Let’s Hear It for the Species!
In an essay titled “The Moon and Man” devoted to the truly remarkably technological achievement by mankind of making it possible for the species to actually be able to survive in the vacuum of space, the author pulls out all the metaphorical stops to paint poor, put-upon barely-above-a-chimp homo sapiens in a really quite remarkably complimentary light:
“Man, the naked ape, the terrestrial animal who is the son of a very long dynasty of terrestrial or marine being, molded in all of his organs by a restricted environment which is the lower atmosphere, can detach himself from it without dying.”
Trickle-Down Consumerism
“Among the Peaks of Manhattan” transforms NYC into a metaphorical mountain range down in the valleys of which roam other examples of those hairless apes. The ones who haven’t figured out how to live in space, but something perhaps much more tangibly important for the time being. These are humans often overlooked as such who call the streets their home and dumpsters their restaurants and who have American’s obsession with disposable culture to thank for elevating their state of existence one level up from those examples which came before:
“The consumer society is prodigal, if the wind blows or it rains, they wrap themselves up in polyethylene bags that the same wind scatters about everywhere in abundance.”
The Difference Between Translating and Romancing
In introducing his essay on the subject of translating the writing of Franz Kafka, the author raises an interesting point through metaphor. He questions the potential validity of the work of any translator who traffics only in the writing of those authors which personally attract him, pointing out that:
“Translating a book is not like contracting a matrimony or becoming a partner in a business. We can feel attracted even to someone who is very different from us”
What Does a Mirror Do?
The title story examines in a very analytical—and very extended—way, the basic concept of the purpose served by mirrors. By analytical in this case is meant something more philosophical than strictly scientific. Rather than asking what a mirror does with the expectation of an answer using terms like concave and refraction, the answer provided takes a more metaphysically enlightening turn. A mirror offers a reflection:
“like a human mind; but the ordinary run of mirrors obey a simple and inexorable physical law; they reflect as would a rigid, obsessed mind that claims to gather in itself the reality of the world—as though there were only one!”
A Timely Lesson to Learn
For the author, Richard Baer is really more the face of evil that was the Nazi rise to such a powerful state that their inhuman agenda could be carried out right in front of millions of people with no fear of retribution than the much bigger and more famous names associated with the malevolent regime. Baer was the Commandant at Auschwitz, but still managed to slip through history without become a household name. Despite this lack of infamy, the author points out the chilling inarguable truth that:
“…without him, without the Hosses, the Eichmanns, the Kesselrings, without thousands of other faithful and blind executor of orders, the great savage beasts, Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels, would have been impotent and disarmed.”
