Various impediments to purchasing a pizza

There's a little place up the block called Scent of Italy that had the best pizza I've yet encountered in Jersey City. Don't know how Authentic or whatnot it was, but it was perfect for my purposes -- thin, firm (but not overly crispy) dough with fluffy, chewy crust, a nice wet brush of sauce over that, a thin but substantial layer of mozzerella on top, and some thin-sliced mushrooms and other vegetables spread all over, along with thick pieces of sausage and pepperoni, all of it sunk into (and at points submerged in) the cheese, which was cooked to a minimum of browning.

Anyway, it was a minimum ten buck order for delivery, which put a 10" Supreme Pizza (as described above) just out of reach at $9.95 (next up was a 16" for $16.95, at which point you may just as well go for the $18.95 18"). The point being that, when ordering for myself, I was stuck calling in the order and then walking four blocks to pick it up. Which isn't a big deal in the more temperate seasons, but it's a full-on endurance test during the freezing months of winter. Which is why I pretty much flipped out on the counter-manning adolescent who fucked up my order one night last March.

Now keep in mind that Scent of Italy is famous (amongst, at the very least, myself and my roommate Chris) for employing quasi-pubescent girls whose innate stupidity had doomed them to a life of dire prospects long before their first inevitable unplanned pregnancy. Along the lines of:

ME: "I'd like to order a ten-inch Supreme Pizza for pickup"
IDIOT ADOLESCENT: "What?"
ME: "A ten-inch Supreme Pizza for pickup."
IDIOT ADOLESCENT: "Hold on a minute."
(An interval of some five minutes follows, often terminated by me hanging up the phone and calling back).
IDIOT ADOLESCENT: "What was your order?"
ME: [See above, but slower and with almost comical ennunciation]
IDIOT ADOLESCENT: "An eighteen-inch pepperoni pizza?"
ME: [See again above, but with an undertone of irritation that Adolescent is either oblivious to or blatantly uninterested in acknowledging]
IDIOT ADOLESCENT: "Fifteen minutes." (hangs up phone)

-- only imagine this going on way longer and without the endless, Escher-esque layers of repetition being edited out for the convenience of the blog-reading public.

The point being that the aggressively freezing March evening on which I trudged down those long cold blocks to pick up the 10" of sustenance-sustaing Supreme Pizza that would fill my stomach -- if not my Seasonal Affective Disorder-ravaged soul -- was far from the first on which I arrived to instead find an 18" Cheese Pizza ready for pickup. And was then offered the option of a) paying $15.95 (Cheese being cheaper than Supreme) for the pizza I hadn't ordered or b) waiting twenty minutes for the pizza I had ordered to be prepared. Which really shouldn't have been all that big a deal (the waiting shouldn't have been), except that I tend to wait until I'm already well past starving (and thus in a foul mood indeed) before ordering and am known to experience a Staring Into The Face Of The Abyss-grade discomfort with waiting for most anything.

So I pretty much flipped on the chick, or at least made enough of a scene that my Baptist humility-is-a-virtue-above-all-others genetic instincts kicked in pretty much the moment I walked out of the store, and I've been too ashamed/embarrassed to set foot in there ever since. (Scent of Italy has since either changed ownership or changed names, though the former is much more likely, and it's a shame because -- although I no longer patronize the place and their failure would have been hard-won, as detailed above -- their pizza really did rock). The upshot being that I was then forced to find a new solution to fulfilling my not-infrequent pizza cravings.
And keep in mind that I'm a lazy man, one who is not likely to take the chance on sampling some of the other pizzerias within an 8-10 block radius and running the risk of discovering that the product is substandard and then experiencing a level of disappointment/lack of fulfilment that is out of all porportion for what is, after all, nothing but a meal. So what I settled on was the famed "it's not delivery, it's DiGiorno" Personal-sized pizza, which really isn't at all like the longed-for Scent of Italy pizza -- being much thicker in dough and toppings alike -- but is at least a known quantity and if nothing else under my own control and immune from the cruel indiffernce of adolescent cashiers/phone operators.

But this poses its own problem: The ShopRite across the street (1) doesn't seem to have a dedicated rack in the Frozen Foods section for the DiGiorno Personal Pizza. There's a nice selection of full-sized DiGiornos, and several racks of Personal-sized pies from other manufacturers (Pepperidge Farms, Mama Celeste, etc.), but nothing reserved for the prized DiGiorno Personal. However what I've found is that, if you look long enough, you'll find two or three Personal-sized DiGiorno pizzas (typically one Cheese and either one Pepperoni and one Supreme or two Pepperoni or two Supreme) wedged in amongst the competitors, way in the back, as if they'd been briefly considered by a consumer but then rejected in favor of some other brand, the implication being that the DiGiorno Personal imprint sells quite well on the whole and the stock has been depleted to just these two or three units and there's a backorder on additional units and thus the dedicated DiGirono Personal rack has been removed until the next order arrives, with the remaining units left to fend for themselves.

Except that this is always the situation at ShopRite. Meaning that -- while the general rule of thumb is that while there doesn't seem to be a DiGiorno Personal anywhere in the Frozen Foods section, if you look long enough you'll discover one, two, or even three camoufloged behind the similarly packaged French Bread and Microwave-Ready frozen pizzas -- there's no guarantee you'll find anything at all. Like, for all you know the issue is that the distributor keeps slipping a trio of poorly selling DiGiorno Personals into ShopRite's shipment of full-sized DiGiornos in a vain attempt to get the store to pick up the item despite the fact that the Frozen Foods Manager keeps telling them that the damn things just don't sell. And maybe this is the time that the the manager finally said, "fuck this, I'm sending them back, I don't care how much it pisses them off," and there actually is no DiGiorno Personal anywhere in the store, you're just fishing through frozen goods on a fools quest. I mean, how long do you keep looking, when positive reinforcement has time and time again told you that you'll eventually find what you're looking for? Even if all external evidence is telling you that the search is futile?

The answer, as it turns out, is about ten minutes. And the message that I'm trying to convey to you through all of this is that I'm fucking hungry. And that when I'm in a pissy mood tomorrow because all I did all night was drink beer and not eat anything and now I have a headache, it's really not my fault.


(1) ShopRite being one of only two legit supermarkets I've encountered out here on the east coast (the other being A&P). ShopRite isn't unionized, and as such is an object lesson in why those of you who crossed picket lines durning the great SoCal supermarket employee strike of 2003 were making a catastrophic mistake for reasons that go far beyond throwing away the literal blood that was shed by previous generations in winning basic workers-rights provisions such as the 40 hour work week and the two-week annual vacation. Because the thing about non-unionized supermarket checkers is that they make minimum wage and, as such, straight don't give a fuck. As in, are conspicuously annoyed by the fact that they've been momentarily distracted from their conversation with the adjacent checker by having to read off the total cost of your purchase from the register. Not to mention that they're almost all black and (judging from their vernacular) poor, which adds whole other dimensions of cultural/racial/socio-economic guilt to the mix, plus if you're in the service industry like I am you can't help but a) sympathize, because believe me, at this point in my career I'm pissed off at you just for walking in the door and b) be incredibly pissed off because hey, I don't get to be an overt cock to my customers, so why the fuck do you?
Personally, I much prefer Vons.

Book Review -- Falling Man

Here's another one, to appear eventually on kgbbar.com/lit, in one form or another...

"'All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children's games. We edge nearer to death every time we plot.'" -- Don DeLillo, White Noise

What to make of Don DeLillo's Falling Man? The first page looks like trouble: opening onto the chaos of lower Manhattan just seconds after the collapse of the World Trade Center's south tower, it's difficult – for those of us who weren't there – to prevent this prose depiction from being hijacked by memories of news footage from the disaster. Too Soon, as the saying goes? Are we still too close to the event itself for any novelist to examine it from an "objective" perspective?

But then, that's aside the point. More so than perspective, Falling Man offers immediacy. The novel captures nothing so well as the disorientation of those first days and weeks after the attacks. In his 2001 essay "In the Ruins of the Future" (a sort of rough sketch for Falling Man), DeLillo described the attacks as "bright and totalizing and some of us said it was unreal. When we say a thing is unreal, we mean it is too real, a phenomenon so unaccountable and yet so bound to the power of objective fact that we can't tilt it to the slant of our perceptions." This is the space in which Falling Man exists, its characters struggling to reconstruct the illusion of predictability and safety that was shattered when the planes hit the towers.

The story, such that it is, is simple enough: Keith, at work in the World Trade Center on the morning of the attack, narrowly escapes the disaster and emerges from the smoking ruin carrying a briefcase that is not his own. Covered with ash and debris, he makes his way to the door of his estranged wife Lianne, and over the following weeks the two engage in a largely unarticulated reconciliation. Meanwhile, Keith embarks on a brief affair with Florence, the owner of the briefcase and fellow survivor of "the planes," while his son Justin keeps watch for another attack by the Al Qaeda mastermind whose name he's misheard as "Bill Lawton."

But Falling Man is not really a story, in the sense of one event leading to another and then to another and eventually reaching a conclusion. Like the characters it depicts, the narrative is continually drawn back to the day of the attack, trapped in the moment, grasping for meaning. More jarring than the physical destruction is the psychological shock of having one's unconscious assumptions about life thrown into question. After the attack, "Everything seemed to mean something. Their lives were in transition and [they] looked for signs. … But things were ordinary as well. They were ordinary in the way they were always ordinary."

This alienation cuts far deeper than the political or social level – at its heart is an alienation from one's sense of self. It's no accident that Lianne at one point ruminates on the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, the proto-Existentialist philosopher who argued that facing the inevitability of one's own death is essential to achieving true selfhood. Fear of death – or more precisely, repression of the fear of death – figured prominently in DeLillo's White Noise, and this anxiety, depicted with an undercurrent of comic absurdity in the earlier novel, casts a cold wash of unmitigated dread across Falling Man.

The 9/11 plotters, in this formulation, represent the antithesis of that anxiety, a consciousness fixated on death and as such invested with terrifying power. The story of one of the hijackers, Hammad, weaves its way through Falling Man, and DeLillo hones in on the nature of his Otherness as he tells himself, moments before his plane strikes the tower, "Forget the world. Be unmindful of the thing called the world." Hammad and his compatriots welcome death as a lifting of the false veil of the physical world to reveal the true reality of Eternity. The other characters in Falling Man struggle to hold onto that veil as it is ripped violently away, their myopic mindfulness of the world no longer adequate against the reality that rushes through the hole drilled into the Manhattan skyline.

Short Story: The Cat

The Cat

She returns in exhaustion, her fur matted and broken. Outside, the world has retained its velocity. And she is slow now, dull. Within the angular cave, she has learned complacency.

Outside, complacency is unknown and unknowable. All is precision and vigilance. The furry Twitch Nosed thing that slashed her body might have been prey to her, once. Now complacency has made her prey to it.

So she returns to her prison-home, the angular cave that infected her with comfort and undid all that is natural and proper. It is her unholy womb, her suffocating and protective second fur, a condition she calls captivity but is actually something else.

The Grotesques gather above her, around her. They snatch her up and draw her to their covered bodies, their distended, hairless paws running along her skin and through her fur. They spout their blunted noises in excitement, in confusion, in what they might call sympathy. They press at her wounds, salve them.

They comfort her. They diminish her.

They return her to the Tiny Ones, writhing with need. She retracts into the soft nest the Grotesques have provided as her domicile. She closes her eyes against the rude midday light as the Tiny Ones trample one another in a quest for her belly.

Asleep, she dreams of giants.

Of the glorious tribe lost long ago, vanished down some untraceable path into the dim periphery of memory. Of the Nephilim – fierce, monarchical beings, sovereign over the dusty plains, magnificent and feared, exquisite and savage.

She inhabits their form, her paws swelling to flatten the brush, her claws unsheathing like massive thorns. She glides through the flatlands with shuddering grace, her legs long and powerful, deadly pursuers now small as prey. She claims dominion over the scurrying Bushy Creatures and the nimble Twig Legs, the sagging Snout Noses and the horned Fat Bellies. She stalks them with impunity, the others of her tribe pouncing in unison to ensnare them in thunderous ambush. She returns home with the others, dragging their limp prize in her devastating jaw.

Proud. Unmitigated. Free.

The Tiny Ones scrape at her underside and the dream evaporates. She rolls to her side and submits.

###

She was brought here by trickery, by seduction. By her own compulsions, turned against her and wielded like a fatal claw, a sharpened fang that pierced her caution and bled her essence. By need fulfilled, replaced by needlessness, idleness, nothingness.

Before, all was reconnaissance and attack, defense and motion. Earth beneath her paws, foliage for shelter. The scent of soil and brush and threat. The chatter of the groaning creatures, the chirping creatures, the yelping creatures. The siren melody of intuition guiding her through the chaotic rhythm of struggle. This was her world, driven by need and compulsion, encompassing all things in savage harmony.

But there was another world, a world of angular caves protruding through the land like demonic hills, burning with sterile fire and inhabited by malformed giants – Grotesques, their skin furless and pale, their posture defying the pull of the earth. They stomped out at the Scampering Hour spouting unnatural sounds. They crawled into their Screaming Things, cold inanimate beasts on rounded legs that trod the blackened strips of wasteland that cut through her world. The Grotesques were apart from her world, masters over it as they chose but for the larger part indifferent, indifferent to prey and territorial claims, untouched by primal urge. She feared them, feared their ghostly un-need, their grasping un-paws, their gawking un-mouths.

And then one night, they set a trap – glistening things, lain at the lip of the angular cave.

The drifting scent of nourishment called out to her famished insides. The cave's mouth was covered and a preternatural light illuminated its face. She drew toward it, famishment overruling caution.

She crept upon the prize: silvery ovals stacked in plentitude, unguarded and unclaimed. They were too perfect, too alluring – a perpetually fresh kill conjured by Grotesque alchemy. What would it mean to ingest the product of their strange magic? Might it not taint her, infect her with their unworldliness, cast her into their state of oblivious damnation?

Need prevailed.

She gnawed into the slithery ovals, their skins tasting of salt, their flesh cold and firm. It was a sublime feeding, satiating and delicious. A divine feeding, delivered like a sacred offering, coaxing her into relaxed bliss.

A distraction.

By the time their scent penetrated her reverie, the Grotesques were already upon her. They watched her, still and quiet, their legs folded and the height of their bodies cut by half. She recoiled, made the first steps of a panicked retreat.

The Grotesques remained motionless, their eyes fixed upon her as if their gaze alone might halt her retreat. And it was not their gaze but their stillness, their absence of evident compulsion, which gave her pause. For what could these creatures want from her if not to satisfy the same compulsion that brought her to this precarious moment?

They cooed at her, their bizarre noises now altered to mimic something she might recognize as natural sound. One of them extended its naked paw – slowly, deliberately, assuring the option of escape. She held still, tensed for retreat but inexplicably curious. The paw landed gently on her head and traveled slowly down her back. Curiously comforting, strangely soothing. She relaxed, submerged in the lulling warmth of an alien touch.

And then, she was theirs.

###

They release her at last, the Tiny Ones, their need sated just as hers arrives. She rises from her nest and shakes off the dampening residue of sleep.

Energy comes fleetingly now, the Hunt a vestigial compulsion that calls with decreased frequency but undiminished authority. She wonders why it calls at all. Her continued nourishment is now deadeningly ensured by the Grotesques, their daily offering no longer the divine perfection of that first night but a mound of aberrant flesh with the flavor of a dozen different prey and the texture of none.

But the Scampering Hour is upon her, the shadows deepening in the catacombs of the angular cave and the softening light sharpening her vision. She walks to the flapping hole in one of the cave's blockaded mouths. There are blockades such as these throughout the cave, separating its chambers. When she first arrived, she had thought them mystic portals that yielded only to her keepers' whims. But by carefully observing the mechanics of their manipulation, she was gradually initiated into their mysteries. With sufficient effort she can now enter many of the cave's chambers on her own – though to do so risks the scorn of the Grotesques.

To enter the outside world, however, she need only pass through the flapping hole. This is the truth of her captivity: escape is denied not by her keepers but by her own weakness, a weakness that gorges on itself as she grows ever more slovenly and dull.

She is foolish, no doubt, to reenter this world so soon after her humiliation. Her still-ripe wounds are a pulsing reminder of the ineffectual creature she has become, of how she has allowed herself to be reduced through plentitude. She despises the Hunt even as she craves it, despises the empty ritual that was once the very essence of her being. And yet the compulsion lingers, just as the Nephilim linger in her bones long after the dream has passed.

The dream has come for years, has always come. Once it was nothing but a dim passing of smudged remembrances. Echoed smells, stale sounds. A phantasmagoria, easily dismissed.

Until the Nephilim appeared to her incarnate.

It happened a time such as this, not so long ago, before she had fully succumbed to the damning comforts of captivity. She had ventured far into the wandering hills behind the angular cave, bent on escaping its seductions. She walked through two Scampering Hours, sleeping intermittently during the eye-dulling sunlight of the hours in between. She passed cautiously through the dominion of the Beasts, the ashen-furred monsters who stalk the forests in gangs, feeding primarily on the Hopping and Burrowing Things but quick to descend upon her own kind as hunger or whim dictates.

She had tracked a scurrying Pink Nosed prey to the sandstone crevices near the hilltop, its coarse grey tail locking her focus even as it scrambled to escape her pounce. The light had begun to wane from Scampering into night, and she was famished and weak. She swatted at the furry blur as it zagged across a clearing, but she stopped short of finishing the kill. Even in near-starvation, the Hunt demands adherence to certain forms. First comes the dance, as the prey struggles for its right to exist just as her rights demand that its existence must end; then follows the inevitable outcome, in which the rights of all creatures are reaffirmed and the hierarchy maintained.

As she brought the dance to its conclusion, she caught glimpse of them.

They stood silhouetted on the jagged ridge, the outline of their forms a purer, more idealized reflection of her own. From the proud slope of their foreheads, across the subtle arch of their powerful backs, to the terminus of their graceful tails, it was as though God himself had rendered them in a single stroke. They were the uncorrupted master design of which she was but a crude approximation – the Nephilim of her dreams, conjured in awesome and terrifying flesh.

She froze in rapture and the Pink Nose scurried to safety. She did not pursue it. The call of the Hunt had been silenced, replaced by a call so primal and ancient that even hunger seemed superfluous in comparison.

The Nephilim had not yet noticed her, their own gaze fixed on an infinity far beyond the crest of the hill. She crept closer, the details of their giant bodies sharpening as she approached. Their fur was short and lustrous, of the same shade as the dusty rock beneath their massive paws. The muscles of their magnificent legs rippled like water beneath a gentle breeze. She longed to commune with them, to be uplifted into their realm of divine perfection.

They turned their gaze to meet hers.

She faced them in trembling challenge, her guiding-hairs pressed against her face and her belly expanding, as if those Titans might mistake her for some fearsome beast. They stared back in what must have been amusement at this tiny echo of their own majesty, raising its timid voice in imitation of their imperious roar. She kept her paws planted and her eyes locked. She would prove her worth. She would be as one of them.

One of the Nephilim lifted a paw – perhaps in greeting, perhaps in attack. She would never know. All at once she was drowning in panic, an urge to flee so overwhelming that she found herself at the bottom of the hill before regaining control of her mutinous body.

She turned back. They had not followed.

They had retreated back into the nocturnal recesses of her mind, into the dreams that come now like exhilarating despair, vivid and taunting, a winged prey that swoops just beyond paw's reach, never close enough to subdue. She is prey to the dream now, too small a morsel to consume, more amusing to track and torment. She is hunted by a vision never to be relieved, never to be fulfilled.

She is made small.

###

She returns from the Hunt with a small offering, a burnt-jade Creeping Thing she danced with in the enclosed field outside the cave. It is a fresh kill, its smashed body still squirming even as she punctures its scales in her jaw. She drops it to the floor of the cave's central chamber, a payment to the Grotesques for their continued offerings to her. It is not a payment they will accept, she knows, but she is bound to offer nonetheless. It is only proper.

She watches as the undead creature writhes belligerently on the floor. It is a ghost now, an animated shell that has not yet accepted its end. She wonders if she will be so reluctant when her day comes. It feels distant now, this compulsion to survive, as if it has been suffocated in her ever-full stomach. When the panicked Twitch Nose lashed out against her lazy pounce, there was a fire in its dark eyes that startled her even more than the penetration of its miniscule claws. That fire is nothing but embers within her now, but she recognized its fury. She was such a creature once. Once, she grappled with monsters.

She lived at that time with others of her kind, in a hidden enclave of uncorrupted soil within the vast labyrinth of angular caves smothering the land beneath the hills. Prey was scarce, and territory was defended in vicious contest. She was fierce then, and strong. Those who trespassed on her territory were rare to do so twice, such was the rancor of her punishment. All of them, in their turn, had met one other in engagements of this sort, and those unable to defend their boundaries were quickly cast out. Amongst her kind, there is no community. There is only mutual regard for solitary strength.

Yet there was also a kind of confederacy between them, a shared contentment in living with others bound by the same compulsions and adhering to a common conception of propriety. Those who earned their place among them gained comfort and companionship, cleaning one another's fur and grappling in playful combat. And then there was combat of another sort, the Fever Nights, when the thrusting madness overtook them and pain merged with delight as they made eager prey of one another. She was a purer creature in those days, unsullied and untroubled. She ate and slept to the accompaniment of familiar voices, a language that had yet to conceive a grammar for the expression of doubt.

She was asleep when the Beasts attacked, at first mistaking the shrieks which awoke her for the ecstatic agony of her companions in the grip of a Fever Night. Then the deafening scent of jeopardy engulfed her and she opened her eyes to a scene of unspeakable carnage. All around, her companions were ripped to pieces in a blur of charcoal and umber fur, gobbled up in the elongated jaws of the Beasts. Her scent had already attracted their attention, and a group of them discarded their maimed victim and set greedily upon her.

She raced across the enclave, the panting monsters nipping at her tail. If she could reach the enclave walls, she might climb to safety. More Beasts joined the pursuit, closing in along her periphery. The wall towered before her as she approached. There would be no time to pause and coil for a jump. She spotted a burrow at the wall's base and scurried inside, squeezing her body through the narrow opening.

The Beasts thrust their probing snouts into the hole but could not force their immense heads within. She clawed at their cold black noses in spite and fury. They yelped at the flicker of pain and soon withdrew, returning to their wounded prey as she shuddered silently in the dark pocket of earth. Outside, those of her companions who had not yet succumbed whimpered in pain and fear. She cowered stoically in her refuge as they were slaughtered in succession.

When she emerged in the morning, nothing remained but wisps of fur that drifted through the air like sterile spores. She felt no guilt in survival. Self preservation is the highest law; all others are contingent. But the silence was insufferable. She left the enclave and did not return.

She does not think often of these lost companions, nor does she miss them. But apart from them, she is a changed creature. Alone in an alien world, she has become alienated from her own nature. Perhaps this is why she is bound by some inexplicable compulsion to cultivate the Tiny Ones. Despite their nuisance, they are eager to be molded. And somewhere within her is the desire to shape them into a familiar form.

On the floor, the Creeping Thing continues its death-dance. Its obstinance offends her. She stomps on the writhing corpse, crushes it beneath her paws until at last the animation seeps from its battered form. To cling to the last dissipating scents of existence is natural. To linger beyond is obscenity.

###

The Tiny Ones grew like hunger in her belly.

Then like panic.

Then like negation, a massive void swelling to blot her out from within.

Then finally, after the waterlogged nothingness had seemed ready to burst through her very fur, they emerged: repellent, squirming creatures, bodies pink and naked, glistening with viscous liquid. They writhed across the ground like the Oozing Things that grovel in the soil, their deformed mouths squeaking with crippled pleas.

But she was compelled to tolerate them, to fill their gaping maws with the sap of her bloated trunk, to warm their exposed skin under her fur until, unexpectedly, they sprouted fur of their own. Then they became something different: miniature reflections of herself, given form in a multitude of shades.

And now, they are vanishing.

She finds another missing as she approaches her chamber – the one with the ginger-rippled fur and turquoise eyes. The others are oblivious as always, their shrinking numbers signifying nothing except reduced competition for her attention. She herself is not so much angered at the loss – lightening her burden as it does – as she is baffled by its meaning. Was this the purpose of the Grotesques' seduction? Had they refrained from feeding on her in order to wrest a steady stream of prey from her own flesh?

An eruption of sound bursts in from a far chamber. The mouth of the cave opens and her keepers' squawks are joined by those of other Grotesques, a patterned interplay of noise they engage in whenever they encounter others of their kind. It is all senseless clamor to her ears. And yet she strains to decipher it, wonders if the meaning of all that has happened to her might be uncovered within this thicket of sound, if only she could dig down to its twisted roots.

A tiny voice seeps through the cacophony. The missing Tiny One, crying out in confusion and fear.

She scrambles out of her nest, ignoring the protesting yelps of her brood, and darts into the outer chamber. She arrives as the Grotesques pass through the mouth of the cave and into the outside world, sealing the blockade behind them. This blockade is impenetrable to her, offering no flapping hole for bypass. She climbs to the jutting lip along the cave's wall, perching herself by the geometric hole that offers a view of the outside world. Holes such as these can be found on any of the cave's outer walls, but they are protected by esoteric forces of the most mysterious order, patches of impossibly solid air unbreachable by wind or rain or paw.

Outside, her keepers follow the foreign Grotesques to their Screaming Thing, sleeping at the edge of the green field in front of the cave. The ginger-striped Tiny One is in the foreigners' grip, its tiny paws flailing and its tail atwitter. She calls out to it, knowing full well that her voice will not penetrate the mystically thickened air that separates them.

The foreigners deposit the Tiny One into the gut of their Screaming Thing. They grasp paws with her keepers and then crawl inside as well. The Screaming Thing shudders awake, coughing smoke and trembling with power. It releases a grumbling moan and then joins the vast herd of its kind careening endlessly across the charcoal wasteland. It recedes from view.

###

The vanishings continue. More foreigners arrive, more Tiny Ones evaporate.

Only one remains now, the dark-furred creature she calls her Shadow. It follows her through the angular cave and on the Hunt, mirroring her actions and shaping itself in her image.

It occurs to her that she is to this creature as the Nephilim are to her, colossal and ancient, a holder of secrets, a keeper of sacred traditions. The Shadow strives to become her just as she longs to become them, to outgrow this impoverished existence and seize the legacy that whispers in her sleep. And does the chase continue, beyond the horizon of her aspirations? Are the Nephilim of her dreams haunted by giants of their own?

The tiny Black Shelled Thing on the ground tries again to escape. A rush of impulse floods her paws. Her claws ache to be unleashed. She swallows the instinct and turns her attention to the Shadow. It is observing the prey with a more focused scrutiny than before. Its paw springs with less hesitation and greater force. It is learning.

But still, the Black Shell is a trifling prey. Outside, it might take a dozen such kills to stifle the gnawing demands of hunger. And the Shadow, for all its efforts, sees the Hunt as a diversion, not an imperative. She wonders at the point of it all. The Shadow, born into this life of surety, will never know the desperation of need. A lifetime of instruction and admonition cannot replace the baptism of relentless struggle. The threats the Shadow would face in the outside world would make quick prey of its meager skills. Even more than she, it will be forever condemned to the safety of the angular cave.

The Shadow completes the dance and displays its work. She paws at the lifeless kill for confirmation and then bestows her approval. They will not feed on it, of course. They gather up the shell and position it in the central chamber, retreating to her nest and awaiting her keepers' return.

When they do return, they greet the offering with predictable insult. For all their powers, all their summoning of light and heat and water and flame, the Grotesques know nothing of the order of things or the laws of propriety. They scoop up the offering and cast it from the cave.

They enter her chamber, cooing at the Shadow in a familiar tone – the distinct cadence that precedes a vanishing. She knows what will happen next.

They grasp the Shadow in their paws. It struggles against them, howls for assistance. She calls back but does not intervene. It would be of no use, and in any case she has already given the creature all of what little she has. The Tiny Ones were lost from the moment they emerged into this cave-bound counterfeit of existence. To depart after so brief a stay is a mercy. For her, there is no such hope.

The Grotesques carry the Shadow out of the cave and she takes up her ritual position at the geometric hole. She feels something now, watching as the Shadow disappears into her keepers' Screaming Thing. A sort of emptiness, a cousin to the hollowness that follows the kill, when the cycle is complete and the fever of compulsion has passed. A point of focus has expired. She is at liberty, but without desire.

###

Her keepers return deep into the Scampering Hour.

She joins one of them in an outer chamber, crawling into the indentation of its legs as it sits on the padded mound and stares into the glowing shape-box. The shape-box is an object of reverence for the Grotesques, one of the few indications that they too are subject to the call of instinct. They are drawn to it each day as Scampering dims into night, sitting motionless before it and often silent. It calls out to them and they listen and watch, drawing nourishment or perhaps enlightenment. She has gazed into the flickering patterns many times, but receives nothing.

Her keeper strokes her fur, and she permits it. The scent of the Shadow lingers on its paw but does little to penetrate her repose. The hollowness has already begun to fade. She rolls onto her back as the Grotesque gently strums her belly. How odd, the comfort of this profane touch. How perverse and yet strangely natural.

A sound from across the cave. A voice.

Her keepers are oblivious or indifferent. But she hears the call, a faded echo of her vanished brood. It comes again. She leaves the Grotesques to their liturgy and follows the sound through the central chambers and into her own.

A cold wash of unease dampens her fur as she approaches the darkened cavern. A soft putter of movement echoes within. The timid voice cries out. A blotted form takes shape in dark and she halts, confused.

She can see it now, her diminutive Shadow lurking in the murky recesses of the chamber. It moves awkwardly, stiffly, as if unacquainted with its own legs. It stands a short distance from her, looking to her in expectation as it flaps its miniature tail.

She approaches slowly. Something is wrong. The creature's scent is askew. Something missing. Something added. It cries again. She comes closer, hesitant, fighting the impulse to recoil.

It rolls onto its back, stretching. Something glints from its belly. She examines it at a distance that feels perilously close. There is a great gash on the creature's underside, a curiously bloodless tear bound together by strands of coarse silver hair.

And all at once she understands. The horror of it submerges her, as if she has been cast into a lake of deepest water. This shadow of the Shadow is a slain prey come nightmarishly back to life, an Abomination, its rotted soul stuffed back through the very wound that released it. She hisses at the desecrated corpse.

She is outraged. Had she the scale and strength of the Nephilim she would tear her keepers to grass and swallow the Abomination whole. But she is only the ineffectual creature that fate and weakness have made her. She can do nothing but flee.

She hisses again at the Abomination as it as it trails her through the flapping hole.

###

The Abomination stalks her like a vengeful spirit as she trudges into the hills. She curses it, swats at it in warning. It falls back for a moment and then resumes pursuit, calling out in feigned ignorance of its own damnation.

She tried at first to evade it with speed, bounding through the canyons of the cave-labyrinth, over its barriers and through its crevices. She exhausted herself in bursts of movement and then crammed her body into holes and nooks, lying silent until she was certain the forsaken thing had lost her trail. Then the voice would come again, furtive and earnest, always close. She fled recklessly, darting across wasteland and through herds of Screaming Things, into the tangled underbrush surrounding the hills, mindful of nothing but the relentless wraith dogging her steps with preternatural cunning.

She has slowed now to a wary trot. To run is futile. Her energy will be depleted soon enough, and the Abomination is content for the moment to match her pace and await surrender. Something must be done. She dare not touch the unholy thing, lest it corrupt her with its putrefied spirit. But she cannot avoid it forever.

A scent drifts near, carried by the whispering breeze. Her fur tingles with the recognition of danger. She looks back at the Abomination, still mimicking her movements in morbid nostalgia for their lost kinship. If it has detected the scent, it shows no sign of comprehending its import. This is to be expected. Instinct serves the living; the dead become so the moment it defects.

This is the way.

She walks towards the scent, paddling furiously against a flood of instinct while the Abomination floats obliviously behind. They climb the gentle grade of the hill, moonlight flickering like a dying flame through the canopy of flapping boughs above their heads. The scent screams in her nostrils. They are close.

She slows as they reach the crest of the slope. An odor of threat chokes the air. Even the Abomination can sense it now, hesitating as it traces her steps into the exposed clearing. She stops and turns back to the repugnant thing, beckoning it on with shimmering eyes. And although it seems to recognize the imminent danger ahead, it obeys the instruction of her gaze without question, pattering towards her with reckless weight. Monstrosity though it may be, the Abomination trusts in her wisdom. For a moment she is gripped by a sense of immeasurable loss.

The end comes quickly. A rustling of shrubs at the periphery of her hearing. Suddenly the Beasts are upon them, their fanged snouts seething with menace. She scrambles a hair's breadth ahead of their swooping claws, scaling the nearest tree and perching safely in its highest branches. The Abomination, with its tiny paws and unrefined craft, scratches pitifully at the bark as the Beasts overtake it, snatching it away in their slobbering jaws. They retreat into the darkness, pausing momentarily to howl into the bashful moon.

Confirmation of the Abomination's fate comes shortly after, in the tiny shrieks that expand to ghostly wails as they reverberate through the silent hills.

###

She waits until the sun has begun its climb into Scampering before cautiously descending from her perch. The aftersmell of the Beasts lingers faintly in the air, but there is no indication of present threat. She cannot remain in any case. Hunger has begun to assert its authority, and soon the Hunt will demand her attention.

She has little use for either. If she stays here in the free world her days will be few. She knows the desperate energy required for survival, and knows that she no longer possesses it in sufficient quantity. She is old and languid. Soon enough she will follow the Abomination into darkness.

But to return to the angular cave is intolerable. To sup further on the poisonous plentitude that has already destroyed her is no more an escape than to deliver herself into the growling snouts of the Beasts. If she is to resign from the struggle, she will seize upon the choice as a final opportunity for ennoblement.

She walks for hours beneath the glare of day. Sleep, and the despairing dreams it conceals, begs her attendance as her paws tremble and ache. Her head is a blur, the unyielding light pounding her eyes and her unfed stomach invading her thoughts with cries of indignation.

She is lost. The sandy outcropping on this peak looks no different from the one before. Ahead, more peaks await in endless succession.

She stops to rest and exhaustion pounces her. The dream commences even before her eyes shut, the scent of her brethren beckoning her onto the brush-dappled plains. Her body revolts against the commencement of yet another hollow fantasy. She pushes against the weight of sleep and opens her eyes.

The scent remains.

She rises and sniffs around the tendrils of the smell, searching for the thickening thread that will lead to her goal. She finds it soon enough. She follows it across the hard soil of the ridge, her vigor growing as the scent intensifies.

She arrives at a dark wedge in the enormous sandstone walls. She stands before the mouth of the cave – a true cave, rough and jagged, uncorrupted by devilish angularity. The odor of her kin bleeds through the darkness in rapturous gushes. Her ears tilt toward the sound of measured breathing within. They are here.

Her fur stands in excitement as she steps inside, the cool air a luxurious antidote to the relentless sunlight. As the blinding glow of day fades, the contours of the space are revealed. It is small, no bigger than her chamber in the angular cave. The two Nephilim lie sleeping against the far wall, their immense bodies rising and falling in lumbering rhythm. Fear seeps into her body once again, the urge to retreat. She does not. She continues, one paw after the next. When she is close enough to feel their warm breath against her fur, she sits. And waits.

Slowly, they stir. Their great lids rise and their glimmering eyes take her into focus. She is hypnotized. They smell her pleading fear and their mouths slide open to reveal ferocious fangs. She is ready.

One of the Nephilim rises. It nudges the other and soon both are on their paws. She waits in terrified quietude as the giants stretch their legs and thrash their heads against the last vestiges of sleep. Soon they will turn their attention to her, and soon after she will dance into apotheosis or oblivion. Her heart throbs in panic but her body is not moved. Instinct has been silenced. Only one outcome remains.

The Nephilim glide toward her, regarding her lazily. Is she so little challenge? She awaits their attack, wonders if she will flee like prey or acquiesce when the moment comes.

The moment does not come.

The Nephilim continue past her and out into the naked light, without even a backward glance for their sacrificial postulant. She does not understand. She scrambles after them, her meek voice demanding satisfaction. One of them looks back and growls, but their pace remains leisurely. Hers increases, fear now smothered by indignation. She patters by their side, undeterred by their grunts of warning.

Finally one of them strikes her, not in menace but as if swatting away a pest, as if she is nothing but a troublesome itch on its august hide. Even this restrained blow contains enough force to lift her from her feet, and a great explosion of pain bursts from her side as she shrieks unconsciously. She stands in wobbly defiance. She sets a paw in their direction and they unleash their fury. Claws burn through her skin and tufts of her own fur flutter before her eyes she as feels a jaw closing around her shoulder.

Teeth dip into her muscles and then abruptly retreat before striking bone. She is damaged but not extinguished. The Nephilim step back, granting her escape but poised to proceed if she does not relent.

This is the moment, the summation of all that she is. One more thrust and she will be ended. One step forward and she will become a free creature, unfettered by the tyranny of compulsion, unmoved even by the elemental current of self preservation. This corrupted world will recede and she will pass forever into the dreamscape, reunited with her brethren and roaming the dusty plains for days without end, inextinguishable and pure.

Fear intervenes.

It pulls at her like gravity and she clings to the earth as if rooted. The Nephilim pace before her in lilting challenge but do not advance. Their taunting eyes mock her brittle resolve. Inside she rages, her own will clawing furiously against itself.

She does not move. The moment passes. The challenge has been extended and gone unmet. The Nephilim disengage with the same totality in which they struck, her presence suddenly no more notable than a weed sprouting through the cracked soil. They continue down the hill without a hint of disquiet.

She crawls humbly in their wake, blood seeping from damp patches in her mangled fur. Her body is heavy. She peers over the edge of the rise. Far below, the Nephilim bounce down the steepening hillside, scampering in whimsical tandem as they vanish into the trees shrouding its base.

Her own descent is slow and tentative, and the senseless landscape offers no sympathy for her meager whimpers of pain.

###

She returns in resignation, limping through the flapping hole and back into terminal safety. Her wounds throb. Perhaps they are beyond even her keepers' ability to remedy. They will try nonetheless, and she will protest. But it will be a lie.

The cave is dark and silent. She is starving. She gnaws into the counterfeit flesh, piled as always in its receptacle in the corner. It is not fulfilling, but it is sufficient. She exists and will continue to do so. To escape, or even to desire it, is beyond her strength. She understands this, but does not linger on the thought. Her body is spent and her consciousness exhausted. She curls into her nest and plunges into sleep.

The dream proceeds.

Tonight on 24: The terrorists win. We lose. The end.

The current New Yorker magazine features an article entitled "Whatever it Takes: The Politics of the Man Behind '24'", written by Jane Mayer. The man in question is Joel Surnow, the self-described "right-wing nut-job" who created the Fox-TV series (1), and the issue at hand is '24''s depiction of the War on Terror (and more specifically, the use of state-sanctioned torture to prosecute that war) and how that depiction may or may not be influencing American opinions about said "war."

'24', for those of you who've never seen it, is a deliriously over-the-top thriller that takes place in "real time" – i.e., a one-hour episode equals one hour in the characters' lives, with a full season adding up to one day. It follows the exploits of Jack Bauer, a field agent working for (or with, or against, as events dictate) the fictional Counter Terrorism Unit in Los Angeles. Each season starts with the discovery of a terrorist plot. They've become more elaborate with each passing year, starting with the first season's Manchurian Candidate-style conspiracy to murder a presidential candidate and moving on to season five's Byzantine plot in which the United States president arms Russian separatists with nerve gas in an attempt to secure oil interests in Central Asia on behalf of a shadowy cartel (later revealed to be under the control of Jack Bauer's father). Each episode moves Jack Bauer through various clues (which he usually uncovers through increasingly ingenuous forms of torture) and red herrings, ending at a moment of maximum jeopardy, as the clock clicks down and apocalypse seems all but unavoidable. The show is truly Wagnerian in the scope of its melodrama and violence, and as such it's got the irresistible appeal of a good, trashy soap opera.

Where this becomes a problem is when, as reported in the New Yorker article, people in positions of responsibility start taking this stuff seriously. The article gives several examples of this, including a visit to the set of '24' by Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point. General Finnegan had arranged the visit in an attempt to persuade the producers of '24' to stop portraying torture as an acceptable and productive method of interrogation. The problem, the article explains, is that "…it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misconceptions spread by '24', which was exceptionally popular with his students." The article goes on to list the many members of the Bush administration who are avowed fans of the show, culminating with this truly mind-boggling quote from Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff: "Frankly, it [the show] reflects real life."

That's almost correct. What '24' does reflect, I think, is the reality that we as a nation believe exists. At this point, the disconnect between what's actually happened to us in the last few years and our collective reaction to it is so severe that it qualifies as a near-psychotic break. '24' offers a window onto the world as distorted by this deeply paranoid and delusional national psyche. Consider:

In the six years since the show's premiere (12 years in show time, adding up the eighteen-month to four-year gaps between "days"), terrorist actions in the United States have included, in '24'-world: at least one bus bombing; one train bombing; the bombing of a Federal anti-terrorism agency's Los Angeles field office; the mass murder of multiple employees of that office via a deadly nerve gas; the execution (under terrorist demands) of a high-ranking official of the same office; the takeover of an airport in Ontario, CA (presumably the parking situation at LAX rendered the preferred target unworkable); the theft of an Air Force stealth fighter; the downing of Air Force One with said stealth fighter; the attempted assassination of one presidential candidate; the attempted assassination of two sitting presidents; the successful assassination of one sitting president and one former president; the release of a deadly nerve gas in a suburban shopping mall; the release of a deadly biological weapon in a Los Angeles hotel; the sabotage and near meltdown of a half-dozen nuclear reactors; the launching of one nuclear missile towards Los Angeles, CA (casualties: zero, but it was touch-and-go for a minute there); the detonation of one nuclear bomb over the Nevada desert (casualties: one, but he was in bad shape anyway); the detonation of another nuclear bomb in Valencia, CA (casualties: 12,000 and counting, plus Six Flags Magic Mountain).

Meanwhile, in the real world, terrorist actions in the United States have included: the 9/11 attacks; the distribution of anthrax through the US postal service (possibly unrelated to Islamic terrorists); one attempted shoe bombing; one alleged "dirty bomb" plot (since discredited); one plot to attack the Sears Tower (foiled by a Federal agent who convinced the Florida-based terrorist masterminds to postpone their plans in favor of first purchasing uniforms and combat boots); one plot to collapse the Holland Tunnel between New York and New Jersey (conceived in Germany by a group of terrorist masterminds who had not yet actually seen the tunnel, nor figured out how they would go about securing the materials for and constructing the bombs, nor even worked out how they would enter the United States sans passports).

In short, in the five and a half years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, there has been not one single terrorist attack in the United States. Which, of course, leads many to say, "see, all those heightened security measures, those new exemptions to Constitutional protections – they're working." Maybe. You can't disprove it. But isn't it at least possible that the threat is nowhere near as dire as we've convinced ourselves it is?

I mean, if draconian legal and military measures guarantee safety, how do you explain the continuing suicide bombings in Israel? The Israelis certainly haven't been using kid gloves. Nor did the British when fighting the IRA in the 80s. Terrorism is an extremely effective tactic because, short of a total, society-wide lockdown, there's no way to stop it. No way.

You want to know what makes me feel safe? The fact that no one's bombed the New Jersey PATH trains or the New York subway system. Because it would be so, so easy. I travel one or both of these train systems five times a week with a heavy bag slung over my shoulder, nary a Port Authority or NYPD officer in sight. If that bag contained a bomb, setting it off at rush hour would be the simplest thing in the world. You wouldn't even have to be a suicide bomber. Just switch on a time-delayed trigger, jump off the train, and it goes off before anyone has a chance to alert the proper authorities. And my point is, the fact that no one's done this – in five and a half years of our War on Terror – says to me that there can't possibly be that many of these people in the US.

Even the 9/11 attacks have taken on mythic proportions that are totally out of synch with reality. The plot is seen as so massive, so complex, so evilly brilliant that only a '24'-level terrorist genius or – in the other popular delusion – the US government could possibly have pulled it off. Which is so exactly wrong it's comical. The most striking thing about the 9/11 attacks is their – for lack of a better word – brilliant simplicity. They were an exercise in resourcefulness. I mean, consider that these men didn't even have to break any laws until the moment they took over the planes:

Entering the US on a student or visitor's visa: legal. Attending flight school: legal. Studying building schematics, researching structural weaknesses, determining the heat generated by burning jet fuel: legal. Purchasing airline tickets: legal. Carrying box cutters onto an airplane: legal before 9/11. Empowering nineteen dedicated fanatics to dictate the agenda of the world's sole superpower for more than half a decade: priceless. It's the most American story of all: the lone Idealist taking on the System – and winning. Anyone remember Knight Rider? "One man can make a difference."

Or at least, nineteen men can.

So then, the argument goes, if these men were able to pull off such a destructive attack without any overt lawbreaking, doesn't that just point out the necessity of new laws to deal with the threat? No. As has been pointed out ad nauseum over the past five years, various elements of this plot were detected by local and Federal law enforcement officials. Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies did have the information to uncover the one crime that was being committed before the attacks: conspiracy. Hell, a number of the hijackers were on terrorist watch-lists the morning they boarded those planes. The fact that it was a complex and obscure puzzle to piece together does not change the fact that our security and intelligence capabilities pre-9/11 were sufficient to prevent the attacks. We simply lacked the dedication and focus to implement them. The 9/ll hijackers, faced with (given their lack of resources) an even more complicated puzzle, were not so lacking. They win, we lose. Simple as that.

So listen up, America, because I'm calling you out. Rational argument is clearly useless, so I'm going to appeal to good old-fashioned American machismo: are you going to let nineteen guys from some crappy, backwards-ass country in the middle of the desert tell you how to feel? Are you such a pussy that one punch in the face is going to send you running behind the couch and begging daddy to protect you, "whatever it takes"? Is that how America rolls?

(1) And also the creator of Fox News' horrifically unfunny new comedy show, "The Half-Hour News Hour," created as a right-wing counterpart to "The Daily Show."

Review: Graphic Bio of Malcolm X

Book Review

Hi all.

The following is the full text of a book review I wrote that will be appearing shortly at www.kgbbar.com/lit in vastly truncated form (i.e., about 500 words vs. the 2500 or so below). Smarmy footnotes are included as well, with full apologies to David Foster Wallace.

Andrew Helfer and Randy DuBurke's MALCOM X: A GRAPHIC BIOGRAPHY
By Kevin Adkins

There was a time, way back in the early 90s, when Malcolm X was the radical icon du jour of young, socially conscious white hipsters (roughly the same position that Che Guevera holds today) (1). Primed by the late-80s rise of politically oriented hip-hop groups like Public Enemy (2) and brought to its apogee with Spike Lee's 1992 film biography X (3), Malcolm fever was best recognized by the black baseball cap emblazoned with a stark white "X," which could be spotted atop Caucasian craniums everywhere from Los Angeles "Rave" parties (4) to NYU-occupied Greenwich Village. Exactly how many of Malcolm's actual ideas were absorbed by these X-hatters is a detail long since lost to history. But sometime after the release of Lee's film – and the pronounced absence of the predicted race riots in its wake – the hats started slowly disappearing from the streets, and are no doubt resurfacing today at rummage sales across the nation.

So it is perhaps in an effort to bring Malcolm X back into the hipster limelight that the Hill & Wang publishing imprint has brought us Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography, written by Andrew Helfer and illustrated by Randy DuBurke, the second in its recently launched Novel Graphics series (The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, released in August 2006, was the first). The stamp on the back cover designates it as a Serious Comic, which we can presumably take to mean that its aspirations are in some way literary, as opposed to being mere "kids stuff." And indeed, Publisher's Weekly hails the new series as "the latest sign that comics have found a home at traditional book publishers."

The road to respectability for the Literary Graphic Novel was more or less paved in 1992 by Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer-winning Maus. Speigelman's artistic style falls somewhere in the vicinity of R Crumb, and in Maus he employed it to great effect, dramatizing his father's memories of Nazi Germany through a clever visual metaphor: the Nazis as cats, the Jews as mice. Since then, the genre has grown modestly, with Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (2003) one of the more notable recent examples. Like Maus, Persepolis offers a personal account of sweeping political and social events, in this case the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The crude, almost childish drawings of Persepolis serve to humanize a culture that is – to Western eyes – frighteningly alien. In both cases, the artwork and the prose work in harmony, each augmenting and enhancing the other.

In contrast, Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography suffers from a fairly severe disconnect in quality between word and image. Mr. DuBurke employs a style that might be described as a kind of Gothic hyper-realism – if you've ever opened up an informational pamphlet published by the fire-and-brimstone contingent of evangelical Christianity, you'll recognize the approach. From a visual-arts perspective, it's quite striking: the stark black-and-white drawings hew closely to photorealism (though it should be noted that the book's depictions of young Malcolm vary widely from panel to panel, presumably due to a lack of photographic references from that stage of his life) while employing a film noir-ish use of contrast and shadow that lends an unsettling overtone to the proceedings.

This style works to some advantage when depicting the more sinister figures in Malcolm's life, or when dealing with more abstract concepts, such as the Nation of Islam's truly bizarre creation myth of the White Man.(5) But when married to Mr. Helfer's words, the overall effect is simply alienating. Because there are so few actual "scenes" in the book (most interactions between characters are depicted through narration rather than dialogue) the reader is left with the sensation of watching a silent movie featuring dramatically lit figures yelling, arguing, and so forth, while a fairly articulate but not particularly interesting film-studies major summarizes the plot from the back row.

And the book's flaws run deeper than its narrative approach. This allegedly Serious Comic seems to assume that its readership is largely ignorant and not particularly bright (the fact that the authors feel the need to exposit about the very existence of slavery in America speaks volumes). Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography is not so much a Literary Graphic Novel as it is a kind of Wikipedia Graphic Novel, bringing together a collection of basic facts and presenting them in roughly chronological order (complete with the occasional gaping holes and ideologically motivated addendums that Wikipedia is famous for). The prose is relentlessly competent in the same way a Freshman Composition student's "A" paper is extremely competent – the voice is third-person and distant, thoroughly Objective in the most uninspiring sense of the word, dutifully repeating what it has learned from (primarily) Alex Haley's Autobiography of Malcolm X.(6) If it shares with Lee's X the fundamental limitations of the bio-pic format (such as the condensation of huge chunks of the subject's life into a single, representative scene (7), it lacks completely that film's righteous passion, or even any discernable point of view – with one telling exception (addressed below).

Lacking a compelling voice of its own, one might expect the book to let Malcolm himself do the heavy lifting. But you'll find precious few of his public statements reproduced here. Malcolm could certainly turn a phrase: "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us"; "A junky only has a little monkey on his back – you're running around with a big white ape named Uncle Sam on your back"(8); and so on. Considering that the subject at hand is a man whose fame and infamy was based in large part on his undeniable rhetorical power, it seems absurd that an introductory text would offer so little of it. We get a few tastes – his description of JFK's assassination as "chickens coming home to roost," his ultimatum of "the ballot or the bullet" – but these are offered without much in the way of context, analysis, or any real point of view.

In fact, the only thing resembling an editorial viewpoint in the book is one so subtle you'd be excused for missing it. The incident occurs near the end of the story, during Malcolm's pilgrimage to Mecca and subsequent abandonment of the Nation of Islam in favor of the "true" Islam of the Middle East. This was a hugely pivotal event in Malcolm's life. He spoke rapturously of the racial harmony he witnessed on his pilgrimage, and for the first time began to speak of racism as an American social problem, as opposed to an inherent quality of white-skinned peoples. And the solution to America's racial problems, he believed, could only be found though the abandonment of Christianity and the embrace of Islam.

The book repeats all of this, as it should. But then comes a curious panel, in which we find a pair of Middle Eastern men shaking their fists at one another, surrounded by the image of a turbaned Muslim cleric in mid-invective and a grotesque close-up of a veiled Arab woman. The text box accompanying this panel reads: "But as Malcolm's own notes emphasize, his inability to speak the languages of the majority of his Muslim brothers meant he was on the outside looking in. From the inside, his vision of unified humanity was something much more complicated."

Now, for a book that has thus far hewed religiously to the official record on Malcolm X, what is the justification for this passage? Certainly, Malcolm's feelings about Middle Eastern and African Islam were anything but mixed. While he does write of his frustration with being unable to speak Arabic, there's no indication that he was aware of a "more complicated" vision than the one he was seeing. So it's hard to shake the feeling that this passage is intended as some kind of editorial apology: Sadly, the language barrier prevented Malcolm from realizing that Arab Muslims are violent and evil. It smacks of ideological correctness, as if no description of Islam as a religion of brotherhood and peace can be allowed to stand unchallenged.

But it does pose an interesting question: If Malcolm were alive today, would the events of the last few years have turned him against Islam entirely? It's quite possible. In fact, a more astute biographical treatment of Malcolm's life might have seized on his experience in the Middle East as an opportunity to explore the man's admirable ability to reject even his most deeply held beliefs in the face of new evidence.

But it's also possible – especially considering Malcolm's growing focus, in his final years, on economics as the engine of social oppression – that a 76-year-old Malcolm X would have watched those steel birds flying into the World Trade Center and seen nothing more than another flock of chickens coming home to roost. In terms of rhetorical approach, Malcolm X and Osama Bin Laden are of a kind (9) – with the proviso that it's hard to imagine Malcolm advocating violence against anyone not posing an immediate threat to life or limb. Here's one line, out of context, from Haley's Autobiography: "Only one religion – Islam – had the power to stand and fight the white man's Christianity for a thousand years." Sound familiar?

It's not hard to understand why white America felt so threatened by Malcolm. He was not a terrorist, but he did speak the language of revolution: "I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man's problem…To me a delayed solution is a non-solution" (also from the Biography). But in truth, the essence of his philosophy is simple and undeniable: self-defense is a fundamental human right. All of his actions flowed from this assumption, and it's hard to imagine any rational, sensitive person taking issue with this central thesis. Where the issues arise is in not hearing his argument in its fullness, in not understanding the cause-and-effect that led to this worldview. The events of Malcolm's life are essential, but his own analysis of those events is just as crucial, and any biography seeking to give a full picture of the man has to fully present both. Thankfully, Alex Haley already wrote that book four decades ago. So if you're inclined to learn about Malcolm X, his life, and his ideas, skip the graphic novel and go pick up The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Footnotes:

1. This observation is totally anecdotal and based on nothing more than my own personal experience and observations. Re: the comparative popularity of Che Guevera vs. Malcolm X, the results of a rigorously unscientific survey of New York booksellers (conducted in the Union Square area) revealed the following: Strand Book Store: Che books, 0; Malcom books, 0 (seemingly – see (a)); Virgin Megastore: Che books, 1; Malcom books, 0; Barnes & Noble: Che books, 3; Malcom books, 1.

a. While we're on the subject, I've got a question for the Strand Book Store: What's up with your organizational structure (i)? By which I mean: What, specifically, is "Literary Non-Fiction"? How does "Americana" differ from "American History" or "Cultural Studies"? Why does "Biography," as a category, exist only as a sub-category of the "Art" section? And where, if not in any of these sections, would one expect to find The Autobiography of Malcolm X?

i. And I ask this as the son of a librarian, who, as such, knows a thing or two about the Dewey Decimal system…

2. Here's a question: Given the revolutionary fervor of the "politically conscious" hip-hop movement of the late 80s -- and of Public Enemy in particular -- doesn't Flavor Flav's decade-long de-evolution into today's reigning pop-culture clown -- as solidified by his current "reality" show Flavor of Love -- represent something more than just your run-of-the-mill downward spiral from artistic relevance to self-parody? The word I'm looking for here is "treason" -- call Ann Coulter for notes on how to proceed.

3. At least that's what I think they settled on calling it. This was right around the time when it became tres hip to convert movie titles into acronyms, a trend that started with T2 -- aka Terminator 2 -- and then infiltrated the culture over the next decade to the point that now every damn thing (the WB, PSP, Y2K, etc.) just has to have its own oh-so-cool shorthand title. But anyway, at some point during the pre-release media storm, "Spike Lee's controversial new film Malcolm X (a)" started being referred to simply as X. Which gives rise to some confusion: for example, we can only assume that the recent X2 and X3 are not intended as direct sequels.

1. I mean, do people remember the epic hissy-fit that this film stirred up "back in the day"? Armed guards at the movie theaters and such? This was right after the LA riots/uprising, of course, and Spike Lee -- as was his way -- just kept throwing more fuel onto the media fire, doing a last-minute re-edit to include footage of the Rodney King beating, refusing to be interviewed by white reporters, etc. It was all great fun. The movie itself was, I thought, kind of meh. But then again, I've got a thing against bio-pics.

4. And here's where my little dig at "socially conscious white hipsters" may be wholly inaccurate: It has to be noted that the popularity of the Malcolm X baseball cap coincided almost precisely with the rise of "rave" culture (at least in Southern California), a culture driven in large part by the "love drug" MDMA -- aka Ecstasy, aka (at the time) X (a). So it's entirely possible that the social consciousness of the white hipsters in question had absolutely no bearing on the popularity of the cap as fashion symbol. My sincerest apologies to all whom I have so misdiagnosed.

1. Though even back then, a fair number of people had taken to referring to the drug by the now-standard "E."
   

5. Short version: 6600 years ago, a man named Yacub -- one of the "original," black humans -- discovered the secrets of genetics and learned how to breed new races. After being exiled to the island of Patmos with 59,999 of his followers, Yacub initiated a generations-long breeding program to create "a devil race -- a bleached out, white race of people," which would then return to the mainland and subjugate the "true humans" for some 6,000 years, thus securing Yacub's revenge. And yeah, that's some crazy shit, but the fact that someone of Malcolm's evident rationality found the story eminently credible (at first -- see (a)) speaks volumes about just how deep the sense of oppression by white America goes for some African-Americans.

1. By the time Malcolm returned from Mecca in 1964, he'd come to view this story as one of the Nation of Islam's many perversions of "true" Islam.

6. A book which, in stark contrast to the work at hand, is -- in my experience, anyway -- near impossible to put down.
   

7. And the difference between a motion picture and this sort of "realistic" comic book is a slight one, narratively speaking. Compare Frank Miller's Sin City graphic novels to Robert Rodriguez's frame-by-frame film adaptation and you'll see what I'm talking about.

8. And how totally great and subtle is that phrasing, turning the tired old racist depiction of black-man-as-ape back on the (allegedly) racist country itself?

9. Go to http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/malcolm-x/index.htm and take a listen to his speech "The Black Revolution Requires Bloodshed." Then go to http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/opf980830a.htm and read Osama Bin Laden's "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places." Compare and contrast.