Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

THOMAS MORE – UTOPIA – 1516 – TEXT AVAILABLE AT http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2130/2130-h/2130-h.htm - TRANSLATION FROM LATIN AND EDITING BY HENRY MORLEY (1822-1894) – FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1901 – REPUBLISHED BY DIVER PUBLICATIONS, REVISED ED. EDITION – 1997 – AND CREATESPACE INDEPENDENT PUBLICHING PLATFORM – 2015 – TRANSCRIBED FOR GUTENBERG.COM BY DAVID PRICE – 2005

THIS BOOK CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD BUT IN ITS PERIOD: 1516.

FIVE CENTURIES BEFORE BREXIT

THREE CENTURIES BEFORE MARX

FIFTY YEARS AFTER THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR

JUST AFTER THE WORST 150 YEARS OF BLACK DEATH 

ALL OTHER INTERPRETATIONS ARE ANACHRONISTIC

The first thing you have to keep in mind is that this is a translation from Latin and the translation is necessarily a betrayal of the original text. This is quite obvious with the simple words “slave,” that has the standard meaning of human being owned by someone else who exploits the former as a beast of burden or labor, and “slavery,” that has two distinct meanings. As the Online Etymology Dictionary says for “slavery”: “1550s, "severe toil, hard work, drudgery;" from slave (v.) + -ery; meaning "state of servitude" is from 1570s; meaning "keeping or holding of slaves" is from 1728;” (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=slavery&allowed_in_frame=0, accessed June 28, 2016) the word “slavery” did not exist with the modern meaning in English before the 1550s. Thomas More book was published in 1516 and the book uses in Henry Morley’s translation the word “slavery” with two meanings. The most frequent one has little to do with the modern meaning, and the second but by far less frequent one carries the modern meaning. The modern meaning is “the state of dependence of a slave.” The word that does not carry the modern meaning is often in the plural which indicates that difference in meaning.

What is the most frequent meaning of this “slavery,” especially when you find words like “inclislaverys” or “divislavery (so much observed among other slaverys)” or “imagislavery”?

The first instance of this word with its special meaning is in the plural and is also the first instance of the word in the text.

“’And on his own too,’ replied he [Peter Giles, Thomas More’s friend when introducing the man from Utopia, Raphael Hythloday], ‘if you knew the man, for there is none alive that can give so copious an account of unknown slaverys and countries as he can do, which I know you very much desire.’”

The last instance of this word is going the same way in the singular this time but with an indefinite article showing this word is countable and not abstract. It cannot be “slavery” in the modern meaning that is of course always abstract and used with no article.

“. . . many things occurred to me, both concerning the manners and laws of that people, that seemed very absurd, as well in their way of making war, as in their notions of religion and divine matters--together with several other particulars, but chiefly what seemed the foundation of all the rest, their living in common, without the use of money, by which all nobility, magnificence, splendor, and majesty, which, according to the common opinion, are the true ornaments of a slavery, would be quite taken away. . .”

This word “slavery” here can only mean “society” and in the context of this excerpt the society that is meant is that of the dominant noble class of England or Europe at the beginning of the 16^th century. It carries though another element. The suffix –ery is a common suffix in the Middle Ages coming from French and means only the place where someone works, some activity is performed or something is produced, (information from http://www.dictionary.com/cite.html?qh=-ery&ia=luna, except when otherwise indicated)  like in “butchery” from Middle English (denoting a slaughterhouse or meat market) and from Old French boucherie, from bouchier ‘butcher’; or “brewery” that is in fact a late reconstruction probably on the model of the Dutch word “brouwerij” replacing the original Middle English word, perhaps from circa 1200 as a surname element, from brew (verb) + -ery, Old English word “breawern” in this sense (from aern "house"), and “brewhouse,” the more common word up to the 18^th century, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=brewery); or “cutlery” that means 1. cutting instruments collectively, especially knives for cutting food; 2. utensils, as knives, forks, and spoons, used at the table for serving and eating food; 3. the trade or business of a cutler; from 1300-50 Middle English cutellerie from Middle French coutelerie.

That leads us to understanding “inclislavery” as the social situation of someone who is practicing the profession he is “naturally inclined” to practice, “divislavery” as the status of someone who is practicing a divine activity in this society (limited in number and highly selected), and “imagislavery” as some society imagined by some member of this Utopia island. These three compounds clearly indicate that slavery has nothing to do with the modern meaning.

But then what is the meaning of the root of this “slavery”? The reference is obviously not “slave” as a human being owned by another and exploited as a simple beast of burden or labor. We are in fact tricked here by the translation. What was the Latin word used by Thomas More and what was the meaning of this Latin word? But the meaning of this word in Thomas More’s text is quite clear as I have explained.

Once this first element is cleared we can move to the main ideas of the text. I do not intend a full study, just a few remarks.

This Utopian society is highly hierarchical with three strata in each town, knowing that this society is urban, meaning the population is administratively gathered in cities, and yet agricultural since the main activity is agriculture: all city residents have to go to the agricultural fields for various periods of time that can be several years or may only be for the harvesting season, because agriculture is seen as the main training and educating activity. This society is founded on work that has to occupy six hours a day, and cover every single day. The three hierarchical levels are as follows:

"Thirty families choose every year a magistrate, who was anciently called the Syphogrant, but is now called the Philarch; and over every ten Syphogrants, with the families subject to them, there is another magistrate, who was anciently called the Tranibore, but of late the Archphilarch.  All the Syphogrants, who are in number two hundred, choose the Prince out of a list of four who are named by the people of the four divisions of the city; but they take an oath, before they proceed to an election, that they will choose him whom they think most fit for the office: they give him their voices secretly, so that it is not known for whom every one gives his suffrage.  The Prince is for life, unless he is removed upon suspicion of some design to enslave the people.  The Tranibors are new chosen every year, but yet they are, for the most part, continued; all their other magistrates are only annual.”

This hierarchy is based on free secret ballots for the Prince but also for the lower echelons.

The very first element is the fact that everyone is supposed to work. There is no normal exemption, even those who are by law exempted, only temporarily indeed since they are the annually elected officers (who can be reelected) who go back to work at the end of their terms and even work during their terms outside the performing of their duties. This society of compulsory productive work is cut in daily time slices of which one is work for six hours (twice three hours a day, three in the morning before dinner and three in the afternoon after dinner), sleep for eight hours (from 8 pm to 4 am) and then various activities that have to be productive, particularly productive of knowledge by studying, following their inclinations (inclislaveries).

“The chief, and almost the only, business of the Syphogrants is to take care that no man may live idle, but that every one may follow his trade diligently; yet they do not wear themselves out with perpetual toil from morning to night, as if they were beasts of burden, which as it is indeed a heavy slavery, so it is everywhere the common course of life amongst all mechanics except the Utopians: but they, dividing the day and night into twenty-four hours, appoint six of these for work, three of which are before dinner and three after; they then sup, and at eight o'clock, counting from noon, go to bed and sleep eight hours: the rest of their time, besides that taken up in work, eating, and sleeping, is left to every man's discretion; yet they are not to abuse that interval to luxury and idleness, but must employ it in some proper exercise, according to their various inclislaverys, which is, for the most part, reading. […] Even the Syphogrants, though excused by the law, yet do not excuse themselves, but work, that by their examples they may excite the industry of the rest of the people; the like exemption is allowed to those who, being recommended to the people by the priests, are, by the secret suffrages of the Syphogrants, privileged from labor, that they may apply themselves wholly to study; and if any of these fall short of those hopes that they seemed at first to give, they are obliged to return to work; and sometimes a mechanic that so employs his leisure hours as to make a considerable advancement in learning is eased from being a tradesman and ranked among their learned men.  Out of these they choose their ambassadors, their priests, their Tranibors, and the Prince himself, anciently called their Barzenes, but is called of late their Ademus.”

Thomas More comes to the conclusion that this compulsory work organization with only six hours of productive work is not in any danger of running out of labor since everyone is supposed to perform these six hours. Note there is no mention of the young and their education. Do they work too? The answer is probably in the situation at the end of the 15^th century. Children work like any other members of society as soon as they can stand on their feet and use their hands (around five or six). If we stick to this period to interpret the text we have here the pure Lutheran description of society in which work is the supreme value and working the supreme activity. All ranting or raving about what will come later (socialism or communism) is absurd and anachronistic since it projects onto an old text concepts that only developed several centuries later, not to mention the Soviet Revolution that could have been inspired by Thomas More’s Utopia, why not, but that has no meaningful value on the analysis of Thomas More’s text.

"And thus from the great numbers among them that are neither suffered to be idle nor to be employed in any fruitless labor, you may easily make the estimate how much may be done in those few hours in which they are obliged to labor.”

These work ethics and workaholic social vision is, as I have said, vastly connected to the Lutheran and Calvinist, Protestant in one word, approach of life, by the way dictated at the time by the Black Death that reduced the population of Europe by at least 50%, not to speak of constant wars, the most famous of which being the Hundred Years’ War. This conception is perfectly represented in the economical approach of clothing that has to be lasting, functional, simple, with no wasted luxury or sophistication (absolutely no frills) even at the level of colors that are reduced to “natural” colors: that of wool or linen.

“As to their clothes, observe how little work is spent in them; while they are at labor they are clothed with leather and skins, cut carelessly about them, which will last seven years, and when they appear in public they put on an upper garment which hides the other; and these are all of one color, and that is the natural color of the wool.  As they need less woolen cloth than is used anywhere else, so that which they make use of is much less costly; they use linen cloth more, but that is prepared with less labor, and they value cloth only by the whiteness of the linen or the cleanness of the wool, without much regard to the fineness of the thread.”

In other words, without speaking of a direct reference to Lutheran or Calvinist Protestantism, we have here the economical, economy-oriented and hyper-productive conception of a social value-adding economy and political system. Is it totalitarian? Once again in 1516 this term is anachronistic. In fact this vision is dictated by the necessity to repair the damage of the past century and a half and to lift up Europe, in fact Christianity, from the dire straits in which history and the Black Death had set it. We seem to forget that Christianity at that time was in a situation that could compete in poverty and misery with some of the poorest countries today in AIDS devastated Africa, without any help from outside, be it from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or the United Nations, that did not exist – but do I have to mention that – at the time.

The last element I want to insist on is the fact that this society considers slavery, this time the situation in which a human being is deprived of absolutely all human or civil rights, is basic in its functioning. For any crime, petty or not, including “vagabonds,” slavery is preferred to any other punishment, like the death penalty, which is a waste of human labor. War prisoners are also reduced to being slaves. Without entering the problem of war, vastly discussed in this pamphlet, let’s say that war is always envisaged as an extreme but necessary method to solve problems with neighbors, including with mercenaries (the Zapolets). The objective of war is not to conquer slaves, but it is always ending in engulfing all prisoners into slavery, into being slaves, meaning human beings – but are they still human? – who have no tights whatsoever, not even to speak. The only limit I found about this constant presence of slaves is that each family can only have two slaves. But since a family is forty people (“no country family has fewer than forty men and women in it, besides two slaves”), slaves represent something like 5 per cent of this society, at least at the level of the families. It is not specified if there are slaves owned by society as a whole or any organization in that society (note there is no mention of such organization that would not be based on one family but be transversal).

This element is essential because in this vision of an ideal society, slavery is stated as a normal state limited only in the fact the children of slaves are not born slaves. Note this idea implies slaves are married, like anyone else: marriage at the age of 18 for women and 22 for men is universal, meaning everyone has to be married and the objective is procreation. This is an obvious sign of the state in which Europe is after 1450. But this approach of slavery as a normal fate for a human being because of his “crimes” or because he is a “war prisoner” will explain later that slavery will be seen as a normal state of affairs in America, in Virginia first and then the thirteen colonies and then all American territories. This will all the more be true since the “pioneer” John Smith was a slave of the Ottoman Empire before escaping and sailing to what was to become Virginia in 1607. Thomas More is thus demonstrating that the concept of slavery was deeply rooted in the English conception of human society as well as humanity if not the human species. Note here that has nothing to do with feudalism that stated all human beings are potential Christians and that rejected slavery when instating the social category of serf. A serf was not a slave. He was a Christian and a subject of the King and other Lords. He had the right to benefit from all religious sacraments and education. He was protected by justice and could not be sentenced to anything without a trial, even if that trial was often based on torturing seen as a divine way to find the truth which could only be divine in nature.

This last word brings up my last remark. Thomas More pretends this Utopian conception of society is natural. He states the existence of a Supreme Being in the very Catholic perspective of his time, but this Supreme Being created Nature and man is supposed to follow Nature. This implies this society is by essence natural since it follows the divine conception this God represents. The strange or surprising element is that Thomas More states tolerance among all religions of any kind has to be the rule with no exception, and slavery for those who break this rule. This is of course an echo of the Reformation and could probably be seen as the final stage of the medieval debates against heresies and the practice and existence of the Inquisition. It could also be seen as maybe a presage of what was to happen in England with Henry VIII and his son and daughters leading to the Stuarts and the Puritan revolution.

I said it could be seen because this idea is anachronistic in a way. How could Thomas More envisage what was to happen over the next century? It is true the reformation in Germany and on the European continent was enough to make Thomas More dream of a Britain, or England, that could be saved from these tribulations by the practice of tolerance in their island, since Britain, like Utopia, is an island. Thomas More is a Brexit supporter exactly five century, year for year, before the famous referendum. And in his text the island was devised as such but the digging of a channel cutting it from the continent, the Channel in a way.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Jacques Coulardeau at Academia.edu (20) 

MARSHALL McLUHAN

UNDERSTANDINGMEDIA, THE EXTENSIONS OF MAN

ROUTLEDGE, LONDON – 1964

Monday October 14, 2013 – 9,400 words, 18 pages

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

https://synopsispaie.academia.edu/JacquesCoulardeau 

INITIAL STUDY / STARTING POINT REVIEW(S)

https://www.academia.edu/4769483/MARSHALL_McLUHAN_UNDERSTANDING_MEDIA_THE_EXTENSIONS_OF_MAN_ROUTLEDGE_LONDON_1964

MARSHALL McLUHAN, A PROPHET

THE APOCALYPSE OR SPIRITUAL SALVATION?

FOR A GLOBAL APPROACH OF MENTAL POWER AND CONCEPTUALIZATION

Wednesday January 21, 2015 – 2,700 words, 5 pages

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

https://synopsispaie.academia.edu/JacquesCoulardeau

POST SCRIPTUM

https://www.academia.edu/10283790/MARSHALL_McLUHAN_A_PROPHET_THE_APOCALYPSE_OR_SPIRITUAL_SALVATION

This is the first leg of a longer study that is in the process of being written. After the review and its illustration I added the 2006 review I posted on Amazon.co.uk, and its comments, for the sake of perspective.

This review is the prolongation of a long study that dealt with, among other topics but essentially, Ray Kurzweil’s “popular-science”-fiction wrapped up as MIT expertise. Marshall McLuhan . . .

[Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980), a Canadian philosopher in communication theory and he became one of the cornerstones media theory with practical applications in the advertising and television industries. McLuhan coined phrases like “the medium is the message” and the “global village” and for his prediction of the Internet medium he could not know in his life time though the invention of the transportation of data from a computer to another via a telephone line was invented in the Fall 1969 between Stanford, California’s military laboratory and Oakland, California’s US Armed Forces Headquarters for the Pacific (and at the time the Vietnam war). I would refer you to the Official Site of the Estate of Marshall McLuhan at http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/ if you want to know more about him. Accessed October 8, 2013.]

… is essential here because he deals with the media and not the machines, or rather with all inventions, mechanical or not, starting with oral language, considered as media all of them extending man’s body, body parts, central nervous system and even “consciousness” as he calls the mind. We will concentrate on his 1964 book Understanding Media, The extensions of Man.

We have to get some detail on his theory and, to remain in our own logic, consider it in a phylogenic perspective though Marshall McLuhan does not envisage any other human phase before the invention of writing systems (even his short chapter on “The Spoken Word” is entirely oriented towards writing systems).

Hence he starts considering humanity around 5,000 years ago in a sequential presentation of various inventions one after another in chronological order. What’s more he centers his interest on what he calls the “electric age” that starts with the “discovery” of electricity and the invention of means to produce, store and transport it.

His electric age is based on the stage of universal (though even today it is still not fully achieved) networked distribution (the electrical grid) of this electricity characterized as continuous and instantaneous, meaning we can use it at any time and in any place we want at the commanding tip of one finger pressing a button on or off.

In other words his discourse is centered on the last one hundred years when he wrote this essential book in the 1960s and today for us on the last 150 years.

I will consider his approach in both phylogenic and psychogenetic perspective.

The first thing we have to do to penetrate his meaning is to list the various inventions he considers in the book and try to find out what extensions of man’s body or body parts he refers them to. We will present this list in the form of a table. He considers 26 inventions in 26 separate chapters. We have to keep in mind this conclusion of chapter 21:

“The owners of media always endeavor to give the public what it wants, because they sense that their power is in the medium and not in the message or the program” [Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, The extensions of Man , Routledge, London, 1964, p. 216)

Synchrosome II-Ilya and Vanya

Kévin Thorez, compositeur et interprète

Jacques Coulardeau, auteur et interprète

NadXka, interprète.

A small article essentially centered on the technical side of things, the machines used to produce the CDs. Do not expect anything like a real critique, or review, or even artistic presentation of the music itself. But that is always funny to have your name page 16 of a national magazine you will not be able to read online, only on paper, issue n° 304, February-March 2015. http://www.kr-homestudio.fr/

*****

Notre musique vise au dépaysement sonore, à la recherche d’un univers où instruments, langue et chant se conjuguent en un tout surprenant et même parfois bouleversant.. . .

            Ces thèmes sont d’autant plus développés qu’un récit ou dialogue entre Ilya et Vanya prend corps liant les chansons et révélant deux êtres se torturant par et pour leur propre amour dans l’album Synchrosome II, Ilya and Vanya.

            Les visuels sont des peintures de ma cousine, Caroline Guille, tableaux visibles pour certains, sur son site : caro-paint.com .

*****

AMAZON.fr MP3 STORE

1:19:14 – Langue : anglais/English – Indie & Alternative – Explicit Lyrics - ASIN: B00J0B57BC - EUR 9,99 TTC

http://www.amazon.fr/Synchrosome-ll-Ilya-Vanya-Explicit/dp/B00J0B57BC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424208453&sr=8-1&keywords=Coulardeau%2C+Ilya+et+Vanya%2C+MP3  

KEDDIE HUGHES – AN OBSTINATE VANITY – KINDLE EDITION – 2016

In the light of Brexit this book is a Revelation that is at least as powerful as John’s.

We are in Scotland, in fact in Glasgow and on the coast of what is the Atlantic Ocean, in a place called here Skye. We are dealing with two worlds that come together and apart in the most vicious and endearing ways. In Skye a father, Dougie, and his motherless son, Benjy, are trying to make a living, the father with an oyster farm and business and the son with an algae farm and business. They forgot that the water is not always pure and clean. In Glasgow a certain Beth is a successful business executive who accepts a public job with the “Agency” that is supposed to stimulate the development of the region, of Scotland. She forgot that any public agency is not a business and their only objective is to make money that is embezzled into private pockets without making any wave at all. That’s the very antagonistic reverse of any business procedure.

Then you add to that a plotter who comes from Paris and Europe to prevent some international research and development private concern to come up and open up in Glasgow – as opposed to the alternative in Mexico – though they are practicing animal trials for all kinds of chemicals, particularly in the cosmetic line.

Beth will lose the battle and she will be laminated to being slightly less rich while her brother will go to prison for embezzling millions from his private employer. Beth will get her vengeance with some unethical crimes committed by her boss who fires her – under the name of resignation of course – when things get a little bit too hot.

The plotter had managed to infiltrate the private life of Beth and at the same time to fall for Benjy and make Benjy fall for her. Add to that the fact that Beth was the enamored fiancée of Dougie in their college times and you will have the both fertile and sterile sentimental intimacy of the plot.

The salvation of the poor characters will come from three principles:

1-                          Go back to your own resources and energies and do not count on foreigners, meaning people who are not Scottish;

2-                          Let Benjy, the Scotsman, go build his future in the non-European-Union Norway and come back later to Scotland to eventually redevelop a new branch;

3-                          Concentrate on the new generation of Scots and help them start up businesses and initiatives and keep your fingers and toes crossed for success.

This is the typical Brexit scenario with some modifications. Let Scotland get out of the United Kingdom and cut off the two heavy metal balls attached to their legs. Let Scotland negotiate and work in full cooperation and not submission with another European country not tied up in and to the EU. Count only on your energy and the energy of the younger generation and you might end up starting up a real movement to the future, your future, your salvation and regeneration.

Interesting indeed though the sentimental betrayals of women by men seems to be the most popular action in this emotional world, and I should add the political and economic betrayal of women by women. And yet the regeneration of men can only come from women. Well no one can have everything they may want. Wanting is free but granting – or being granted – is expensive. An interesting novel if you do not mind rain, salty oceans and cold weather apart from half a dozen weeks in the summer.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Chers amis d'En Marche,

Je ne crois pas que regretter servira à rien. Voici deux opinions émises par moi. La première dans le cadre de l'Assemblée Générale du Syndicat National des Auteurs et des Compositeurs la semaine dernière :

« Cher Jean Marie [Moreau],

J'ai bien entendu ton argument sur l'interdiction de protection d'un territoire ou des productions d'un territoire national dans ce cas de la part de l'Europe au nom de l'égalité de concurrence, liberté de circulation, etc. On ne peut avoir que des quotas linguistiques. Notons que ces quotas nient ces mêmes égalité de concurrence et liberté de circulation.

D'abord j'aimerais qu'on me donne des chiffres pays par pays sur la part de la production dre leurs artistes nationaux en musique, toutes les musiques, et leur diffusion sur les radios et les télévisions et comparer ceux qui ont des quotas et ceux qui n'en ont pas. Et ainsi voir si l'absence de quotas pénalise les artistes dans certains pays à la fois sur la base de la langue nationale et des langues courantes dans le pays, et sur la base des artistes nationaux. Je suis tout à fait persuadé que l'Italie n'a pas de problèmes d'après ce que j'ai entendu, pas plus que les Allemands ou les Autrichiens. J'ai remarqué une forte présence du Suédois en Suède, mais en Scandinavie il faudrait prendre les trois langues scandinaves comme un tout. etc. Je ne pense pas que les quotas aient aidé à sauver quoi que ce soit, et je ne veux pas parler de qualité. Mais pourquoi donc sommes nous si pâles à l'Eurovision ou autres compétitions européennes sur bases nationales d'ailleurs.

Mais cette pratique des quotas sur la seule langue est une pratique de négation des identités nationales des artistes et des publics. Les Flamands flamingants en France ont tendance à se retrouver à l'extrême droite. Je les ai rencontrés à Radio Quinquin il y a longtemps et ils sont devenus une base du FN. L'absence de reconnaissance des diverses formes de la langue occitane comme pour la langue galloise, la langue écossaise et l'irlandais dans les iles britanniques, et quelques autres, et même chose pour le Breton en Bretagne, les dialectes germaniques en Alsace Lorraine, les langues spécifiques du Dauphiné, de la Savoir et du pays Nissard sans parler de la Corse, nie non seulement la langue, mais plus encore la possible intégration dans la nation française et cela donne des mouvances vers les indépendantistes ici et là et surtout, comme dans mon Auvergne, une fporte mouvance vers le FN. Frustrer la langue, ne pas intégrer la langue dans l'identité nationale, et ne parlons pas des langues de l'immigration, donne du pain à manger et du vin à boire aux extrémistes de tout crin, que ce soit de gauche (les campagnes VIVRE AU PAYS du PC il y a longtemps après 1968) ou de droite.

L'homogénéisation des nations au nom de l'Europe ne peut mener qu'à des drames comme le Brexit, UN MORT, au moins, spectaculaire. J'ai voté contre la constitution de Giscard en 2005, avant de partir au Sri Lanka, car elle définissait l'Europe comme une économie de marché capitaliste (à la manière de l'URSS, économie socialiste) et parce qu'elle niait ouvertement toute référence aux nations. J'ai vu au Sri Lanka le danger d'une telle négation avec les Tigres Tamouls et trente ans de guerre civile terminée dans le sang et maintenant s'effilochant dans une réconciliation bien difficile à venir. Il ne s'agissait pas de la langue ici car les deux langues étaient reconnues et largement présentes dans de très nombreux sites et dans le système scolaire, mais de la conscience nationale, culturelle, historique, voire anthropologique des Tamouls face aux Sinhalas, dont la langue n'est qu'un élément.

Finalement quand nous Européens prétendons exiger de la Chine qu'elle donne l'autonomie au Tibet, au pays ouighour, à la Mongolie et qui sait quoi encore non sur la base d'une langue, mais sur la base d'un territoire et d'une religion, on est bien mal placé pour venir refuser la reconnaissance du fait national en Europe.

Aux USA la bataille juridique sur le mariage pour couples de même sexe, toutes orientations sexuelles concernées, (soit dit en passant pas le mariage pour tous car le mariage n'est pas une obligation mais un droit et un choix, un droit pour tous mais pas un choix pour tous) s'est réglé sur l'existence des territoires appelés états. Certains états niaient le mariage à des couples inter-états auxquels seule la loi fédérale peut s'appliquer et donc le célèbre amendement 14 sur l'égalité face aux institutions fédérales et l'égale protection de chacun de la part de ces institutions.

Voilà ma position.

C'est le refus de prendre en compte les entités nationales par l'Europe qui provoque le Grexit, le Brexit, le Frexit, le résultat électoral en Autriche: un presqu'inconnu inexpérimenté battant de justesse l'extrême droite, Ne parlons pas de la Catalogne, de l'Espagne, du Portugal et il y aura bientôt l'Ecosse si le Brexit passe. L'Europe ne peut être qu'une fédération de nations sinon elle explosera et les quotas fondés sur la seule langue française sont une telle absurdité, surtout que j'ai entendu que l'Arabe serait concerné, alors que la majorité (statistique interdite en France) des immigrants Marocains ou Algériens sont de langue Kabyle ou Berbère, sans parler des Turcs (langue agglutinante) dont la majorité en France sont des Kurdes (langue indo-européenne). Il y a là le ferment d'une frustration, d'un rejet, d'une révolte, d'une insatisfaction, d'une castration comme dirait Lacan ou Freud. On se prépare des lendemains qui explosent. Voire les scènes de guerre urbaine du Boulevard Montparnasse de mardi après-midi dernier avec les Zauzaus et les Zinzins (les autonomes te les indépendants) qui avaient déjà sévi en 2006.

D'ailleurs Brel, Stroemae et quelques autres n'ont pas eu et n'ont toujours pas de difficultés à exister même aux USA où Stromae a fait une tournée en français alors qu'il parle anglais mais il n'a pas mis ses chansons en anglais, même si pourtant Brel a du passer du Flamand de sa jeunesse au français belge de son âge plus avancé.

Provocation à part il y a une nécessaire réflexion à entreprendre rapidement.

Bonne journée

 Jacques

  

Take your country back from those who seek to destroy it

Nick Cohen

The English air is as foul as it has been at any point since my childhood. It is as if the sewers have burst. The Leave campaign has captured the worst of England and channelled it into a know-nothing movement of loud mouths and closed minds. It is easy to mock, but essential to fight, because the new right could win a victory that may never be reversed. . . .

THE GUARDIAN, Sunday 19 June 2016 00.03 BST

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/18/eu-referendum-vote-leave-campaign-poisonous?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=178081&subid=1439009&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2_footer »

  

Et la seconde juste aujourd’hui après une leçon par téléphone avec un étudiant chercheur dans une startup française:

« You chose your subject (http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/brexit-donald-trump/) and you exploited it properly and you already expect a BUT from me and you will very probably have it.

BUT that is not what is important here. We are dealing with reality, immediate reality? No one can predict what is going to happen. At best we can prepare ourselves for a couple or a triple of solutions we can envisage. And then wait for what is going to come out of the magician's hat. A rabbit, or a dove, or a scarf, or even something else.

You can envisage Brexit from the UK's point of view: then the questions are who is going to be the leader of the conservative party in Parliament who will become the Prime Minister? Then what will happen if no one is accepted or chosen as the leader of the Conservative Party? Normally general elections, officially called by the Queen. Then what? On another side what is the game of Scotland going to be who wants to be independent and remain in the EU though their head of State is Elisabeth I, Queen of Scotland? Last question: what will happen in Northern Ireland that wants to remain in the EU, along with the Irish Republic though the majority of the people is protestant?

You can envisage Brexit from the European point of view. Is it going to be business as usual? Are they going to understand there is a real danger as long as they negate the national entities Europe is composed of? Are they going to grasp the same problem is present and simmering in at least eleven European countries? And what is going to be the position in each country about a referendum about Europe? The new deal in Europe? Or the same old deal that we all know and has failed in the United Kingdom? Are we going to accept Scotland as a member of the EU? On what legal ground?

You can envisage Brexit from the West's point of view. What about the link between northern America and Europe? Is Britain going to become an intermediary, a go-between, a necessary passage between the two continents? Is Britain going to become a privileged ally of the USA as it used to be in the 50s and 60s? And what is going to happen to NATO that is based on the unification of Europe? How can Europe accept Ukraine if the United Kingdom goes out? What about the role of the IMF that traditional based on a united Europe if Europe is no longer united? What about Turkey who is a member of Nato and not of the EU?

We can finally envisage Brexit from the Rest's point of view. What are the emerging countries doing in our back while the Pound is diving under, while western stock exchanges are sinking, while the western economy is going to get through difficult moments, while the restructuring that is going to follow is going to be enormous and while the west is going to waste a tremendous amount of time, energy, money and even more to face and sidetrack the populists, if not the nationalists or even the isolationists? What is China doing in Tashkent right now at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, probably the most important and influential alliance outside the EU and NATO? TPP is a baby when compared with that one. and the negotiation between Europe and the USA is down the chute or in jeopardy.

That's how I would look at the problem today and I would do some research in all directions. What I have heard is not encouraging: in France there might be some new ideas coming from the right, though it is still fresh to know. The left is lost in some innocuous bla bla without any black sheep of course (Hollande), or a strong anti-capitalistic European rejection from the extreme left that flatters the position of the extreme right. Where is the new realistic discourse going to come from, that new discourse that is going to reinstate the concept of nation in Europe, Europe a federation of independent nations and not a homogenized alliance of states? Who will have the charisma of a man like de Gaulle? Or as for that Adenauer

You see what I mean by taking a crash course at Science Po, your next door neighbor? And of course we have to consider the various levels: economic, cultural, linguistic, political, ethnic, religious, and a few more.

Good job anyway. »

Ce serait une catastrophe d'en rester à des regrets ou des pleurs qui seraient de crocodile: au moins les 66% de lecteurs qui approuvent le départ du Royaume Uni de l'Europe dans le Figaro ne cachent pas leur satisfaction.

Jusqu'à présent je n'ai entendu que Juppé qui aurait légèrement changé sa position sur la possibilité d'un référendum sur un nouveau deal européen.

J'espère simplement que la raison des nations entendra la raison tout court et que la raison des états laissera la place à ces nations.

Bonne soirée

Jacques

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
8 rue de la Chaussée
63880 OLLIERGUES
04 73 95 59 17
dondaine@orange.fr
http://drjacquescoulardeau.blogspot.fr/
http://google.com/+DrJacquesCOULARDEAU
http://independent.academia.edu/JacquesCoulardeau   

STEPHEN KING

THE BILL HODGES TRILOGY

1- MR. MERCEDES

2- FINDERS KEEPERS

3- END OF WATCH

SERIAL KILLER, PSYCHOPATH AND TERRORIST

https://www.academia.edu/26320666/SERIAL_KILLER_PSYCHOPATH_AND_TERRORIST

I dedicate this “review” to my own son, Annunzio COULARDEAU,

and to those who certainly are my fellow travelers,

Ivan EVE and Serban V.C. ENACHE

At the end of his life or at the beginning of a new career, a third career of sorts, Stephen King is courting and wooing new genres intensely. Not new genres that did not exist before him, but new genres for him, genres he had never or very rarely dealt with before in his first and second career. And it is clearest in this trilogy.

A second element appears and it is the fact that he works with his two sons in collaboration a lot more than he did before. He is going through the syndrome of the father looking for his next generation heirs. We all do that. If we have a son or a daughter we try to make that blood heir more receptive and prepare him or her to having to carry their father’s heritage in the world. If we do not have such a blood descendant we select a young man or woman in our surrounding environment and make him or her the spiritual heir or heiress we need before moving on because it is absolutely true that we will not take anything along and I don’t think any angel would be interested in our baggage, especially Stephen King’s.

This trilogy ends thus positively since the evil man is destroyed but also negatively since the main character is also put to sleep by cancer. Nothing dramatic but everything sad and bleak. This Bill Hodges had chosen a partner, Holly Gibney, in his last Det-Ret phase of his life, and she is the heiress who will carry his heritage. She will have to select a partner of her own too and she will, a natural partner since he was Bill’s partner in the police.

Yet Stephen King will remain in this trilogy the creative mind who exposed the world after the Big Recession of 2008-2009 and celebrated the young black man who saved him and his partner Holly at the end who of course is like Barack Obama, the last resort in the situation when all seems to be going to hell, the Deus Ex Machina of the past-present-future flow of time.

And at the same time King goes a lot farther than a simple parable of the first black president of the USA. Holly Gibney will pick his heritage but this woman is autistic and Stephen King is so modern in his approach of autism, in fact it seems the Asperger syndrome of autism. He shows how good she can be within her clear cut capabilities and how tense she can be when dealing with human and physical contact. She sees through any personality and can ask the very question that leads to the heart of the matter, but she is irreversibly unable to accept physical contact. She is blocked in bad habits like smoking and yet she is able to get over it and drop it. We will never know if it is genetic in her or not. But one thing is sure. Stephen King insists in the first volume on the cannibalistic attitude of her mother that locks her up in her neurodiversity as if it were a crime and a stain on her, the mother’s of course, reputation.

That’s what is most visible in this trilogy. Stephen King kind of reflects on the world and states we can improve it if we have the guts to change our bad habits and stand against the individuals who are the  forces of evil.

STEPHEN KING – THE BILL HODGES TRILOGY – VOLUME ONE – MR MERCEDES – 2014

Don't believe all the book says. There are some mistakes like for instance the illegality of being able to read all formats from all zones on one DVD reader. Such a machine exists: it is produced by Sony, made in Malaysia and distributed to the whole world from Chicago by, among others I guess, Amazon. At least the one I have came that way and was delivered to me by Amazon.fr. Some other elements from police speak are not always listed in various sites or glossary on the subject. He seems to be using some shortened forms that are popular in his own living circles. For example "to steal the peek." It refers to what is called "passive keyless entry and start" or PKES and the "signal" used to operate it can be captured from a short distance. As for the expression "stealing the peek" it does not seem to exist as such. Yet it now does.

But apart from that the book is not a glossary of police speak, nor an urban dictionary of crime speak. It is a book in the line of several books Stephen King has recently written that have to do with some kind of criminal, some form of crime, and catching the former or stopping the latter. Here we are dealing with a serial offender who is turning into a serial mass murderer. That is in no way terrorism and critics like Chuck Bowen in Slant Magazine, House Next Door are totally wrong when they define the book as a cop-and-terrorist thriller. Terrorism implies some political aim and in this case the man is deranged and nothing but a sociopath and psychopath. The Unibomber was a terrorist since he had a political agenda. But here Stephen King defines his criminal as a "mad bomber" and that does not make him a terrorist.

It is a thriller that does not use in any way supernatural or fantastic means like for instance in Doctor Sleep that deals with a band of criminals who are in a way living dead people and some kind of vampires though they do not drink blood but vital energy. It is in the line of Joyland in which a simple young man is tracking and bringing out and down a serial killer. Stephen King is thus in line with some of the books he has written before, though this one is original because it uses an ex-cop, a retired detective as the main character though Stephen King adds to this man an underage high school student and a psychologically deranged middle age woman who is somewhere between neurosis, psychosis and autism, definitely compulsive obsessive and yet sane enough to be of great help and to manage to get out of the super low state of mind and extreme dependence she is in at the beginning and reach some independence and equilibrium at the end.

The main criminal, aka Mr. Mercedes, is a psychopath and sociopath but as the result of an intense and prolonged trauma that started when his younger brother came into the picture and when their father got out of it leaving their mother with two sons, no income or nearly none, and the younger son is slightly retarded. Misery, poverty and later on the assassination of the younger son after a dumb accident in which the child chokes on a slice of apple and his mother aggravates the situation by trying to get the slice out of his larynx with her fingers instead of using the Heimlich maneuver. Stephen King knows everything about Heimlich and his maneuver since he used it in Christine. Thus it is a choice leading to drastic elimination. The assassination is performed on the incoherent child after his being brought back to life by doctors with a severe mental impairment by his mother and his brother together.

Then there is an allusion to a stepfather who took to using his stepson as a sexual toy torturing him too with cigarettes and other elements that are not mentioned. The mother took part in the victimization that implied rape even if it is only alluded to. The child becomes an adult for sure but attached to his mother and his mother considers him as a sexual partner, a surrogate to a man who would be her husband or lover, though with strict limits: she is the onanistic tool of the grown man. I would say this long lasting trauma can only produce the asocial psychopath we have in the book, though it is a little bit easy on the inside. The pattern of a stepfather and a mother victimizing the stepson (and son) is a little bit simple. We are spared though the direct gay sexuality which would not have been in anyway sane and the result of a choice, though he is clearly described as a closet-homo who hates women, especially young women and teenage girls Most of his direct victims are women, at times unwillingly on his part but women nevertheless. The last crime he plans is a mass murder of essentially teenage girls and chaperoning mothers.

What is particularly catching, appealing in the book is what Chuck Bowen hates. The writing is in a language that borrows a lot from colloquial discourse and even social dialect. His high school senior Jerome, a black teenager, uses a lot of linguistic ebonics in his discourse and this is quite typical of that black young man whose family members have typical Caucasian, hence American names and he wants to go to Harvard. He is the victim of quite a lot of racial prejudice in the mild ostracism that has taken the place of open segregative rejection of previous decades but that is rejection nevertheless. To compensate for this rejection, and to assert his blackness, with some white people he is in regular contact, he uses ebonics. This is natural and even both sane and healthy. That's some kind of homeopathic medicine to overcome and tolerate any kind of bigotry, present or only intended around him.

The retired detective, Kermit William Hodges, is also quite typical of people in his situation. He is alone and he easily slips into some fattening life style that leads him to overweight and a coronary accident at the end. He has abandoned all sexual activity that implies a partner. In other words he is a social and psychological wreck. All the easier for him to jump on the bandwagon of some police work on the side of official duties, hence to become an uncle. Since the criminal is making it a personal case against him he reacts in the very same way and makes it a personal case against the criminal. Nothing new under the sun. Circumstances just add some more disinterest from the official police department of the city that sidetracks him into being his own master in clandestine police work. Circumstances (his heart attack) will enable him not to perform the last stage of the neutralization of the criminal.

The writing itself is split into short sequences jumping from one character to the other, from the retired detective to the criminal essentially but not only. This is cinematographic writing of course, which makes this novel into an easily adaptable story for a film. But that is the way all modern writers write today with TV and cinema in mind. Chuck Bowen has it wrong: most modern novels have that structure of an unfinished scenario and that cannot be considered as a shortcoming because it corresponds to the viewing habits of a modern audience who watches TV series and films all the time, stories that are more and more exploded into some kind of mosaic of short sequences.

This very story line is catching and appealing. We get into the story and then we are in a way mesmerized by the story telling. We can maybe say everything is understandable before it happens and we can foresee every event. That is true and false. At every crucial point in the novel we can see the options that are available to the author. It is true most of the time what the author chooses is among these options, but it is only one option in a set of several. The end is predictable and yet apart from the idea that the criminal will be stopped, we cannot really predict how, where, when and by whom before it happens. The very conclusion of the novel is tremendously moving. We cannot resist thinking of Misery, though the cruelty against Retired Detective K. William Hodges is a lot less intense than that described in that older novel. The book altogether is more luminous than older books and is in the line of Joyland as for this luminosity. That is probably the element that could be regretted: the brutal rude cruelty of the Richard Bachman side of Stephen King. He seems to have curbed it in his latest novels. Should we regret it?

But it is true he is experimenting other styles under the collaborative influence from his son Joe Hill, a novelist of his own. He has thus a real future and heir for the coming decades in the cinema, in fiction and in other genres like the musical. Maybe he should concentrate on these new forms and aim at producing more mini series or films than books. He maybe has written enough books and should change media. But such a choice has to be his decision. It is true it is difficult to do better than a good dozen of his older novels, not to speak of The Dark Tower series, IT or The Stand that are plain master pieces. But yet there still are some territories he can explore for our pleasure.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

STEPHEN KING – THE BILL HODGES TRILOGY – VOLUME TWO – FINDERS KEEPERS – 2015

“Mr. Mercedes” was a prodigy in Stephen King’s long and voluminous work. But this sequel is a miracle this time. And there are so many reasons that I can only give you a few.

First the suspense is perfect. The end is unpredictable, really, at most one among many others. It is centered on a teenager, a junior in high school who is totally trapped by life. And the big event in his life is the 2009 depression that makes his father unemployed and his mother unemployed and then employed in a lower job. Then there is the phenomenal Mercedes terrorist attack at the job fair at the Municipal center. The son is suffering because his parents are bound to end up in separation and divorce and he hates the idea, for them, for himself and for his younger sister. What can HE, HIMSELF and  HIM AGAIN do about it?

That’s the genius of Stephen King. He knows how to center his stories on children, teenagers particularly, and he seems to be able to capture their psyche, their strange mind and growing personality, growing in tortured anguish, awe and angst, permanently victimized by their own self-centered altruistic ego. They want to do something for other people and yet it is always for their own sake and that’s why it hurts. So what happens then? They launch themselves on the most incredible schemes that are supposed to bring salvation and epiphany, redemption and regeneration to everyone they may think of, but first of all and mostly to themselves. Then they will twist their minds and their psyches and their neurons, mirror or not, because their schemes are bringing some wounds and pains to those they love instead of only helping them along.

Stephen King has always been able to do that, to describe that, to delve, dive and soak himself in such contradictory antagonistic and dialectical good bad-doing or bad good-doing. You would use a long M word, and that would not be Mercedes, if it were some solitary play, but these teenagers or tweenagers cannot do anything without involving other people in their intentions or in their targets, and good morning Vietnam, let me introduce you to the catastrophe of the century who kills quite a few people and nearly kills a few more. The criminal, the psychopath, the sociopath, and whatever else you may think of along that path, is an ex-convict on parole who is absolutely crazy, I mean a “path” of any type you can think of: sociopath, psychopath and even, that’s new, just out of the magic hat, culture-path. The poor man, because it has to be a man, is so fixated on the work of the writer he killed out of vanity and disillusion that he is able to kill half a dozen people to just have the chance of reading the novels this writer never published. Bad luck all along since he is frozen feces-less by his own intellectual mother and he gets drunk and he rapes a woman, a substitute for his mother that he would have liked to rape, that he should in his small logic have raped twenty times at least as soon as he was something like 12.

Then the heart of the novel is that the money he stole and the notebooks he stole too from that assassinated writer, he buries them before being caught raping a woman and before being railroaded down into some penitentiary for life. Then the whole novel is the peregrination of the money, that ends up in some charitable saving plan, and the notebooks, that end up all burnt up in the final catastrophic and abysmally apocalyptic scene, though six were saved by the teenager who plays hero – maybe he is in a way – and Stephen King seems to forget about these and seems to assume that they have all been destroyed. Maybe he should check the loose board at the back of the closet of this young teenager.

That kind of suspense novel is perfect, absolutely perfect and Stephen King manages to include some allusions to some of his short stories and films, but forget about it. It is gently vain and funnily gentle.

But the book has a tremendous symbolic value. 185 minus 6 notebooks (if I am not wrong on the numbers) get burnt up at the end of the book. An “autodafe,” an act of faith my foot, an act of barbarity from another time, another civilization, another barbarism, another monstrous inquisition in some Mesoamerican or south American Spanish or Portuguese colony based on burn them all, the male Indians, and keep the females for your service. And burn them all they did there in the basement of that closed and disaffected and abandoned Municipal Centre. All except six of them. How can Stephen King even imagine such a crime against humanity and against human culture? I swear I will hate him forever for this act but I must admit it is the perfect climax in the grisly repellent suspense crime story this book contains.

And Stephen King cannot obviously resist putting some “magic” or supernatural energy somewhere, but I can’t reveal it since it is going to be the starting point of the next volume of this psychopathic series.

Enjoy the novel, especially at night, and in the middle of the night get your courage up in your hands and feet and walk to the out-house at the back of the yard outside in the pitch-dark night, if you still have an out-house, and imagine the monsters that are going to catch you while you are tiptoeing along to that small bungalow of your physiological needs, but please do not wet your pants, underwear or pajamas, or whatever you are wearing, or the grass if you are wearing no encasement for your family jewels, just an XXX-large T-shirt you have put on as a nightshirt with some provocative inscription on it, front and back, like Bill Hodges’s assistant.

Have a good reading session under the full moon of all crimes.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

STEPHEN KING – THE BILL HODGES TRILOGY – VOLUME THREE – END OF WATCH – 2016

I will dedicate this review to our good old friend Bill Hodges, alias Kermit William Hodges, aka Kermit, otherwise known as the Det-Ret, who died at the end of his third statutory case and eponymous volume, and was buried in total privacy by his own father and creator Stephen King when this one was finally through with exploiting the character in his fictional stories. Let us pray for a minute for this glorious and courageous character who could not enjoy his fame more than a few months after his victory and yet in great pain, in spite of morphine.

Now let’s become what we should always be, busy beavers.

This volume, like the previous two, could be taken all by itself and that’s how I am going to look at it. We are dealing with a psychic psychopath, Brady Hartsfield, alias Library Al or Z-boy, aka Dr Babineau or Dr Z, also named Zeetheend in virtual reality, and even known as Zappit Zero in  game hardware. We could refresh you on the previous crimes but it is not necessary here and in the book there is no summary of the previous action or actions though the essential elements are given by Stephen King when necessary.

But let’s be clear, at least a little bit more. In the first volume Brady Hartsfield ran a stolen Mercedes Benz into a crowd waiting for the opening of a special job fair, very early in the morning  in 2009 killing quite a few and maiming quite a lot more. Later on Brady Hartsfield tries to blow himself up in a boy-band concert in the middle of thousands of kids, essentially girls, and parents. He is stopped just in time by Holly Gibney who seriously concusses his skull and mashes his brain into total coma for a while and a paraplegic situation afterwards. He thus ends up in a special unit in a hospital in a state that is declared catatonic though we have a glimpse at the end of the second volume that he is maybe not completely catatonic, at least not on the mental side of his being.

The second volume concerns a completely different business like a vacation from the Hartsfield case, while this hard-core criminal is recuperating from his catatonic state. A vacation to recuperate from mental vacancy.

In this here third volume we go back to Hartsfield and we discover how an over 60 year old doctor used this patient as a guinea pig for not yet certified experimental drugs under no control at all. The patient then re-conquers his mind and develops some particular capabilities, like telekinesis but also the great ability to use hypnosis to capture the attention of people and take control of their minds and at first direct them to his obsession, to commit suicide, and even later to host his own mind and thus transport him in a body that is little by little made a simple pod for the mind of the criminal Brady Hartsfield. This is not a new idea and Anne Rice used it a lot in her novel “The Body Thief” where Lestat de Lioncourt, her vampire, and another man who is in no way a vampire have this ability and play around with it. Here Brady Hartsfield uses this ability to move around when he is paraplegic to go and do things he could not do, to organize his big scheme and set up the whole technical apparatus he needs to do it, either under the appearance of Library Al, alias Z-Boy, or under the appearance of Dr Babineau, alias Dr Z.

He will thus buy a whole batch of game consoles that are out of the market because of some bankruptcy, have them reprogrammed into hypnotic machines that will enable him to take control of the minds of the users and lead them to suicide, because his main objective is to make hundreds of people commit suicide, to start and feed a real suicide epidemic. He is then known as the Suicide Prince, or Prince Suicide if you prefer, or even the Prince of Suicide. He is a genius in computer science though in his hospital wheelchair he cannot do much. He will have to take control of a girl with whom he had worked in the first volume to be able to achieve his aim. She is Frederica Linklatter. For the sake of money she finds herself involved in that completely crazy project. She even let her own lesbian friend if not partner go just for the thousands of dollars that are falling into her basket. Then Brady Hartsfield is able to plan and start his vengeance against three people essentially, Barbara Robinson, a black girl who is essentially the sister of Jerome Robinson. Brady Hartsfield had noticed her in his second terrorist attack on the concert. Then he is targeting Jerome Robinson, a black boy he calls the Det-Ret’s nigger lawnmower, because he used to do that for Bill Hodges when he was a teenager, and of course Bill Hodges, though he does not so much want to kill that last one as make him suffer with the suicide epidemic he is planning.

I am not going to tell the story that leads to the full and final destruction of Brady Hartsfield. I’m going to make a few remarks at a wider and higher level.

My first remark is that – for once – Stephen King closes the trilogy with a “no survivor” situation, at least the main pair of characters are exterminated, the criminal Brady Hartsfield and the ex-cop Det-Ret Bill Hodges. The end is not a new beginning. It is a real end, not like the second coming restart of the Dark Tower, and if there were to be a new beginning it would have to be of a somewhat totally different nature. One may out-Caesar Caesar but as long as Caesar and Brutus are still alive, both of them. Then out-Hodging Hodges becomes impossible once Hodges is out.

My second remark is that more than ever the third volume is a metaphor of America. In the previous episodes the situation was saved by a woman Holly Gibney and a young black teenager Barbara Robinson. In the same way the second volume was saved by this same Holly Gibney and a young black teenager Jerome Robinson. In this third volume, taking place six years after the events of the first Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney are going to be killed by Brady Hartsfield when Jerome Robinson, now a young black man, arrives with the cavalry and the cavalry is one horrible monstrous snow mobile or snow tank that saves the day by crushing Brady Hartsfield  into some dying pulp led to his own death by such a rolling over and abandoned in the snow storm to freeze till the cops may arrive. The famous Christine is revisited in this end. Jerome Robinson is an obvious personification of Obama. Holly is the personification of Hillary Clinton, except that the woman came first and will stay last. But is it not the very situation we had in 2008 and then 2016. The Blackman will naturally move on to his own life.

My third remark is that any institution in the USA, including the police, are institutionalized into impotence, and not only by the Peter Principle. This volume as much as the two previous ones shows how all institutions are the victims of the ambitions of their members who prefer messing up a case to jeopardizing their personal goals, though some private initiative is going to force them into doing what they refused to do at first and they then are very good at making it part of their plans. They are vampires  sucking the pith and marrow of the adventurous individuals who seize the day and change the world. At the same time if they cannot recuperate those adventurous individuals, then they will push them into oblivion and inexistence by all means possible. Here the X Files are the matrix of such a bureaucratic administrative perversion we all have encountered here and there.

My fourth remark is that Stephen King has become obsessed with and by death, “one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peal.” (347) There is no escape from some obvious elements in life – and death. “Friends and neighbors, does the sun rise in the east?” (296) “If life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” (293) “Two survivors of the City Center massacre. . . have committed suicide. . .“ (263) No getaway from your fate. Even if it is racial/racist and sexist. “She is blackish, a word that seems the same as useless, and she doesn’t deserve to live.” (115) And that fate is often repaired with patches and elastic bands. “Deep in his thoughts, he misses the primer-spotted Chevy Malibu for the third time in two days . . . standing next to it an elderly man in an old Army surplus parka that has been mended with masking tape.” (108-9) It is all nothing but a backside front countdown. Nine pink fish to capture that are carrying numbers. Numbers that have to be captured in these pink fish to add up to one hundred and twenty in one hundred and twenty seconds. The obsession of the diabolical hour of Jesus’ death on the cross, the ninth hour. The obsession of the twelve disciples, of the twelve months of the year, that all accompany the Lord in his death on the cross; accompany and reject, to maybe recompose themselves when the danger is passed, except John at the foot of the cross and the two Mary’s, the last two not being disciples, at least officially, but these are a kid under 15 and two women. And this book all starts with a survivor of the City Center Massacre, Martine Stover, being put to sleep by her mother, Mrs. Ellerton, who then commits suicide.

Seen like that in backward retrospective the whole book is like a descent into hell and we can then think of the seven screens of Brady Hartsfield’s own morbid regressive perspective. (91)

1- His brother Frankie he helped die by pushing him down some staircase.

2- His mother Deborah he helped commit suicide with psychic means.

3- Thing One and Thing Two, his long lived and still-born inventions.

4- Mrs. Trelawney’s gray Mercedes sedan that killed quite a few at the City Center.

5- The wheelchair in which his body is now locked up as the result of his failed attack against the Mingo Auditorium.

6- A handsome, smiling young man. . . , the old Det-Ret’s nigger lawn boy.

7- Hodges himself who will lead the attack bringing the death of this pitiful excuse for anything as far away as possible from what we generally call a man, and yet this chase will lead to closure six months later.

How can you be more gruesome in your regression than that? Just a child turned into a monster by his family conditions, his jealousy against his little brother, the ambiguous and obscure role of his mother and this child will grow into a computing genius who will use his capabilities to in the end commit suicide, kill himself, destroy his sorry excuse for a human being, but along with dragging as many people down behind and with him as possible. Don’t tell me that does not exist. San Bernardino, Orlando, Paris, Brussels, and so many other places where one can die and kill dozens at the same time, as if these deaths, including theirs, were able to compensate for their mentally neutered and physically spayed frustration.

Strangely enough I found an obvious mistake in the book. Page 234 and page 237 the Chevy Malibu, the possession of Library Al, is absent from Dr Babineau’s property when the police arrives though Library Al is sleeping and snoring upstairs. This Library Al is attributed later the coming to Dr Babineau’s, then going to the hospital and then coming back to Dr Babineau’s and staying there, and yet his car is absent, and Dr Babineau’s has been shot at, by whom? And this Chevy Malibu is the car Brady Hartsfield in the body of Dr Babineau uses to get to the hunting camp for the end of his suicide inflicting and suicide committing mission. This discrepancy is surprising but I guess when we are dealing with a mental monster we may lose some threads or some threads may get loose.

I will conclude with a double question.

Is Stephen King obsessed and fascinated by his own death, which would be morbid?

Is Stephen King the simple mirror capturing the reflection of what life is in the world? The obsolute domination of inflicted and self-inflicted death everywhere in the world? And when there is no war in a country you can be sure there will be a San Bernardino in California or an Orlando in Florida to inflict their load of victims onto our souls and minds.

We could wonder if Stephen King is not recapturing the self-drawing of blood that was ritualistic among all men in Maya society a long time ago. And this is only one case of self-sacrifice. What about the systematic human sacrifice that is still going on in our societies under the name of the death penalty?

We can go on wondering, but it is a sad state of affairs in this supposedly civilized world where one candidate in the US presidential election is advocating torture not to get information since we all know it is ineffective for that, but to get even with the barbarity of the other side. A never ending competition at who was first and who will be last. There is always an ugly duckling in a brood of  political fledglings.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU