So let me conclude Confessions of St. Augustine for the moment with this quick summary so I can tellya about The Donnie Diaries. ‘Cause ya wanna know the REAL cause of it all? Lemme make it real simple:
Confessions of St. Augustine (a 21st Century post post-modernist novel [not for the post post-modernist deconstructionist]). Simple enough? Naw. So let’s take it down a few notches:
Cliff Notes version:
Our hero: a New Yorker. The Conflict: a lot of Sturm und Drang. The Cause: coffee. The Solution: no more coffee (but that would be too easy [even for Cliff Notes (no more coffee, no more story)] – no, a tome of this magnitude dear readers, demands a more erudite reason than just coffee – especially when we’ve got BP, ADD, ADHD and a whole host of other disorders out there to choose from – not to MENTION – the POV!! –
For example: 1 – to the traditionalist, this story could be seen as a Greek tragedy (as seen in the first novel). 2 – to the modernist, it could be seen as a tragicomedy (as seen in the second novel). 3 – to the post-modernist – perhaps a campy melodrama with a lot more Sturm und drang, caricaturized by bipolar disorder and a lot of other disorders PARODYING THE FURIES OF GREEK TRAGEDY (as seen in the third novel). 4 – and for the post-post-modernist – a kitschy little DISNEY CARTOON with a whole FANTASIA of disorders multiplying exponentially like all those brooms in The Sorcerers Apprentice SWEEPING AWAY ANY SEMBLANCE OF SANITY NOW (as seen in all three novels). 5 – and to the post-post modern deconstructionist – A BUSBY BERKELEY-BROADWAY- EXTRAVAGANZA! – WAVERING BETWEEN PIANISSIMO AND FORTISSIMO PYROTECHNICS! – WITH ENOUGH JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES, FREUDIAN SYMBOLISM AND LITERARY IMAGERY TO OBSCURE ANY point of view (as seen in NONE of the novels) all of which brings us back to where we started in the first place and probably the CAUSE of the whole thing!
New York. (Minimalist POV).
Conclusion: you can take the boy out of New York, but you can’t take New York out of the boy.
With me so far? Naw. So let’s take it down a few more notches and stick with New York:
Because THAT’S the key! Me, the narrator of Donnie Diaries and Augie, the narrator of Confessions and yes – hate to say it: TRUMP! Because we ALL have that one thing in common: that NEW YORK ATTITUDE! Now I’ve been all over the world, met all types, speak any number of languages, including ethnic dialects, ESPECIALLY all New York ones, you name it, I got’m all down if you wanna survive in this city, but NEVER have I come across anybody like a New Yorker. Outspoken, with an attitude, and TOTALLY indomitable, because it doesn’t stop with the wise guy bit:
But that’s just the intellectually hip bad boys for whom NOTHING is sacred you say. What about the poor slobs who barely exist?
You mean like the Ratso Rizzos in Midnight Cowboy? played by Dustin Hoffman? He DEFINITELY was a bottom feeder in the New York pecking order! Yeah, but don’t you remember? He ALWAYS had a hustle! And remember when he was crossing that street and that high class dude in the fancy-schmancy car almost hits him? Whad HE do? He starts pounding on the hood of the guy’s car and yells “HEY, I’M WAAKIN’ HEAH! I’M WAAKIN’ HEAH!”
Best line in the whole movie.
Bottom line is if New York ran on manners the whole city would be gridlocked. “You go first.” “No, you go first.” and traffic would stop. And fagedabout obeying the speed limit and keeping a safe distance between you and the schmuck in fronta you if you expect to actually MOVE: West Side Drive runs just fine bumper to bumper 85 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour speed zone as long as you don’t leave any more space between you and the schmuck in fronta you that can be filled by all the schmucks behind ya ALL goin’ 85 mile an hour too! Get the picture?
His vision of America (Augie’s). My vision of America. 50 years apart. His: light. Mine: dark (very). His? I can almost hear Kate Smith in the background singing God Bless America. His were the Reagan years. The Republican Renaissance. Their golden era. Mine? The nadir. Any lower we’d be in Dante’s Inferno where Trump would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. Take Nero, Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, add Idi Amin, mix with Mr. Hyde, Bozo the Clown and a country that’s on tender hooks as volatile as Lincoln’s pre-civil war climate and then multiply it tenfold. For starters.
That’s the good news. Now for the bad. He’s the Antichrist?
Naw, he’s worse. The Antichrist’ll have his act together. Trump’s a loose cannon in a munitions factory, except the munitions are nuclear. Picture On the Beach. Not the Beach Boys’ sunny California beach, but life’s a bitch and then ya die beach like On the Beach, Neville Shute’s novel of total nuclear destruction where the few survivors were waiting for the nuclear cloud to reach them down under in Australia, also made into a movie with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, with that haunting Australian song, Waltzing Matilda as Ava looks out to sea as Peck and his men go out to sea in their submarine to die.
That’s the world of Trump. And do you think he cares?
No, he doesn’t give a ****! But you know what he DOES care about? His image of course and so ALL the parodies and the jokes mocking him (in the thousands)? None of them have taken him down. Yet. But there is hope. South Park definitely got under his reptilian skin and like Watergate, Epstein came out of left field-HA by someone who comes out’ve RIGHT FIELD in fact he invented it (Ruppie Baby) because what other News has reached more people than Fox, Faux, F***s, whatever epithet you want to throw at them and why is it bothering him as much as it does? Because Epstein is the one to bring him down? ironically the most reviled man in America (next to Trump of course) MAY VERY WELL GO DOWN AS THE MAN WHO SAVED AMERICA!
And how’s THAT for irony?
And now South Park’s the mouse that roared. So I figure I’ve got the rest of the summer before the grim reaper. And see whom he gets first. Me? Trump? Or you America?
Dr. Phineas T. Redwell