Coincidental murder story?

This isn't going to be a deep reflection on Libra  because I've spent quite a bit of today thinking about a different story, my story.

I'm writing about Josephine Cochrane. If you don't know who she is, you should look her up. She invented the dishwasher. And she happened to do so in Shelbyville, Illinois which is about an hour and a half from here (I used to live there).

My story borrows from Libra and Mumbo Jumbo in that there is a conspiracy theory behind everything. There is a secret society of men who are working together to prevent the spread of this invention in anyway they can. They don't want women and servants liberated from the kitchen sink and able to challenge them in other areas.

Of course, this in itself would make a good story. But in a stack of books about Illinois in the 1880s and women inventors, I also brought home a book called Weird Illinois: Your Travel Guide to Illinois' Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. I got it on a whim, thinking something in it might help me out.

It did.

I found a story about H.H.Holmes, who was apparently a "diabolical druggist" and operated a "murder castle" at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 (the same fair at which Cochrane displayed her dishwasher). Apparently he is America's first known serial killer.

I won't recount the gruesome details of the gas chambers and direction tables in his "castle" or the stories of some of the more than 50 murders that appear to have occurred there. If you want some ugly Illinois history, check out the book when I return it or read this wikipedia page.

For Mr. Mitchell's sake, I won't tell you how I plan to use this information in my story (I want it to be surprising) but it probably isn't hard to guess.

Lesson learned: Looking for an interesting coinciding story to mesh with yours? Find a "weird" history book!

The KGB

Whenever Lee encounters anything to do with the KGB or the prisons or Gary Powers is mentioned I shudder inside because I have the faintest idea what that was like.

A few years ago, while I was living in Lithuania, I visited The Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius. It was the former KGB headquarters in Vilnius and it was terrifying. There are things about it that I absolutely can not forget. When I was there, it had been less than 20 years since the prison had been in active use, but it had rooms that seemed like Medieval torture chambers. Between 1940 and 1960, over 1000 executions took place in the basement of the building.

There are pictures which can not convey the awfulness that you feel when you are inside that building but  they might give you some idea:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mental_cell_in_museum_of_genocide_victims.jpg A torture cell.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2011/4/29/1304097386882/A-cell-at-the-Museum-of-G-007.jpg
A normal prison cell.
http://www.way2lithuania.com/sites/way2lithuania.com/files/museum%20of%20genocide%20victims.jpg
The execution room. The glass cases hold objects found in the room.
http://tampaxtowers.blogspot.com/2012/01/vilnius-kgb-museummuseum-of-genocide.html
A series of pictures from the prison and descriptions of the various rooms.
http://www.t52.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/lithuania-105.jpg
The basement hallway.

I know that what we sometimes read about the KGB and see in movies about the cold war is scary, but I haven't come across anything that conveys the true horror of what I saw in the Lithuania headquarters and I know that was just the tip of what they did. The true impact of the horrors was evident in the way people walked and interacted.

I heard that before the Soviet Union collapsed they used to display the bodies of people they had recently executed on the streets. They would post guards by the bodies and if anyone reacted as they walked by, those people were arrested because they must sympathize with the executed. So even twenty years later, people generally keep their eyes on the ground and they don't greet one another in the street. Every one has been trained to ignore others in case they are being watched by how the react to someone.

Anyway, that is a not very cheerful blog post but something to keep in mind as you read about the KGB. And it also makes you wonder what CIA headquarters are like.

Hidell

On about page 90 of Libra, I started to realize that there were occasional references to this "Hidell," whatever that is, that kept showing up in various places.

For example, the first time you see it is right after Oswald's nickname Ozzie the Rabbit is explained. All you get is this one little line:

"Heindel was known as Hidell, for no special reason." (82)

Seven pages later, it shows up again twice with very little explanation.

"Hidell in a dark jacket with a pouncing tiger on the back."
"Hidell means don't tell." (89)

I thought this next paragraph would help me understand when I first caught sight of it as I read.

"Take the double-e from Lee.
Hide the double-l in Hidell.
Hidell means hide the L.
Don't tell." (90)

But it didn't really help me all that much. I mean, seriously, if you take an ee+hide, you don't get anything that makes sense. And what does "Don't tell" have to do with it? Mystifying.

The next time this mysterious Hidell showed up I started wishing I had taken psychology and understood all of Freud's thinking. I feel like Lee, not really sure what ego and id really are but feeling like they must have significance.

"We live forever in history, outside ego and id. He wasn't sure he knew exactly what the id was but he knew it lay hidden in Hidell." (101).

And then yet another paragraph that seems to suggest an answer, but instead is more confusing. Clearly we have a reference to Jekle and Hyde, but exactly how that is being used I'm not sure. Perhaps Lee is considering himself both a jerk and a person who hides, and in that way he has a double personality. Or perhaps Jerke refers to his cellmate.

"Hidell means don't tell.
The id is hell.
Jerke and Hide in their little cell." (101)
"Hidell climbs the ancient creaking stairs" (109)

And the last one I found in the reading seems to refer to Oswald getting closer to the East.

"Hidell creeps closer to the East" (134)

Perhaps you can tell that as I finished my reading tonight I was getting pretty curious about what this Hidell was and what is signified. So I googled it. And guess what, Alek Hidell was an alias used by Lee Harvey Oswald! So it is important somehow! Now I get to keep watching references to this and wondering what DeLillo is trying to say with these short, semi-random interjections about Hidell. Stay tuned for a possible follow up if I figure this out!

Double YUCK!!!!

In response to Mr. Mitchell's comment on my previous post, I would just like to add to my last thoughts: DOUBLE YUCK!!!!

I've read some gross short stories, The Lottery being chief among them. But nothing compares to the grossness of "Lyndon." It is just DISGUSTING.

I do not really care to read page after page of detailed recounting of Lyndon B. Johnson's bodily functions (like the nasal inhaler--I can't take the constant information about LBJ sticking this thing up his nose and inhaling-ugghhh!). And I don't want to hear about his use of a wastebasket as a toilet or his meetings held in the bathroom. And what is with the narrator's husband's mysteriously gross wasting disease?

I would give you some examples of passages that make my stomach turn, but it just seems insensitive for me to subject you all to that.

So I'll conclude with this parting thought: all this detail makes me like Lyndon B. Johnson even less. It doesn't humanize him for me, it turns me off. I'm so glad that story is over and I hope Libra is totally different.

Sometimes I Just Don't Want to Know

In general, there is a point in relationships where you decide that either you want to get to know this person better (knowing that their could be stuff you don't want to know about or deal with) or you want to keep this relationship on the same level and go no deeper.

I'm feeling like I would rather take the second course of action with Lyndon B. Johnson. This short story,"Lyndon," has pushed me to a point where I'm thinking that the Johnson I read about in the history books was more pleasant than the mental picture I'm building as I read on page by page.

I think this is especially true of major historical figures. For example, I wouldn't mind learning more about some of the people in my classes or that I've met through various extracurriculars. They are interesting people and while their lives can be messed up, somehow that doesn't usually destroy my view of them.

But historical figures, they don't have a chance to redeem themselves. When you find out that the queen you looked up to was actually rather cruel, or that Helen Keller grew up to be very different than the girl who stuck her hand under a pump, or that Christopher Columbus wasn't the nice explorer you thought he was, you don't get to see them redeem themselves. Forever after, your image is tainted. 

That's not to say that knowing the truth isn't better than the idealistic picture. It's just more disappointing.

I guess all that is to say that I don't really want to read any more about Lyndon B. Johnson on a personal level. True or not, he's been ruined for me by a farting scene. I don't know if I'll ever be able to think about the huge impact he had on American history without seeing that scene.

I hope Libra isn't like this short story. Because there is truly some stuff I just don't want to know.

Analysis of Power: Think Small

If Mumbo Jumbo is a novel concerned with national and international power struggles between Jes Grew and the Wallflower Order, and Slaughter-House Five is about the effects of war (the epitome of international power struggles) on a generation of boys like Billy Pilgrim, then Kindred analyzes a very different type of power struggle, the power struggles in everyday human interactions and relationships.

Octavia Butler really focuses on the small shifts in power in the relationships between masters and slaves, and people from the future, in the ante-bellum south. Her book doesn't have as many slap-in-the-face postmodernist forms, in part I think because she is less interested in discussing the mega power struggles than she is in putting normal relationships under a microscopic and trying to understand how slavery affects people in the past, and how it still affects people in the future.

Is Rape Wrong When It's Not Wrong

All last week we kept coming back to the question, is Rufus' continual raping of Alice wrong when culturally it isn't really wrong? Can you judge a person based on the ethics and morals of another time? Are there absolute wrongs that transcend time and place?

I'm still not really sure how to answer that question. Sometimes I feel like Rufus must be totally wrong, even if to him it seems excusable. Other times I want to think he can't help but be a product of his time.

But what I find interesting in Kindred is that Dana seems to almost shift her position on this issue as time goes on.

For example, on her second trip back when Dana is almost raped by the patroller. Her response is immediately to defend herself, running and wrestling and eventually clubbing him (of course, minus the important first opportunity when she chooses not to gouge out his eyes). She believes rape is totally and completely wrong, a normal viewpoint in 1976 America, and so she flares up against it with a lot of anger and desperation.

She says:

He reached out and ripped my blouse open. Buttons flew everywhere, but I didn't move. I understood what the man was going to do. He was going to display some stupidity of his own. He was going to give me another chance to destroy him. I was almost relieved.

He tore loose my bra and I prepared to move. Just one quick lunge. (42-43)

On her last trip, Dana is also almost raped.

He pushed me back on the pallet, and for a few moments, we lay there, still. What was he waiting for? What was I waiting for?

He lay with his head on my shoulder, his left arm around me, his right hand still holding my hand, and slowly, I realized how easy it would be for me to continue to be still and forgive him even this. So easy, in spite of all my talk. (259-260)

Dana realizes that she has become so accustomed to 19th century ideas about rape and a man's right to do things to his slave women that she is in danger of silently accepting a rape. She had told Alice that she wouldn't go to Rufus, but she is right on the verge of giving in.

Dana of course then kills Rufus for trying, so at the last second it appears that her 20th century ideas about rape and what is acceptable behavior kick in and she physically defends herself. But it is dangerously close. Life in her ancestors' world almost took her from willing to defend herself from rape to silently accepting it. Almost.