Let Go

See right there on page 29 of Ulysses (the 1990 Vintage International Edition) where Stephen Dedalus receives his salary for teaching wee snot-nosed lads history, mathematics, Latin, and etc.? You can tell right away that Mr. Deasy, the distributor of the money, is despicable in all sorts of ways. Stephen sees him “stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet.” Can we agree that undue interest in keeping one’s feet dry is despicable? Deasy then proudly flourishes the money, dispensing it from a special change machine and counting it deliberately—investing the act with all the ceremony of the preparation of the Eucharist.

Stephen, qua man of ideas, is embarrassed by Deasy’s pomp and the necessity of money and quickly shoves it into his pocket, which prompts the schoolmaster to dispense some advice. He recommends that Stephen be more careful with his capital, save more. Deasy quotes Shakespeare: “Put but money in thy purse.”

Of course, Shakespeare wrote this line, but Iago, as Stephen notes, is the one who utters it. Iago, the villain, who’s giving this advice to his pawn Roderigo, and for villainous reasons.

This painful scene worsens, the players perfectly misfit for each other. Deasy selects those historical and literary details which best fit a series of ignorant, racist, or silly claims: that the Irish deserve to be an English colony, that O’Connell was a chump, that Jews are taking over the world, that hoof and mouth disease is easily cured if the government would just take his advice, that a black balance sheet is a man’s noblest virtue.

Stephen’s replies consist of grunts and brief gestures, but his interior monologue lists with poetic allusions the details Deasy omits. Stephen’s knowledge burdens him with history. Deasy’s ignorance liberates him. Deasy is comfortable; Stephen is beyond exasperated.

Why are the Mr. Deasy’s the ones we must genuflect to? Why are they the ones lording “financial arrangements” over our heads? Better yet, what does it feel like to ask these questions, and live in the world? Books that fail to address these items are worthless, and are for Mr. Deasies. The rest of us were left better books, and better words to live by.

When he was fired from the post office for hiding in the back room to read, Faulkner said: I reckon I’ll be at the beck and call of folks with money all my life, but thank God I won’t ever again have to be at the beck and call of every son of a bitch who’s got two cents to buy a stamp.

 

A People’s History of Yoknapatawpha County – Part I

In Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America, Diana Kendall argues, among other things, that the poor and homeless are unfairly and incompletely represented in US media. She cites as evidence shows like ER and CSI (and other non-acronymatic shows such as Law and Order), where the homeless and poor are crazy wild-eyed folks in need of medical attention they won’t be able to pay for or decorative red-herrings for the intrepid modern-day Poirots, respectively. I myself can’t furnish enough examples of the media depicting the homeless or poor as actual people whose struggles and challenges matter to argue her point.

With all the televisual focus on hotel heiresses and talentless singers and earnest crime solvers intent on making the world safe for law-abiding white people, it’s easy to read statistics such as the following without flinching: 35 million Americans living in poverty in 2006 (poverty, officially, means making less than around $21k/year for a family of 4); 17% of children under 18 living in poverty—that’s about 1 in 6.

If you do spend time meditating on those figures, which, again, our culture encourages us not to do, I suspect you’d become disturbed. But even if you get beyond the lack of direct focus and patent frivolity of the media-tainment industry, there’s another layer of protection against thinking deeply about the poor: the blame game. From the comfort of your partisan couch, you can bitch about your chosen enemy: corporate power and unfair institutional biases on the one couch, maybe, and shiftlessness and the moral hazard of government handouts on the other.

This multi-layered, insulating sheath, along with the intrinsically inert mindset watching cultivates, precludes acts of the imagination. Maybe all these poor people result from a problem of policy, a lack of leadership, or their own deficiencies, but yes I do believe I think they’re the result of a lack of imagining.

Turn away, with me—especially if you’re reluctant to talk to and laugh and eat with the actual poor—because there exists an endlessly interesting, dynamic and variegated place where one can gain powerful access to penurious lives.