For those who have not been following the debate that ensued after the publication of my post on Eddie Aquilina’s column, I am reproducing it below. First, however, let me reject pre-emptively any suggestion that printing the contents of the comments section is somehow lazy or space-filling. The truth is that I’m a bit busy at the moment. And anyway, it’s late.
However, to get to the point; repeatedly, I have been vilified by this sonorous popinjay, who goes by the name of cyberdigger. I have been pilloried by his incessant insinuations and slander. Here, in this public forum, I call for him to join me in a public debate, which we can hold in a place of his own choice. I suggest a neutral territory, perhaps New York, though my antagonist should know from now that I have no intention of paying for either the flights or the cost of accommodation.
By way of introduction into the debate, I should say that it was prompted by a rectification addressed, in absolutely civil terms, by the curator of the j’accuse blog. Here, therefore, is the full catalogue of his verbal assaults on my integrity, not to speak of the honour and dignity of countless young men and women:
Vlad,
One teeny point. Eddie Aquilina did not "author" that column but reproduced an email he received in his inbox. He counts himself among those who must believe that their inbox is the envy of all and sundry. We must all be grateful to be allowed a peek into this receptacle that is ful of God knows what knowledge and wisdom.
As for the nostalgia for times gone by that felt better than now.... somehow I don't think that the email was far off the mark... I normally delve (well delve sounds bombastic but there you are) into this in my Sibtijiet Flimkien corner.
I was about to make the same correction but jacques got there first. One other thing, why does the author refer to little leagues and soda pop? Perhaps he's referring to another childhood in another country...
Well, strictly speaking it wasn't Eddie Aquilina, but philosophically it was. Besides, for a person prepared to devote 90% of an article to someone else's writing and then put his name to it, he deserves the flak. That is to say, he as good as wrote it since he was prepared to put his name to it.
a poor defence, vlad, but an excellent post nonetheless. Keep them coming.
"Vlad shafted by Aquilina's plagiarism".
Now there's a good headline.
A poor defence?! My friend, if you cannot grasp the interstitial transtextuality upon which I operate I fear that you are going to get lost. As you seek a continuity that is merely implied, I explore the cyclical notions underlying the structural archetypes that define the fabric of Aquilinian prose. I reject the positivistic-deterministic notion that there is only a single correct given form for mediatic exegesis. I simply fail to understand your outdated fetishization of information processing theories that forcefully necessitate the monotonic (not monotonous, mind) assumption of a liner conception of "constructive reading". Intertextually speaking, criticising the message and chewing a brick comes much to the same thing.
I strongly disagree with the word 'prose'
Hmm, this Aquilina piece has done the rounds on the internet. However, the last time I saw it, it was written from the perspective of people who grew up in the 70s and 80s looking down scornfully at the youth of today, rather than the golden Aquilina generation. He seems to have hi-jacked it for his own purposes.
I follow your defence with interest, but I am not sure what "liner conception" is. Is it something to do with cruise ships?
- the Titanic was not a successful "liner conception".
Cyberdigger,
Your intervention is a thoroughly foolish one, but let me take it on board, so to speak.
You argue that the Titanic is an example of unsuccessful "liner conception", in spite of extensive testimony that attests to the fact that it was the application of said vessel that fell short of desired standards. I suppose if one drove a Ferrari into a brick wall at high velocity, you would be taking issue with the car's engineering shortcomings. The fundamental issue here is one of misuse of technology at the hands of the foolish and the incompetent. And, sir, you are surely living evidence of this, as it is not for lack of opposable thumbs that you have failed to refrain from making ill-judged remarks in this forum. "Liner conception" indeed!
The whole notion of "liner conception" was one which you yourself introduced onto this forum. In my Titanic paradigm I was merely seeking for an application for this seemingly anomalous concept in the midst of some sort of turgid Barthean treatise on the nature of authorship.
However, I now realise that you were not referring to "liner conception" at all, but instead equipping us with what is truly another sad example of the slavish addiction to technology in the form your apparently beguiled, botched attempt to use a spell-checking tool to cover up for your syntactic inadequacies.
You sir, are product of the very generation that Aquilina's original piece sought to condemn. An android generation who wish to forsake meaningful human interaction for the sound of a clicking plastic mouse.
Yes, we ate worms and mud pies. And they were not ordered "on-line" from "e-bay", lest we should miss even a second of joy derived from playing "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" on our "x-boxes", whilst simultaneously sending horribly misspelt "text messages" on our "mobile phones", all the time plugged into our "i-pods" and "calculators".
Very well, now that your agenda is in the open, there is some scope for open discourse, a mode that we have thus far been denied by your coy deceptiveness as to your true intentions. In your craven devotion to the forces of reaction, you have contrived to throw the baby out with the bath water. Your refusal to engage with the modern world, which you strangely eschew when it comes to spewing your virulent Luddite ravings, has driven you so far beyond the edge of sense as to confound whatever shred of cognitive faculties you might ever have had in the first place. I suppose I could dwell on your misapplication of the word "syntactic", which is hardly at issue, but that would be at the cost of overlooking the sheer intellectual antediluvianism to which have resorted in taking shelter under the simpering words of Aquilina's fictive correspondent.
Yes, you too have "eaten worms", and good for you. However, it is not what has gone into your mouth that worries me, but what comes out of it. A bile-ridden panegyric against modernity and all its presumed evils. It is a shame that the faceless cowards that can hold forth on such views are not so bold in their resistance to the less suspect candidates of modern progress. Sir, why not attack the cure for polio, why not attack the invention of the airplane, why not attack the democracy most of us have come to cherish so dearly. Your ilk are the last rotten bastions of an era that has long since died: an era of bigotry, ignorance, superstition and racism. Good riddance!
Though on reflection, that should be philippic and not panegyric. At least I am endowed with humility. Look at the humility! Look at it!!
I am looking, but I am afraid that I do not see it. It does not surprise me in the least that you, coming from a generation raised exclusively on marijuana, Diet Coca-Cola and Crazy Frog, do not exhibit any of the true qualities of humility that were prevalent in my day. Back then, an uncouth whippersnapper like yourself would be brought into line using the back heel of a slipper. Nowadays, they probably give you Mars bars as disincentives to unruly behaviour. Or cans of Diet Coca-Cola.
I doubt that the workers on the top floors of the World Trade Centre on September 11th 2001 would have shared your enthusiasm for the invention of the aeroplane and if it is democracy that allows such oafish elements as yourself to carp and arrogate publicly then it is indeed a badly flawed concept.
Well, I can well believe that you must have had a fair of amounts savage beatings applied to your head, if your inane observations are anything to go on. If nothing else, this exchange has lead you up the morally vacuous cul-de-sac in which you rightly belong. Keep your boiled sweets and hypocrisy to yourself, why don’t you.
Perhaps if you can pull your head out of the fusty cloud that you appear to inhabit, you will see that there is more to the world than your pathetic dog-eared memories of an unfulfilled youth and the bitter scorn you see fit to heap on modernity. Look around you and see how much better this reality is than the petrified, ideological aridity of your past. We have achieved so much, seen so much, and want to do so much more. But you persist in your sad ruminations in your sad little room; broken black-and-white TV; cracked 78s lying abandoned in the square of sunlight that the tiny window allows for; cigarette burns in the carpet; a creased postcard from Greece that you never got round to sending.
Yes, today’s world may be the world of Crazy Frog and Diet Coca-Cola; but it is also the world of Internet, of open horizons, of freedom and democracy. It will mean nothing to a relic of the bleak MAD generation to hear that we dream of tomorrow, we strive for it, and know that it is within our grasp. So what if we enjoy ourselves on the way? Sir, all I can truly say to you is that I pity you, you who have nothing but an endless procession of cheerless yesterdays to look forward to.
How convenient in your assessment of our sad modern era that you fail to omit the rising rate of crime at bus-stops, estates sinking under a tide of hypodermic syringes and soaring teenage pregnancy.
These sir, are the true legacy of our era, and not the internet or democracy. On the contrary, in a world driven solely by the twin forces of instant materialistic gratification and rampant individualism, many are turning to the internet as a means of establishing human contact with other lost souls in as far-flung places as Tonga, Rhodesia and the Phillipines, while at the same time not knowing the name of their next door neighbours and being afraid to find out, lest he should turn out to be the new crack dealer who has just moved into the neighbourhood.
Your description of my home leads me to believe that you have actually broken into it, which does not surprise me given the moral ambivalence of your generation, combined with the fact that house-breaking has probably been added to the national curricculum.
I will send that postcard from Greece however. I will send it to the proprietors of this blogstation, instructing them to remove you and and your poisonous views posthaste.
Heavens above, you might do well to pull your nose out whatever tabloid comic you rely on for your news. What would it take to convince you that the dystopian nightmare you envisage is little but a figment of your febrile imagination?
But then again, it is only your warped mind that could believe that Rhodesia still existed; perhaps a not-so-subtle indicator of your sympathies for the brutal colonial past with which you obviously identify. In your ideal situation, you wouldn’t have neighbours, just an army footmen-wallah to fan you and keep the natives off the lawn. What you are less keen to acknowledge is the legacy of injustice and intolerance that stoked the social aberrations that you saw fit to grotesquely caricature. If it isn’t hypocritical that in one breath you slate the oppressed proletariat, while in the next you hark back to the values of your superannuated generation, then I don’t know what is.
I despair at the myopia of those like you, sir, who will themselves to see everything upside down, back to front. Where you see alienation and loneliness, there is community; the global community of a new generation seeking to give meaning to their shrinking world. You may remember the fall of the Berlin Wall (a sad day for you, no doubt), but ever since then yet more frontiers have fallen. National frontiers, trade frontiers, communication frontiers, cultural frontiers, linguistic frontiers, and so much more. You, however, turn in ever-diminishing circles, cut off from a world that you no longer understand, eaten away by a cancer of hatred, consoled only by the opportunity of heaping abuse on that which you cannot comprehend.
Seek recourse in front of any tribunal you see fit. I am ready for you. Indeed, it may do you well to have your rancour aired, but do not fool yourself, for you will surely lose.
Oh, I will not lose sir. If the forces who operate this blogstation have even a shred of human decency, they will acquiesce to my demand to have you removed. Your rose-tinted perspective leads me to the inescapable conclusion that your knowledge of the world around you is blinkered by the barrier of your computer monitor, upon whose screen you continue to dwell in some sort of virtual make-believe world.
When the streets of Paris were ablaze, were you holed away in some chat-room discussing the merits of this year's Celebrity Big Brother contestants? Maybe you were staging a google-fight between Jordan and Jodie Kidd while the bombs rocked Britain's capital. And were you watching a webcast of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! when the latest pensioner was attacked at a bus stop?
The moral decay I speak of us is all around us. It is in the tears of the teenage mother who must prostitute herself for crack cocaine. It is in the illiterate school child who subjects himself to public humiliation in the meaningless desire for the modern grail of celebrity. It is in the crooked smile of the tenement under-classes, devoted to the twin pursuits of living off the government and selling skunk. It is in the eyes of the war veteran who fears to leave his home as darkness spreads across this unhappy hemisphere. It is in the very particles of air that we, who knew a better world, must heave and breathe such wistful sighs. It is everywhere.
And besides, who can share your excitement at the fall of the Berlin Wall? An event which led to the proliferation of drugs and gangsterism across the eastern plains? Mafia, coups, oligarchs, Beslan, a beheaded journalist in Gorky Park, a war in Cechnia, prostitution...reasons to be cheerful indeed!!
Nay, sir, thou art a naughty knave whose very kind does not bode well for the future. In the words of Leonard Cohen, "I have seen the future, and its hell." Thankfully, I will not have to live to endure the culmination of the worst excesses of your age, while you must reap the tragic whirlwind that you and others of your ilk have sown, through your distraction and inaction.
The only unhappy hemisphere I can bring myself to pity is the diminutive one inside your skull. Your demented apocalypticism has now spilled uncontrollably outside the boundaries of rationality. It comes, therefore, as some consolation that you have promised to be absent at the culmination of this age, for we would not want our party to be sullied by a chronic manic-depressive such as yourself.
But brushing aside your ill-informed bombast about the supposed effects of the collapse of communism, let us look at the substance of your argumentation. For the record, I have never heard of google-fighting and I have little interest in the developments of the latest reality TV programs, matters on which you appear to be surprisingly well informed. But indeed I do listen to podcasts, such as Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time, which allow me to broaden my horizons while walking amidst the terrified pensioners and addict teenagers that you suppose to exist from the confines of the shuttered fortress you have barracked yourself into. I am a regular user of the Internet, which I use to confront my views with others and test my prejudices. But I suppose your idea of reading the day's news is going on Google and typing in "drugs" and "hooligans".
As for moral decay, perhaps an old timer like will not have noticed the events of the Live Eight last summer in which the youth collectively demonstrated solidarity for global poverty, itself engendered by the heartless and vicious colonialism and exploitation of the supposedly moral past. Indeed sir, if anyone can be said to be wearing rose-tinted glasses, then that surely is you. How much brutality are you prepared to turn a blind eye to? How many more millions would you have been prepared to see die under the yoke of the communist visitation as you relived the drama of the Cold War through your James Bond films and Frederick Forsythe novels?
You sicken me with your false piety towards the elderly. In your day, they were given a boiled sweet and a pat on the head, as the doctors waited for them to die.
And you pusillanimously resort to the veteran card, while lambasting the celebrity culture of our age. You would think it would be reassuring that the youth of today have such superficial concerns, rather than having to work out how to put their lives back together after having their legs blown off in a war they don't understand. No more world wars, no more Korean wars, no more Vietnams, and no more Falklands!
You decry the inaction of the youth, but where were you when we marched for peace, against the cruel Iraqi war for oil? A war willed by your hawkish clique, pushing a new generation through the meat-grinder for their own ends. How many more will have to die before your bloodlust is satiated? Open your eyes, my friend, it is never too late.
I do not know if I have space to attempt to construct for you a scaffold for the cognitive understanding of the concatenation that led to that sorry conflict in Iraq and I am not certain that it is relevant to this discussion. But let me say that while I am no passionate supporter of the likes of Rumsfeld or Bush (although I accord them the respect they command in their roles as distinguished statesmen. An odd Voltairian concept - to respect even those who have diametrically opposed views? Not in my day), their actions have to be taken not only in light of their nation's thirst for oil (although if this were the case it would be in no small measure to the present generation's dependency on the technology that fuels, to pardon the pun, this state of affairs) but also in a simple Christian desire to rid our world of bloody dictators and terrorists. In my day, these were given short shrift, rather than government handouts. While I feel that the war was a misguided one, I can not help but admire the unyielding tenacity of the American administration in wishing to weed out these elements.
As for Live 8, I did tune in for a while, and upon viewing the "duet" performed by Pete Doherty and Elton John, I found yet more confirmation of the superiority of our age. Doherty the young pup, rambling, incoherent and obscene, contrasted by the manly John, so graceful, poised and dignified. The gulf was there for all to see.
Let me tell you now about a book that has no yet been written. This is a book called The History of the 20th Century. And at its epicentre will be chapter about us - the golden generation. a golden generation who soared to incredible heights, who dared to dream and even dared to make our dreams come true. And when we were finished, we handed it over and said "Now its your turn." But that was our mistake. In our haste to build a better future, we forgot to look over our shoulders and did not catch view of the ghastly spectre that was rearing its head in the rear view mirror. Yes, we were the golden ones.
One prejudice that you may wish to confront is your outrageous, fit-inducing disrespect for your elders. We are not here to be mocked and patronised. We may have lived long and hard, but we are still here and we will not go gently into that dark night!
I am sure Sir Bragg remembers how we were the golden ones who laughed (but with each other, not at) and danced (but not in an ecstasy induced state of catatonia to three hundred beats a minute)and sang (of love and kindness, not lust and violence).
And we did not fear being beaten to death with an i-pod while waiting to catch the bus home.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
By way of a post scriptum, this cyberdigger fiend may rest assured that he has not heard the last from me. An appropriate riposte to his latest compendium of vilification will duly follow.
5 comments:
i laugh
hey... you bicycle-riding wishywashy new-age grammarian with a tendency to nitpick on typos....
from today's times...
Ghallis Landfill to serve for seven years (as a waiter presumably)
And from the Gama article: "The chief executive officer of the Gama Textile Group, Manfred Baier, had headed a textile company that went bankrupt in 2003 and one of the directors, Berhard Maier, was in charge of seven companies that failed." Companies that failed... maltesisms galore
il-kumpanija falliet
il-landfill serviet
when in doubt ask daphne. :)
I would be ready for a Grapple in the Big Apple or even a Feud in Ghar-id-Dud or Fracas in Hal-Ghaxaq any time Vlad, but I am afraid that I have a bad back which seriously prohibits me from travelling. I think that the only form of transport that would have allowed me the comfort and luxury of a transatlantic crossing in my present physical state would have been the Concorde, but after my generation built it with our idealism and ingenuity, yours trashed it because it wasn't making you enough money.
Er...that should have been Fracas in Hal-Far.
My dear cyberdigger,
It surprises me that a representative of a generation so used to extolling its own courage in the face of adversity has debased himself in such a display of pusillanimous defeatism. Who knows if it is your "bad back" that accounts for so much of your misanthropic hating.
After all, you perplexingly attempt to contrive that it is your age that has devised the marvels of modern technology. Don't get me wrong, I love telegrams but I prefer e-mails, I love phone boxes but mobiles are more convenient, I love polio but I prefer not to die of it, I loved the Vietnam war but would have preferred not to die in it. Need I go on?
But should I awaken you from the mental slumber to which you have happily become accustomed? Obscurantism is a term normally incorrectly applied to the prejudiced, but you truly are in the dark about all that is novel and brilliant. May I remind you of a quote from your last burst of vituperation?:
"As for Live 8, I did tune in for a while, and upon viewing the 'duet' performed by Pete Doherty and Elton John, I found yet more confirmation of the superiority of our age."
And this is where the flimsy edifice of reason that you propose to construct falls about your ears. You identify with Elton John, a dated and pedestrian performer if ever there was one. Fair enough, we all have our own tastes, but you seek to evaluate your own preferences at the expense of a vastly more talented and complex artist like Pete Doherty. Indeed, this young man, or "pup" as you fogeyishly suggest, is truly the hero of the artists and the intellectuals; a latter-day Rimbaud or Duchamp, embarking on an experimental study of a personality disengaged from the normal contingencies of human life: a prophet and a playboy. Doherty is the post-modern incarnation of the archetypal rake, cocking a snook at the censorious head-shakers like you, sir.
Art itself has grown up finally. I cannot help but suppress a wry smile thinking about how your generation mindlessly memorized verses which you did not have the soul to understand. You looked at the pretty paintings which you recognised to be good, because you know art when you see it. We engage with art, we discuss, and we debate about it; and if it's no good, we say so. We don't memorise our opinions out of crumbling manuscripts of Ruskins or Vasaris. The artists of today toy ironically with expectations and assumptions, subverting the rules and exploring the ironies of existence. It could hardly be otherwise in the absolute democracy of our age. If we have lost the oppressive absolutism of the empirical values you presume to exist somewhere in the ether, then that's all the better. How refreshing that we can all reach for the stars, that we can dream of transcending our heritage; how sad for you stuck in era of class guilt, arid artlessness, and the dead personality.
Post a Comment