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the
current
Monday
Report
below!
This week's report by James Nowlan, ULA
"The Protoplasmic Ivy League Literary
Vagina and Its Sociopathic Offspring"
To be a successful sociopath one must develop a persona that hides
one’s true intentions. Though some might have more of an inclination
towards sociopathy than others, the role of the environment in which
this veneer is applied shouldn’t be denied. The vicious conditions of
the lower classes are often accused of producing anti-social
individuals but elite institutions have their own methods for
producing persons divorced from conventional morality. The case of
Kaavya Viswanathan exposes the mechanisms which foster their
development.
I haven’t actually read Viswanathan’s book (I’m sure it’d be beyond
the comprehension of a definitely non-Ivy eligible high-school drop
out) but from what I have gathered it’s the story of a girl who has
been pushed too hard to fit the criteria that a supposedly egalitarian
institution like Harvard must seek and so she must now cultivate a
more fun loving image in order that the admissions board will
perceive her scholastic success as a result of natural aptitude rather
than parentally imposed rigor. The book itself, it turns out, is not
even the result of her own work but mostly plagiarized from other
teen books and probably not a result of some chick lit muse
descending upon Kaavya Viswanathan but marketing ploys of several
groups involved.
The true drama here is the unraveling of all the layers of deception.
An “author” writes a book that is in large part plagiarized and in
which the protagonist supposedly resembles herself. This personage
must cultivate a more light-hearted and carefree exterior to hide the
fact that her parents have engineered her life to give her the
appearance of being exceptionally talented in order to enter into a
university that needs to admit a number of students that can act as
propaganda instruments in order to perpetuate the illusion of their
meritocratic nature. A mirror facing another mirror both reflecting an
endless series of mirrors that continue off into eternity. Is this how
myths are made, from bottomless depths of nothing? And glancing at
the mythic should send us back to the origins of this venerable
institution Harvard which has so much to do with American fiction.
Cotton Mather, a Harvard graduate whose father was an ex-president
of Harvard (guess they had legs even back then) has greatly
contributed to the American myth in his work “The Wonders of the
Invisible World,” in which we learn that “The New Englanders are a
people of God settled in those, which were once the devil’s
territories” that “the devil attacks the people of God” and “an army
of devils is horribly broke in upon the place which is….the first born
of our English settlements”. The existence of the “people of God”
makes necessary the creation or discovery of the agents of the devil.
The frenzied search for these malefactors leads to annihilation. The
witch’s sabbath, the hidden ceremony which gave them their terrible
powers is now replaced by an academic literary cabal that conjures
up literary stars like Viswanathan.
The naive nihilism inherent in Viswanathan’s work might be
compared to the more conscious efforts of Warhol. While the depth
of Andy’s nihilism had to be minimized, that of V’s cannot even be
acknowledged, not even by herself. His original rows of detergent
cartons and soup cans were simply a representation of the esthetic
product as it was, but of course his later works of painted celebrities
that reflect an even bleaker vacuity needed to be interpreted as
celebrations of “cultural icons”. Viswanathan’s book is a reflection
of social relations as they are but of course it needs to be attacked as
“false” because the deeper truth that it reveals is that much more
frightening.
To truly look at Warhol’s work one wouldn’t feel that he is trying to
say that American society is superficial but that it is empty, which
cannot be said to be the same thing. Rows of detergent cartons or
soup cans with simply printed logos upon them. A terribly bleak
landscape that opens its vast maw before the contemplator. There are
superficial humans but humanity itself is never superficial, there is
always too much of the grotesque and repulsive and those giddily
unaware of their own share of the human animal’s putrefaction are
all that more grotesque and repulsive for their ignorance.
All the pomp and ceremony, ranks and regulations are simply there to
hide the bestial truth that lies behind it all, the dark force that is
driving America to the abyss just as it drove all that came before.
Another Harvard alumnus, William Burroughs, called it the
mugwump. The mugwump doesn’t care about your grade point
average; he just wants to fuck you and kill you. When the facade is
torn away the mugwump is revealed in all his squat horrific glory. All
the sociopaths think that they are running the show but in truth they
are nothing but sock puppets on the mugwump’s finger tips waving in
a pantomime of glee, luring you in close enough so that the
mugwump can get your pants down and his fingers around your neck.
And of course the sociopath in chief is W, mocking America and the
world by mocking himself. Making the sting of humiliation that much
harsher by revealing the absurd nature of the instrument as a sadistic
murderer might display the gleaming sharp edge of a knife with
which he plans to slice up a victim he has tied to a chair in order to
derive further pleasure from the cringing of his captive. His favorite
technique, the neoplasm, a worldwide international philanthropic
charity or such like but which leads us to ask if much of what is
worldwide isn’t national and many charities aren’t actually
misanthropic and what is called multi-cultural is actually anti-cultural.
Here is the lie of academia’s multi-culturalism: only those who are
sufficiently superficial and hedonistic can be admitted. V must show
herself to be sexually available in order to have her place within the
Ivy covered monkey house and be ready to join in the simian frolics.
For ultimately the role of American universities is much more social
than educative and to be socialized one must be sexualized. Yes, we
all need to get naked open up and find out the truth about ourselves.
The “truth” of America is to be found in the way in which we have
learned to lie. To conceal the bitter reality of ugly social relations
behind a cheerful smile. One must learn to dance this waltz of
deception in order to be invited to the ball and not be left outside
with the beggars. This “veritas” for which so many children are
fictionalized. For I would count all Americans as the children of the
Ivy League Protoplasmic Literary Vagina. Those graduated from
lesser colleges, incarcerated in prison, fighting America’s wars or
maybe sleeping in its subways stinking of piss. The great vampiric
vulva opens its maw to let out its terrible tentacles which then seize
us by the neck and we are forced to swallow her foul menstrual fluid
whilst a pair of terrible fangs that emerge from the depths of the
orifice are thrust through our chest into our hearts. Right now at this
very moment the Ivy League Protoplasmic Literary Vagina is sucking
the blood out of you while the mugwump humps her from behind.
[Note: Kaavya Viswanathan, authoress of Opal Mehta, recently
acknowledged that she had unconsciously plagiarized – had been
victim to‘cryptomnesia’ if you can swallow that – several episodes
from books by Megan McCafferty; article at the Harvard Crimson
on-line : http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513041]
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James Nowlan is the author of SECURITY. He is also a film-maker
and an expat living in France.
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