Monthly Archives: May 2023
Soviet Techno Anthem and Flag
The Sacred War – Instrumental Soviet Flag Video (1:55 min) Audio Mp3
Trotsky – The Revolution Betrayed – Audiobook Opening (27:15 min) Audio Mp3
Text at the Marxist Internet Archive – https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm
Befriending Richardson’s book ‘Clarissa’ the 1,500 page novel during lockdown – by Jill Radsken – 23 Sept 2020
Very long, even for academic book club, but themes of morality, isolation resonated
In audiobook form – almost 100 hours
(Text online at Project Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9296/pg9296-images.html)
(Audio reading at Librivox – https://librivox.org/author/3579?primary_key=3579&search_category=author&search_page=1&search_form=get_results
When the pandemic upended life in Cambridge, Deidre Lynch fled to her hometown of Toronto, where the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature found herself facing the end of what was a sabbatical year with only her husband, beloved cat Mr. Bean, and three works of fiction.
One was a heavily dog-eared Penguin paperback copy of “Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady,” an 18th-century novel by Samuel Richardson that follows Clarissa’s pursuit and rape by an aggressive suitor named Lovelace. The novel is notorious for its difficult themes of morality, gender, and class, but also its length: nearly 1,500 pages. Lynch had taught undergraduates the book in its abridged form for more than a decade, but the copy in her home was the unabridged version narrated through 537 letters, most of them written by the protagonist and her aggressor.
With time flattened by quarantine, Lynch proposed a reading group with her friend Yoon Sun Lee ’87, an English professor at Wellesley College. “Clarissa,” in Lockdown, Together was born.
“There was so much aspirational reading going on in May,” recalled Lynch. “I thought, ‘I’m going to use lockdown to reread ‘War and Peace,’ but ‘Clarissa’ is just as important to the genre. Then Leah [Whittington of Harvard’s English Department] announced the group on the new Early Modern World listserv at Harvard. We started the first week of June.”
Faculty word-of-mouth spread quickly among dozens of colleges and universities across the globe, and soon a group of 50 had signed on for the biweekly get-togethers. Members committed to read 100 pages a week, which brought the reading to completion Sept. 11.
“The novel moves from January to November, so we felt as if our calendar would merge with Clarissa’s, but we also wanted to finish before the semester got underway,” said Lynch. “It’s not just a book; it’s a way of life, and it changes people.”
Ramie Targoff, who teaches Renaissance literature at Brandeis, joined to read “Clarissa” for the first time, though she had read Richardson’s more famous “Pamela” in her high school AP English class. She likened the project to training to run a marathon, which she had previously attempted but never completed.
“I bought the physical book so I could feel the progress,” she said. “I was the strict 15-page-a-day reader. I did it like I do my yoga practice. I would choose the time of day when I wanted a hit of ‘Clarissa.’” But she found she had to read in small doses, because she could sometimes barely stand the “emotionally wrenching” passages.
“I couldn’t read big swaths,” she said. “Just when you thought nothing could get worse, it did. And it often overlapped with the horrendous news in our country. The dates of the novel corresponded almost exactly with the COVID crisis.”
The discussions were lively, and to keep the conversation going outside the formal meeting, Alex Creighton, a Harvard Ph.D. student in English in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), organized a blog with the reading group’s name. There they posted on a variety of topics including: how relatable were Clarissa’s isolating and prison-like experiences in this time of pandemic; how sating the epistolary form felt; and how seeing Mary Trump interviewed on MSNBC connected directly to the book.
Wrote Martin Quinn, a Ph.D. candidate in English in GSAS: “profoundly more compelling visually was the only legible title in [the] shot, perched perfectly over Mary’s right shoulder: a vast, looming, two-volume ‘Clarissa.’ Was she trying to tell us something? Or has the culture finally memed and Zoomed its way into critical and archival self-awareness? Or are those of us neck-deep in Richardson simply apt to see him everywhere?”
“Having everyone contribute was really meaningful. We didn’t have strict rules around anything and that was to the benefit of the group,” said Creighton, who Zoomed in and blogged from Watertown. “The conversation just had a life of its own. It ran itself and was some of the smartest thinking and reading I’ve ever encountered.”
Lee, who helped Lynch organize the group, which numbered in the 30s throughout, specializes in British Romanticism and Asian American literature and has a long history of teaching “Clarissa.” But that didn’t prevent her from finding it “almost unreadable” this time around.
“I began teaching the abridged version in my ‘Rise of the Novel’ class. For a time, I even dreamed of teaching an entire course on the novel,” she said. “But after 2016, my feelings did a 180. I came to view it in a completely different light. I’m hardly able to read the letters from Lovelace, which make up a large part of the novel. Reading it after #MeToo, I’m not sure if I can teach it again.”
If the current social and political climate soured Lee on the plot, the global group of voices conversing virtually and through the blog brought her joy.
“As critics we often think about books alone and write alone, so to experience it as a group was enormously consoling to me. There were people from three continents, from Korea, Turkey, Ireland, Scotland, as well as from the U.S.,” she said. “In some ways the Zoom format made this reading group better than past ones I’ve been in. The simultaneous Zoom chats were also extraordinary, going at a mile a minute. Everyone occupied the same space, and it felt in some ways more intense and more equal than when you are physically present.”
……………………
Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Top 50 Organizations to Know (Archived)
Lenin – Imperialism The Highest Stage of Capitalism – 1916 – Audiobook (5:18:50 min) Audio Mp3
What Is To Be Done? – Lenin – Audiobook (7:06:01 min) Audio Mp3
What is to Be Done – Text online
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/preface.htm
Ireland: 1981 RIP UK POW Francis Hughes
Francis Hughes, South Derry Brigade, Óglaigh na hÉireann, died on this day in 1981. “If I have a duty I will perform it to the full with the unshakable belief that we are a noble race and that chains and bounds have no part in us.” I measc laochra na nGael go raibh a anam dílis
Notes on the financial oligarchy: Jeffrey Epstein and the criminality of the ruling class – by Gabriel Black – 10 May 2023
In August 2019, financier Jeffrey Epstein died in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan as he awaited trial for criminal charges relating to his decades-long sex trafficking of underage girls. While officially declared a suicide, his death was more likely murder, a contract killing to silence the specialist in deal-making and tax evasion—and sex trafficker—before a trial could produce evidence that would implicate many others in the US ruling elite.
At the time, the World Socialist Web Site asked two important questions. First, why was the media dismissing questions about Epstein’s death as “conspiracy theories”? Two, who wanted Jeffrey Epstein dead?
We argued Epstein’s case was significant not because of the financier’s particular depravity but rather because his operation and death expressed something true about capitalist society as a whole. We wrote:
The super-rich prey upon the poor and the vulnerable, using them as they wish. They make use of their connections to cover up their crimes, or, depending on the circumstances, arrange for the elimination of those former friends and associates whose activities have become an inconvenience or a danger.
Almost four years after Epstein’s death, a series of articles last week in the Wall Street Journal have made it possible to peer further into this incestuous world of high finance and corporate-state power in which Epstein played a key intermediary role.
es, however grotesque, were a distilled expression of the far broader exploitation this layer oversees and from which it profits. (cont. ….. https://archive.ph/3X1MJ )
‘Sin’ – by Zakhar Prilepin – Audio Mp3 (6:31:41 min)
Sin (Prilepin novel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sin (Russian: Грех) is a 2007 novel in stories by the Russian writer Zakhar Prilepin.
This novel was published in 2007 in Vargius (Russia).[1]
Prizes and awards
References
- ^ Zakhar Prilepin: Bibliography
- ^ Короткий список 2008 года Archived 2013-10-04 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Писатель Захар Прилепин получил 100 000 долларов за “Грех”
External links
…………….
………….
……..
Biography from Wikipedia
Yevgeny Nikolayevich Prilepin (Russian: Евге́ний Никола́евич Приле́пин;[2][3][4][5] born 7 July 1975), writing as Zakhar Prilepin (Russian: Захар Прилепин), and sometimes using another pseudonym, Yevgeny Lavlinsky (Russian: Евгений Лавлинский), is a Russian writer and political activist.
He was a member of Russia’s National Bolshevik Party from 1996 to 2019 and the leader of the national-conservative political party For Truth from 1 February 2020 until it merged into the pro-Kremlin A Just Russia in February 2021.[6]
Biography
Yevgeny Prilepin was born 7 July 1975 in the village of Ilyinka, Ryazan Oblast, in the family of a teacher and a nurse. His family lived there until 1984, when they moved to Dzerzhinsk.[7] He started working at age 16 as a loader in a bread shop.[3] He graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the Nizhny Novgorod State University and the School of Public Policy. He worked as a laborer, a security guard, and served as a squad leader in the Russian police group OMON, and subsequently took part in the fighting in Chechnya in 1996 and 1999.[3]
Prilepin at the 6 Moscow International Book Festival in 2011
In 1999, due to financial difficulties, Prilepin left OMON and got a job as a journalist at the Nizhny Novgorod newspaper Delo. He published under many pseudonyms, the most famous of which is Eugene Lavlinsky. In 2000, he became the editor of the newspaper. At the same time, Prilepin began to work on his first novel, The Pathologies.[7]
“The newspaper, however, was horribly yellow and sometimes even reactionary, although it was part of the holding of Sergei Kiriyenko. And I realized that I spent a life for nothing – and began to write a novel. At first, it was a novel about love, but eventually (I worked for three or four years), it turned into a novel about Chechnya as about the most powerful experience of my life – as the saying goes, what we are doing always turns out to be a Kalashnikov rifle.”[citation needed]
Works by Prilepin were published in various newspapers, including Limonka, Literary Gazette, The Edge, General Line, as well as in the magazines North, Friendship of Peoples, Roman-gazeta, New World, Snob, Russian pioneer, and Russian life. He was the chief editor of the People’s Observer, the newspaper of Nizhny Novgorod’s National Bolshevik Party branch. He participated in the seminar of young writers Moscow – Peredelkino (February 2004) and in the IV, V, and VI Forum of Young Writers in Moscow, Russia.[citation needed] He also wrote a biography of Soviet novelist Leonid Leonov.[8] He is a member of the ideological think tank the Izborsk Club.[9]
Prilepin was a member of the banned Russian National Bolshevik Party[3] and a supporter of the coalition The Other Russia, and took part in the organization of the Nizhny Novgorod Dissenters’ March on 24 March 2007. In July 2012, he published a short essay titled “A Letter to Comrade Stalin,”[10] a Stalinist critique aimed against modern Russian “liberal society”, which was widely regarded as antisemitic.[11][12]
The media has repeatedly mentioned Prilepin’s friendship with Vladislav Surkov, whose cousin is married to Prilepin’s sister, Yelena.[13]
In February 2017, Prilepin gave a lengthy interview, in which he revealed that he was leading a volunteer battalion in the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk. The battalion was the 4th Reconnaissance and Assault Battalion of the Special Forces of the Armed forces of DNR, commonly known as Prilepin’s Battalion; Prilepin claimed it had been created in July 2016 on his initiative and announced “we will ride on a white horse into any town we’ve abandoned.” Prilepin further said he was second in command with the rank of major.[14][15] Prilepin was an influential figure and a celebrity in the DNR and the concept of Malorossiya was seemingly created by him.[16]
In late July 2018, Prilepin returned “demobilized” to Moscow;[17] the battalion he had served in was disbanded in September 2018.[18][19] In an interview with the Russian news outlet Znak.com on 15 August 2019, Prilepin claimed that the battalion had killed more Ukrainians than any other, which, however, has been disputed.[20][21][22] He is wanted on terrorism charges in Ukraine, and was denied entry to Bosnia-Herzegovina for security reasons.[20][23]
On 29 November 2018, he joined the All-Russian People’s Front.[24] Because of this, he was excluded from The Other Russia political party by its founder Eduard Limonov, who had earlier, together with party members, told Prilepin to choose between the two political structures.[25]
On 29 October 2019, he created the public movement For Truth (За правду). He intended for the movement to be transformed into a political party that will participate in the 2021 legislative election.[26] However, the party merged into A Just Russia in February 2021.[6]
Prilepin strongly supported Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. For his support of the war in Ukraine, Prilepin has been sanctioned by Australia, Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom[27] The European Union had included him in the very first round of sanctions on 28 February 2022 on those supporting the invasion.[28] In January 2023, Prilepin signed a contract to join the Russian National Guard and fought in Ukraine for a second time.[29]
On 6 May 2023, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, on the way to Moscow from the Russian-occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk, Zakhar Prilepin’s car was blown up and the writer was injured, and the driver died. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, blamed the “Kyiv regime”, the United States and NATO for the attack.[30][31] The Russian Investigative Committee called the explosion “a terrorist act”.[32] Russian authorities say that one man has been arrested in relation to the explosion, saying the man had testified that he committed the attack under orders given to him from Ukraine.[32][33] According to the BBC, the Atesh partisan movement claimed responsibility for the attack.[34] The attack was the third of this type targeting pro-war figures to happen in Russia after the start of its invasion of Ukraine, with the earlier ones having been the killing of Darya Dugina and the 2023 Saint Petersburg bombing that killed Vladlen Tatarsky.[30]
Personal life
Prilepin is married to Maria and has two sons and two daughters: Gleb, Ignat, Kira, and Lilia. Prilepin lives in Nizhny Novgorod.[35][7] He also has a sister, Yelena, who lives with their mother in Dzerzhinsk.[3] His father died in 1994.[7]
Bibliography
Novels[edit]
- Санькя – Sankya, Novel. Ad Marginem, Moscow 2006, 280 pages
- Патологии – The Pathologies, Novel. Andreevsky Flag, Moscow 2005, 250 pages
- Грех – Sin. Vargius, Moscow 2007
- Чёрная обезьяна (Black Ape) AST, Moscow 2012
- Обитель. (Abode) AST, Moscow 2014
Stories[edit]
- Ботинки, полные горячей водкой. (Shoes Filled with Hot Vodka) AST, Moscow 2008
- Война. (War) AST, Moscow 2008
- Революция. (Revolution) AST, Moscow 2009
Essays[edit]
- Я пришёл из России. (I Came from Russia) Moscow 2008
- Terra Tartarara. Это касается лично меня” (сборник эссе). (Terra Tartarara. It Personally Corncerns Me) AST, Moscow 2009
- Летучие бурлаки. (Flying Burlaks) AST, Moscow 2014
Other
- Леонид Леонов: Игра его была огромна. (Leonid Leonov: His Play was Great) Molodaya Gvardiya, Moscow 2010
- Книгочёт. (The Bookgazer) Astrel, Moscow 2012
- Именины сердца. Разговоры с русской литературой. (Heart’s birthday. Conversations with Russian Literature) AST, Moscow 2009
References
- ^ “Захар Прилепин – Биография”. Zaharprilepin.ru. Archived from the original on 10 August 2013. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
- ^ “Захар Прилепин | Новая литературная карта России”. Litkarta.ru. Archived from the original on 1 June 2020. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c d e “Прилепин, Захар”. Lenta.ru. Archived from the original on 1 June 2020. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
- ^ “Биография Захара Прилепина | Анонимная Правда”. Sta-sta.ru. Archived from the original on 1 June 2020. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
- ^ Medved magazine, No 3 (138), 2010
- ^ Jump up to:a b “Манифест”. spravedlivo.ru. Archived from the original on 28 January 2021. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c d “ВСЁ СБЫЛОСЬ”. zaharprilepin.ru (in Russian). Archived from the original on 15 August 2021. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
- ^ Прилепин, Захар (2012). Podelnik epokhi: Leonid Leonov. ISBN 978-5-271-42690-2. Archived from the original on 19 August 2021. Retrieved 19 August 2021.
- ^ Galstyan, Areg (27 June 2016). “Third Rome Rising: The Ideologues Calling for a New Russian Empire”. The National Interest. Archived from the original on 22 April 2021. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
- ^ “Письмо товарищу Сталину – Общество – Свободная Пресса”. svpressa.ru. 30 July 2012. Archived from the original on 24 August 2013. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
- ^ “Ежедневный Журнал: Дебютант”. Ej.ru. 24 September 2012. Archived from the original on 19 August 2013. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
- ^ “МЫ ЗДЕСЬ | Публикации | Сифилис антисемитизма”. Newswe.com. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
- ^ “Захар Прилепин”. Скачать бесплатно книги в FB2 и EPUB форматах (in Russian). Archived from the original on 29 November 2020. Retrieved 19 August 2021.
- ^ “Захар Прилепин собрал в ДНР свой батальон”. Archived from the original on 29 January 2023. Retrieved 8 December 2022.
- ^ Following “Russia’s Hemingway” to War Archived 16 December 2022 at the Wayback Machine, Atlantic Council‘s Digital Forensic Research Lab (28 April 2017)
- ^ From “Malorossiya” With Love? Archived 16 December 2022 at the Wayback Machine, Atlantic Council‘s Digital Forensic Research Lab (18 July 2017)
- ^ Russian writer quits Donbas terrorists’ ranks, moves back to Moscow Archived 26 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine, UNIAN (18 July 2017)
- ^ “Все хотят освобождения всех земель Новороссии”. Archived from the original on 3 December 2022. Retrieved 8 December 2022.
- ^ “#MinskMonitor: The Rise and Fall of “Prilepin’s Battalion””. Archived from the original on 7 December 2022. Retrieved 8 December 2022.
- ^ Jump up to:a b “Best-Selling Russian Author Boasts Of ‘Killing Many’ In Ukraine’s Donbas”. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 18 August 2019. Archived from the original on 1 February 2023. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
- ^ “Russian Novelist Brags His Battalion Killed the Most Ukrainians”. Archived from the original on 6 February 2023. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
- ^ “Militant Prilepin is offended that killing of large number of people is not recognized for his battalion”. 16 August 2019. Archived from the original on 10 December 2022. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
- ^ “A Stolen Ukrainian Icon Reveals a Web of Secret State and Nonstate Connections | Wilson Center”. http://www.wilsoncenter.org. Archived from the original on 30 March 2021. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
- ^ “ОНФ подвёл итоги первой пятилетки и обновил руководство”. Archived from the original on 5 December 2018. Retrieved 7 November 2019.
- ^ “Эдуард Лимонов исключил Захара Прилепина из партии «Другая Россия». За членство в ОНФ”. Archived from the original on 7 November 2019. Retrieved 7 November 2019.
- ^ “Захар Прилепин написал партию”. Archived from the original on 5 November 2019. Retrieved 7 November 2019.
- ^ “Who is Zakhar Prilepin, target of car bomb in Russia?”. Al Jazeera. 7 May 2023. Archived from the original on 7 May 2023. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
- ^ Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/336 of 28 February 2022 implementing Regulation (EU) No 269/2014 concerning restrictive measures in respect of actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine
- ^ БОЙКО, Александр (26 January 2023). “Майор Захар Прилепин отправился на спецоперацию во главе подразделения спецназа”. kp.ru (in Russian). Archived from the original on 1 February 2023. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
- ^ Jump up to:a b “Russian nationalist writer wounded in car bombing, one dead”. Reuters. 6 May 2023. Archived from the original on 6 May 2023. Retrieved 6 May 2023.
- ^ “В Нижнем Новгороде взорвали машину Захара Прилепина. Водитель погиб, писатель ранен”. Archived from the original on 6 May 2023. Retrieved 6 May 2023.
- ^ Jump up to:a b “Russia says bombing of military blogger is ‘a terrorist act'”. CNN. 7 May 2023.
- ^ “Russia blames Ukraine for car bombing that injured pro-Putin novelist Zakhar Prilepin, killed driver”. CBS News. 6 May 2023.
- ^ “В России взорвали автомобиль Захара Прилепина. Идеолог и участник войны с Украиной ранен”. http://www.bbc.com. 6 May 2023. Archived from the original on 6 May 2023. Retrieved 6 May 2023.
- ^ “Прилепин, Захар Российский писатель”. lenta.ru. Archived from the original on 19 August 2021. Retrieved 18 August 2021.
……………………..
Zakhar Prilepin: Russian pro-war blogger injured in car bomb – by Matt Murphy (BBC) 6 May 2023
A prominent Russian writer and pro-war blogger has had surgery and is now under sedation after a car bomb attack, officials say.
Zakhar Prilepin, a vehement supporter of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine, was in a car blown up in a village in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region. He suffered fractures and his driver was killed.
Investigators say they are questioning a suspect named Alexander Permyakov who has admitted operating for Ukraine.
That has not been confirmed by Kyiv.
Nor has Kyiv denied involvement, or responded to a Russian foreign ministry allegation that Ukraine – backed by the US government – targeted Prilepin as an ideological enemy.
Russian reports did not specify Prilepin’s injuries. The Investigative Committee (SK), which handles serious crimes including terrorism, accuses Permyakov of having detonated a remote-controlled bomb, wrecking Prilepin’s Audi.
The SK says the suspect was caught in a neighbouring village. The region is more than 425km (265 miles) east of Moscow.
The suspect “admitted doing an assignment for the Ukrainian secret services”, the SK alleges.
It comes a month after another pro-Kremlin blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, died in a bombing at a St Petersburg café.
Saturday’s explosion reportedly took place on a remote road some 80km from the town of Bor.
The partisan group Atesh, which is made up of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, claimed it was behind the attack on Prilepin.
“We had a feeling that sooner or later he would be blown up,” they wrote on Telegram. “He was not driving alone, but with a surprise on the underside of the car.”
The BBC cannot verify Atesh’s claims.
As well as being one one of Russia’s best-known novelists, Prilepin is known for his involvement with Russian ultra-nationalist politics.
A veteran of Russia’s bloody wars in Chechnya in the 1990s, the 47-year-old has admitted fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
He has called for the “return of Kyiv to Russia”. Last year a group founded by Prilepin called on officials to “purge the cultural space” of all who oppose the conflict.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the alleged bombing until the investigation was complete.
But Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova sought to blame the attack on the UK and the US.
“The fact has come true: Washington and Nato fed another international terrorist cell – the Kiev regime,” she wrote on Telegram. “We pray for Zakhar.”
The attack is the latest to target high-profile supporters of President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Vladlen Tatarsky was killed last month. The blogger had reported from the Ukraine front line and gained notoriety last year after posting a video filmed inside the Kremlin in which he said: “We will defeat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone as necessary. Just as we like it.”
Activist Darya Trepova, 26, was later arrested and was charged with terrorism following the publication of a video – believed to have been recorded under duress – in which she admitted bringing a statuette to the café that later blew up.
And in August 2022, Darya Dugina – the daughter of a close ally of Mr Putin – was killed in a suspected car bombing near Moscow.
It is thought her father, the Russian ultra-nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, who is known as “Putin’s brain”, may have been the intended target of that attack.
………………………………
The BBC’s Laurence Peter contributed to this report.
Russia: Who is novelist Zakhar Prilepin, target of car bomb in Russia? (Al Jazeera) 7 May 2023
Zakhar Prilepin, who was wounded in a car blast in Russia that killed his driver, is the third prominent prowar figure to be targeted by a bomb since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The 47-year-old novelist was hospitalised with wounds to both of his legs on Saturday, but was conscious and doing “alright”, the TASS state news agency reported, citing officials.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine and Western states backing it, particularly the United States, of the attack on the writer. A senior official in Kyiv, however, has accused Moscow of staging the incident.
Prilepin, the author of several novels inspired by his experiences of war and of living in Russia’s provinces, was once praised by literary critics in the West before he put his pen and his gun to the service of the Kremlin in Ukraine.
Born in 1975 in the Ryazan region, Prilepin was sent to fight in Russia’s wars against Chechen separatists in the 1990s.
After his return to civilian life, he recounted the horrors of the war in his debut novel “Pathologies”, which describes the actions of a special forces unit, including hard drinking and killings.
He went on to write five more novels and has also authored numerous poems, essays and articles. His works have been translated in Western Europe, and he is the recipient of various state awards.
As Prilepin tried to build a name for himself in the literary world in Europe in the 2000s, he became an opposition activist, criticising Russian President Vladimir Putin and campaigning for Russia’s poor against corrupt oligarchs.
Everything changed with Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Prilepin has since embraced Putin’s policies and went on to fight alongside pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, revealing in 2017 that he had created his own battalion.
“I think a writer has a right to any position,” Prilepin said at a Moscow news conference following the revelation.
“He can stand with a flag saying peace to the world or he can take up arms.”
In a 2019 YouTube interview, he boasted that his unit had “killed people in big numbers”.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year, Prilepin, who has approximately 300,000 subscribers each to his Telegram and YouTube channels, went on to become an ardent proponent of the military campaign.
“I have no guilt about what is happening. It has happened, now we have to see it through,” he said in November.
Prilepin has also been politically active as the cochair of the “A Just Russia — For Truth” party.
Last year, he took a prominent role in creating GRAD, a parliamentary group that seeks to identify cultural figures with “anti-Russian” views and persuade the state and businesses to stop funding them.
GRAD’s initials stand for “Group to investigate anti-Russian activity in the cultural sphere”. Grad is also the Russian word for “hail”, and the name of a missile system.
Prilepin has been sanctioned by Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the European Union over his support of the war in Ukraine.
The writer and politician has compared himself with two giants of Russian literature — Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Lermontov — both of whom fought as soldiers before turning to writing.
According to Prilepin, Tolstoy and Lermontov would have joined the Russian army in Ukraine had they been alive today.
Interviewed by the AFP news agency in Paris in 2018, he said he was fighting out of “empathy” and did not hide his desire for Russia to take over more of Ukraine.
“Our aim is to conquer and control territory,” he said. “Killing is not an aim of itself and we will be held accountable in hell.”
…………………
Sin – by Zakhar Prilepin – A Novel from the Russian – Excerpt (3:46 min) Audio Mp3
Over the past several years Zakhar Prilepin has emerged as a discovery in the world of prose fiction. Drawing on his experiences of peacetime labour in Putin’s Russia, as well as his service with the Russian Special Forces in Chechnya, Zakhar Prilepin creates in the novel “Sin” an outstanding and controversial piece of work, winning several prestigious literary awards, including The National Bestseller Prize (2008), The Super Natsbest Prize (2011), and the honorable Alexander Nevsky Award “The True Sons of Russia”.
In the episodes of Zakharka’s happy life, in non-chronological order, the reader sees him as a little boy, a bitterly drinking grave-digger, a nightclub bouncer or a soldier in Chechnya. The happiness of poor Zakharka even in doing dirty work is shown with brutal honesty and breaks all the genre’s rules. On top of everything, this guy even writes poetry, and his stylistically varied verses are presented in the penultimate chapter, “In other words”.
Zakharka is young and strong. He has no money, but has the ability to enjoy every moment of existence. He is sensitive, but rude and bold. He is affectionate and irresistible as only a man can be. He is not devoid of narcissism, but able to admire the beautiful small things in life. He is contagiously full of passion for living, taking large gulps of it while being uncompromisingly happy, despite the crudeness of his surrounding reality.
Manhood in the flesh, he is overwhelmed by instincts and overcomes them not without pleasure, preserving what is truly important in life. He looks boldly, and even with curiosity, into the face of death – either taking pictures of the deceased at a funeral or staring agitatedly at a just-disembowelled pig – and values the freedom of not fearing for his life, perhaps even more than life itself. And only two young sons make him understand that this freedom is not his anymore. The family determines the best moments of Zakharka’s life, lightning some episodes of the novel with the radiance of healthy, youthful or mature, male happiness.
Like the Russian soul itself, Zakharka is lost in search of his place in this newly-reorganized world. He is a kind of goodness with fists, full of youthful energy and daring, capable yet of truly loving and changing today, even in little things – in order to obtain justice.
Sin offers a fascinating window into the soul of those whom you can see on the streets doing menial jobs, or stone-faced Russian army recruits who will come back from war to find themselves chucking drunken visitors out of a nightclub.
***
This title has been realised by a team of the following dedicated professionals:
Translated by Simon Patterson with Nina Chordas,
Edited by Nina Chordas,
Maxim Hodak – Максим Ходак (Publisher),
Max Mendor – Макс Мендор (Director),
Yana Kovalskaya and Camilla Stein.
Chomsky’s Ties to Jeffrey Epstein—and Suspected 9/11 Mastermind Ehud Barak—Exposed – by Kevin Barrett – 4 May 2023
No wonder he lied so outrageously in our email correspondence
• 2,100 WORDS •
In early summer 1992 I caught the documentary film Manufacturing Consent when it opened in San Francisco’s Castro Theater. That film changed my life. It showcased Noam Chomsky, an accomplished linguistics professor, and his analysis of corporate media propaganda. Manufacturing Consent convinced me that the American academy could tolerate, and indeed celebrate, serious social criticism. If Chomsky, a radical opponent of America’s most powerful institutions, could not only survive but thrive in academia, speaking truth to power and building a huge audience along the way, why couldn’t others do the same?
Before that screening, I had been a profoundly alienated bohemian haunting the margins of academia, so disgusted by all of America’s institutions that I could scarcely have imagined working for them. (Learning the facts about the JFK assassination at age 16 can do that to a person.) But Chomsky’s example inspired me. It made me want to join him and the other academic critics of US empire, convince our colleagues of the truth of our arguments using logic and evidence, and help the USA return to its anti-imperial roots and then some.
So it was largely thanks to Chomsky that I entered a Ph.D. program in 1995. But by then I had noticed two glaring anomalies in his political thought. The first, and most important, was that his analysis of the JFK assassination seemed insane. Chomsky argued that the assassination was obviously a conspiracy, and not the work of a lone nut as the official story has it—but that it didn’t matter who killed JFK, because the assassination didn’t change any policies! Since he felt it was so utterly unimportant that the president was murdered by conspirators powerful enough to force their ludicrous cover story on the world, Chomsky evinced no interest whatsoever in identifying the perpetrators, and discouraged his followers from further interest in the topic.
“Take for example all this frenzy about the JFK assassination. I mean I don’t know who assassinated him and I don’t care, but what difference does it make?” –Noam Chomsky
The other anomaly involved the question of Palestine. Though Chomsky has verbally sympathized with Palestinian suffering, and admitted the justice of the Palestinian cause, he has vociferously obstructed the two most promising strategic efforts that could help Palestine defeat Zionism: The boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) movement, and the campaign to expose Zionist control over US Mideast policy.
Alison Weir once asked Chomsky why he opposed BDS and why he had falsely claimed that it was bad for Palestinians (who almost unanimously support it). “The reason is very simple. It’s so utterly hypocritical that it’s basically a gift to the hardliners. They can say, ‘Look, you’re calling for a boycott of Israel, but you’re not calling for a boycott of the United States which has a much worse record…’”
Would Israeli hardliners ever actually say such a thing? And would it matter even if they did? Of course not. Here again, Chomsky is spouting sheer nonsense, prefaced by the obligatory disclaimer “it’s very simple.” When someone as seemingly intelligent as Chomsky says such things, there are really only two possible interpretations: Either he is suffering from some bizarre mental dysfunction, or he is lying and gaslighting us.
Chomsky’s occasional habit of emitting streams of discombobulated blather repeatedly surfaces when he is asked about Israel’s control of US Mideast policy. As James Petras writes, “Noam Chomsky has long been one of the great obfuscators of AIPAC and the existence of Zionist power over US Middle East policy.” The nonsensical gnome ludicrously argues that US policymakers’ enslavement to Israel actually serves US national and imperial interests. For him, Israel is basically a powerless appendage of US empire. Chomsky’s implicit subtext is that anyone who notices Israel’s death grip on US foreign policy, including Walt and Mearsheimer, Alan Hart, James Petras, J. William Fulbright, James Abourezk, Paul Findley, and indeed every honest and informed analyst who has considered the question, must be “anti-Semitic.”
My issues with Chomsky’s repeated bouts of apparent insanity came to a head after 9/11. In November 2001, Chomsky published a “surprise” bestseller. Entitled 9/11 and republished ten years later as 9/11: Was There an Alternative?, the book basically repeats Chomsky’s vacuous diatribes about the JFK coup d’état—“it doesn’t matter who did it, do NOT look behind the curtain”—and applies them to 9/11.
“If if it were true [9/11 conspiracy theories], which is extremely unlikely, what difference does it make? I mean, it doesn’t have any significance.” –Noam Chomsky, interview with David Barsamian
While I was participating in the rise of the 9/11 truth movement from 2004 onwards, I noticed that Chomsky was growing ever-more-strident in attacking truth-seekers and insisting that it didn’t matter who did 9/11. In 2008 I invited him on my radio show, which led to an exchange of emails culminating in his last-minute refusal to appear. I was flabbergasted by Chomsky’s seemingly insane statements and positions. When he finally started lying outright, I concluded that he must be acting in bad faith. I published the private emails in their entirety because I thought the world needed to know the truth about the evident gross immorality (or, charitably, insanity) of America’s most celebrated (fake) dissident.
Then in 2016 I gave a talk at the Left Forum on “Why Chomsky Is Wrong About 9/11.” Though my criticisms of Chomsky were quite restrained in tone, given his appalling betrayals, I was banned from the Left Forum the following year. Apparently going to the Left Forum to criticize Chomsky is like going to the Vatican to criticize the Pope.
Read the full text of “Why Chomsky Is Wrong About 9/11”
Over the years, it dawned on me that if Chomsky were deliberately leading people astray, there would have to be some sort of method in his apparent madness. Why would he herd the critical thinkers and idealists of the left away from the truth about the JFK assassination, 9/11, Zionist control of US policy, and the best strategy for saving Palestine? Whose interests would be served by those four acts of deception?
The question, of course, answers itself. As Michael Collins Piper, Laurent Guyénot, Ron Unz, Alan Hart, and so many others have suggested, the leading suspect in both the JFK and 9/11 coups is the state of Israel and its “American” acolytes. Chomsky has been consistently, systematically gaslighting his followers on the four issues most crucial to the preservation and expansion of Zionist power. As Jeffrey Blankfort writes:
“At the end of the day, it is evident that Chomsky’s affection for Israel, his sojourn on a kibbutz, his Jewish identity, and his early experiences with anti-Semitism to which he occasionally refers have colored his approach to every aspect of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and explain his defense of Israel. That is his right, of course, but not to pretend at the same that he is an advocate for justice in Palestine.”
Since our ill-starred 2008 email exchange I have leaned towards acknowledging the likelihood that Chomsky is a lying, gaslighting Zionist scumbag. But I wasn’t sure until a few days ago, when the news broke that Chomsky had repeatedly hobnobbed with then-convicted-sex-criminal Jeffrey Epstein, including meeting Epstein together with pervert and 9/11 suspect Ehud Barak, apparently even flying on Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Express. Characteristically, Chomsky dissembled: “If there was a flight (with Epstein), which I doubt…” If Chomsky hadn’t flown with Epstein, of course, he would just say so. His mealymouthed evasions of the truth, whether of JFK, 9/11, Israeli occupation of America, or his relations with Epstein and Barak, have a vacuously passive-aggressive tone that is inimitably Chomsky-esque, but jarringly incommensurate with his reputation as one of the world’s greatest linguists.
Chomsky’s response to journalists’ questions about his relationship with Epstein began: “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s.” That is, of course, exactly what many people would say when questioned about their sexual activities with consenting adults. So why is Chomsky proffering a stock “don’t ask me about my sex life” response when questioned about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and his stable of underage prostitutes?
Methinks the gnome doth protest too much.
More troubling than whether Chomsky (statutorily) raped young girls is the question of why he was meeting with Israel’s top blackmailer of American leaders, Jeffrey Epstein, alongside the likely mastermind of 9/11, Ehud Barak. Barak resigned as Prime Minister of Israel in May of 2001 and disappeared from public view, presumably spending June through early September working on plans to demolish the World Trade Center, attack the Pentagon, and blame the carnage on Israel’s enemies. Barak’s work on the lead-up to 9/11 recalls Ben Gurion’s resignation as Israeli Prime Minister and disappearance from public view in June, 1963, after which he went underground and presumably orchestrated the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November. The moral: When Israeli PMs resign in the spring, get ready for something big come fall.
Ehud Barak was conveniently pre-placed in BBC’s London studios so he could go live an hour after 9/11, where he recited what would become the official story:
Barak’s coercion was aimed at the masses, who were traumatized by the horrific images they had just seen on TV and open to hypnotic suggestion—which Barak obligingly provided, implanting the pre-scripted official version deep in their subconscious minds. Chomsky, by contrast, was deployed a few months later against leftists and intellectuals, who were understandably suspicious and predisposed to mistrust the Bush Administration and its rush to war against Israel’s enemies. (That Chomsky’s coverup-propaganda broadside 9/11 shot up the bestseller lists in November 2001 was hardly surprising, given the realities of power in America’s media, book publishing and distribution industries.)
Many languages have one or more proverbs that roughly translate as “A man is known by the company he keeps.” By simultaneously meeting Epstein and Barak, Noam Chomsky has unmasked himself as a top-level Zionist sheepdog tasked with keeping the dumb American goyim cattle blind, ignorant, and cooped up in their pens, bleating out the platitudes they are taught by their Zionist betters. To say that the scandal will tarnish Chomsky’s legacy is inaccurate, because there is no legacy to tarnish. Chomsky is a charlatan and a fraud. He stands revealed as an agent of the world’s most genocidal and most systematically terrorist state—a state that has attacked the United States of America repeatedly since 1954, assassinating its best leaders, murdering its sailors and civilians, looting its nuclear arsenal and its treasury, and generally assuming much of the responsibility for its impending destruction.
So what did Chomsky talk about with Israel’s top blackmailer Epstein and 9/11 perp Barak? Did the conversation sound like Netanyahu’s talk with his cronies at Fink’s Bar in Jerusalem in 1990?
At the head of the table was Netanyahu. The group at the table had just stolen 5 American KG 84 cryptographic devices with the help of Canadians serving with the UNTSO on the Golan Heights, giving this Israeli-led cabal real-time access to all US State Department, Naval and NATO communications. This is a transcribed quote taken from an audio recording of Netanyahu at that meeting:
“If we get caught they will just replace us with persons of the same cloth. So it does not matter what you do, America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up, and sell it off piece by piece until there is nothing left but the world’s biggest welfare state that we will create and control. Why? Because it is the will of God, and America is big enough to take the hit so we can do it again and again and again. This is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly and make them suffer for refusing to be our slaves.”
Chomsky’s contempt for Americans, and for the intelligence of his American audience, is every bit as palpable as Netanyahu’s. And Epstein’s. And Barak’s.
Maybe it’s time for him to make aliyah…and thank Yahweh that Israel won’t sign extradition treaties.
………………………….
(Republished from Substack)
Drake – AI Song – Winter’s Cold (3:13 min) Audio Mp3
Artificial Intelligence: doomsday for humanity, or for capitalism? (In Defense of Marxism) 5 May 2023
by Daniel Morley
Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence have provoked a mixture of fear and enthusiasm across the world. In this article, Daniel Morley, examines the claim that AI is ‘conscious’ or ‘superhuman’, draws out the real potential for this technology, and explains how we are really enslaved by the machine under capitalism.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been the subject of much debate and speculation in recent years, with many people claiming that it will soon become conscious and potentially even surpass human intelligence. However, as socialists, we must approach this question from a materialist perspective, examining the underlying causes and conditions that would be necessary for such a development to occur.
It is unlikely that AI would be able to achieve true consciousness, as consciousness is a product of the material world and the specific conditions of human evolution. Our consciousness is shaped by the way we perceive the world, our environment, our social interactions, and our history. Without these specific conditions, AI would not have the same kind of consciousness as humans. Moreover, capitalism sees AI as a tool to increase profits and control over the workforce, rather than as a way to improve the lives of working people.
The above lines were, ironically, not written by myself, but rather by the new ‘chatbot’, ChatGPT, after having been given the following prompt:
Please write an article critical of AI’s ability to become conscious, on a materialist basis, in the style of Daniel Morley from Socialist Appeal.
It took ChatGPT less than ten seconds to produce this. The quality of the writing is so convincing that it has inevitably led some to declare such ‘chatbots’ sentient, and still more to speculate that this technology will sooner or later replace or even enslave inferior human beings. Indeed, following its integration into Microsoft’s Bing search engine, ChatGPT has itself claimed to be sentient, as well as professing to have all manner of bizarre desires.
Despite the novelty of this powerful AI, the promise and threat of automation are as old as the industrial revolution. Ever since the advent of mechanised production, humanity has both dreamed of its potential to free us of backbreaking toil, and despaired at being replaced by the machine. The notion of an intelligent, or even super-intelligent, machine carries these dreams and nightmares to an extreme. But until recently, these seemed to be just that: far off dreams.
In 2012, neural networks using a technique called ‘deep learning’ became much more viable, and quickly produced far more impressive results than previous forms of AI. This revolution has caused many in the tech world to hail the imminent arrival of super-intelligent AI, just as the millenarian sects hailed the second coming of Christ. For them, this miraculous technology promises to solve all our problems, and therefore needs only to be enthusiastically embraced. This ‘AI sect’ includes a left-wing sub-sect, who hope the technology will ‘automate’ away the need to overthrow capitalism, and give us what they call ‘fully automated’ communism.
Overall, however, the prospect of super-intelligent AI generates far more fear than it does enthusiasm. Such responses range from the widespread assumption that AI will drive an unprecedented wave of unemployment and inequality, to the idea that AI will establish itself as some sort of cruel master race, enslaving mankind, as depicted in films like Terminator and The Matrix. Although this idea belongs to science fiction, it is also very widespread.
AI channels very deep fears, bred not by the technology itself, but by capitalist society and its deeply rooted alienation. Under capitalism, humanity lacks control over its own technology, because of the anarchy of the market. Technology is used not to meet the needs of humanity, but to make profits, with no consideration given to the long-term effects. Therefore, to understand the real effect this technology will have, it is necessary to understand how capitalism has developed AI, and how it will utilise it.
(cont. https://archive.ph/Z5oYO )
Bobby Sands – Irish Freedom Fighter – Died During Prison Hunger Stike – 5 May 1981
Ukraine: The Counteroffensive – by Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg (The Atlantic) Archived – 1 May 2023
The Egyptian – by Mika Waltari – Opening (4:38 min) Audio Mp3
Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s newly-released private calendar including meetings with professor Noam Chomsky – Chris Bradford
JEFFREY Epstein met with professor Noam Chomsky years after registering as a sex offender, bombshell documents have revealed. The disgraced financier also met with top officials, including the current CIA director William Burns, according to his schedule. Epstein and linguist Noam Chomsky reportedly talked about politics and academia during their meeting. Chomsky, a staunch critic of US foreign policy, was scheduled to fly to Epstein’s plush Manhattan townhouse in 2015, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The linguist, 94, revealed that the pair discussed politics and academia during their meeting. Epstein did not graduate from college. Epstein reportedly penciled in meetings with Chomsky between 2015 and 2016. Chomsky was quizzed about his relationship with Epstein, and he told the WSJ: “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him, and we met occasionally.”
A top ‘dissidents’ meeting with a top spy is nobodies business. The ‘public intellectual’ only wants part of his persona to be public.
Epstein pleaded guilty in June 2008 to a single charge of soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14. He had to register as a sex offender and make payments to victims. The WSJ unearthed a trove of documents from 2013-2017 that had previously not been reported.
Epstein reportedly arranged meetings with Burns in 2014 while he was Deputy Secretary of State. One lunch was planned to take place at a Washington, DC law office, while two were expected to happen at Epstein’s home. CIA spokeswoman Tammy Kupperman Thorp told the WSJ that Burns remembered being introduced to Epstein by a mutual friend.
She added that Burns also recalled meeting Epstein “briefly” in New York. The meeting between Epstein and Burns happened when the diplomat was trying to leave the government. Burns served as Deputy Secretary of State from July 2011 until November 2014.
The meeting with Epstein happened years before Burns was nominated for the role of CIA director. Kupperman Thorp said: “The director did not know anything about him, other than that he was introduced as an expert in the financial services sector and offered general advice on the transition to the private sector.”
She continued that Burns and Epstein had “no relationship.” Chomsky and Burns have not been accused of any wrongdoing. Lots of people have multiple meetings with mysteriously wealthy convicted sex offenders who act like spies. “We’ve all done it.”
Kathryn Ruemmler, who formerly served on The White House Counsel during the Obama Administration between 2011-14, told The WSJ that she “regrets” ever knowing Epstein. The paper reported that Epstein called Ruemmler to arrange a meeting – just weeks after she left the White House. A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs, where Ruemmler now works, said she had more than 30 appointments with Epstein.
They told the WSJ: “It was the same kinds of contacts and engagements she had with other contacts and clients.” The docs claimed Ruemmler was planned to join Epstein on visits to Paris in 2015 and his Caribbean island in 2017. But, the Goldman Sachs spokesperson said that she didn’t travel with him.
Ruemmler also has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
In August 2019, Epstein was found dead in his New York prison cell while awaiting a sex trafficking trial.
Epstein had pleaded not guilty to charges of sexually abusing dozens of girls, with some of his alleged victims being as young as 14.
Across the Street and Into the Grill – by E. B. White – 6 Oct 1950
This is my last and best and true and only meal, thought Mr. Pirnie as he descended at noon and swung east on the beat-up sidewalk of Forty-fifth Street. Just ahead of him was the girl from the reception desk. I am a little fleshed up around the crook of the elbow, thought Pirnie, but I commute good.
He quickened his step to overtake her and felt the pain again. What a stinking trade it is, he thought. But after what I’ve done to other assistant treasurers, I can’t hate anybody. Sixteen deads, and I don’t know how many possibles.
The girl was near enough now so he could smell her fresh receptiveness, and the lint in her hair. Her skin was light blue, like the sides of horses.
“I love you,” he said, “and we are going to lunch together for the first and only time, and I love you very much.”
“Hello, Mr. Pirnie,” she said, overtaken. “Let’s not think of anything.”
A pair of fantails flew over from the sad old Guaranty Trust Company, their wings set for a landing. A lovely double, thought Pirnie, as he pulled. “Shall we go to the Hotel Biltmore, on Vanderbilt Avenue, which is merely a feeder lane for the great streets, or shall we go to Schrafft’s, where my old friend Botticelli is captain of girls and where they have the mayonnaise in fiascos?
“Let’s go to Schrafft’s,” said the girl, low. “But first I must phone Mummy.” She stepped into a public booth and dialled true and well, using her finger. Then she telephoned.
As they walked on, she smelled good. She smells good, thought Pirnie. But that’s all right, I add good. And when we get to Schrafft’s, I’ll order from the menu, which I like very much indeed.
They entered the restaurant. The wind was still west, ruffling the edges of the cookies. In the elevator, Pirnie took the controls. “I’ll run it,” he said to the operator. “I checked out long ago.” He stopped true at the third floor, and they stepped off into the men’s grill.
“Good morning, my Assistant Treasurer,” said Botticelli, coming forward with a fiasco in each hand. He nodded at the girl, who he knew was from the West Seventies and whom he desired.
“Can you drink the water here?” asked Pirnie. He had the fur trapper’s eye and took in the room at a glance, noting that there was one empty table and three pretty waitresses.
Botticelli led the way to the table in the corner, where Pirnie’s flanks would be covered.
“Alexanders,” said Pirnie. “Eighty-six to one. The way Chris mixes them. Is this table all right, Daughter?”
Botticelli disappeared and returned soon, carrying the old Indian blanket.
“That’s the same blanket, isn’t it?” asked Pirnie.
“Yes. To keep the wind off,” said the Captain, smiling from the backs of his eyes. “It’s still west. It should bring the ducks in tomorrow, the chef thinks.”
Mr. Pirnie and the girl from the reception desk crawled down under the table and pulled the Indian blanket over them so it was solid and good and covered them right. The girl put her hand on his wallet. It was cracked and old and held his commutation book. “We are having fun, aren’t we?” she asked.
“Yes, Sister,” he said.
“I have here the soft-shelled crabs, my Assistant Treasurer,” said Botticelli. “And another fiasco of the 1926. This one is cold.”
“Dee the soft-shelled crabs,” said Pirnie from under the blanket. He put his arm around the receptionist good.
“Do you think we should have a green pokeweed salad?” she asked. “Or shall we not think of anything for a while?”
“We shall not think of anything for a while, and Botticelli would bring the pokeweed if there was any,” said Pirnie. “It isn’t the season.” Then he spoke to the Captain. “Botticelli, do you remember when we took all the mailing envelopes from the stockroom, spit on the flaps, and then drank rubber cement till the foot soldiers arrived?”
“I remember, my Assistant Treasurer,” said the Captain. It was a little joke they had.
“He used to mimeograph pretty good,” said Pirnie to the girl. “But that was another war. Do I bore you, Mother?”
“Please keep telling me about your business experiences, but not the rough parts.” She touched his hand where the knuckles were scarred and stained by so many old mimeographings. “Are both your flanks covered, my dearest?” she asked, plucking at the blanket. They felt the Alexanders in their eyeballs. Eighty-six to one.
“Schrafft’s is a good place and we’re having fun and I love you,” Pirnie said. He took another swallow of the 1926, and it was a good and careful swallow. “The stockroom men were very brave,” he said, “but it is a position where it is extremely difficult to stay alive. Just outside that room there is a little bare-faced high-boy and it is in the way of the stuff that is being brought up. The hell with it. When you make a breakthrough, Daughter, first you clean out the baskets and the half-wits, and all the time they have the fire escapes taped. They also shell you with old production orders, many of them approved by the general manager in charge of sales. I am boring you and I will not at this time discuss the general manager in charge of sales as we are unquestionably being listened to by that waitress over there who is setting out the decoys.”
“I am going to give you my piano,” the girl said, “so that when you look at it you can think of me. It will be something between us.”
“Call up and have them bring the piano to the restaurant,” said Pirnie. “Another fiasco, Botticelli!”
They drank the sauce. When the piano came, it wouldn’t play. The keys were stuck good. “Never mind, we’ll leave it here, Cousin,” said Pirnie.
They came out from under the blanket and Pirnie tipped their waitress exactly fifteen per cent minus withholding. They left the piano in the restaurant, and when they went down the elevator and out and turned in to the old, hard, beat-up pavement of Fifth Avenue and headed south toward Forty-fifth Street where the pigeons were, the air was as clean as your grandfather’s howitzer. The wind was still west.
I commute good, thought Pirnie, looking at his watch. And he felt the old pain of going back to Scarsdale again.
………………………….
♦Published in the print edition of the October 14, 1950, issue.
xenagoguevicene 
