---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 108-page perfect-bound ISSN#/ISBN# issue/paperback book “Not There Anymore” cc&d, v331 (the March 2023 issue) Order the 6"x9" paperback book:

Order this writing in the book a Mural of a Forest the cc&d Jan.-April 2023 magazine issues collection book		get the 426 page Jan.-April 2023 cc&d magazine 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

The Hunchback of American Radicalism

starring

RANDOLPH BOURNE

in the title role

Michael Ceraolo


Our story begins in 1886
with what the start describes as a
“terribly messy birth” ,
his face disfigured by a forceps delivery,
and
continues with his contracting of spinal tuberculosis
at the age of four,
which
leaves him a dwarfed hunchback
“the worse the world treats a man,
the more it convinces him of the truth
of his radical interpretation of it”
Our story will end
with his death in the influenza epidemic in 1918,
scarcely six weeks after the armistice ending
‘the war to end all war’,
about which
he will have much to say
In between
he will see clearly,
so clearly
it sometimes seems he is speaking to today
And
he will be a radical for all seasons

culture
economics
education
politics
society,
etc.,
because
“Man cannot live by politics alone”

He is forced by the vagaries of family finances
to forego furthering his education for a few years,
and
is thrown out into the workforce in a series of jobs,
such as factory worker and piano tuner,
not common to the experience of intellectuals,
and others,
such as piano teacher and piano player,
a little more usual
“everyone
recognizes that in actual practice
our governmental system
is at the disposal of the corporation class”
the solution being to
“Abolish this hostile attitude of class towards each other
by abolishing the class struggle
Abolish the class struggle by abolishing classes”

He will graduate from one of the ‘finest’ universities
“Call this thing that goes on in the modern schoolroom schooling,
if you like
Only don’t call it education”
“may produce, at its best, a trained animal”
“it will not produce men and women”

He will not be an ascetic,
but
and eager seeker of the Beloved Community
“I am a battery that needs to be often recharged
I require the excitement of friendship”

He will be a literary critic,
possessing
“the raw material of the good critic—
moral freedom,
a passion for ideas and literary beauty,
vigor and pungency of phrase,
considerable reference and knowledge”
seeking to develop a
“criticism that will discriminate
between what is fresh, sincere, and creative
and what is merely stagy and blatantly rebellious”
realizing
“ ‘Society’ ”
“ the terrorism of ‘good taste’ ”
“is the deadly enemy of the literary artist”

He will say of the world he lives in
“Civilized life is really one aesthetic challenge after another”
“a laboratory to work out experiments in living”

He will speak of what he sees as the treason
of his fellow intellectuals
“The American intellectuals”—
“It is as if the war and they had been waiting for each other”—
“long forgotten that the real enemy is War”
“Our intellectuals have failed us as value-creators,
even as value-emphasizers”

He will glean the reality behind elections,
that the electorate is merely
“a ratifier of slaters,
or
a chooser between two slaters,
both of which
were pledged to upper-class domination”

And
he will speak eloquently of the effects of the war
(one of the effects unspoken of would be
the loss of the friendship of several former allies)
on the life of America
“The war”—
“the luxuriant releases of explosive hatred”—
“or
American promise;
one must choose”
“war orthodoxy becomes the sole test”
“Minority opinion becomes a case for outlawry”
“mystic devotion to the state
becomes the major imagined human value”

And
perhaps his best-known statement,
as true today as it was then
“War is the health of the State”

After his death he will gradually fade away,
needlessly

Forgotten Prophet
Speak Again
Todary

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...