The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Vistata Form

by J. Neil Schulman

  REFLECTING ON THE HUMAN SOUL

  by Michael Grossberg

  Michael Grossberg is the theater critic for the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. In 1981, he founded the Libertarian Futurist Society which still sponsors the Prometheus Awards and publishes the newsletter Prometheus. Grossberg also founded the Free Press Association, a national network of journalists, and has reviewed fiction for Science Fiction Review, Reason magazine, and other publications.--JNS, 1996

  "If anything is sacred the human body is sacred."

  --Walt Whitman, "Children of Adam"

  Much of the sexuality in The Rainbow Cadenza deeply disturbs, shocking readers with its graphic intensity. Yet this unusually adult coming-of-age novel, boasting some of the most scatological material to be found this side of Krafft-Ebing, arguably has no gratuitous sex scenes. Instead, J. Neil Schulman integrates his disquieting eroticism into a complex narrative about a future Earth where birth control advances have had a radical and damaging effect on human relationships, sexual equality, and personal rights.

  Given the development of such an unbalanced society, the novel's often perverse sexuality should not surprise us. After all, the sexual act is a mirror. In reflecting consciousness and character, it offers a highly revealing glimpse of its participants' humanity (or inhumanity). At its best, of course, the sexual act can be a deeply satisfying expression of romantic love and spiritual intimacy, or at least a mutually enjoyable experience between consenting adults. At its worst, the sexual act can be perverted into a neurotic and symbolic act, communicating hostility instead of affection, revenge instead of respect, dominance and submission instead of acceptance, anger and rage instead of bona fide sexual passion. All this, and more, can be found in the diverse sexuality of The Rainbow Cadenza, a morality play in which those who allow themselves to be corrupted by power lust soon find their sexual lusts corrupted as well in the inevitable workings of karmic justice.

  If, as the historian Lord Acton observed, "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely," then, as Schulman shows, power also perverts, and absolute power perverts not only sexuality, but every other dimension of family relationships and community life. Joan Darris's heroic quest to free herself from authoritarian patriarchy is no more and no less than an act of self-assertion and self-defense against legalized rape--and rape, the ultimate obscenity, is shocking and must continue to be so in any civilized society.

  According to the conventional Judeo-Christian morality that unfortunately still casts its bleak anti-sexual and anti-rational shadow over our age, what is shocking is not the violence which objectively defines the so-called sexual act of rape, but such socially defined perversions as heterosexual or homosexual sodomy, which are stigmatized as "unnatural" in part because of their presumed statistical infrequency. Schulman, on the other hand, is wise enough and tolerant enough to understand that true perversion has little to do with the type of sexual act engaged in, but everything to do with the consciousness and intent of those who engage in it--and especially with whether their acts are voluntary or coerced.

  The Rainbow Cadenza dramatically conveys the anguish and needless suffering caused by authoritarian personalities and authoritarian politics, ranging from illicit or socially sanctioned isolated acts of sadistic sex to the impersonal institutionalized violence of a future military draft that forces women to "make love, not war." In so doing, the author brilliantly communicates one of his major themes: that rape is not the only form of "rape" worth opposing. Any infringement of individual liberty constitutes a kind of rape, no less vivid and violent for being non-sexual. With "the emperor's new clothes" stripped away by Schulman's insight, every coercive intervention, private or public, is revealed to be an aggressive act of dehumanization and humiliation by one individual, or group of individuals, against other individuals--most often, predictably, the weak, the poor, and the powerless. Such violations of the human spirit can and do warp an individual, a family or an entire society. And the destructive results may take generations to abate, as the neuroses and sins of mothers and fathers are visited upon their daughters and sons.

  Vera's abusive and exploitative relationship with her younger sister may be "far more brutal, and far more hideous" than some readers may wish to see, but it remains a chillingly accurate portrayal of the devious lengths to which some people will go to inflict on others the buried primal pain that they can not permit themselves to feel. By writing with such white-hot radiance that he overcomes the reluctance of even the most squeamish reader to empathize with Joan's persecution and humiliation, Schulman illuminates the repressed childhood traumas and complex subconscious motivations that warp human rationality and may provide the neurophysiological underpinnings of authoritarianism.

  In The True Believer, Eric Hoffer described the authoritarian personality as one which emerges out of profound frustration: the inability to live one's own life creatively finds some small compensation in the struggle to control, or sabotage, the lives of others. Vera's lifelong struggle against Eleanor and Joan (and against herself) is a compelling re- creation of the authoritarian personality. Schulman's portrait of evil is filled with tragic understanding, but imbued with a righteous justice rather than a false mercy. There is no excuse for the kind of hidden cruelty in child rearing--exemplified in Vera's treatment of Joan--that appears to be a major antecedent of our society's widespread violence and child abuse.

  None of this is to claim, simplistically, that sadistic sex and poor toilet-training, alone, lead to the kind of coercive political systems in which, as Ringo Starr once observed, "everything the government touches turns to shit." No need to go that far to acknowledge the implicit truth in Schulman's multigenerational family saga: that there are intimate ties between the psychological traumas of childhood and the petty (and not so petty) tyrannies of adulthood.

  The Rainbow Cadenza is a psychosexual thriller that breaks new ground in unveiling the hidden roots of oppression within the maturation process. By projecting a future in which parents can generate virtually identical genetic copies of themselves through parthenogenesis or cloning, Schulman throws into stark dramatic relief the ongoing struggle of children to separate and individuate from their parents, as well as the less natural struggle of some parents to live through their children, pressuring them to live selflessly--without a Self. Joan's successful quest to find herself, and Vera's similar but aborted quest to escape the fate of becoming Eleanor's "carbon copy," serve as a symbolic future microcosm of the two basic alternatives facing humans today as in every generation: to grow from dependent childhood to independent adulthood, or to fail to grow up at all, never experiencing full individuality.

  Why do most people submit to unjust authority, following orders all the way to the concentration camp, or worse, following orders to send others to one in their place? And why do other people resist authority? What are the connections between psychological repression and political repression? Even in the late twentieth century--by no accident, the century of both total war and the totalitarian State--these very much remain open questions, despite the intriguing non-fiction speculations of Wilhelm Reich, Stanley Milgram, Arthur Janov, Stanislav Grof, Nathaniel Branden, Peter Breggin, and Thomas Szasz. By tying together the personal and the political in his fiction, Schulman communicates fascinating pre-scientific insights that shed light on this dark phenomenon. By linking Joan Darris's struggle for political freedom to her struggle for personal liberation, Schulman hints that the shortest distance between authoritarianism and a fully free future may not be a straight line but a spiral--a fusion of the political and the personal based on the recognition that any successful revolution for freedom must be accompanied, if not preceded, by a revolution in consciousness.

  Schulman's projected 22nd century world may be more prosperous and peaceful--and, even, in some ways, "freer"--than our own, but, Schulman asks, at what psychic cost? He answers that question by balancing his exploration of sexuality with an exploration of the creativity invol
ved in developing the art form that gives his novel its name. Like sex, art is an arena in which one's deepest values--and deepest value-conflicts--can be spotlighted. Focusing on both sexuality and creativity, Schulman succeeds in exposing the devastating consequences of authoritarianism in that most personal of all realms: the human body/spirit. The result is a startlingly original novel of ideas in the best tradition of romanticism that goes beyond traditional romantic subject matter to embrace a rainbow of diversity, from the depths of sexual perversion and blocked artistic accomplishment to the heights of romantic ecstacy and creative self-expression.

  Like Whitman, Poe, Dos Passos, Rand, Kesey, and Delaney, Schulman's passionate commitment is to self-expression, self- discovery, and self-fulfillment, no matter what the authoritarian obstacles. His novel thus lies squarely within the mainstream of the often misconceived and minimized American literary tradition, which in its dazzling variations has always embraced the struggle for individuality as its central theme. If America is uniquely the culture of the "self-made man"--a popular colloquialism quite properly born on these shores--then American literature is the story of individuals creating and re-creating themselves. That is one reason, I suspect, why so much popular American literature is science fiction--preeminently the modern genre of secular transcendence and unchained human potential--and why so much of that fiction of the future explores themes of individualism and libertarianism, the ethics of the future and the politics of full-fledged adulthood.

  Many libertarian novels have dramatized the more visible social consequences of authoritarianism, showing how coercive government intervention destroys prosperity, sabotages peace, and sacrifices civil liberties. Schulman's novel dramatized authoritarianism's less visible consequences for the individual, showing how the State's institutionalized aggression warps sexuality, saps creativity, perverts relationships, weakens families, and replaced the benevolence and sympathy that healthy human beings naturally feel for each other with an insidious "every man for himself" attitude that is the inversion of true individualism. Such harmful personal crises may be less obvious than the war, mass murder, monopoly privileges, recurrent depressions, and runaway inflations brought about by the State throughout history, but they are no less significant, for such psychic wounds eventually dissolve the voluntary social bonds which sustain civilization itself.

  The Rainbow Cadenza is a passionate testament to the sacred importance and irreplaceable value of every human being--the ultimate foundation of individualism and individual rights. Schulman's genius as a novelist lies in the way his story makes us feel the scars on the soul that result when individual rights are violated and human dignity is raped.

  In recognition of Schulman's talent and insight, the Libertarian Futurist Society chose The Rainbow Cadenza from a field of 25 nominated novels as the winner of its 1984 Prometheus Award, a privately minted "Hayek Half" gold coin. Novelist James Hogan, 1983 Prometheus winner for his own Voyage From Yesteryear, presented Schulman with the award before an audience of more than 2,000 people at the 42nd World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim, California. Appropriately enough, considering its similar focus on the fight for civil liberties in an authoritarian society, The Rainbow Cadenza won its award in the same year that Ray Bradbury's civil libertarian masterpiece Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell's anti-authoritarian classic Nineteen-eighty-four were inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame honoring outstanding pro-freedom fiction of the past.

  Winning the Prometheus Award was a well-deserved honor for The Rainbow Cadenza, which not only powerfully portrays the evils of authoritarianism, but also offers its readers an inspiring example--through the character of one of literature's most memorable heroines--of the vast potential that freedom, and the thirst for freedom, can unleash in the human spirit.

  Joan Darris loved the lights so much that she created a rainbow. Schulman loved liberty so much that he created The Rainbow Cadenza, a cautionary tale with a timeless message we ignore at our peril: "Warning: Coercive Government May Be Hazardous to your Health."

  RED

  THE DRAFT IS SLAVERY

  by Paul Jacob

  Paul Jacob is a young man uniquely qualified to write about the draft: several years ago he refused to register for the draft, made his refusal public knowledge, and went underground to remain free to deliver anti-draft speeches. After two years on the run, he was arrested by Federal authorities who were laying in wait when he returned home briefly to see his wife and, for the first time, their newborn baby.

  Paul Jacob was convicted of violating the Selective Service Act, which is a federal felony, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment (now completed) and four-and-a-half years' forced "community service"--precisely the involuntarily servitude to which he morally objects.

  At the time I requested this afterword, Jacob was in solitary confinement at a federal prison in Dallas. --JNS, 1986

  Not so many years ago, young men were drafted to kill and be killed in the swamps and jungles of Vietnam. In a fit of refreshing sanity, many Americans kicked and screamed, rebelled and resisted, and worked very, very hard to end this brutality.

  Yet in the angry furor over the stupid, useless, and horrible war in Vietnam, few people stopped to consider the principles on which conscription--for any war or any reason--must rest. The draft was fought and ended largely because it enhanced that particularly unjust war effort. Today, the justice of conscription is often judged by the military policy that calls for it rather than on its own.

  Even beyond the fatally uncomfortable fact that a draftee in the military may be forced to murder or may be murdered for a cause he or she does not believe in, conscription is, in its essence, a mighty wrong. Regardless of the reason, the draft is slavery. It is slavery in the very same way that dragging Africans across the ocean and forcing them to work in the cotton fields of the South was slavery. It is forced labor.

  Indeed, rarely is any argument made that the draft is anything but slavery; however, the draft has been camouflaged for so long in talk of patriotism and paranoia that the issue of slavery is usually merely avoided. The definition of slavery is not altered by whether it is used for war or agriculture, by politician or plantation owner.

  A favorite defense for the draft is that the individual has a duty to serve the government when called. This service is what the citizen "owes" the state. Implied is both that the individual incurs a debt to the government simply by being alive and, further, that the amount of indebtedness is ultimately the individual's entire being: his body, his labor, and his life.

  If government has a right to conscript the people, then the government, in fact, "owns" the people. Such an idea must constitute a cold, hard slap in the face to those whose history books contain the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, proclaiming individual freedom by birthright and limiting government to the protection of that right.

  Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all men have "unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." More simply, individuals own themselves. And their lives are their own, thus they should be free to live as they choose. The individual is the sovereign power that creates government; government is not a sovereign "owner" or master, but the servant of the people. To argue otherwise is like maintaining that cars and refrigerators have a claim on the life and labor of the people who made them. For in like manner, people made government.

  Even without the clear message in the Declaration of Independence and the freedom proclaimed in great political writing throughout history, it seems self-evident that for a man to force his neighbor to work for him is gravely unjust. The injustice of this act is not removed if instead of one man enslaving his neighbor it becomes many men and women behind the cloak of government enslaving their neighbors.

  Government is nothing more than an instrument of men and
has no claim on any individual save that he not injure his fellow man. The individual certainly does not owe any person or any government his life. No matter how loud the cry of "necessity," no matter how cleverly conscription is disguised, no matter how equally applied, the draft is nonetheless slavery. It is wrong.

  It is no coincidence that all totalitarian states--from communist to fascist military dictatorships--use conscription. In fact, many of these governments are ushering in a new age of conscription where not only are soldiers drafted but also other workers. Truly, if the state owns the people (as totalitarian governments invariably believe), thus drafting them for war, then nothing prevents the draft for other purposes.

  Unfortunately, the very reasoning found in these "evil empires" has emerged countless times in the U.S. Congress in bills calling for a mandatory "national service." Enslaving people into the military has engendered great opposition, so certain draft adherents are proposing not an end to slavery but slavery toward new ends.

  Yet, whatever the purpose of a draft or the nature of the work draftees will perform, it will inevitably lead to serious harm. The work they are to do--soldiering, teaching, bridge- building or hospital work--will be despised for the obvious reason that it is not of their choosing. The goal of their labor is historically shown to be more likely for evil than for good because, once enslaved, they have lost control over both their government and themselves.

  Napoleon used the draft to scatter death and destruction across Europe, and a century-and-a-half later, conscription was indispensable to Adolf Hitler in doing similarly in even more gruesome fashion. Perhaps less horrible, but only in comparison, are two modern, "peaceful" examples. Vietnam has drafted thousands and sent them to labor in the Soviet Union to pay war debts, and Poland, during periods of worker unrest, has drafted those workers into the army and ordered them to perform their factory work.