When our friend and longtime contributor Benjamin DeMott passed away on September 29, 2005, he left behind the following manuscript, which he had worked on steadily throughout his final illness. We find it remarkable not only for its courage and style but for an honest insight that if anything has only appreciated with time.
Editor’s note introducing “Battling the Hard Man” by Benjamin DeMott in the August 2007 issue of Harper’s
Benjamin DeMott provides a literal pulse for this modern life that resonates like a thunderclap in the ear.
It is not his fault that the ‘hard man’ penetrated his psyche and reproduced. If dominance, revenge and violence could stir his passion, even as death stormed his sanctum, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Subtitled – Notes on addiction to the pornography of violence – it is a beleaguered DeMott staying the course, deploying empirical excuses for his guilty pleasure, releasing them like clusters disperse bomblets amidst acres of frankly brilliant reflections. Perhaps the pandering reflects a work-in-progress and not his typical Sunday’s best.
Perhaps even soldiers of valour who write ridiculously well find it impossible to rationalise an addiction to authority, but they must try. DeMott believes that when he was a young fuckup going nowhere, hating nothing, he knew surrender. He swears this innocence was overtaken by uninvited soul snatchers.
Human beings enter the world fiercely and demand survival ferociously, totally dependent upon caregivers for sustenance, and life thereafter is negotiation. Innocence is taken into custody by these caregivers and held in ransom, kindly or cruelly, but it can’t be returned once it’s been taken. It must be reclaimed and tended like a garden facing drought.
Surrender is not passive. It is not acknowledging imperfections and retiring to the sidelines to commiserate with other moral absolutists wallowing in self-pity – it is a plan of action with a pulse. Feeling god-like whilst under the influence of chemicals and other aspirations of perfection is what the old timers call taking a vacation from reality. If you must take one address the postcards to yourself and read them when you’re sober.
William S. Burroughs, his ego so inflated it couldn’t be shoe horned into his literary footprint, took the con of being life’s most irreverent observer to the ultimate level when he cultivated an obsession for cut-and-paste. He couldn’t be the best writer alive so he contrived to belittle the rest. He was going to predict the future by reassembling the past. He failed to puzzle out that dope always wins, no matter the drug of choice.
There is a cut-and-paste quality to DeMott’s manuscript, a purchase of events that most disturbed his serenity, an urgency to assign blame in exchange for a moment of perfection on earth. Tempered by melancholy that it will never come to pass, he asks of others what he refused to give himself – forgiveness.
It is the most unsettling, thought provoking piece of writing I’ve read in months. Mr. DeMott’s friends were in glorious company.