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… and there is an old Ukrainian who, standing at a Lower East Side corner, screams endless discourses in a reasonable yet incomprehensible voice.
... and there is a very correctly dressed man who, all of a sudden, without any change of expression, spews forth foul insults at the top of his voice, then continues on his way as if nothing had happened.
... and there is a tall black man, dancing and singing, furiously snapping his fingers under the nose of terrorized passer-bys.
... and there is this movie in which millions of Americans open wide their windows and scream to the impassive heavens: "I am mad as hell, and I am not going to take this any more!”
… and there are all those who, unable to express their rage and their despair, one-good day stride into a school or a mall armed to the teeth and shoot down a dozen fellow students or other bystanders before being shot dead in their turn …
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15. Letter from the New World
New York, July 4, 1976
Dear Friend:
Today is the bi-centenary of the American declaration of independence, proclaimed on July 4 1776. As befits the occasion festivities of all kinds are taking place throughout the land, the news media has place for nothing else, indeed the topic is on everybody’s mind – including mine.
Thus it is that, strolling on Amagansett beach alongside the liquid frontier separating Europe from America, an essential truth was revealed to me that remains unknown from the entire world: there is no such country as the United States!
I fully recognize the paradox. Although my eyes have been opened to the point where I know, intellectually and logically, that this “nation” has no other existence than that we concur into bestowing upon it, on the other hand, physically, emotionally, and as a conscientious consumer, I cannot prevent myself from being caught in the trap and believe that I truly live in this imaginary country, fruit of a monstrous conspiracy, an astonishing commercial and advertising enterprise which is stamped with the sign Made in USA.
Even when living in Europe, like everyone I knew that the Western, this poetic genre, was grounded in no reality, and that the myth of the cowboy holds no other truth than the one bestowed upon it by Hollywood, mother of deception. Yes, a whole region was fabricated from scratch and propagandised (what a beautiful verb) by the movie studios: I am speaking about the Far-west, mythologically located somewhere between the Mid-West and California. Later, I came to live in New York City.
Soon, in part thanks to the famous New Yorker cover by Steinberg that shows the United States consisting only of Manhattan, some vague territory to the West, and Hollywood, I realized that practically nothing existed to the West of the Hudson river except fabulous California.
I must say that, like everybody, I tried to visit on the other side of the Hudson and that, like everybody, I thought I had often done it, but the fact is that I never succeeded. New York is wide open on the Atlantic ocean to the East, but on the other side, the West, where one commonly imagines that a continent spreads out, there is, beyond a magical belt made of deleterious emanations reeking of oil, chemical products, burning garbage, fire-melted tires, there is, then, I finally discovered, ... Hollywood’s studios which, in a subtle manner hidden from all but the shrewdest observer, confound everyone and substantiate thanks to very well made mock-ups and trompe-l’oeil what publicity makes people believe. That is: beyond the Hudson River, there exists an enormous region from where come all kinds of industrial and agricultural products.
This publicity is so well made that even the Chinese, pragmatic communists and level-headed businessmen that they are ever since the chopping of protruding heads fell out of fashion after the death of that other advertising campaign named Mao-Tse-Tung — that even the Chinese, then, got caught in the trap and purchased millions of tons of cereals! Just think: it is unbelievable, the degree to which people are gullible!
It is however true that few New Yorkers feel the need to cross the Hudson and go to a country they vaguely mistrust in an manner maybe unreasonable, but nevertheless very real; which indeed shows once again that it is not feasible to completely fool everybody all the time. This feeling allows the Hollywoodian make-believe to be not too sophisticated nor fanciful, particularly since drugs are massively utilized in order to befuddle everybody.
The slightest reflection allows one to realize that no accident, no aberration, no fortuitous series of happenings can explain why and how one would create from scratch a belt of distasteful and dangerous smells and fumes all along one of the most important cities in the world, which is affected by that pollution to a degree nowhere equaled, except perhaps in fabulous California; a pollution that shortens everybody’s life, creates at times a thick unbreathable atmosphere, constitutes an everyday danger, is everyday denounced by newspapers, government agencies, and even by industries such as Con Edison itself, yet remains and even increases in level from year to year.
The explanation of this phenomenon is of a childish simplicity, if one but thinks of it: the psychedelics! This zone, this barrier made of noxious fumes is there for no other reason but that of disguising the smell and taste of the drugs that are in the very air that all breathe per force, and which with the help of Hollywood’s mock-ups and the advertising campaign mentioned above, help everyone believe in the hallucination now strongly anchored in the American and world collective Maya according to which there exists something between the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, between New York and Hollywood.
Having discovered this interesting phenomenon — it is not for nothing that the world centers of publicity and money are named Madison Avenue and Wall street, both located in New York City — I thought I had solved the American enigma. The United States were constituted in reality by New York City and some territory located between the Hudson river and the Atlantic Ocean, on one hand, and on the other hand by Hollywood, sited on the Pacific ocean, and inventor of the legendary California of the gold rush. Together, in order to bolster themselves, to appear important in the eyes of the world and their own, in order to live well, these territories invented the modern United States through a campaign of illusion and publicity basically very similar to that accompanying the launching of a movie or a television program.
However, knowing that nobody invents anything where there is nothing at all, I had the idea to do some research. I went to the main New York Library, that imposing building on 42nd street, well protected by its two stone lions. Soon I could convince myself that a territory had truly existed, which could have been the Mid-west – as we have seen the Far-west, that poetical invention, has never been anything but a myth.
But all the indications are that this territory had disappeared under the waves of the Pacific Ocean during the great catastrophe of 1906, which publicity and censorship had minimized and disguised under the name of the Great Francisco Earthquake.
The direct reason for such a censorship was the fear that the Japanese, who had just defeated the tsarist empire, would take advantage of the weakness in which this fateful blow had plunged America and, like a human tsunami, would roll in upon the place that had already began to be the world center of illusion: Hollywood’s California. (We know only too well how the Japanese attempted that venture in 1941)
I had reached that point with my socio-geographical research, a few years ago, and, by and large satisfied with my explanation, I hardly thought about it any longer. But today, all of a sudden, and this is why I am writing to you, Oh Friend., a supplementary revelation took hold of my dazzled spirit. I had not dared enough. The realization that nothing existed between New York and Hollywood was but a first step, a tentative and timid step. The truth, the real truth, the ultimate truth, is that there is no United States.
As soon as this bold idea took hold of me, I decided to check it as if it were a scientific hypothesis. Once more, I rushed to the Library, greeting in passing the two lions of the wise
patience, remembering meanwhile a fact so evident that it is usually not even mentioned: New York is an African city, one of the largest in the world, a Spanish city, also one of the largest in the world, a Jewish city almost larger than the whole of Israel, a Greek Arabic, Chinese city, or any nationality you can think of, but it is by no means a real American city. Is there such a person as an American?
Feverishly, I opened an Atlas: what did I see in the only region that truly exists, the one between the Hudson River and the Atlantic ocean? I quote at random the name of some cities: Southampton, Paris, Berlin, Stratford, Potsdam, Athens ... All European names! Despite all this evidence, I could not believe it. And the atom bomb? chewing gum? Cadillacs? Blue-jeans? Drug-stores? Jazz? Long-gun? A double crime in the rue Morgue? All this had to come from somewhere, no? If the United States did not exist, wouldn’t they have to be invented?
With these words, I calmed down. I re-read Voltaire, who had famously written: “If god does not exist, He would have to be invented.” I re-read Korzybski, and in particular his celebrated dictum “ the map is not the territory,” which in this case we can translate by: the American products — the map — are not America — the territory. In other words, it not necessary for America to exist in order to have American products!
This epiphany led me to this other philosopher, this juggler of paradoxes, this pataphysist without par … Yes, it’s him, it is Borgés, Jorge-Luis, the man who recounted for us the true legend of those cartographers of a fabulous country who attempted to fabricate a full-sized map, but had to give up after centuries of efforts because, as soon as they would partially reach their aim, the result of their work disappeared within the territory with which it would become one.
Yes, it is Borgés, this traitor, who, through the parable he gave the title of Tlőn, revealed to us the truth about the United States. The complete title of his tale is: Tlőn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Instead of Tlőn, read: the United States. Instead of Uqbar, read: the American continent. And as for Orbis Tertius, you just have to translate from the Latin: the third orbit around the sun, our own little planet, our spaceship earth.
The parallel does not stop here. In the story, Tlőn is revealed to Borgés through a 19th century encyclopedia article. Same thing for the United States. The proof is that I defy anyone to find any mention of the name United States in Diderot’s Great Encyclopedia, or in any encyclopedia prior to 1776.
In the tale, little by little other encyclopedia articles about Tlőn appear. Little by little Tlőn acquires substance, shows its own characteristics, and finally is revealed as a real country. The same thing happened in regard to the United States all along the 19th century. In the tale, artifacts and manufactured goods coming from Tlőn slowly appear.
In the same way artifacts and manufactured goods coming from the United States began to spread everywhere in the 19th century, and have now invaded the whole earth. In Borgés parable, the Earth became transformed into the image of Tlőn. In real life, the Earth is in the process of transforming itself into the imaginary image of the imaginary country that is known as the United States of America.
Thus it is thanks to Borgés, that clairvoyant traitor who paid with the loss of his sight his obscure treason that my own eyes have finally been opened. Yes, Oh Friend, read again Tlőn, everywhere replace this name with United States, and you will see how everything fits.
Tlőn was conceived and created by an advertising campaign run by a group of learned and wise encyclopedic scholars who wrote it as a genesis; and Tlőn being written, Tlőn became. Similarly, a group, a previously unheard of conspiracy of 18th century philosophers with their accomplices arrogated the divine prerogative of creation.
In their pride, they launched that gigantic enterprise to which they gave the name of United States, which they wrote and described in a few key documents in which the so-called “Americans” believe with all their being and which they worship like a bible: Declaration of Independence and Constitution. And the United States being written, the United States became!
Just like Heisenberg’s celebrated atoms wallow in a quantum fog of possibilities yet manifest themselves in a solid material reality, thus the United States nation, nexus of hallucinated probabilities, nevertheless attain in its manifestations the most concrete although totally illusory existence.
It remains for me to thank here Borgés and the New Yorker for having opened my eyes. . Now that, thanks to them, I know what’s what, my decision is taken: I shall escape this endeavor of the encyclopedic Verb and abandon this New York made of mist to go end my days in the solid reality of ancient Europe.
Always Yours,
Red Jeb
P.S. Upon re-reading this letter before mailing it, oh Friend, a dreadful idea came to mind. Would it be possible ... Could Europe itself be ...? I do not dare say it, I do no dare write it, since that would be to acknowledge its reality … But to conceive of something in the secret of one’s thoughts, isn’t that in itself to create it, even before saying or writing it? Isn’t the Verb, above all, an Act? And even if hidden, isn’t it nevertheless real?
Well, here goes, I’1l risk it. Did I stumble upon the fact that the United States nation is but an illusion only because it is the most recent? Could it be the same for other nations, other countries, other continents which were once fabulous and became real for us only because we believe in them, because the illusionary process dates from too long ago? Have Europe, China, old Egypt, been created from scratch by some verbalizing Gilgamesh? And why stop there? The earth itself, the planets, the universes, imaginary or real, could they be due to legendary encyclopedists lost in the identical hexagons of the famous absolute library that Borgés — always him — revealed to us, infinite and cyclical?
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