be described as marginally belonging to the genre of “Travel” literature, since Sal guides the reader to and through a variety of “exotic” places, which include not only Mexico (exotic), but the lower depths of large American cities, places contained as it were within the familiar landscape which the middle-class reader at least cannot be expected to be familiar with: the dives, flop-houses, jazz joints, Negro parts of town, which may have been one of the attractions of reading the novel at that time: safe access to inaccessible places. Thematically, there is the classic theme of the search for the father, especially old Dean Moriarty, who is much discussed but never turns up, but this theme is not seriously pursued.





Commentary:

Part I.
Chpt. 1 - Sal meets Dean in New York. The first sentence shows first, that this is a world of male-bonding; Dean Moriarty in effect will take the place of the narrator’s wife, though homoeroticism never quite surfaces (endless face to face talks seem to be the substitute or perhaps the sublimation for homosexual acts). Remember Leslie Fiedler’s theory of American fiction as the lone male and his minority companion on the quest; if we take the quest in this novel to be essentially Sal’s, the narrator’s, Dean might be seen as the (white) negro companion. Second, this sentence has the personal world-weariness, “beat” in the sense of defeated, which keeps coming up in intervals between frantic activity, as the trough of each wave of movement. The narrator Sal constantly fluctuates between joy and sadness, ecstacy and despondency. Sal’s last name Paradise suggest the “beatific” meaning of beat. Sal reveres Dean for his “madness,” as the leader of a cult of vitality and energy, a human antidote to the incipient nihilism which we have seen as an ingredient of Beat culture [quote p. 11 “the mad ones”]. Here Sal characterizes himself as a follower, not one of the mad ones but someone who likes to be close to them to absorb some of their energy and zest. In this reading, the real hero is just who the narrator says it is, Dean.


2 - Sal sets out on lone trip west (though to his frustration he ends going north and then south again). This account resonates with the mythic west of the pioneers, the frontier which he reads about before leaving. The classic americanness of the undertaking also signaled by his food: nearly always apple-pie. The details of his several vehicles, connections suggest that Sal is not so much inventing as recording his experiences, i.e. Sal is merely a mouthpiece for Kerouac. The author has a keen eye for the detail of places. That Sal is not himself mythicized is shown by his refusal to omit his being conned or made foolish or even concealing his hero Dean’s shortcomings. In this chapter, for example, the epic journey is demystified. Sal sets off with a grand vision--of drawing a red line on the map straight across America and following it--but he gets stuck trying to realize it; he gets caught in the rain, no body will pick him up, and ignominously he has to take a bus back to New York and start over, which suggests that America is more complex than the mythical desire to master it.
3-5 - I think the finest episode in the novel, relating Sal’s lyrical cross-country hitch-hiking, the prose equivalent of Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road.” This episode is a celebration of wide-open American space, geographically the midwestern plains, but with a characteristic ambivalence about direction and destination. Whither? Denver? LA? Opportunities open up with the possibility for travel but perpetual motion here, as after in the novel, becomes an end in itself. The wide open space metaphorically is the freedom and comraderie of the men on the road, that wonderful passage of the farm-boys going to California in a flat-bed truck and picking up everybody along the way--a classless vision of a real democratic America (significantly with women missing) where money, liquor and cigarettes are shared among them.
6-10 - Denver interval, forward movement stopped, but characters keep moving in circles within the city. Large group of male buddies on a party, working-class mostly (Dean, Carlo). Along with some of Sal’s naive reactions on his trip west, this episode points to a curious feature of the novel, a group of what are after all grown men who think and act more like adolescent boys. No one works except sporadically (though that may be put down to conscious choice) yet their material needs are constantly, almost magically provided for, as if they were dependent children: food and room provided by someone’s parents or relatives, sex supplied by compliant women, money always turns up somehow (Sal’s aunt, for example). Yet, Sal has identified himself as a “veteran” (army) and he occasionally gets veteran’s benefits (Uncle Sam the most beneficient relative of all) and he has been to “sea” (merchant sailor), so he must be at least in his twenties, yet the boys go round in a gang, commune only with one another, act up like kids, etc.
[Quote p. 53, “beat generation” is explicitly mentioned]
11 - Like “paradise” itself, the maximum satisfaction is always deferred. Sal is always aiming to get somewhere but never really content when he is there, he always has some other place on the next horizon: “I’ll dig this later,” he says, but right now I have to get somewhere else. For example, in the next episode,
12 - where he takes up with Terry, the Mexican woman in Los Angeles, he has hardly spent much time in southern California and he is already talking about returning to New York. The description of the LA streets is superb, an early vison of the future postmodernist city: a cacaphony of sounds, styles, characters, activity. One attractive thing about Sal is his dream of solidarity with down-and-outs of society, the poor and racially excluded, underclass, road bums, etc., these people seen positively in the novel, even a little idealized, always described as “wonderful.” “Everywhere I went, everyone was in it together” (p. 88) Sal says, when he’s driving around with Terry’s brothers.
13- At this point, the endless round of drinking and partying means constant poverty, living day to day like the poor. Sal, a former college boy, has to do proletarian labor like picking cotton for low wages, a job at which he is woefully incompetent (Terry and her little brother pick much more than he does) though in compensation his empathy with the poor is increased by seeing how hard they work. The road, then, is not only “kicks” but a place to learn the human solidarity so notably lacking in people who lead stable and safe lives.

Part II
Chpt. 3 - [quote p. 114] which almost might be the Beat philosophy of the road.
6 - They go south to pick up Galatea, whom Ed Dunkel had dumped in the midwest on an earlier trip. Old Bull Lee (perhaps William Burroughs, who was an older man and used the name of Bill Lee in some of his novels and who was a lifelong drug addict) described as student in the “streets of life.”
7 - Dean & Bull Lee give their own form of special education: road-skills, disarming knife-assailants in dark alleys, the proper way to jump off a moving train.

Part III
Chpt. 1 - [quote p. 169 “sad overworked Jap”] is perhaps the most quoted passage of the novel and highly criticized at the time. While we understand what Sal is talking about, the spiritual limitations of white middle-class life, he hopelessly idealizes minority cultures, even to the point of caricature (the “happy” Negroes). Here, too, we see the limitations of what I called Sal’s attractive empathy with the lower classes; it stems less from human solidarity (though there is some of that as well) than from his own feeling of inadequacy, of the lack of white soul, as it were, where he doesn’t perceive that the soul these people have originates in their material poverty, suffering and discrimination. In any case, what he calls his “white sorrows” doesn’t last very long; immediately, he says an unnamed “rich girl” with whom he spends the night gives him a hundred dollars for no apparent reason and off he goes with the money to San Francisco. His sorrows in this context seem ludicrous: the minority people he envies cannot have such facile and immediate cost-free gratification, but he evidently doesn’t see the contradiction.
4- Description of a tenor-sax solo in a low-down jazz club attempts to capture the rhythm and ecstatic quality of the music and its audience. Sal goes home with the musician and there is a revealing passage where the man’s wife is in bed and they have to practically walk on her to get to the light bulb but she just lies there smiling [Quote p. 122, “That’s a real woman for you”]
5 - Dean shows his driving skills by giving dangerous lessons in how not to drive. Dean is at his best at top speed; in a sense, he’s a humanized car; a critic cleverly called him “a centaur” half man, half car, as he is truly in his element behind the wheel.
7-9 - For example, he makes the trip,1180 miles (almost 2700 km.) in 17 hours, minus 8 hours they spend in a ditch, at Ed Wall’s ranch and under arrest, so he really did it in nine hours, which Sal calls “a crazy record.”

Part IV
Mostly describes their trip to Mexico City by way of Texas. [Quote p. 264 from the top] a passage in which Sal essentializes and conflates the world’s peoples on one hand, but on the other shows he has some understanding of their journey and the people they are seeing, who are not reduced to picturesque natives for tourists. Nevertheless, Sal and his two companions act like (hip) tourists, doing the usual American thing: getting drunk, going to the whorehouse, throwing money around without any understanding of its value. Still, one has the idea that these at least are unlike their countrymen in that they have contact with real people, talk to them despite the language barrier, see them as sympathetic, suffering people rather than stereotyped “dirty” Indians, etc.
In Chpt. 5, the account of their comic and chaotic romp in the whorehouse has the ring of authenticity; and there is a description of a mariajuana high in which Sal conveys the mental confusion and and sensory illusion but also the vividness of color and inner excitement [p. 268]
Sal gets sick in Mexico and Dean deserts him; it turns out he had only gone along to get a quicky Mexican divorce, so he can marry his third wife but then immediately afterward he deserts her and goes back to the second.

Part V - merely an epilogue, in which Sal makes it back to New York alone, Dean’s last visit, and Sal’s final rejection of his friend as he evidently will go on to a more stable life off the road, marriage, writing books, and so on.





























Spatial Chart for Keroauc’s On the Road

Part I - Chapter Cities Direction Events

1 New York ---- Sal meets Dean
2 NY-Bear Mountain-NY N/S Sal unable to go west
3-5 NY-Denver W Sal hitches solo across midwest plains
6-10 Denver --- Dean’s buddies’ party
11 Denver-San Francisco W Sal hitchhikes to west coast
12 SF - Los Angeles N Sal takes up with Terry
13 LA-Fresno N Sal works in the fields
14 LA-midwest E bus-trip
Part II-1 Paterson, NJ-Virginia S Sal’s southern relatives
2 Virginia-NY-Paterson N ---
3 Paterson-Washington S Dean arrested for speeding
4 Paterson-NY --- New York party
5 New York --- Sal tries to “work” Marylou
6-7 NY-New Orleans S Sal, Dean, Ed visit Bull Lee
8-9 New Orleans-LA-SF W/N Trip through southwest
10 San Francisco --- Sal shacks up with Marylou
11 SF-NY E Sal & Dean fall out
Part III-1 Denver-SF W Sal seeks out Dean
2 San Francisco --- Camille kicks out Sal & Dean
3 San Francisco --- Galatea berates Dean
4 San Francisco --- Jazz night
5 SF-Denver E Dean’s driving scares tourists
6 Denver --- Sal & Dean stay with Okie family
7 Denver --- Dean steals a car
8-9 Denver-Chicago E Dean sets speed record in Cadillac
10 Chicago --- Sal & Dean cruise Chicago
11 Chicago-Detroit-NY E Sal & Dean sleep in skid row theatre
Part IV- 1 New York --- Sal & Dean split up
2 NY-Denver W Sal meets up with Denver buddies
3 Denver --- Dean arrives, they plan trip to Mexico
4 Denver-San Antonio S Sal, Dean, Stan go through Texas
5 San Antonio-Gregorio,Mex. S Pot, sex, and mambo in whorehouse
6 Gregorio-Mexico City S Dean deserts Sal when he’s sick
Part V - Mexico City-NY N Sal leaves Dean behind in NY