AtDDtA1: Safely within the Fictional Leaves

[Dave Monroe]

"...--a sinister affliction to which I pray we shall suffer no
occasion for exposure more immediate than that to be experienced, as
was Pugnax at this moment, safely within the fictional leaves of some
book ..." (AtD, Pt. I, Ch. 1, p. 6)


"book"

Against the Day?  The Chums of Chance and ...?  ...? ...

See, e.g., ...

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent; a Simple Tale (1907)

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/974

http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/jc/sa/sa.html

http://www.ductape.net/~steveh/secretagent/

http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7682

Chasing After Conrad's Secret Agent
It's the archetypal novel about terrorists. And everyone's getting it wrong.
By Judith Shulevitz
Posted Thursday, Sept. 27, 2001, at 3:00 AM ET

Ah, the perils of relevance! In the aftermath of the attacks on Sept.
11, Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent became one of the three works of
literature most frequently cited in the American media. (The other two
were poems by Wystan Auden: "Sept. 1, 1939"—also the subject of a
"Culturebox"—and "Musée des Beaux Arts.") The Secret Agent, a 1907
novel that depicts a sordid netherworld of would-be terrorists of the
anarchist persuasion and the twisted machinations behind a plot to
bomb a national monument, London's Greenwich Observatory, seems today
like a promising piece of prophecy—a literary Nostrodamus, an early
warning of the enduring evil of the nihilistic class.

But as King Oedipus learned to his dismay, and far too late, it is not
enough to know of prophecies. You must be able to interpret them
correctly. This is why it is partly comic, partly tragic that each of
the major articles of the past two weeks to make use of the The Secret
Agent gets the book completely, tellingly wrong.

The most inadvertently amusing case of Conrad-mangling is a fiercely
patriotic editorial in the National Review that likens the symbolism
of Arab terrorists flying into the World Trade Center to that of
anarchists bombing the Observatory, and both to barbarians sacking
Rome. What's the analogy? In all three cases, "national headquarters
and totems excite the fear and wrath of those in the world who feel
themselves shortchanged."

The NR thereby mischaracterizes the single most important plot twist
in Conrad's book. The Observatory bombers are not anarchists. The
culprits are an agent provocateur who has infiltrated the anarchists'
ranks and his half-witted brother-in-law. The mastermind of the plot
isn't an anarchist either. He's a Russian diplomat frustrated with the
refusal of the London police to arrest the anarchists. In short, a
foreign state sponsors an act of terrorism in order to provoke a
crackdown on terrorists; the incident has no relation whatsoever to
ressentiment. Conrad, though no fan of anarchists, was equally
skeptical of the governments that demonize them and of
journalists—like those at the National Review—who are quick to issue
jingoistic judgments about complicated events. Indeed, the Greenwich
Observatory not only never excites the "fear and wrath of those who
feel themselves shortchanged," it is so ludicrous a target that the
agent charged with carrying out its bombing is afraid to involve any
actual anarchists in the plot for fear they'll realize he's a fraud.
Instead he entrusts the explosives to his wife's mentally retarded
little brother. Naturally, the boy bungles the job and blows himself
up....

http://www.slate.com/id/116220/