Vision is Humble

SPOILER ALERT

Good After Dachau book review/synopsis

In After Dachau, Daniel Quinn’s mortifying novel of society 2,000 years down the road had Hitler been able to take over the world, the main character uncovers the truth and feels intensely compelled to share his findings, to goad everyone else to attention, consciousness, and remorse. But what he discovers, after a staged kidnapping intended solely to prove a single point to him, is that “no one cares.” This revelation liberates him to redirect his energies so that he is able to do something other than fret, feel trapped, and despise everyone in his society. He takes his energy and opens a bookstore/gallery, eccentrically selling old books seized during World War II (even spearheading publication of Anne Frank’s unearthed diary) and showcasing his fiancée’s Abstract Expressionist artwork (named Gloria, she is a black woman born in 1922 and killed in the final wave of exterminations of minority populations in the genocide, when it came to New York City, trapped 2,000 years later in the body of a crash victim, Mallory Hastings). The gallery opening is abysmal, precisely because no one cares, but little by little, with Gloria and Jason’s perseverance, it gains steam as its own radical protest. One evening, someone hurls a (flaming?) brick through the storefront. Someone cares.

Despite the odds, the horrors, the ghastly unearthed secrets, the guilt, the passage of 2,000 years, it turns out others in their society can feel threatened by the fact that their world is built on lies, that they are suddenly being accused and implicated in the horrific destructive actions that their way of life was founded upon. Despite the (unbearable weight, or light-weighted-ness) of history, the brick-thrower cared about something that happened 2,000 years before, and so did Jason. Both the brick-thrower, bent supposedly on either keeping the past a secret or defending his ancestors' inhumane actions, the atrocities they perpetuated, and Jason, bent on learning about and from the truth, have particular visions, mythologies, agendas that they want to propagate (create support for) in the world. Jason slowly attracts attention, the brick-thrower slowly nurtures (his or her) exacerbation/outrage/animosity. Their visions slowly grow, humbly. While most people (rightly) do not condone the ideology moving the brick thrower to action, they can wholeheartedly relate to Jason’s character and thinking. They too would be outraged if no one cared about something so earth-shatteringly monumental and de-stabilizing about their culture. They too would do whatever it took, persevering humbly, working slowly, little by little/poco a poco, to gain steam and support for their vision and perspective on life, on an ethical lifestyle change that addresses the dark history and breaks from it in a way that will hopefully prevent a similar future catastrophe.

The analogies Quinn is trying to draw in After Dachau are many. His writing in all his other novels and nonfiction concerns itself with the similarly dark origins of our own civilization. He concludes that “History is written by the conquerors,” that we are blind to the lies we’ve been told, the mythologies/rationales/ideologies, “stories we tell about how things came to be this way,” precisely because we know nothing other than these stories; presented with nothing else, we take our stories, our histories, to be the only ones there are, to be authoritative writings of how things came to be this way, we situate ourselves, plant our feet in the ground, to then discover how unstable things are -- well, that’s just not what we asked for, not at all what we bargained for, completely unacceptable. Yet Quinn has always had this as one of his best traits as a thinker, his willingness to take on the role of the gadfly, much the way that Socrates did in his time (the similarities between the two are striking; exploration for another day). All his writing is meant to expose the lies, the secrets, the hidden realities, the mythologies, those darknesses we are all reluctant, unwilling to see, for good reason—because then our world must enter through such dramatic upheaval, an upheaval we shirk from because we are so stunningly unprepared for anything of that magnitude.

He instructs in Ishmael or Story of B to “Teach 100. If you cannot teach 100, then teach 10. If you cannot teach 10, teach 1” (though I can't seem to locate this quote). Vision is humble. Vision, he believes, is the most drastic, inciting force, the most rife with potential to turn everything, every last aspect of our cultural reality, on its head. Yet people are slow in coming around to it. God knows how much opposition I have to deal with in advocating for Neo-Tribalist thought and vision. Vision must be humble in order to survive disillusionment, discouragement, loneliness, isolation, but it will be all worth it, apparently, because one day, utter silence and solitude skips ahead many years in one breath, and a brick is sent through a wall; one day, there is a sudden transformation from silence to momentum (think Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, and the magic number - is it 125?), and many people turn to the vision because it suddenly makes sense, matters, is worth caring about, even if it is only because it offers a simpler way of living than an increasingly unlivable, harder to continue, lifestyle. Vision must be dedicated, must be perseverant, sturdy, and as such, humble vision will be less liable to crack than a volatile, impatient mentality powering an individual’s experience of the vision.

The use of art as radical protest is an intriguing component of the story. Quinn does not in any way condone what he calls programs (in My Ishmael, he includes intentional communities as such a misguided program…more on that later!). I think many protests and social movements he sees as programs in this regard, as ineffective movements that are not nearly as transformative or radical, altering, as their constituent movers and shakers think they are, which is why I found it interesting that he included similar methods in After Dachau. I think he was making a delicate distinction that any methods used to perpetuate a new vision, to educate others, even if they resemble other social movements, if they use activist art and methods, are still unique by virtue of their driving force, vision - the flowing river that overpowers the flimsy sticks or programs stuck in its path.

Quinn prefaces the entire work with a note on his complete and utter lack of support for ideas of rebirth, past lives, and reincarnation. I found this intriguing, fascinating, humorous, and all, when I first opened the novel. I see many similarities to my fear/disinterest/suspicion of New Age ideas and practices, a bias I’ve been meaning to explore in writing (what’s the difference between supporting a Buddhist praying with a singing bowl and a New Age-y practitioner or dabbler co-opting the practice for their own spiritual fulfillment/journey/whims? – think Andrew Bird’s “Heretics”: “What a crack!” – See what I mean? How do you tell?). A lot of sorting must be done to clear up the unattractiveness, the prejudice, and the merits or detriments of New Age-ism…Also a project for another day! Until next time!