Eschatological Targets

"I wouldn't know where to find such people." Tom Wilkinson.

When Howard Stern had syndication currency, simulcast from his New York station to WYSP, he claimed, in less than scintillating fashion, that black authors wrote to capitalize on the white guilt market, and I probably believe that about Morrison's work, though I am not entirely certain about Beloved in particular, like a snake in the grass, choking on marshmallow. Did she write it for the chimera of canonization? For herself? For a paucity of comparison to the estimated 4 million lives taken in the division of the Korean peninsula?

We read fictional narratives for many reasons, the most prevalent being an enjoyment of satire, or the need to escape ourselves. What Morrison has provoked in me is guilt, guilt not for her characters, some so abused, so wretched, that they snap into a madness, pleasure and horror intermingled, but guilt in my own identification with her bleak exposition. There is nothing wrong with softening the toughness in her courageousness in being explicit, as she does in Beloved. It has the standard ironical undercurrents, humorous interludes, comparisons to Salman Rushdie's ending of The Satanic Verses, descending into the escape hatch of schizophrenia, but the hymnal wail of Morrison's communal voice of expiation was too overly lavish. It led to a regurgitation of my sympathies. This doesn't mean I resent Toni the way I resent Oprah's rise as America's shadow empress, but a cop out is still a cop out, though it would be too much to feel the grand dame implicitly modulated her tone for a Danny Glover/Winfrey deal.

I do not know the truth about myself anymore. Jimmi Shrode cut me socially first because I was having an emotional breakdown over what Linda did to me. He had been my friend (supposedly), but refused to understand what he and Erik von Schmetterling did was wrong, and placed honest applicants at a disadvantage. Since Philadelphia ADAPT, as a whole, cannot rectify its moral turpitude, I cannot reengage the group. I have absolutely no intimacy in my life, not a soul to speak to who cares about me. Think about that, how hard it has been for me while Linda still buses into work, has her social extensions and a paycheck, and I can't leave the building where so many of her consumers still traffic in and out of her domain. Both the staff who knew me and the staff who didn't say "I transferred your case file." Why don't we close your case file?

Are you that relegated?