Trayvon Williams tragedy(not)

[Mark Kohut]

----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Cc: 
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 9:19 AM
Subject: Re: Trayvon Williams tragedy(not)

David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have to say that playing literary word games with this boy's murder
> seems callous to me.
> Just sayin'...

first, please pardon me if I gave any offense.

But literary word games are pretty important to me.

I'm writing in a forum where none of us is personally acquainted with
either of the persons (please let me know if that's wrong), and which
is dedicated to literary contemplations.
A national tragedy is that such a country as ours, founded in the deepest statements
of equality and justice for all, have such LAWS on the books that allow such events 
not only to happen but to go tragically--sic---unpunished, uninvestigated, unaccountable
to 'the moral law within and the stars above". So far. 

That Stand Your Ground law, in how many states? is the most overt LAW that institutionalizes
the law of the jungle, every man for himself, kill or be killed, a state of nationwide seige on the street
that I have ever heard about. I still cannot believe it exists, showing my naivety. Why aren't simple 
self-defense laws enough? (I know, gun lobby pandering to.) Awful.
(In the way TRP wrote of the State of Seige that was History, meaning mostly institutionalized war
if I remember it aright.)

Literary thoughts? I think of Cormac McCarthy most as a writer who has given us self-styled, self-justifying
'street' violence as evil everywhere...
My literary callousness---and I know it is---is to remember Eudora Welty's story about Emmet Till's murderer
and to wish that someone would add to the massive righteous outrage over Trayvon Martin's murder 
with a story trying to put down on the page Zimmerman's head full of hate. (That's what Welty's story tried to do. )
Talk about a Candlebrow wish....

Michael, I wish I could have gone--made the sacrifice to go-- to the protest and visited you as well. 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm following up on my original post that started the thread in which
I used the term "tragedy" and refining what I think the tragedy of the
situation is.

Trayvon (afaik) didn't do anything wrong.  His plight and the
community problems surrounding it are being addressed by persons more
versed in those matters - as I expressed a hope for originally - thank
goodness!

I think anyone with a heart would be moved by what happened to him.
That's not in dispute, and I will participate in solidarity to the
best of my ability.  It's a sorrow, it's a shame, it's a cause.

But the tragedy, in Joyce's terms, is a person with good intentions
taking on inappropriate authority.  There is so much that excites pity
and terror in me:

a) that terrible feeling when one becomes conscious that one has made
a grievous error
b) the societal trends pushing gun ownership, Florida's
stand-your-ground law, racism, and for that matter, the criminals who
made a neighborhood watch seem necessary
c) the difficulty a young person has finding a place in society and
the way he apparently adopted the Neighborhood Watch as way too big a
part of his reason for existing
d) the apparent coverup by the Sanford police
e) Zimmerman's future - what will happen to him in prison?

The person whose conscious actions can be said to be the proximate
cause of a tragic occurrence is the tragic protagonist.
The problems that need to be addressed are the problems that this
person demonstrated.