The Sheila Variations

"Darkness at Noon" announcement

Ahem. For, uhm, two years now?? Various people on this blog have told me I must read Darkness at Noon. These people do not know one another. They are not in a conspiracy (not that I know of, anyway). Emily, David Foster, CW ... to name just a few. There are many more. It's become a theme. "Have you read Darkness at Noon?" "You have to read Darkness at Noon!" I wasn't trying to disobey these people - all of whom I trust - they're all smart, and they seem to know what I like and what I'm interested in ... It's just that there's always another book to read on the list. Darkness at Noon was on "the list", I assure you - it was even on my Amazon Wish List. Finally, a kind reader sent it to me, off the list - as a thank you for my posts on Laurette Taylor. That was a while ago. And it has sat on my bookshelf ever since. Unread.

Until now.

I read the entire damn book in one sitting last night. (And no, it wasn't 3 a.m. when I read it. ha! I have learned my lesson.) I kept saying to myself, "Okay, just a couple more pages, then I'll go to bed ..." "I'll just finish this chapter, then I'll go to bed..."

But I couldn't put it down. It was impossible for me to put it down.

This post from yesterday (about Stalin, and the Kirov murder - brought on by my reading of Conquest's The Great Terror - at long last) is what finally got me into action in regards to Darkness at Noon. David Foster (or Photon Courier - great blog!!) mentioned it yet again.

Thank you SO MUCH everyone ... for continuously reminding me about that book, for keeping it on my radar.

I could. NOT. put it down.

It was a perfect counterpoint to the nightmare described in Conquest's The Great Terror.

The book drew me into its terrible web, and into the circular logic of the Communist Party, the maniacal lack of reality with everyone playing a part self-consciously. Rubashov has that one moment during interrogation when he realizes, fully, just how much everyone is acting a role, and he gets dizzy from the "grokking" of it.

The book delves into, for me, what has always been very confusing, scary: The ritual of the forced confessions, the demand that you publicly admit to how "wrong" your political ideas were, how even if you DIDN'T do what they said you did, by your very thoughts you encouraged the counter-revolutionary attitudes. And you accept that they need to make an example out of you, for "the masses". Now here I sit, in a free country, blogging away, writing what I want to write, moving about freely, etc. No punishment. I have no sense of fear, in saying what I think, even if it's opposite what the government is saying, or what my Congressman says. It's okay to disagree with them. Whatever. It's not orthodoxy. I fully accept this reality. To a large degree, I take it for granted. It is difficult for me to picture what would have to happen to me in order for me to confess to something I did not do - and accept that I would be SHOT for my confession. The forced confessions, for whatever reason (maybe because of the psychological nature of what had to have gone on in those interrogation rooms) haunt me, intrigue me. Over the course of a couple of weeks of pressure, a human being can crack. There is a natural limit to all of us.

And an interrogation is really the plot of the entire book. The way it unfolds in the book makes a terrifying kind of sense. Even Rubashov's odd nauseous RELIEF when he decides to stop fighting and to just say "yes, I did it." makes a kind of sense. Awful. It's not that simple, though - he doesn't just give up, throw his hands up in defeat. He has justified his reason for confessing - with intricate logic. He understands the game. He finally understands and accepts the role that he is supposed to play. He accepts it because then - maybe he will be sent into exile, where he can have a bit of peace and quiet, where he can read at a desk with a green-shaded lamp again, and contemplate political theory and write a book.

This transformation in attitude (from defiance (and truth): "I didn't do it" to acquiescence (and lies): "Okay, I did it. Give me the paper to sign.") has always hooked me in. (Probably why the whole Patty Hearst thing fascinated me so much. If you locked me in a closet for 2 weeks, would I suddenly have a change of personality and viewpoint? It's hard for me to imagine ... I wonder about it.) I wonder what happens to the human personality under pressure, I wonder what would have to happen to me - to make me sign a confession to something I did not do.

Arthur Koestler was inside the belly of that beast, which makes his perspective even more important. It's always interesting to listen to someone who once was a full believer - who then sees the lie beneath the illusion. He is able to speak about the illusion itself far more eloquently than people who are on the outside. Because (and this is what is awful) there is a sick logic to the whole thing. It's the logic of terror, granted - it's nightmare logic - but it IS logical. To hear someone just come out and say it, to describe the logic in blunt no-nonsense terms - as though they're telling you their favorite recipe, is really frightening. "We are doing an experiment on mankind. If millions die, don't you think that is a small price to pay?"

I was particularly struck by how Koestler describes the difference between the older generation (the theorists of the revolution) and the younger generation - who are blunter, more brutal, less educated. The younger generation are true followers. They live in the logical consequences of the theories propounded by the generation before. Their personalities are dulled, there are no sharp edges - Here is how Koestler puts it: "They need not deny their past, because they had none. They were born without umbilical cord, without frivolity, without melancholy." Jesus, dude, write much? "Without frivolity, without melancholy." The things that make us most human.

And also - since "No. 1" (Stalin - whose name never appears in the book. Neither does Lenin's - I think he is referred to as "the Old Man") took over, there can be no more debates about political theories. No. 1 IS the Party. What he says is Party Gospel. End of discussion.

Koestler writes:

No, one cannot build Paradise with concrete. The bastion would be preserved, but it no longer had a message.

Also - here is Rubashov, on "No. 1" -

He had often looked at the colour-print of No. 1 hanging over his bed and tried to hate it. They had, between themselves, given him many names, but in the end it was No. 1 that stuck. The horror which No. 1 emanated, above all consisted in the possibility that he was in the right, and that all those whom he killed had to admit, even with the bullet in the back of their necks, that he conceivably might be in the right. There was no certainty; only the appeal to that mocking oracle they called History, who gave her sentence only when the jaws of the appealer had long since fallen to dust.

This is at the beginning of the book - obviously a foreshadow of the last line (thanks, Emily, for sending it to me for my next Last Line game).

The last line is: "It came from afar and traveled sedately on, a shrug of eternity."

The more I think about it, the more awful that line seems.

Eternity shrugs . It shrugs at suffering, it shrugs at horror, history will not rehabilitate you, posterity will not absolve you ... You are forgotten, and eternity shrugs.

It's a phenomenal book, y'all. Thanks for keeping at me until I read it. In one sitting.

Posted by sheila