A tale of two trilogies: Confessions of St. Augustine and The Donnie Diaries. More specifically for right now, we introduce The Donnie Diaries: An Ode To Ipecac. The two trilogies have a symbiotic relationship, a doppelganger or yin and yang that bookend a common theme from opposite world views: theist versus atheist. Or more specifically, like the former’s namesake, an intellectually hip bad boy’s view who converts versus an intellectually hip bad boy’s view who doesn’t. Separated by a generation. However, for the moment, we’ll concentrate mainly on the Diaries, with Confessions only as they relate to the Diaries.
Love/hate. Hope/despair. These are some of the issues they deal with, with different answers. Both narrators love America, but ultimately see it as a metaphor for the metaphysical: Gatsby’s Green Light that represented the hope of the New World, Huck Finn’s desire to light out to the territories, go west young man but always westward always westward. But all symbolic of what? The Promised Land? Heaven? Or merely a few days of Heaven like the movie of the same name where everything is transitory in a deterministic universe governed by forces unknown to us that consumes us all eventually in a Yeatsian gyre where “the center no longer holds?” and “The Second Coming” is merely the beast “slouching towards Bethlehem” or is “there a stillpoint in the universe” T.S.? and “SHALL I disturb the universe?” or do I merely “descend the stair?…with a bald spot in the middle of my hair?” in a world of mere Jungian archetypes? – Or Joseph Campbell’s follow your bliss routine that’s man’s aspiration? or man’s affliction? or even more disturbing – the God wired conscience? or innate knowledge? in all of us? that longs for such a world?
Confessions, takes place in the latter half of the 20th Century, starting in the summer of ’65; The Diaries, takes place today – a day by day account of the summer of ’25. The former, apolitical, the latter: political (VERY), with a VENGEANCE!
Dr. Phineas T. Redwell, the narrator of The Diaries, a minor character in Confessions, the first character who actually speaks, quickly fades into the background of Augustine’s narrative and is never mentioned again. While Augustine, whom Phineas refers to as Augie, is a constant topic and source of most of Phineas’ illustrations since his narrative all started out with an abortive attempt to review Augie’s narrative. But instead of reviewing Augie’s narrative, he gets sidetracked by his utter disdain for the present political situation and with the help of LSD goes off on a rant that goes so viral he ends up narrating what ends up to be a counter narrative to Augie’s narrative like Catch-22 is to Naked and the Dead.
It all starts in the first diary (An Ode to Ipecac) with Phineas trying to explain Augie’s use of the word Ipecac in a joke, only to be sidetracked, and for the rest of the trilogy the only constant is his South Park, SNL like parodies on politics and who needs Ipecac when we’ve got Trump, with an occasional reference to Augie’s treatises on life. One in particular that becomes a lietmotif (the most difficult chapter in Augie’s trilogy): free-will versus predestination – that eventually becomes the comic MacGuffin that eventually morphs into more secular terms: determinism versus existentialism.
Tristram Shandy, Remembrance of Things Past, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses could be the inspiration in a parodied sort’ve way:Tristram Shandy from the first page to the last, is almost all digression; Remembrance of Things Past starts out with a seemingly insignificant memory that becomes a major theme; and in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, a major character becomes a minor character just as in Confessions a minor character becomes a major character and vice versa.
After that, all comparisons stop. Outrage du jour is the order of the day: the outrage and Phineas’s reaction to that outrage is now the central theme of the trilogy – a reaction to the original outrage that goes SO far beyond that original outrage that almost every chapter after that is an over-the-top rant that only seems to escalate exponentially into the stratosphere of utter absurdity with each new chapter an attempt TO BE MORE OUTRAGEOUS THAN THE LAST!
Ginsberg’s Howl might seem like an obvious comparison but it’s not angry enough. Look Back in Anger comes closer, but Jimmy Porter’s rage is against the staid, not the outrageous. Portnoy’s complaint perhaps comes even closer because he lashes back at what he perceives as the outrageous, but with Phineas T.? – he’s a veritable powder keg! an explosion waiting to happen – ALL of which belies Augie’s perception of him in Confessions! Because what Augie didn’t realize at the time is Phineas was far more like him than he ever could have imagined. While Augie was probably on some form of speed, Phineas was on LSD. But because of the age difference, and being the 60s, he just assumed anybody over 30 was the enemy.
While many politicians today are speaking to an audience of one, our Phineas, although speaking to that very same audience of one, is doing it for the VERY OPPOSITE REASON! TO ANTAGONIZE, MOCK, and most of all – DARE HIM TO SUE since he sees that as his ticket to recognition. “No book has ever suffered from a good lawsuit,” consequently each chapter is an attempt to outdo the last in terms of ridicule. Unlike Augie who is constrained by his eventual “theistic” constraints, Phineas (like the very man he’s mocking) has none: only an undying loathing that knows no bounds. He relishes the fray like a man with a death wish who would prefer to go out in a blaze of glory – in a war of words – now that he’s found the perfect and much deserved “tin god” to unleash a lifetime of stored up invectives.
Only difference between Augie’s ridicule and Phineas’ is Augie’s is self-derogatory. Which is funnier depends on your point of view. Or more precisely your politics. Augie has none. Phineas is a walking time bomb, an anarchist to the core. A rebel with a cause whose theme song is Bella Caio Bella Caio Bella Caio Ciao Ciao and his hero is Che Guevara (without the Communism) – the poster boy super-rock-star of revolutions, as popular today as he was over 60 years ago in the 60s at the very same time Augie’s trilogy started with Portrait of an American Wiseguy. And yet now 60 years later, each new chapter of PHINEAS’ trilogy is a manifesto, a case of the studied insult, The Devil’s Dictionary revised and updated, with each new chapter an experiment in THE WILDEST SNL-SOUTH-PARK-LIKE TAKEDOWNS OR PUTDOWNS OR PUTUP OR SHUTUP DONALD J. TRUMPTY-DUMPTY! – YOU OH SO PERFECT INSPIRATION FOR AN ODE TO IPECAC!! – BECAUSE YOU’RE THE ONLY THING ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET THAT’S EVEN MORE REPULSIVE THAN THE VERY OBJECT OF THAT ODE!!! – BUT WE DON’T STOP THERE!!!! – NO WE GO SO FAR OVER THE TOP AND GO SO FAR BEYOND AS TO REACH THAT SEVENTH HEAVEN OF PURE PARODY, SATIRE, AND RIDICULE THAT NOT ONLY NO LONGER STICKS TO THE GENRE – BUT TRANSFORMS IT!!!!! – BENT ON NOTHING LESS THAN TOTAL DEVASTATION!!!!!!! TAKE NO PRISONERS!!!!!!!! ALL OUT WAR!!!!!!!!!!!
or… is it Dante’s seventh hell?
and the antidote is Confessions?
Read them both and then you decide.
“The yin and yang of modern man in all of his bipolar glory – wavering between Augustine and Auschwitz, Sartre and certainty, heaven and hell – but both taking you on a full-throttle ride through our subconscious dreamscapes.”