Court of
Inquiry by The Messiah of Comedy Kingsley Amis http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/07/girl-20-by-astounding-kingsley-amis.html
10 out of
10
Court of
Inquiry is the second in the Collection of Short Stories by Kingsley Amis and
seems to follow on the footsteps of the first one, My Enemy’s Enemy, at least
one of the characters, the adjutant, shows up again in what is another story
about the military (apparently the shortest one that Medicine Man Amis has
written) inspired from the experience of the author, while he was doing his
military service.
We are told
this is 1944 and we have a mess hall and ‘only the fact that two or three of
them were also drinking stopped the place from looking like a barber’s waiting
room’ which shows you the incredible talent that the ‘Angry Young Man’ had for
hilarity, he was acclaimed as the best writer of comedy in the second half of
the last century – he would have competition from Evelyn Waugh, if it comes to
the whole 20th century.
The target
of sarcasm in this second short story would be the absurdity of officers in the
army, which seems to be a rule everywhere – think of that moron Flint, hired by
Trump and willing to have martial law and get the military seize the voting
machines, while taking money from foreign powers and saying nothing about it,
willing to give tyrant Erdogan an opposition figure living in the free United
States.
Then I
recollect what my cousin and once best friend – he has been living in Argentina
for quite a number of years, and I only saw him in the past thirty once, in 2006,
when he was cheering me on for having slapped Miss Romania in the 1990s, when I
was clearly an idiot…granted, at the time, it looked like the woman was saying
to this goodfella that she is ‘available’, when she called him from the
reception of the Lido hotel, where I was standing beside her, as her lover, I
thought, only she was saying on the phone that she has her assistant on cue,
hence I slapped what I saw as a pute…yes, I know, I am a goddamn son of bitch
and a monster- told me about the military, that they are all limited…
Promotions
are given to those who obey orders, and in our commie system – of which he was
mostly talking about – these were the subordinates, gorillas, dogs from the
magnum opus Animal Farm by George Orwell if you will http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/01/animal-farm-by-george-orwell-magnum.html that kept Ceausescu in power and
maintained the tyranny because of the privileges they had.
Once they
turned on him, Ceausescu lost his throne, faced the trial (it was not a fair
one, a kangaroo version, but we can also argue over the aspect that he was
clearly guilty of torture, massacre, hunger, brain washing, keeping people in
the dark and cold, imprisoned and the list is so long we better stop here) and
then he was executed by firing squad in Targoviste, about sixty miles north
from where I write this
By the way,
I took part in the 1989 Revolution, a contested rebellion, and then my
contribution was quite small, only hey, I went down to the Roman Square and
protested, along with just about two hundred others, while at the end of the
shooting show, tens of thousands showed up to claim certificates and the many
lucrative benefits…Andrei Finti should have a statue, but that will never
happen, for the same military, Securitate took over and then we had a sort of
neo-communist regime for another six years or so.
What was I
saying anyway…right, it was about Court of Inquiry, but the Kafkaesque http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-castle-by-franz-kafka.html situation of the short story made
me remember our own internal affairs in the days of the demonic Ceausescu, with
its similar excesses and atrocious injustices…in this episode from World War II, they do not reach the same
level of torture, ineptitude, violence and stupidity that we have seen in the
communist systems, but we have a foolish situation nonetheless
Major
Raleigh is the villain here, just as that vile adjutant was in My Enemy’s Enemy
– you can read a note on that tale on the blog http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – together with the general who
demanded to have a special courier sent to Brussels to take his dirty laundry,
though he would not state that, but claim he needs this for official business,
and then bring back cigars and wine, and he has the idea to organize a Court of
Inquiry.
His target
is poor, young Frank Archer, who has made another mistake, for he has lost a
charging engine, and that will be the object of the Court of Inquiry, however
preposterous this is, as our narrator, Jock is arguing, since the engine was
not in functioning, they have no spare parts for it, and besides, there is at
least another one, in good shape, with spares, which is available and nobody
claims…
However,
Major Raleigh says that ‘is not the point’ to which hilariously Jock retorts
‘do I hold Archer while you beat him up, or what’ and then we learn with
amusement that ‘the major’s modes of operation were often inventive, to the
point of romanticism’, albeit even for him that was farfetched.
Humor is so
abundant that the reader is regaled in just a few pages, which is the way of
Magician Amis, ‘three waitresses whose ugliness was too extreme to be an effect
of chance, but libido in Raleigh’s domain’ culminating with the drama show of
the Court, where Frank Archer puts on a formidable show (spoiler alert) where
he does mea culpa, admitting he forgot the engine, he is ashamed of letting the
company down, thankful for the help offered by Major Raleigh, which is in fact
non extant, for is there had been any, there would not be any Court of Inquiry,
this shows how intelligent Archer was, seeing that there was no alternative to
having Raleigh stop at the court, without that ostentatious penitence http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-anti-death-league-by-kingsley-amis.html
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