PARTISAN REVIEW
41
ments.
This
has led to the most consistent misunderstandings of
his
work, a failure to grasp why he
is
of necessity given to obscenity
and violence. In "An Impolite Interview" with Paul Krassner of
The Realist,
he makes
his
position on these matters clear enough, but
in
such a way as to perhaps only further confuse
his
detractors.
Alluding to an Italian bombardier who reported that the bombs
bursting over an Ethiopian village were beautiful, he writes that
while he does not necessarily disapprove of violence in a man or a
woman "what I still disapprove of
is
inhuman
violence," which
is
of
course the kind infused into D.J. and
Tex
at Brooks Range.
I disapprove of bombing a city. I disapprove of the kind of man
who will derive aesthetic satisfaction from the fact that an Ethio–
pian village looks like a red rose at the moment the bombs are
exploding. I won't disapprove of the act of perception which wit–
nesses that: I think that act of perception is - I'm going to use the
word again - noble.
What I am getting at is: a native village is bombed, and the bombs
happen to be beautiful when they land; in fact it would be odd
if
all
that sudden destruction did not liberate some beauty. The
form a bomb takes in its explosion may be in part a picture of the
potentialities it destroyed. So let us accept the idea that the bomb
is
beautiful.
If
so, any liberal who decries the act of bombing
is
totalitarian if
he doesn't admit as well that the bombs were indeed. beautiful.
Because the moment we tell something that's untrue, it does not
matter how pure our motives may be - the moment we start
mothering mankind and decide that one truth is good for them to
hear and another is not so good, because while we can understand,
those poor ignorant unfortunates cannot - then what are we doing,
we're depriving the minds of others of knowledge which may be
essential.
Think
of a young pilot who comes along later, some young pilot
who goes out on a mission and isn't prepared for the fact that a
bombing might be beautiful; he could conceivably be an idealist,
there were some in the war against Fascism.
If
the pilot is totally
unprepared he might never get over the fact that he was particular–
ly thrilled by the beauty of that bomb.
But if our culture had been large enough to say that Ciano's
son-in-law not only found that bomb beautiful, but that indeed
this
act of perception was
not
what was wrong; the evil was to
think
that this beauty was worth the lot of living helpless people
who were wiped out broadside. Obviously whenever there's de–
struction, there's going to be beauty implicit in it.
