CHE IN DISGUISE

The last two years of his life, Ernesto "Che" Guevara traveled around the world trying to foment armed revolution.

He spent six months in the African Congo involved in a total debacle, a mess of classic proportions. The Congolese rebel soldiers were undisciplined and unmotivated. They got drunk and visited whorehouses, and most of them had venereal diseases. Che, a doctor, spent time giving them penicillin shots.

Che couldn't speak the native language, so he talked to the officers in French. The soldiers blamed invisible spirits and other people for their own failures and refused to train or learn weapons.

When Che criticized the soldiers, they laughed hilariously. The one disciplined Congolese officer he could rely on drowned under suspicious circumstances, perhaps killed by his own men.

Che spent time in Prague and Paris, Moscow and Beijing. He burned up a lot of jet fuel.

Throughout his life, he neglected his own family, putting his epic dreams of international Communist revolution ahead of his own parents, his two consecutive wives and his five children.

The most horrific event occurred the last time he saw his wife Aleida and their four children in Cuba. He had snuck into the country in disguise, under the name Ramon:  

His wife knew who he was, but his children did not. He pretended he was "Uncle Ramon" and played with his kids in disguise. He didn't want anyone to find out where he was. He knew the children couldn't keep the secret.

That seems incredibly sad. In my opinion, he was playing games with people's lives, including his own and that of his family. He was more interested in his grandiose plans, and in sending men off on dubious missions, where many died.

As he predicted, after his death the two littlest kids had no memory of him whatever. I think that is a misplaced value. What a horrible way to treat your kids. I have to say, I am not a fan. I don't have a lot of respect for a man who put his family last.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

MILES AHEAD? OR BITCHES BREW?

I noticed today that the Jazz Bakery in L.A. is going to have a birthday tribute to Miles Davis, on May 26. He would've been 85.

When I was young, I loved Miles. Kind of Blue. Sketches of Spain. Miles Ahead. Bitches Brew. God, I loved that mellow trumpet and those artistic arrangements. Super cool, I thought. Powerful, too.

But some years later, in Irvine, CA, I saw Miles live. He was into his beep-squeak phase. God, I hated that music. To me, it was offensive, not even music.

OK, what does that mean? Does it have something to do with being true to yourself?  

I always think that you have to be true to yourself, that you should follow your own lights. Screw everybody else's ideas of what you should do. Follow your own ideas.

OK, great, so far.

But what happens if you are in show business, as Miles was, and you lose your audience?

How important is that? How much attention should the artist pay to his audience? To his bread and butter?

Of course, it is nice if you can be true to yourself and still get rich.

I knew a woman once who was (and still is) a famous mystery writer. Twenty years ago, she was making a million dollars a book. That was real money, back then.

Wait. What am I saying? That is real friggin' money, right now.

Anyway, she said, "I never think about the reader."

What? I don't believe that for a minute. Everything she wrote, she wrote for the reader. Here is a line I remember, because it is one of the worst lines in all fiction:

"Wedges of fear drove themselves into his groin."

Ah, lord, how painful that must've been. Painful to experience and painful to read. Of course, I have no idea what a wedge of fear is, or where it came from, or how it drove itself into his groin. The line was complete BS, I thought.

But do you think that wasn't for the reader? Of course it was. Who was supposed to react to the line? Who was supposed to feel the fear? Who was supposed to get jacked up?

The reader, of course. For Christ's sake.

People create certain myths about themselves. She believed in her own artistic purity. I myself believe that I am 22 years old and play basketball professionally in the winter and volleyball professionally on the beach in the summer.

You see me out there, don't you? Well, I do too. In my mind's eye.

Meanwhile, back to Miles Davis, one of the great jazz musicians of all time, no doubt. I prefer John Coltrane and Charlie Mingus and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, but still Miles is great.

Do you think Miles should have paid more attention to his own artistic tradition than to his new music? Or more attention to my taste than to his new ideas? Or more attention to the rest of his audience? Who should he have listened to? Me? You? Or should he have followed his own lights and told the rest of us to flake off?

If you go too far one way, you sell out and become a hack. If you go too far the other way, you edge over into obscurity. That is what Miles did, I think, with that beep-squeak music.

As Napoleon Bonaparte said, "Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."

My answer is that you have to find a way to stay in touch with your audience. After all, the work doesn't come to life if it's totally obscure, if the novel sits in a drawer, or if no one listens to the music.

You want to shock 'em, but not run them away. It's one of the problems of being an artist. Find a balance and bring your audience along with you, if you can.

Sometimes you cannot. But you should try. At least, that's what I think.


-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

OSAMA & CHE: TWO OF A KIND?

Two famous men, Osama bin Laden and Ernesto "Che" Guevara, had several things in common, it seems to me:

1. They were both extreme idealists, focused more on the way the world should be rather than the way it is.
2. They believed they had the answers to the world's most pressing problems, more so than other people.
3. They believed in violence, often extreme violence, as the best way or only way to create political change. Elections were not good enough.
4. They both thought they were special people in the world. Perhaps they were narcissists. I'm not a shrink, so I don't know.
5. Both men, although violent, were known as polite and sometimes even deferential in person. Che was extremely attractive to women, and admirable to many men personally. He was hard to resist in person. Very charismatic. I don't know about OBL.

Che killed or participated in the killing of several hundred people in Latin America. Osama, of course, planned and took credit for the killing of about 3,000 people in the USA on 9-11-2001.

In case you don't know, Osama Bin Laden was the "head" of Al Qaeda who was killed last Sunday night (1 May 2011) by U.S. special forces in in his walled compound in Pakistan. I say "head" because apparently Al Qaeda is extremely decentralized.

Here is a photo of Osama:

Che Guevara was an Argentine adventurer who helped Fidel Castro overthrow Batista in Cuba in 1959 and establish a Communist state there. His is the revolutionary image you see everywhere in the world: 

The second photo is Che fishing on May 15, 1960 off the coast of Cuba in the "Ernest Hemingway Fishing Contest," a photo that is not so famous.

Guevara was killed in Bolivia in 1967 while trying to "export" the Cuban Communist revolution to other Latin American countries, a long-term project that Che believed in and which led to his death.

To me, the most interesting things are two: their belief in violence and their extreme self-confidence that their way was the right way.

They seemed to admit no higher authority than themselves. Even though Che was against "imperialism," it seems to me he was extremely imperialistic himself. He was a follower of Fidel and always deferred to Fidel's leadership, but he always thought his ideas and his ideals were correct.

Both men, it seems to me, were unwilling to accept the flaws and the foibles of human nature, and of human society, the way that it is and probably always will be. They clung to their ideals, in spite of everything. And tried to force their ideals on others.

They were both arrogant and violent, a bad combination. A fatal flaw.

-- Roger


(Links:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

BORGES vs. CORMAC McCARTHY

This is truly a clash of titans. It never occurred to me before to compare Jorge Luis Borges and Cormac McCarthy.

They are very different writers, but I think it might be interesting to compare their minds. That is what you engage when you read.

Borges's mind is like an infinite palace of countless rooms. Some rooms are libraries filled with unforeseen books by myriad authors. Other rooms hold chests of jewels, like those you imagine pirates once buried in the Caribbean.

All in all, Borges is a magical and transcendent experience. How did one man contain so many mysteries?

It is impossible to conceive of such a writer, to understand him all at once. Reading him is like living in New York City. You could live there a thousand years and go out every day and every night and still not see everything.

Cormac McCarthy, on the other hand, is different. He is like going on a long voyage by ship. He reminds me most of Herman Melville. Reading him is like living "Moby Dick" over and over again. You become the whale, and you become the harpoon. And you die over and over.

I don't know how to explain what I mean. 

Both writers offer profound experiences of the imagination. At the moment, I prefer Borges. Perhaps that is because I am stuck in Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," an annoying and tedious story that is apocalyptic, episodic and bleak, to say the least.

Both are great writers, and I recommend them both. But not every book by each.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

OSAMA'S DEATH: HURRAY?

Last night, I heard the news that U.S. Navy Seals had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

The first thing I thought was, how sad. Now the morons will gather together and chant "USA, USA," as if this whole thing was a stupid football game.

Sure enough, I turned on the TV and there were crowds in front of the White House and in NYC chanting, "USA, USA..."

But how many people in the USA know why Bin Laden waged this long war against us?

I actually have read two or three statements from him, published online.

Here was a man who inherited $300-million and could have done anything with his life that he wanted. He had reasons for waging war against the USA. Mostly, he wanted American troops out of the Arab peninsula.

Does that seem so horrible? Would you want your ancestral homeland occupied by foreign troops?

I agree with this quote from Michael Sheuer, former CIA analyst and the man in charge of tracking Bin Laden before 9/11:

"Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty and democracy, but have everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world."

I also agree with this quote from Michael Moore:

“Terrorists aren't trying to kill us because they hate our freedom. They're killing us because we're in their countries killing them.”

So why are we cheering?

Chances are, his death will have little impact on the so-called War on Terror or on anti-American feelings around the world.

So, we killed him. Now we can beat our chests and give our Tarzan yell. Hurray for us.

But we haven't changed anything. We are still killing innocent people in the Middle East, and until we stop that, we are still making enemies.

We have bungled almost everything we have done in response to the attacks of 9/11. We invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and killed thousands of innocent people, as if their blood would somehow atone for those attacks.

Most of the people we killed had little or nothing in common with those who planned and carried out those attacks. They were, metaphorically, distant relatives.

We have alienated thousands of people the world over, and now we have killed the figure-head of Al Qaeda, which is less of an organization and more of a belief system among those who see the USA as an imperialist monster.

Now more people who hate the USA will have more of a reason to attack Americans around the world.

Whoop-dee-do. Hurray for us.

But Americans should stop chanting and start reading. Maybe if we understood why Bin Laden and his followers hate us, we could make rational decisions about those policies.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

(Link to Islamist reaction:)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/02/us-binladen-militants-idUSTRE74147320110502

ON 'THE ROAD' TO HELL

I am still trying to slog through "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy.

Parts of it are well written, but I don't believe any of it, and I think it's self-indulgent and without any clear moral purpose.

I believe that fiction should have a higher moral calling, a reason to exist, a theme, an insight into human nature and an insight into the world.

This doesn't work like that. The theme seems to be, "We're all stupid and we'll die," like that line from "Blade Runner," the great sci-fi movie that's part L.A. noir and part future vision.

I am having a hell of time trying to read this stuff.

So far, I don't see the point.

BTW, I do recommend several other of his books: "Blood Meridian," "Suttree," and "Cities of the Plain" (up to the Epilogue).

"Blood Meridian" is way and away the finest novel by any living American writer, I do believe.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

CHE, HERO OR VILLAIN?

I am nearing the end of Jon Lee Anderson's bio of Che Guevara, and I don't know if I have settled my main question yet.

I started out trying to settle an argument between my friend Jose and my friend Richard about Che, whether he was a good guy or a bad guy, whether he was a hero or a vicious killer.

I don't know about that. But I have settled my own attitude toward Che and toward his cause. I think he and Fidel -- who was an overbearing horse's ass, by most accounts, even when he was young -- made several fundamental errors and some immoral choices. 

First, and perhaps most important, I think it's wrong to take away people's businesses, farms and properties.

If a man or woman, or their family, has worked for years, in some cases for generations, to build up a farm or a ranch or a business, I think it's immoral and unethical to take it away from them.

If these business owners or land owners have treated their employees or their tenant farmers badly, and paid them almost nothing, I think the aggrieved employees should be compensated justly for past inequities and raised up to a decent standard of living, whether the owners want to do that or not.

In other words, free the slaves. Force the owners to do the right thing. The rich should have certain moral restraints. Regulations, if you will.

Second, I think too many people were killed. The tribunals, firing squads and summary executions were too frequent and too many.

But it's a fascinating biography. I recommend it. Che and Fidel, and their followers, accomplished amazing things. They changed Cuba forever. In some ways, for the better, in some ways for the worse.

I am a reformer, not a revolutionary. A social democrat, not a communist. I would not have gotten along well with Che or Fidel.

Oh, well. You can't get along with everyone.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle