The Courier's Tragedy

[Samuel Moyer]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Monroe" <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>



> Okay, this just in, only time for the back cover blurb
> right now, but, from J.W. Lever, The Tragedy of State:
> A Study of Jacobean Drama (London/New York: Methuen,
> 1987 [1971]) ...
>
> "The domination of the state over the lives of
> individuals is a problem of the present-day world.  In
> Jacobean tragedy J.W. Lever finds essentially the same
> problem in the shape it assumed during the rise of the
> first European nation states.  The English dramatists
> of the early seventeenth century are seen as giving
> expression to the ferment of ideas which, only a
> generation later, precipitated the revolutionary
> struggles of the 1640s.  Some of the major Jacobean
> tragedies are seen in this book as having a close
> bearing upon the vital issues of our own age; not only
> the evils of tyrrany but the ambivalent ethics of
> revolt are explored."
>

Thanks Dave - interesting.

A couple quotes from COL49:

p. 123 - To the boy off to negotiate with dolphins, his mother says, "Write
by WASTE... the government will open it if you use the other."

p123 - A night watchman, nibbling on a bar of ivory... trained his stomach
to accept also lotion....etc... in a HOPELESS attempt to assimilate it ALL,
all the promise, productivity, betrayal, ulcers, before it was too late.

p124 - For here were God knew how many citizens, deliberately choosing not
to communicate by U.S. Mail.  It was not an act of treason, nor possibly
even of defiance*.  But it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the
Republic, from its machinery.... there had to exist the separate, silent,
unsuspected world.

*Act of Defiance.  Think of Kramer from the Seinfeld episode where he
attempts to stop his mail: "I want out!"

I probably should have snipped more of the above quote by Dave... as I am
referring only to the first part:
>"The domination of the state over the lives of
> individuals is a problem of the present-day world."

On that topic there is also _Piano Player_ by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.  not to
mention the usual... Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury or Orwell's 1984, etc...

Sam