New Views on Old News

By Merritt Abrash

The objective of the seven articles reprinted in New Views on Old News is to promote reconsideration of longstanding assumptions about a variety of significant creative works. The hope of author Merritt Abrash is that readers will find Thomas Mores Utopians, H.G.Wells time traveler, Karel Capeks robots, Alfred Hitchcocks birds, and the other subjects of the book, no longer appearing quite the same as widely understood. It is not a matter of previous interpretations being in any way wrong; rather, the general point of the articles is that in regard to the works they discuss, exactly the same evidence can, if viewed from different angles, lead to different conclusions claiming equal validity.
The long short story, A Question of Code, which begins New Views on Old News, stands apart from the seven articles in that it presents a new view regarding which virtually no old news exists to be reconsidered. The only longstanding assumption about its subject matterretribution for the Holocaust--could be said to be that, in the first place, the latter defies any form of plausible creative handling at all. Instead of comparing the validity of different interpretations, each reader of this story must come to his or her own unaided conclusion about the merit of the Majors design very much as does the narrator in the story.
Aside from any other virtues (or lack of same), New Views on Old News should open up for readers fresh avenues toward understandings, just as compiling its various parts did for the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491868409

Merritt Abrash

Merritt Abrash was well positioned to write Absurdist Angles on History: Three Plays, thanks to a background in both history and playwriting. His historical expertise centers on areas receiving absurdist treatment in the first two plays: nineteenth century Europe, and the First World War. The third play, “How It All Might Have Ended,” – about nuclear catastrophe – was professionally produced at the Berkshire Theatre Festival under the title “Postscript.” Abrash, a former fellow at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, has written on art history, utopian studies and science fiction as well as diplomatic history. Since retiring from teaching, he has published a novel, Mindful of Utopia, with 1stBooks Library.

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© 2014 Merritt Abrash. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/07/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-6868-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-6840-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014903765

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Table of Contents

Introduction

A Question of Code

Missing the Point in More’s Utopia

Le Guin’s The Field of Vision: A Minority View on Ultimate Truth

R.U.R. Restored and Reconsidered

Knowing the Unknowable: What Some Science Fiction Almost Does

The Hubris of Science: Wells’ Time Traveler

Have Faith, and Enjoy: What the Stunt Man Learns

Hitchcock’s Terrorists: Sources and Significance

The Making of Fantasia: Walt Disney’s Visionary Moment

Introduction

The Old News in this collection’s title refers to the generally accepted opinions of widely respected authors on significant subjects of a few books, articles and films. The New Views, presented in the seven articles following the opening story, are alternative explanations or interpretations. These are mostly based on revised readings of agreed-upon evidence, but some major conclusions, so firmly established as to be considered old news, are directly challenged.

However, A Question of Code, the fictional work which precedes the articles, is radically different in its orientation. It does treat its subject as a New View—but regarding that subject, virtually no Old News exists. Efforts to understand, or at least to encompass all relevant knowledge about, the Holocaust have been undertaken by estimable authors within a variety of thematic frameworks. However, retribution, as opposed to description, compensation, commemoration etc., has remained almost entirely outside of consideration. Indeed, is there any imaginable possibility of fulfilling, in this utterly unprecedented case, the essential attribute of retribution, well described as the just or deserved punishment for some evil done? Which of the multitude of indirect participants—even an entire nation?—are to be punished? How could such unavoidably indiscriminate punishment be made convincingly just? And, were the forms and degrees of punishment actually to achieve consensual approval, what person or body of persons could be trusted to carry them out in a spirit transcending crude revenge? The monstrous atrocity summarized by the word Holocaust seems to defy inclusion in any of our familiar categories of crime and punishment.

This is the dilemma which A Question of Code seeks to resolve, with what degree of success and on which underlying terms each reader must determine, as does the story’s narrator, for him/herself.

A Question of Code

I happened upon the small German town of S_____ (old-fashioned anonymity style serves best here) in the summer of 1945. A friend from college, now editor of a current affairs magazine, bought my freelance proposal for a series I touted as, From Mastery to Subjection: How Germans Are Adjusting, to be based on interviews conducted in the American occupation zone. Car and authorization for gasoline were arranged for me.

S_____ was not actually on my itinerary, but after a hurried light breakfast followed by creeping behind a military convoy for most of the morning, I became aware of my stomach signaling that it would not take kindly to holding out until B_____, the next scheduled stop. So I left the highway at the next cross road, one not quite two lanes wide winding several miles through hilly country to the small town of S_____. This turned out to be the market center of a somewhat scraggly farming area appearing, from all indications, to be long since undisturbed by intrusions from outside, whether military, industrial or even commercial. Parking at the edge of the town square—there were two or three horse-drawn wagons but no cars in sight—I strolled out among buildings and shops of travel-brochure quaintness, the whole works charmingly in scale except for two larger churches. What particularly caught my eye, however, was not the picturesque vista, but an outdoor café open for business, although with no customers in view.

Since the waitress lounging near the door showed no interest in my arrival, I seated myself and motioned for a menu. While waiting, I began considering whether, as long as I happened to be in S_____ anyway, it might be an opportunity to do some useful off-the-beaten-track interviewing. But I dismissed the notion—after all, inhabitants of a small country town seemingly isolated from the violence of dictatorship and war weren’t likely to provide the kind of significant sentiments my series was supposed to come up with.

The fact was, however, that interviews thus far on my carefully laid out route had produced few enough significant sentiments. Most of the obvious villains—Nazi officials and the like—had been arrested or were lying low, and the ordinary folk willing to be interviewed proved remarkably adroit at deflecting my shrewdly probing questions (as I fondly imagined them) with an impenetrable blandness. My inability to elicit meaningful reactions made me suspect my post-graduate-level German wasn’t quite up to disguising a righteous strain underlying too many of my questions.

To be honest, more than just righteousness was involved. I found my approach tending to slip into a downright accusatory mode, even when I fell back upon a stock of circumlocutions in an effort to prevent it. Although I had assured the editor that attitudes toward the persecution of the Jews would remain a subordinate theme—the series was supposed to stress promising imaginings for the future rather than rehash grim realities of the past—I have to admit that my proposal had indeed stemmed in part from visceral outrage over that persecution and its ghastly outcome. Not as if I had any personal involvement in the matter; none of my Jewish friends had suffered directly, but, deny it though I might, something within me was looking forward with barely repressed glee to the exculpatory squirmings of an evil populace brought low.

Yet since fulfillment of that hidden scenario was proving more elusive than I expected, my enthusiasm for the whole project was beginning to wear thin. Certainly the prospect of a leisurely lunch in the environment of a placid town square wasn’t likely to fire up any latent hostility on my part… until it turned out that everything I tried to order from the menu got the same response: not available. Seemed a clear enough hint that an American civilian wasn’t likely to get served, and I was just about to get up and go back to my car when two American soldiers, an officer about my age and a young enlisted man, walked past. They looked at me with some surprise but didn’t slow down or say anything loud enough for me to hear, and for my part, I was struck dumb with astonishment to see that the officer was almost certainly a classmate I’d known well at prep school some twenty years before, but hadn’t been in touch with for nineteen.

Vernon! I finally found my voice.

He turned and after a moment of hesitation his rather stern expression relaxed into a smile. Denny! he exclaimed, What the devil are you doing here? While we shook hands I gave him a quick lookover. The tall, good looking upperclassman had matured into a figure no less handsome but now projecting a markedly self-assured, not to say commanding, manner. When soon enough I became aware of the well remembered mocking undercurrent in his voice, it was clear that he had pretty well completed creating the persona aimed at during our school years.

I’m having lunch, I replied. That is, as far as lunch is possible in the absence of food. Would you care to join in the experiment?

He threw back his head and laughed, the same laugh as ever. There was always a touch of condescension in it, as if he knew something you didn’t, or saw hidden humor you weren’t aware of. You’re looking for lunch here? Fat chance! Hell, the café only stays open because I tell it to—veneer of normality sustains local spirits, so I’ve been told. But I can’t make the place come up with food when the farmers don’t have any surplus, and we’ll take it for granted you’re too hungry to wait for the fall harvest! Come on, I’ll take you to a proper meal. And while we eat, Corporal Morris—Vernon indicated the fresh-faced enlisted man—will see to your quartering. The Corporal saluted and left.

Drawing and quartering? I asked wryly.

Ha! That proves you’re the genuine Denny, bad puns and all, so it’s safe to allow you into HQ innards. He strode off toward the other side of the square.

Look, I said, hurrying alongside, I don’t want to keep you from doing whatever you were on your way to do.

He gave that laugh again. Nobody keeps me from doing what I want to do, so don’t worry about it. As we walked, I noticed that passing townspeople greeted him with deference so exaggerated that it verged on parody. Vernon barely acknowledged their presence, striding ahead, so it struck me, like a man who knows exactly where he is going and which people are not relevant to his getting there.

Near the Catholic church—the other one, I soon learned, was Lutheran—we entered what had evidently once been an inn. A six-stripe Sergeant sat at a desk in the former lobby. Sergeant Tracy, said Vernon, this is Mr. Russell. He’ll be staying with us for a while. Tracy, matching almost to perfection the stereotype of a grizzled career noncom, looked at him dourly, at me hardly at all, and growled what I am reluctant to call a greeting. Past the lobby was a small dining room, where Vernon and I seated ourselves. From the elderly German who hurried out from the kitchen, Vernon brusquely ordered lunch for two. The waiter bowed obsequiously and sped off to do as commanded.

Well, said Vernon, leaning back in his chair and, as it were, surveying me, what have you been doing all these years?

As you might have expected, I’ve been writing. Lots of freelance journalistic work, although of course in secret I compose sublime sagas of the century. Or enduring epics of the era, if you prefer.

He chuckled. You think S_____ can do for you what Troy did for Homer?

Not quite! Fact is, it’s only by accident that I’m in S_____ at all, and in any case this German jaunt is strictly for income, not inspiration. The assignment I’m working on doesn’t exactly lend itself to literary creativity—I’m supposed to report on what the ex-master race is thinking about these days. Which, by the way, has so far pretty much eluded me. But hey, how about you, Vern? Seems to be one of the odder wartime odysseys, for you, of all people, to wind up in sleepy S_____!

Not so odd. After chasing Jerries across Europe, like all the rest of us,—that last phrase made me suspect a dig, although I couldn’t imagine how Vernon would be aware I’d been 4-F—I got posted here because rumor had it that a bunch of Wehrmacht and SS holdouts were setting up a guerilla base in hills hereabouts. Seemed ridiculous to me—still does—but army intelligence, in its infinite wisdom, felt there ought to be a U.S. presence just in case, so here I am—me and my fearsome staff, an R.A. sergeant who resents my college-bred ways and a bright-eyed corporal who thinks I’m God.

Sounds like a tough break—a swashbuckler from the conquering horde winding up stuck in a backwater burg!

Nothing ‘stuck’ about it! Turned out to be a better posting than I could have imagined for myself. Ever been a military governor, Denny?

Typical Vernon one-upmanship. Yes, I said, just not to say no.

Well, then you know what it does for the ego to have an entire population at your command, dependent on you for every favor. He paused, then quoted dramatically: ‘Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile, and trembled with fear at your frown!’ We both smiled at this memory of a spring evening in our senior year, when with a couple of friends we boozed it up off campus, taking turns declaiming that Victorian chestnut, Ben Bolt.

You know, I remarked, I always thought you’d make a damn good Ben Bolt, not that your ego needed much help even then. So how long has this boss role been going on?

He shrugged. "Five weeks, six weeks, who’s counting? There’s no timetable—here I stay until one of these days orders turn up for me to rejoin my regular unit. Of course, at some point I’ll have to start suspecting