6: THE UNIVERSITY OF DEATH
[RMcG: 17 January 2007]
to carry on with our AX discussion...
mike, I think you said you were burrowing thru University of Death, and yes, it certainly is more complex than the others... for one thing, this time Tman has a rival, whom he cleverly tricks into playing a role in the final collision scene
as we've gone on, I've started looking to dr nathan to supply the storyline, and the "rationale" (if perceivable) for Tman's obsessive projects...
once again, dr nathan doesn't disappoint..
as befitting a university, JGB ironically chooses a campus as his landscape for this study in the field of "conceptual death", more specifically, a conceptual auto-
so, we can expect a lot of sex, and a conceptual death (an orgasm, "the little death", it appears) staged as a car crash...
to bring this all together, Talbot needs a "conceptual equation" to bring about his alternate, or false death... again dr nathan delivers in "Geometry Of Murder", where he identifies the equation to a geometric triangle: one side is JFK, the other is Nader... we can assume the third side is Talbot, or his substitute... and why Nader? "Talbot is here distinguishing between the manifest content of reality and its latent content. Nader's true role is clearly very different from his apparent one".... and here JG, as he does on a number of occasions, shies away from being specific, and bales out in a flurry of enigmatic images... "different from his apparent one, to be deciphered in terms of the postures we assume, our anxieties mimetized in the junction between wall and ceiling"...
Am I wrong in assuming these virtually undecipherable phrases could mean our "mental state" at a "point in time"? our physical posture is sort of a function of mental attitude... attentive, droopy, sexy, a sort of sounfless "body language"... or perhaps it just means "Body"... and the way we "imitate" our anxieties in "the junction between wall and ceiling"... representing our Mind, or our consciousness, or perhaps "place of imagination" -
anyway, the Nader example is very revealing insofar as JGB's ideas about manifest and latent are concerned... now we can see JG's use of freud is a dialectical move: nader's manifest role is that of a car safety whistleblower... so his latent meaning is that of a savior for those who experience a car death... neat little ironic inside-
this plot is more complex than the previous, as Talbot (robot? sexbot?) sets a class project (devise the first conceptual death of WWIII), allows the class to use him as the first victim, then substitutes a student (Koester) to die at the last second... as an added thrill, the "death" in question is JFK's, and the "end of the world" where this happens is dealey plaza...
actually, it could also be the university of sex and death and cars, as this time Talbot is more physically excited by overpasses, underpasses, roads in every massive concrete form... than he is by women... but then again, nothing beats the orgasm of a good car crash, and all these roads to bliss take on the role of foreplay before the consummation...
Talbot starts in a clinch with catherine austin, and the stage is set when he realizes the roadwork outdoors gets him more excited that fondling cathy's boobs... her body is now as personal as a "masturbatory appliance", and this death of affect(ion) heralds the arrival of helicopters, and one might assume, the movement into madness... advance insects of WWIII, they invoke the media image of viet nam, and the next thing Talbot sees is his "home movie" version of the nearby radio telescope dishes, his sculpture of glass slides pointing at the sun... and listen to the "time-
this thought is perhaps expanded further in "Persistence of Memory" ... Talbot reacts to dali's famous painting, and JG explains the images "are the residues of a remembered moment in time"... Talbot reacts to the rectilinear sections of sand and sea (body and mind)... because they have been "warped" into "the rigid and unyielding structures of his own consciousness"... he's disconnected, bigtime.... he, in fact, becomes another fearless ballardian character... of course, it helps if you no longer have a body... then some foreshadowing: "he realized that the rectilinear forms of his conscious reality were warped elements from some placid and harmonious future"... so, assuagement ahead... our all-
then, the surprise: koester, a student, challenger, a sexual rival for catherine, and also sexually attracted to talbot... we first meet him, ironically loading the billboard of talbot we see in the final paragraph... could he be a sort of jungian "dark twin"? he wears dark clothes, etc., and is antagonistic to talbot... talbot's "shadow"?
notovny next appears, and we see talbot in the familiar shabby flying jacket... karen has picked talbot up at the same space medicine conference they meet at in every chapter, and this time she notices talbot's displacement, "some fugitive from time and space" clearly moving into his own "landscape"... talbot's inner journey begins by following a helicopter pilot thru a maze of his own image... deep inside, he meets a silent girl, a student... she seems to be this story's version of coma... they take off with the pilot, who must be kline, and "his committal to the authority of these two couriers" frees him from his memories of K and cathy... bye bye reality, hello quasars...
it's while flying with kline and coma that the correct scenario comes to talbot... they see a big car pileup and land to investigate... "here he would find his alternate death, the mimetized disasters of Vietnam and the congo recapitulated in the contours of these broken fenders..."
dr nathan, obviously writing later in a case history, sees that talbot has secretly taken over his class project, and is actively involved in the narration -
talbot's neural system is fascinated with a plaza, and again we're given religious imagery, as the clouds overhead form a pair of tented hands, apparently blessing all below... with supreme irony, talbot whispers the name of the 20th century's christ: "ralph nader" ... talbot knows his course... he prepares to leave, and now kline & coma defer to him... upon his return to his torrid affair with karen, he now seems to be a man slightly in the future...
meanwhile, koester/talbot is after catherine, and has realized his car accident fetish in a gallery show, and has produced a magazine, Crash! the star of the show is JFK in his lincoln... talbot, meanwhile, is outlining karen's body positions in chalk, like a traffic accident victim, and K eventually shows up to photograph them... K, the fool, is planning a sort of sexual crucifixion car crash for talbot, but he's only in the present... talbot, kline & coma get in the limo... meanwhile, karen has gone off to seduce K in a class wreck called "dodge 38"... after sex, the car is literally dragged forward, crashing headlong into talbot's lincoln...
the scenario is orgasmic: "a celebration of the unity of their soft geometries, (bodies) the unique creation of the pudenda of ralph nader (genitals of christ)... the dead bodies of karen "and himself" fly thru the air... what? OK, it can't be talbot, it's koester, mimetized as talbot (hence the conceptual part)
notovny dies (she's perfectly armless), K goes missing (he's been re-
you can see JG's technique: it's all about latency... and if the nader example is any guide, then JG's method is to invert (un-
but what are these tmen trying to do with all this conversion? what is the method of their madness? are they reacting to an external madness, the fiction of culture and media? or are they merely using the icons of culture, the darlings of media, to express a madness driven by an internal tension? If so, what is the cause? I think we'll get to that with death of affect, but you can start to see the bricks in the wall at this university of death, "placid and harmonious" .
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[MH: 18 January 2007]
RMcG wrote: to carry on with our AX discussion... mike, I think you said you were burrowing thru this "chapter"
Yes, I've been making slow progress for a number of reasons, so your comments were very welcome, Rick! Here's what I've come up with so far:
The 'manifest' content of this chapter is pretty similar to the previous two chapters -
This 'latent content' that differs between chapters is similar to what Mike Moorcock has described as "the individual's trying out of various roles to find the most effective persona for living in an increasingly complex society". So what is the 'latent content' in this variation? Well, in many ways Talbot is rather passive: he appears depressed and uncertain, and much of the activity is undertaken by his students. For example, right at the start we read that: "... these seminars had become a daily inquisition into Talbot's growing distress and uncertainty. A disturbing aspect was the conscious complicity of the class in his long anticipated breakdown. ... Using the identity of their own lecturer, the students had devised the first conceptual death." And he's displaced from the world around him, viewing Catherine Austin as merely "a rubber mannequin fitted with explicit vents, an obscene masturbatory appliance".
Even his attempts at redemption through excess seem doomed. Nathan muses that the results of Talbot's 'Festival of Atrocity Films' were disappointing: "whatever Talbot had hoped for had clearly not materialized. The violence was little more than a sophisticated entertainment." To escape from the mediatized world through excess is only to enter it more deeply -
I'm sort of tempted to interpret Talbot's role in this chapter in Taoist terms, as 'actionless action'. By withdrawing from the world, he lets the Tao (the quasars) work through him, and hence achieves his aims by the actions of his students. However, this aspect of Talbot's role appears rather differently to Nathan, who is still immersed in normal reality: "Far from the students making an exhibition of an overwrought instructor ... Talbot has in fact exploited them. This has altered the entire direction of the scenario, turning it from an exercise on the theme of 'the end of the world' into a psycho-
If Talbot is passive, then the student Koester plays the active role, and I'd agree with Rick that he is Talbot's alter-
The pilot and silent young woman play the usual role of the avatars of Talbot's unconscious, in this case assisting him in his disconnection from active participation in the world around him: "His committal into the authority of these two couriers had at last freed him from his memories of Koester and Catherine Austin. The erosion of that waking landscape continued."
He listens to the 'music of the quasars' through his home-
Talbot wanders with the pilot and young woman in a beach area and round the motorway overpasses and ostensibly nothing much happens, but this period of time is building to some sort of epiphanic event, where he sees an enormous image of a woman's hands forming an arch over an invisible child (a birth image, presumably). He mutters 'Ralph Nader', now realizing that the car crash can provide a (re)birth, or as Nathan helpfully suggests "the car crash may be perceived unconsciously as a fertilizing rather than a destructive event ... In the eucharist of the simulated auto-
So the story winds its way to the usual climax, with the difference that it is the students (albeit led by Talbot's alter-
But when Nathan arrives, Talbot cannot be found. Is it Koester who died there? Or as Rick suggests, is it that Talbot has been made whole with his alter-
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[RMcG: 18 January 2007]
MH wrote: The 'manifest' content of this chapter is pretty similar to the previous two chapters -
yes... I've been pondering these shifts, as well... I've actually thought of doing a Nathan on the info, and try to chart it out chapter by chapter... In all cases, however, there seems to be a kind of transference, where normal cultural "manifest" -
step 1: disassociation from reality, or the reality principle
step 2: psychic tension, and development of a "conceptual" plan for relief
step 3: execution of plan -
step 4: catharsis and pleasure
hmmm... just noticed: aren't those the same steps a man takes when he crawls into bed with a desirable woman?
MH wrote: So what is the 'latent content' in this variation? Well, in many ways Talbot is rather passive: he appears depressed and uncertain, and much of the activity is undertaken by his students. For example, right at the start we read that: "... these seminars had become a daily inquisition into Talbot's growing distress and uncertainty. A disturbing aspect was the conscious complicity of the class in his long anticipated breakdown. ... Using the identity of their own lecturer, the students had devised the first conceptual death." And he's displaced from the world around him, viewing Catherine Austin as merely "a rubber mannequin fitted with explicit vents, an obscene masturbatory appliance".
yes, but I think Tman's depression and uncertainty are part of his "going crazy" -
MH wrote: Even his attempts at redemption through excess seem doomed. Nathan muses that the results of Talbot's 'Festival of Atrocity Films' were disappointing: "whatever Talbot had hoped for had clearly not materialized. The violence was little more than a sophisticated entertainment." To escape from the mediatized world through excess is only to enter it more deeply -
ha... I thought this was a JGB aside on the state of hollywood, rather than as a comment on Tman... despite the "ingenuity of the film makers" the results were merely "sophisticated entertainment", as far as nathan is concerned... one wonders what Tman might have made of it... regardless, I think the point here is that there is probably a gulf of difference between a true atrocity film, and perhaps the kind of "mondo atrocity" films in this festival... it may be JG is saying that atrocities can't really be filmed, that is, captured in the moment and saved in time... our conscious inner critic (superego) will always impose a media rationality on the irrational, adding meaning to meaninglessness... so they're "home movies" in the sense they are one-
MH wrote: I'm sort of tempted to interpret Talbot's role in this chapter in Taoist terms, as 'actionless action'. By withdrawing from the world, he lets the Tao (the quasars) work through him, and hence achieves his aims by the actions of his students. However, this aspect of Talbot's role appears rather differently to Nathan, who is still immersed in normal reality: "Far from the students making an exhibition of an overwrought instructor ... Talbot has in fact exploited them. This has altered the entire direction of the scenario, turning it from an exercise on the theme of 'the end of the world' into a psycho-
sorry, I don't see it that way... talbot may be disassociated, but I hardly find him passive... he's jumping karen, flying around, checking out roadways, running thru mazes, etc etc... plus he's had to plan the whole thing... and build sculptures
MH wrote: If Talbot is passive, then the student Koester plays the active role, and I'd agree with Rick that he is Talbot's alter-
again, I think talbot is the driving force (sorry) and koester the latent element... in psychoanalytic terms, koester seems to be another denizen of the unconscious, a symbol of libido and desire, polymorphous and aggressive... as such, perhaps the perfect sacrifice in the strange way JG blends JFK/Jackie, nader/christ, and talbot/koester/greer in an artistic re-
MH wrote:He mutters 'Ralph Nader', now realizing that the car crash can provide a (re)birth, or as Nathan helpfully suggests "the car crash may be perceived unconsciously as a fertilizing rather than a destructive event ... In the eucharist of the simulated auto-
yes, they take him away... but only until he decides what to do... then they return to his command... actually, it's interesting... they take him away to a deserted scene of endless road works, littered with busted cars... aren't these the outward images of tman's inner space? how important are these four paragraphs which describe tman and his "couriers"? first, they arrive at the "zone"... a sort of demolished and abandoned roadworks area... this could represent Tman's "mad" consciousness -
MH wrote: He listens to the 'music of the quasars' through his home-
he listens to the "time music", not just music... in this chapter's notes JG goes on about how we may some day decipher these signals and discover not meaningful messages, but repetitive garble "as reassuring as the waves on a beach"... I think Talbot is listening in to try and escape "clock-
MH wrote: So the story winds its way to the usual climax, with the difference that it is the students (albeit led by Talbot's alter-
we have competing death scenarios here... koester's scenario for talbot's death is a ripoff of the crucifixion -
now we go to the impact zone, where talbot and coma check out the wrecks, plus the "catapult" which will ultimately cause the crash... this area is a lab test track, (what else at a university of death? in fact, it's a university of death because here's where they test the deadliness of car crashes)... all the previously-
the "false deaths" paragraph is cool, too... more latents revealed: cars are bodies; crashes are orgasms... and later, nathan brings in the concept of assassination as a hypotenuse to tman's conceptual equation...
talbot assumes greer's role as the JFK limo driver... kline & coma are JFK and Jackie... flares go off and the limo leaps forward towards the impact zone... but kline & coma are now gone...
MH wrote: But when Nathan arrives, Talbot cannot be found. Is it Koester who died there? Or as Rick suggests, is it that Talbot has been made whole with his alter-
mike, I dunno... I'm having second thoughts... how about this? there is a strange complexity about the ending, again from the dualistic nature of the characters... in a close re-
I think the collision itself is only conceptual... "the car crash may be perceived unconsciously as a fertilizing rather than a destructive event ... In the eucharist of the simulated auto-
basically, the cars crash and the "dismembered" bodies of karen and talbot are all that's left... but it's a false death, as talbot has already stated: "a crushed fender: in its broken geometry talbot saw the dismembered body of karen notovny, the alternate death of ralph nader"... I'm surprised only karen's body is left at the end... only talbot is in the JFK limo... and koester with karen/coma in the attack car... how do they escape? but karen is indeed dead, as later talbot feels her body like a ghost on his...
regardless, the "growing distress and uncertainty" affecting talbot at the beginning is now resolved... death is so relaxing!
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[MH: 22 January 2007]
OK, I've now re-
RMcG wrote: yes... I've been pondering these shifts, as well... I've actually thought of doing a Nathan on the info, and try to chart it out chapter by chapter... In all cases, however, there seems to be a kind of transference, where normal cultural "manifest" -
step 1: disassociation from reality, or the reality principle
step 2: psychic tension, and development of a "conceptual" plan for relief
step 3: execution of plan -
step 4: catharsis and pleasure
Yes, that's a good summary of the overall structure of each of the chapters. But what's been bothering me for a while is that JGB suggests (for example in 'Notes from Nowhere') that, whereas many aspects of the 'manifest' content of the stories keep repeating themselves, the 'latent' content differs between chapters. I can see this for chapters such as 'You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe' and 'The Summer Cannibals', but the chapters 'University of Death', 'Atrocity Exhibition', and 'Assassination Weapon' (and also to some extent 'Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown') appear very similar ... so where, I wondered, lay the differences in the latent content? (This assumes that JGB actually did intend there to be substantive differences between these stories ... after all, his comment in 'Notes from Nowhere' actually pre-
RMcG wrote: the disassociation Tman goes thru in every chapter... he suspends his belief in the fiction of "reality" in order to supplant it with an alternate, self-
He certainly creates his own version of reality in each chapter, but I still get the feeling that the way he does it in Univ of Death is more 'internal' than in the other chapters. Maybe I'm just fastening onto minor differences between the different chapters, and re-
RMcG wrote: talbot may be disassociated, but I hardly find him passive... he's jumping karen, flying around, checking out roadways, running thru mazes, etc etc... plus he's had to plan the whole thing... and build sculptures
I don't view Talbot as actively 'planning' what the students are going to do, as some sort of Machiavellian plan for achieving his own ends (even if this is how Nathan describes it) ... it's just that the students will end up unconsciously assisting him. Maybe 'passive' was not quite the right word; it's more that the 'action' so far as Talbot is concerned lies more in his own psyche than in his relationship with others.
For example, the maze that Talbot wanders around in is surely a symbol for his own psyche: he enters it through a doorway cut into an image of his own face; he is led into it by one of the couriers from his unconscious (the pilot); "details of his hands and mouth signposted its significant junctions" [i.e. 'doing' and 'saying']; and in the middle of the maze he meets the other courier (the silent young woman).
It is Koester, Talbot's alter-
RMcG wrote: ... actually, it's interesting... they take him away to a deserted scene of endless road works, littered with busted cars... aren't these the outward images of tman's inner space? how important are these four paragraphs which describe tman and his "couriers"? first, they arrive at the "zone"... a sort of demolished and abandoned roadworks area... this could represent Tman's "mad" consciousness -
On my reading, these are the key sections: Talbot is led away from the 'real world' (the university, the students, Cathy Austin, Dr. Nathan), to find inspiration in his own psyche and in the messages from the quasars. Only here can he realize that "the rectilinear forms of his conscious reality were warped elements from some placid and harmonious future", and work out how to reach that future. He leaves the active role in the 'real world' to Koester; if Talbot is successful in finding a resolution to his difficulties, then he will be reintegrated with his alter-
It's only at the end of his time at the beach and the plaza (directly after his epiphany of 'The Annunciation') that Talbot "at last recognized a modulus that could be multiplied into the landscape of his consciousness" and finds "a key to ... the scenario that had preoccupied him at the Institute." Now he can "prepare for departure". It's noticable that from now on he *does* seem to play a more active role in terms of preparing the end-
Am I making more sense here, or am I lost in JGB's maze?
(Incidentally, one aspect of all this that I'm still thinking my way around is Nader's role.)
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[RMcG: 23 January 2007]
mike... interesting thots on uni/mort... I wonder: does it matter that much who is the most "active"? and I think all our chacters go into their psycho states wheneven (a) the "couriers" arrive, and (b) when helicopters arrive...
and as for nader, I think JG explains the "transference" in his notes... if car crashes are fertilizing, rather than deadly, then nader the car safety icon, known for his slo-
so the first conceptual death of WWIII is the mating of JFK and jackie as their limo crashes?
crazy... we'll get back to this in a week
happy reading!
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[MH: 1 February 2007]
RMcG wrote: and as for nader, I think JG explains the "transference" in his notes... if car crashes are fertilizing, rather than deadly, then nader the car safety icon, known for his slo-
Well, I was wondering whether by concentrating on Nader I could find a key to some aspect of Univ of Death that had passed me by.
But having looked again at the references to Nader, I think they're mostly about how the other elements -
As JGB says in an annotation for one of the later stories: "His assault on the automobile clearly had me worried. ... Looking back, one can see that Nader was the first of the eco-
Along those lines, I noted that the Wiki entry for Nader (which, incidentally, has substantially more on his political role from 1996 to 2004) contains the story that "just before leaving the Army in 1959 Nader made one last visit to the Army post exchange where he purchased twelve pairs of shoes and four dozen sturdy cotton military issue socks. The report goes on to say that as of the mid-
Are you still cogitating on Univ of Death, Rick? ... I've moved on to 'Great American Nudie'.
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[RMcG: 1 February 2007]
again, it seems old JG is obtuse (to use a geometric term) enuff to keep us guessing
basically, it seems that ralph offers a sort of religious blessing to the overall auto action
I'll move on to nudie with you....
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