Lord of the Afternoon

by Pablo Capanna Lord of the Afternoon

  By now, as is often the case with the circulation of rumors, a fresh slew of absurdities enriched Lindner’s story: “A classic example of psychiatry involving a scientist that, for entertainment, began to construct a detailed fantasy world. He did his work so well that, with time, this world became an obsession. He found himself ‘living’ in his fantasy world, to the detriment of his job. He consulted a psychiatrist and after a period of treatment was cured. But then the psychiatrist discovered that he was living in the scientist’s fantasy world.”6

  These whimsical versions constitute a genuinely limited “situation”. Indeed, the more reduced the information and the less scruples one has, the easier it is to arbitrarily situate the person and use him to feed our own mill of ideas.

  Lindner’s testimony exemplifies what we might call the psychoanalytic “situation”, which until fairly recently was extremely popular.

  When Linebarger began seeing Lindner, “Cordwainer Smith” did not yet exist, and the only evidence of his powerful imagination is found in the manuscripts of his galactic delirium.

  The peculiarity of the case put Lindner’s professional skills to the test, as the psychoanalyst feared being drawn into his patient’s madness. In response to the challenge, he found it necessary to take a more heterodox approach.

  Still, however much Lindner brought all the power of his understanding to bear on the case, when it came to interpretation, the current paradigm was the only one he had to work with. His presentation of the case reflects orthodox Freudianism to such a large extent that one is justified in thinking that the facts were “edited”.

  The entire interpretation ―as one would expect from a psychoanalyst in 1948― revolves around the patient’s sexual motivations.

  To conform to the theoretical model, “Kirk’s” schizophrenia must refer to the emotional bonds of childhood: dual maternity (the absent biological mother and the Polynesian wet nurse), the “castrating” experience with the puritanical and obsessive nanny, and the early sexual initiation by the nymphomaniac governess. Identity conflicts, meanwhile, are referred to only in passing. Another psychologist from the same period, one more heavily influenced by the “culturalism” of Margaret Mead, Abram Kardiner and Ruth Benedict, undoubtedly would have brought them to the foreground.

  According to Lindner’s interpretation, the premature sexual experience isolated the young “Kirk” from his white contemporaries. Instead of bringing him closer to the permissiveness of Polynesian society, however, it immersed him in a state of anguish and insecurity. To compensate for this, he identified with an imaginary person who was the epitome of self-assuredness.

  Despite this, Lindner believed that the first “flight” from reality was recent, that is, when “Kirk” was already an adult, in response to a colleague’s frank sexual proposition.

  Curiously enough, this seemingly solid argument begins to fall apart as soon as therapeutic techniques oblige Lindner to abandon orthodoxy. At no point does he return to the matter of sex. Instead of focusing on the unconscious, he acts at the level of consciousness and inserts methodical doubt as a wedge in his patient’s fictional constructions. Only when he meets his patient halfway and helps him to undertake the self-criticism of his madness is he able to break down “Kirk’s” resistance.

  Changing directions in a way that brought him closer to other schools of thought, such as the logotherapy of Victor Frankl, Lindner did not hesitate to disregard his own diagnosis. If he had remained faithful to Freudian orthodoxy, he would not have been able to understand Cordwainer Smith’s work either, reducing it to its libidinal components. This type of “explanation”, while salvaging some worthy aspects, would be incomplete because it risks ignoring the symbolic. Nor does it permit understanding how these fictions, while remaining uniquely personal, could be read as parables of contemporary history.

  While in recent years psychoanalytic readings have lost prestige, sexual suspicions continue to hold fascination for post-modern minimalists. The curiosity aroused by a recently divulged piece of information seems to echo this trivialization.

  The information, which seems tailor-made for unauthorized biographies, appeared in the memoirs of Larry McMurtry, a collector of old books.7 McMurtry, a prolific writer with an Oscar and Pulitzer to his credit, gives an account of the most eccentric personalities he encountered during his career. Among other rarities, he mentions the library that belonged to Paul Linebarger. As he tells it, Linebarger not only had some “absolutely marvelous” books (we know he possessed a copy of the King James Bible) but some rather curious items, such as a pile of anti-communist comic books written in Mongolian. It is not clear why McMurtry, a book collector, purchased from Linebarger’s heirs the mannequin of a female bust “with bra and all” and noted that there were several drawers full of corsets. In any event, he concludes that Linebarger “was interested in female lingerie”.

  Under these circumstances, which could easily nurture a myth of fetishism, we must proceed with caution. The Mongolian anti-communist comic books were more than predictable in the files of someone who had been an intelligence officer in the Far East. In fact, Linebarger may even have written them himself. It might also be possible to explain what a collection of women’s lingerie was doing there. Linebarger’s mother, who outlived Paul and died a centenarian, had been in the fashion business. Maybe he “inherited” the lingerie from her.

  In any case, even if such presumptions were not unfounded, they would only serve to feed a sexually morbid curiosity. In other words, they would not contribute much more than a clinical history to an understanding of the creative work.

  I have left the ideological “situation” for last. It might very well be the trickiest, because in our case it seems equally inevitable and obvious.

  As the reader gradually pieced together the myriad fragments of this mosaic, he might have been tempted to classify Cordwainer Smith politically, beginning with his status as an intelligence agent and declared anti-communist.

  Certainly, he was never accused of being what is often called a “progressive”. Apparently, he was fond of expressing his opinions with discomfiting frankness and provoking left-wing intellectuals with such outlandish behavior as sporting a glass eye with the colors of the American flag.

  The first impression he gave was of being “a real reactionary, a bit tough and a bit bloody minded and that kind of thing.”8 Yet after listening to him for a short while, people would end up perplexed.

  In the seventies, the period when his work started to become more widely known, criticism of Linebarger had a strong ideological bent, one apparent even in the innocuous domain of genre literature.

  At the time, it was inevitable that a figure with a political resumè such as Linebarger’s would arouse suspicion. Stigmatizing him as a “reactionary”, an “oppressor”, or an “imperialist” seemed almost natural, to such an extent that it seemed to disqualify a priori the work I set out to do in those days.

  Back then, it was common to run up against such indicting judgments as: “Despite his extraordinary imagination, Colonel Linebarger was incapable of seeing beyond the oppressive socio-political system in which he was actively involved.” The use of the word “colonel” already implies an epitaphic “situation” from which it is difficult to escape. It is worth noting that when Borges called a writer a “doctor”, it was only to dismiss his literary talents.

  Deploying all the Marxist tools available at the time, the above critic acknowledged that Linebarger did not refrain from objecting to the “system”, but that his critique thereof was nonetheless “superficial, epiphenomenal, evolutionist, anti-dialectical and metaphysical […] a typically ‘right wing’ critique that focuses on effects and avoids the cause.”9

  The most loathsome thing to this critic’s mind was the underpeople, who, while “genuinely rational and endowed at times with certain qualities s
uperior even to those of the ‘true men’, nonetheless accepted the ‘benevolent’ tyranny of their masters without argument or rebellion, allowing themselves to be exploited with the loyal submissiveness of a dog.”

  The most detestable character along these lines is D’alma, the underperson dog that is resigned to her servile fate and toils with joy, never even contemplating rebelling against her oppressors.

  A closer reading, however, would have noted that her submissiveness is only apparent, as D’alma possesses the interior freedom of a Stoic, not to mention her being active in the political organization of the underpeople, which we learn later.

  Such blatant pre-judgments as these are the clearest example of an ideological “situation”. While the eclipse of ideologies has not resulted in their disappearance, they remain entrenched only in certain political and cultural circles. Ideologically speaking, then, if Linebarger was a colonel and worked for the White House, he must have been a “man of the right”, which is another way of saying that his acuteness of judgment was suspect. One wonders if the same critic would have read the stories differently if the writer in question had been considered a dissident or critic of the system.

  If I have dwelled on this type of analysis it is because of its exemplary quality. Once a writer has been relegated to the right (or to the left, depending on the position of the critic), and supposing that the abstract right-winger (or left-winger) lacks an ethical conscience, then all of his actions will be deemed in “bad faith”.

  It is said that someone that acts in bad faith is incapable of transcending his social role, such as the café waiter famously described by Sartre.10 He who acts in bad faith is, as it were, outside of morality, for he behaves without authenticity.

  Could Linebarger’s propaganda manual, which neglects to take into account the motives of one’s adversaries, be an instance of bad faith? Is it necessary to look for “good faith” in the texts of “Cordwainer Smith” where Linebarger seems to take the side of the oppressed? And what to make of the skeptical attitude that at times flashes an elegant smile at both allies and opponents?

  As initial conditions we therefore admit a series of unprofessed contradictions, ones normally characterized as being representative of a “bad conscience”.

  Yet even if it results from an ingenuous state of “bad conscience”, the evolution of a personality can take unpredictable turns. For example, a person can embrace his role and yet represent it in bad faith, even if he is able to convince others of his sincerity. He can (also in bad faith) feign a conversion, as so many opportunistic pseudo-revolutionaries have done.

  As a philosopher, Sartre was concerned with the subtle discernment of these ambiguities. Yet as an ideologue he did not hesitate to judge the man “of the right” as being incapable of creating art, for while his class controls events, he is unable to conceive of them.11

  Even if we accept this thesis, how are we to know that a writer’s allegiance is to the “right” without situating him there a priori? And what will situating him require? Will we base it on social position or wealth? In any event, it will not be easy: it is a known fact that great intellectual figures of the left such as Pablo Neruda were unequivocally bourgeois, and some, Luchino Visconti for one, were even aristocrats.

  Should we then situate the writer on the basis of the kind of reactionary broadsides that, say, Jorge Luis Borges and William Faulkner were notoriously fond of? Yet it is unlikely that such outbursts as this on the part of writers were much more than an expression of political ignorance and inexperience with the media.

  Will a series of offensive statements suffice to determine that a writer is beholden to those in power, to pass moral judgment or, even worse, to invalidate his work? At any rate, to pinpoint a writer’s deepest moral and political beliefs we must penetrate the core of the work itself. And even so, in the event that we come across an aesthete in the purest form, we still run the risk of not finding them at all.

  Extremists, regardless of their affiliation, are usually feckless in the arena of ideas. Since they know little beyond how to attack and defend, most radicals are only capable of producing ideologies. Creative people, it could be argued, fall somewhere in between, though not equidistant from, the extremes. And despite their sympathies for either the right or the left, their spontaneity more often than not ends up being a source of discomfort for both sides.

  Assessing a writer and his work through the lens of ideological prejudice is one of the most disastrous approaches imaginable. An example of what not to do is Roger Garaudy’s exegesis of the Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451.12 Apparently, the philosopher could not resist the temptation to link the novel arbitrarily to the Foucaultian theme of the “death of man”, simply because he was analyzing the book on the basis of the film version by Francois Truffaut.

  Here Bradbury’s work was “intermediated” twice: first, because Garaudy judged it on the basis of the movie, which itself already involved the distortion of an objectivist aesthetic totally alien to the novel, and second, because Garaudy interpreted Truffaut according to Foucault, who at the time was Garaudy’s intellectual adversary. As a result, Garaudy reaches the facile conclusion that the novel is an apology for alienation, given that all its characters, including those that embody freedom, appear to be objectified.

  Some declare that this attitude, in full force at the time when the work of Cordwainer Smith was beginning to gain a wider audience, became obsolete with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the devaluation of Marxist discourse.

  Certainly, ideological discourse of the Marxist stripe, which imposes on all the requirement of agreeing, negotiating or at least engaging in dialogue with it, is non-existent today. What has replaced it, however, is a proliferation of discourses that reproduce, on a minimalist scale, all the dogmatism, myopia, arbitrariness and verbal violence that once characterized both “real” and “imaginary” Marxism.

  Reflect for a moment on the new “situations” Cordwainer Smith would be subjected to today, if, that is, fashionable critics deigned to read him.

  Just imagine the condemnation that would be implicit in a radical feminist reading of his work that set its sights on one of Smith’s female characters such as T’ruth, what with her resignation and the grotesque maternal spirit she brings to her servile relationship with Madigan.

  What would a gay-lesbian reading of stories like “The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal”, in which homosexuality is depicted as a disease, not found worthy of reproach?

  Would Norstrilia pass a radical ecology audit?

  Could the Old Strong Religion withstand the multifarious onslaught of nihilism, New Age and transhumanism?

  Would the co-existence of hominids, “true men” and underpeople pass the test for political correctness in the context of multiculturalism?

  Without a doubt, the ideologies of the sixties (which were petering out just as the ideologies of today were revving up) may seem naïve to us now in light of so many diverse and new-fangled forms of judgment and condemnation.

  Mercifully, the major difference between post-modern violence and the violence of the sixties is that the former is usually limited to language. Still, it too has the potential of being cruel and violent when it nurtures ethnic hate and terrorism.

  According to the Brechtian criteria of distancing effect, a work is critical when it is able to astonish us with something that is utterly familiar.

  Is this not the effect that Cordwainerian universe has on readers? For the clues it contains refer not only to the historical moment of the writer but invite us to share his doubts and alternatives.

  Cordwainer Smith did not pen manifestos or file complaints. Yet employing the kind of distancing that fantasy allowed, he raised the alarm regarding trends that emerged in his lifetime and that would become urgent again in our own.

  Conscience and identity
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  The most mysterious aspect of personality is its continuity, which is as improbable as it is common. An identity that remains stable despite changes and its precarious balance is constructed upon a plexus of tensions. Yet beyond the contrast between what is, what one thinks one is, and what one wants to be, there is an identity capable of resisting both the dialectic and reductionism.

  It is well known that personality is more than simply individuality. Personality is something that begins to take shape the moment at which individuality is acquired. Born of necessity and chance, individuality becomes freer and more conscious inasmuch as it becomes increasingly personalized through social interaction.

  Awareness of the contingencies that define us as individuals is only the first step in the construction of an identity. If the process were to end here, we would accomplish nothing more than “differentiating” ourselves from others.

  Yet even the most clearly defined identity continues to harbor tensions. The shifting sands of interpersonal relations might accentuate them, but under no circumstance are they eradicated completely.

  A line of thought developed over the course of this essay suggests that the ethical conflict within Linebarger-Forrest-Carmichael-Cordwainer had its foundation in the dichotomies between democracy and racism, between religion and politics.

  On the American political spectrum of his time, Linebarger could have been a Republican or a Democrat, or at any rate a moderate. He was “progressive” domestically, especially regarding civil rights, while rather “conservative” when it came to foreign policy.13