The Official Blog of Konrad Ventana

“I know the difference between an architect and a bricklayer!!” shouted the indignant inventor to the scientific tribunal. “Do any of you?!!” The man rose from his chair and paced slowly, confidently as he spoke to the formal inquisition, which included the entire upper echelons of the academic institution. “There is a time-honored distinction between the phrase ‘conceived-by’ and ‘communicated-to’ and I, for one, am acutely aware of that difference!”

“Your tone is one of arrogance,” warned the magistrate, who represented the institute, who represented the community at large, who simply craved a piece of the action.

“Arrogance comes with the territory!” responded the author, the inventor, the creator of new ideas, new worlds, new devices. “A true inventor always knows where and when an original idea first comes into being—the rest of you are simply bricklayers, fabricators or, worse yet, imposters!!!”

.     .     .

We may never know if the aforementioned drama is actually real or not. Yet given that the judgment of history is both impeccable and verifiable, we might assume that this drama has actually occurred, and that it will continue to occur in tribunals around the world. For as long as the oppressive “industries” of our industrial societies are allowed to degrade, diminish, and obscure the vital role of the individual, as a creator, we shall all live with diminished returns.

When I gaze upon the artistic communities of our postmodern times, I see the dictates of sheer demographics and mass marketing strategies as a new and disturbing “reality show” that favors the crude profanity of gangsta rap, the faux fascination of 3D animation, and the school yard sorcery of Harry Potter; I see violence and vampirism targeted to teens and tweens; I see the storylines of Cirque du Soleil and Spider Man on Broadway. When each and every man, woman, and child is collectively bending someone else’s arms and spoons, what becomes of the artist?  When sheer demographics are permitted to define and delimit our humanity to such an extent, what emerges is little more than a tribal society that “shouts out” its own communal structure: its very own Orality. And when such dubious demographic “Orality” has completely displaced any and all forms of “Literacy,” who remains awake and alive to think outside of the smart-box?

To clarify: “Orality” is defined as thought and verbal expression in societies where the traditions of “Literacy” (especially writing and print) are unfamiliar to the majority of the population. Well then, that explains it!  That explains why the offspring of each successive generation are less and less aware of the preceding traditions from which their postmodern world was wrought; that is why so many seem to be incapable of thinking outside the box of pre-digested, massively-promoted “pablum” that is strategically foisted upon them as original art and/or entertainment. To each unassuming child who has not been trained to think critically—in terms of Literacy; in terms of History—every spoon that is magically bent, every sound bite that resounds, every animated hyper-reality that unfolds before their eyes appears as an original composition of their own unique and precious generation. It is no wonder the great herds can be seen walking, and running, and spinning their proverbial wheels for a cure—all in lieu of originality. Alas, fewer and fewer among us are able to reason well enough to even think of saving someone else’s life—that is, without the aid of sorcerers, fabricators, and imposters!

Along with the rise of sheer demographics and attendant mass marketing strategies is the rise of graphic (usually cinematic) violence, which serves as a catalyst and a shared experience that supports both the Orality and the Literary Myopia of a tribal society. As a tribe’s dependence on these galvanizing “oral occasions” increases, there is a concomitant decrease in scholarship and in Literacy, along with a noticeable, tragic devaluation of both the individual and the artist.

Go ahead, ask someone wearing Nouveau Bohemian attire on the way to the Whole Foods Market if they even know from what spiritual and literary traditions the term “beatnik” was derived; or ask them if they’ve ever read anything by Jack Kerouac. Drawing a blank? Here’s a hint from A Desperado’s Daily Bread, which appropriately pays homage to both traditions:

Being on the road, whether to Denver or Damascus, represents a dynamic state of mind, simultaneously illuminating and catalyzing a previously unnoticed yet soon-to-be-recognized epoch of events, pressing all civilizations forth on the momentous stage of cultural transition. (Chapter 3, On the Road Less Traveled)

Still not registering?  Okay, let’s make it easier: Let’s take, for example, the latest highly-publicized excitement over the next big thing: The Hunger Games—what an original idea for a story—that is, if one is utterly unaware of the preceding novels Battle Royale (K. Takami), The Running Man, and The Long Walk by Stephen King. While this next big thing has been savaged in the blogosphere as a blatant rip-off of the Japanese phenom Battle Royale (novel, manga, and film), there is much less mention of the classic story The Most Dangerous Game by R. Connell, nor any of the dozen or so film adaptations (1932, 1953), including Run for the Sun (1956), Turkey Shoot (1982), Surviving the Game (1994), and The Tournament (2009).  Now it’s really not my intention to pile-on or to criticize another pioneer of the pen; I will simply state that artistic innovation is easier said than done, and that the judgment of history is also indelible.

The point I am making is about Literacy and Intellectual Honesty.  The impact of Literacy on a culture is enormous—from pictograms, to the alphabet, to the electronic media and mass communications of today—creative writing is simply thinking that is recorded indelibly, historically for any and all to see: it restructures human consciousness in a highly sophisticated manner; it changes and expands the frontiers of human potentiality for the better; it prepares the mind to imagine new vistas of thought and action. It sets its (literate) cultural members apart from the Oral Societies, which have limited capacity to store information and thus have conveniently shed all memories of the past, while retaining only that information that is immediately profitable and/or of special interest to its present members (i.e., demographics). Such modern-day illiteracy equates to a poverty of mind.

.     .     .

Back to the beginning—to the aforementioned courtroom drama that is near at hand:

“We will drive you out!  We will spend you out!  We will wait you out … until you are dead!” Thus spoke the degenerate industries to the original author, the lowly inventor, the creator. “And then, when you are dead, we will sell it to your children in our own good time, and we will continue to prey upon the unwitting masses with impunity—because collectively we can!”

Fear not, brave soul who dares to stand alone against the tide, for these waves too shall pass. These seemingly oppressive tribal demographics are but fleeting castles in the sand.  Failing to aspire beyond themselves—failing to honor either the traditions, the literature, or the beauty that appertains to eternity—they will inevitably lose all sound and fury … and all significance.

Cheers and Best Wishes from Konrad Ventana.

Note: the above figure, a chapter frontispiece from A Desperado’s Daily Bread, was drawn by Heather Colleen Gordon.

Taking umbrage against the resident evils of his time, Victor Hugo penned and clandestinely published a series of scathing social critiques, stridently confronting the official propaganda machines of his day with an enlightened vision of the future that proved to be more powerful, and more lasting. Rising beyond the role of a political historian and commentator to that of a reformer, Victor Hugo elevated the Art of Literature, both fiction and non-fiction, to that of a “guiding light for society,” and his writings would become an integral part of the world’s collective memory.

In Napoleon le Petit (non-fiction) and L’Homme Qui Rit (the man who laughs) Victor Hugo took umbrage against the aggrandizement and tyrannies of the reigning president-prince:  “Ah! You’ll certainly end up screaming, wretched man!… History at my side exposes your shoulder.”

A man of conscience who wielded his words as bright swords against the vile and oppressive forces and coercive authorities that represented to him nothing but tyranny, Hugo was duly exiled from the realm. His idealistic call-to-arms is for the Poet to lock-and-load and prepare to take on an empire: In Hugo’s political tomes, it is the morning star, an agent of prophecy and rebirth, (which previously inspired Dante Alighieri) that inspires the Poet in a decisive call-to-action: “Get up, virtue, courage, faith!  Thinkers, spirits!  Go up on the tower, sentinels!”

In Victor Hugo’s luminous world, it is a privileged position to possess the eloquence of angels, to wield the awesome power of the written word, to serve as a faithful guide who would see one’s readers through the current darkness and into the light. Like Victor Hugo, we have the power of foresight because we, as writers, have not been lulled to sleep by promises of riches and the propaganda of princes and prigs; we see the future and are able to participate in its denouement because we dare to raise our vision and our voices—by virtue of a writer’s fidelity to one’s own, inalienable artistic ideals:  “From the old dead universe shatter the shell… The past is only the egg from which you hatch!”

Accordingly, in the process of elaborating the major philosophical and dramatic plot-themes of my own literary fiction, I endeavored to take on one or two glaring social issues in the course of crafting each individual novel of the Post-Lux Trilogy: Book 1. In A Desperado’s Daily Bread, the issue was abuse of authority, specifically child abuse, which is still rampant on the reservations, and in society [not to mention the self-proclaimed father of gene therapy who is currently serving time for such an offense]; Book 2. A major issue/sub-theme of The Unbearable Sadness of Zilch is the continuing subjugation and violence against women in Hollywood, which is countered by a strident feminist provocateur; Book 3. In Questing for Uberjoy, the resident evil is obviously the horrors of human trafficking, as well as the predatory aspects of men and nations, that are revealed and opposed by the high-minded drama. I may not be Victor Hugo or Dante Alighieri when it comes to embedding social criticism within literary fiction—when it comes to placing usurpers of liberty and human dignity forever in the pit—but it is certainly not for lack of trying.

Cheers and Best Wishes from Konrad Ventana to all who faithfully wield the power of the pen.

When readers first encounter the The Unbearable Sadness of Zilch—a Hollywood novel and Neo-noir by Konrad Ventana—they are immediately aware that this ultra-contemporary work of literary fiction is intensely philosophical; yet they are also aware that this riveting treatise on existentialism has been made readily accessible to the casual reader through the vivid scenes and engaging dialogues of these supremely-dramatic characters. Written with an artful, ever-expanding “cinematic eye”, the novel brings the failings of postmodernism into focus like never before. Indeed, not since Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Love of the Last Tycoon has Hollywood and the motion picture industry been seen in such a bold and illuminating light. Woven within the colorful tapestry of SadZilch-the-novel are multiple layers of meaning and connotation that begin with a simple phrase, like a delicate musical leitmotif [leading motif] which recurs and then expands with full symphonic sound and fury into something larger … something more meaningful … something that is terrifyingly real!!!

Take, for example, a simple phrase from the field of Modern Rhetoric: Language is a primary element of culture, and stasis in the arts is tantamount to death (Charles Marsh). To many, like the field of rhetoric itself, this may seem cut and dry. But in the hands of Doctor Joseph Metropolis (Philosophical Counselor of Sad Zilch) “Stasis in the Arts is Tantamount to Death” becomes a powerful, ever-expanding leitmotif  which serves as an indictment of our artistic malaise, our existential vacuums, our degenerate industries, our manufactured hyper-realities, and even our postmodern times. Those who know the man behind the pseudonym might even include the modern pharmaceutical industry (which has lost its guidance amidst the abject exploitation of illness) in the glare of Konrad Ventana’s perspicuous light. But, be that as it may, let us restrict the leitmotif and concept of “Stasis in the Arts” to (i) Sad Zilch, the movie mogul, (ii) the tragedy of a postmodern man, and (iii) the motion picture industry, as follows:

(i)  Zero Vaynilovich, aka Sad Zilch the movie mogul, lamenting the loss of his inspiration—

    “I tried and tried to focus on my work, on my art. Yes, of course, to win her back, to impress her as I once had in the
past, as I had when everything was new, when everything really mattered. But more importantly, I had to prove to myself that I could do it alone, as though I always could. But the more I tried, the less and less I succeeded.”

Zilch continued to pace the floor, moving in and out of the shadows with increasing rapidity.

     “Sure, sure, the wheels of Tinseltown still turned for me, doors were opened, actors and actresses swooned, rose
petals and jacaranda blossoms were strewn at my feet, but I could always tell that I had lost my edge. The more I tried to recapture that creative spark, themore derivative my films became, the more stylistic, the more extravagant, the more degenerate, the more lewd, the more violent. The further I fell from artistic grace, the more I had to rely on spectacle and the more grotesque it all became until, at last—damn it all—there were nothing but sequels to show for myself. In the end, and I tell you I am nearing the end, my movies have become, for me, a museum—a museum unto myself.”  Then he poured himself into a velvet chair, covering his face with his hands.

(ii)  The Glendale Train Crash, i.e., the tragedy of a postmodern man seen dramatically—

It was early morning rush hour when the limo arrived at the station…. At 6 am, Zilch was busy pacing the walkway of the newly renovated California mission-style station, gazing intently, even expectantly, up and down the railroad tracks, while the driver was busy parking the limo in a space beyond the Greyhound buses. I was about to comment to Zilch on the perfectly flawless qualities of this establishing shot of “business as usual” on the outskirts of Los Angeles when I noticed a sport utility vehicle that had curiously stopped upon the tracks.

It simply stopped … on the tracks … as in stasis.

There are no other words to describe it. When Charles Marsh said that “stasis in the arts is tantamount to death,” he didn’t mean maybe. Nor did he mean that a motion picture or a fountain is superior to a statue or a still life. Intellectual immobility is the point to be made here, and this day it was to be written in blood.

More and more people began to notice that the SUV wasn’t moving across the railroad tracks as automobiles usually do. They were beginning to notice the stasis.

The position of the SUV at a point crossing four parallel lines would not, by itself, be a matter of any concern—were it not for the ominous stasis—which made it a focus of immediate import. In the midst of the aforementioned stasis, the stalled SUV became a determinant object that would fuse two trains running fast in opposite directions; trains that would normally pass each other by in a blur barely noticed; trains but for the riveting crux of the looming stasis would never meet—but might now be forever fused in the horror of a backbreaking collision.

Men and women began shouting and yelling, and I think that Zilch and I were among them, but we were all immediately aware that there was nothing that any of us could do but watch—that is, to watch with increasing alarm as raw fear turned to panic and dread. I am certain that there were doctors and lawyers and carpenters and engineers and mechanics in attendance, not to mention the captains of industry, and there were people of every nation and race and creed on the railway platform—after all, this was happening in Los Angeles. But shout as we might, as we would, as we did, we did nothing to mitigate the stasis.

It simply stood as an inalienable fact, which we moderns have become accustomed to dealing with. It simply stood as an existential reality, along with the triumphs of our language and our logic and our vastly improved selves. It simply stood on the tracks as the sounds of the engines bore down, as we stood with our own stasis showing.

To the amazement of all, as the concurrence of two commuter trains approaches, each one traveling in equally opposite directions, a door opens, and a man scrambles out, leaving the sport utility vehicle on the railroad tracks. A door opens, and a man scrambles out, leaving all our expectations of normalcy and decency and causality at risk. A door opens, and a man scrambles out, leaving culture itself straining like a damsel in distress. In the hyper-reality of this particular town, a door opens, and a man scrambles out, so as not to miss the impending spectacle….

(iii)  The Motion Picture Industry, addressed in a poetic refrain as the curtains close—

Metropolis, Metropolis, Metropolis! El Metropolis de Los Angeles! Your once-guiding lights appear to have lost their candescence. The golden age of film has passed on into memories as the star machines that once launched a thousand heroes and heroines on voyages of the imagination have ground down to a merely degenerate preoccupation. Nowadays, there are only moth-eaten ghosts in the machine and petty politics and consumer demographics and reels of disillusionment. Thy modernization has spawned a generation of mediocre merchant-men too busy parsing the residuals in an industry of diminishing returns to contemplate the loss of their own inspiration.

What star have we postmoderns together fallen from to meet here at this impasse? Have we not sold our birthright of awe and wonder, laced with unbounded inventiveness and creativity, for the glimmering positivity of some laboriously constrained dialectic, along with the unequivocal certainty of our own superiority? When everyone in every hamlet becomes a countercaster, who among us remains to dig for nature’s diamonds; who remains to mine the regenerate gold?

And who but the lowly philosopher would dare to step dramatically upon such a worldly stage as this? And what would be his intent? He has but one intrinsic virtue to call his own: that is, his undying love of Sophia herself, as she is, as she ever was. And this is the dimension that is hereby added to “the whole equation [of motion pictures]” in the litany of postmodern man. For it is here in following carefully the steps of the intrepid philosopher—in his serious contemplation and ultimate re-vision of the eternal Dance of the Swans—that we find the unfortunate fissure of the beautiful-ideal from the terribly-real forever mended. His purposeful steps into Hollywood neo-noir are to redress that unhealed fracture of classicism and modernism, that gaping wound that separates our creative leaps of imagination from the dirge-like drudgery of our systematic progression with a strident promenade of enlivened aestheticism that is dramatically, psychologically, sociologically, and even philosophically profound.

It is not as unimportant as one might think, considering the wars we have at hand, for it is not only art and theater and drama at stake, but the most vulnerable parts of our societies that continue to languish on the chain of failed expectations. It is almost as if humanity itself hangs from the frayed remnants of this slender, gossamer thread.

Cheers with best wishes for renewed passion, inspiration, and drama from Konrad Ventana

Boulder, Colorado in the 1970’s was a happening place—a slamming, jamming, coming-of-age party, albeit brief, where Rocky Mountain High-minded aspirations from music to meditation held constant sway. On any given day, bare-knuckled rock climbers could be seen dangling in the background on the majestic Flatirons, while hard-core cyclists were careening madly around the University Hill in an all-out criterion race, which might soon sprint to a finish in front of the legendary Tulagi nightclub where the Doobie Brothers, the Eagles, or ZZ Top would be playing that evening … or it might finish on University Avenue where a child Guru would be arriving anytime in a great caravan of Rolls-Royces … or perhaps on Arapahoe Avenue where the founder and faculty of the freshly established “Buddhist-inspired” Naropa Institute (not yet Naropa University) would be reveling in their adolescences—after a long day of chasing “Crazy Wisdom”—in hot tubs under the frolicsome hands-on tutelage of Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, and William Burroughs.

In my first Post-Lux (after the light) novel, entitled A Desperado’s Daily Bread, these facetious sentiments are fondly and somewhat humorously expressed by Wade, the outlaw biochemist who has returned to his youthful stomping grounds after being banished—by weight of his intellect—from the realm:

“Back again in Boulder, thought Wade. A commodious carnival stop for the endless wagon train of spiritual hucksters, gurus, yogis, maharajas, magicians, hard-bodied aesthetes, disembodied poets, fulminating mimes, and other serious clowns bent on celebrating the high tea of divine rapture with fervent, entrepreneurial zeal while chanting concubinal kumbayas amongst the ever-bountiful crop of perfectly mindless devotees that migrate to the virtual base of the Flatirons each year, providing a valuable renewable resource for the never-ending circus of mental masturbation that has been legitimized and even sanctioned by the citizenry in the incense-laden bordellos of the People’s Republic of Boulder.”

For me and many of my generation Boulder in the 1970’s was a place and time of youthful
passions and unbridled aspirations, whether those youthful passions were athletic or poetic, whether those unbridled aspirations were manifested as rock climbing, skiing, biking, dancing, astronomical contemplations, astral projections, or transcendental flower arranging.

To this day Boulder, Colorado remains for me an ethereal place where the air is thinner, the night skies are physically darker, and the days and tender memories are brighter than anywhere else. I can still remember standing completely alone one night under those dark, dark skies, having attended a study session in quantum physics at the university department named after George Gamow—the  pioneering cosmologist whose work in Big Bang nucleosynthesis (element-making) helped explain the formation of the primal chemical elements in the early universe. Looking up into the great expanse of fathomless emptiness above me, I felt terribly alone, practically insignificant, and yet I felt that I too might someday manage to do something that magnificent; that I too might someday reach into the very fabric of nature and extract something that elegant; dare I say it, something that “beatific.”

Looking back over the span of space and time that constitutes a lifetime, I realize now that this alienating quest for contribution I experienced in Boulder that night had served to lead me on into the darkest recesses of our biological nature—yet it would not be physics but “biophysics” that would define my life’s work; not primal chemical elements but “biochemistry and cancer genetics” where I would finally make my mark. Driving back into the Rocky Mountains at night after many years away, I realize that it is all still here:  it is here in the unmitigated darkness of these Rocky Mountain skies, in the unrequited emptiness of the aspiring heart, in the all-aloneness of the impassioned soul that there is still such radiance to be found.

Cheers and Happy Trails from Konrad Ventana

With the publication of Book Two of the Post-Lux Trilogy, The Unbearable Sadness of Zilch, I was delighted when an industry-savvy movie producer found something vibrant and compelling in the ultra-modern themes and characterizations of this Hollywood Neo-noir. Before long, I found myself involved in the adaptation of my story and characters into a full-blown screenplay for SadZilch-the-Movie. What followed was a series of stimulating discussions concerning the central importance of the Detective, his personal code, and his mission as a knight-errant on the mean streets of LA—as was skillfully, historically elaborated in Raymond Chandler’s essay, “The Simple Art of Murder.”  However, at one point in time, a professional screenwriter asked me to summarize the “Credo” of my Detective, who is not a Private Eye in search of some “Hidden Truth,” but a Perspicuous Eye: i.e., a Philosophical Counselor (to the Stars), who is engaged to find the “Lost Beauty” and love interest of a movie mogul, Zero Vaynilovich. The request was so sincere, so earnest, and yet so quaint that I endeavored to set the stage, philosophically speaking, for the entire SadZilch development team, as follows:

From Konrad Ventana to the SadZilch Development Team: “Philosophical Counseling is Not a Personal Philosophy, but a legitimate field of Modern Medicine and Psychotherapy.”

Author’s Introduction: 

There are times when men of science and philosophy reach beyond the status quo of contemporary traditions to contemplate and develop avant-garde  visions—ideologies that are way ahead of their own times, at first, only to have such ideologies become the center of modern culture at a later date. During such transformative times, these thinkers tend to circle the wagons, so to speak, and it is in these philosophical “circles” that one finds the crux of what is yet to come.  It was in the Parisian Literary Salons of Gertrude Stein where we find the literary and pictorial foundations of modern art. It was in the Vienna Circle of the Psychoanalytic Society where Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and other notable scientist-philosophers hammered out the foundations of modern-day psychiatry. It was in another Vienna Circle where a group of early twentieth-century philosophers including Rudolf Carnap sought to advance and (re)conceptualize aspects of Empiricism (contra-Metaphysics) in accordance with recent advances in the physical and formal sciences—thereby establishing the foundations of modern Symbolic Logic and Logical Positivism (Note, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, I studied under Seth Sharpless, a student of Carnap who taught at the University of Chicago).

I mention these philosophical summits, in introduction, for we are currently in the midst of another epic transition/ advancement of modern philosophy, science, and medicine! [No, it is not the advent of Targeted Genetic Medicine of which I speak—but thank you for bringing the enlightened thought to mind.]  Actually, the epic transition of modern medical praxis I refer to is the (re)emergence of Philosophical Counseling as a rigorous, legitimate, and vital aspect of post-modernism.  “Bah! Humbug!” you might say??  Throughout the 2500-year history of Western philosophy, philosophers have always dealt with issues that have concrete applications, and in so doing they have developed a wide spectrum of practical ideas regarding how life should be understood and lived. Right you are!! But are you aware of the fact that Socrates himself is quoted (in Plato’s Theaetetus) as saying that, “the philosopher is a midwife who helps other people give birth to their own ideas.”? Pretty cool, huh??  Rather than providing a dogmatic prescription or formula for someone suffering from some form of imbalance and/or dis-ease, the true philosopher (nowadays, the Philosophical Counselor) is one who is well versed in all of the methods of Philosophical Practice, although he just might specialize in the treatment of Existential Malaise, like Dr. Joseph Metropolis (as described in detail in Chapter 1), along with the associated syndromes, such as Metaphysical Vertigo.

Rather than attempt to persuade anyone that Philosophical Counseling is rapidly coming of age, and is sure-as-shootin’ poised to give now-classical Psychiatry a run for its money, suffice it to say that I am sufficiently impressed with its recent advancement to consider the whole thing rather perspicuous.  Seriously, the modernist-foundations of this field began with the German Philosopher Gerd Achenbach, who founded the first formal Association for Philosophical Practice in 1982 (Gesellschaft fur Philosophische Praxis), which quickly expanded to include branches in Holland, Switzerland, Norway, France, Italy, Canada, Israel, and South Africa. In the USA, the American Society of Philosophy, Counseling, and Psychotherapy is currently focused almost entirely on Philosophical Counseling, and is working towards establishing the new profession in this country (Sorry, advanced degrees are assuredly required). Although we may indeed be comfortable with the typical role and character-arc of the intrepid Private Detective, steeped in the predictable Existentialism of classical film noir, we are emphatically reminded by Dr. Joe Metropolis, PhD, LPC, Philosophical Counselor—in his treatment of the Unbearable Sadness of Zilch—that “Philosophy is not a game for knights.”

Now Finally, in terms of Doctor Joe Metropolis (as requested by the screenwriter): Dr. Metropolis does not exude or lay claim to a singular personal philosophy per se.  Rather, he has the wealth of both Western and Eastern civilizations in hand. He is truly philosophically astute, so to speak, and as such he may recommend a touch of Empiricism, a lilt of Positivism, a dash of Stoicism, or a tincture of Humanism—depending on the particular case (and/or Future Episode … hint … hint), and depending on the degree of severity of the Philosophical Imbalance, the dubiousness of the patient’s assumptions, and/or the acuteness of the dreadful dis-ease at the time of presentation.  However, to really understand the marrow of the man—as I just happen to do—you need only to look to Shakespeare’s Hamlet for a dramatic perspective.  Cut-to: poor sober-minded Horatio, a model of rationality (recall, Wittenberg Univ. equates to Humanism), who is struggling with the whole business of Ghosts, which are not the sort of beings that his “philosophy” can easily take into account:

Horatio:  “O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!”

Hamlet:  “And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

In other words, Dr. Joseph Metropolis, like Hamlet, like Konrad Ventana, leaves healthy room for the divine.

–stepping beyond the themes and conventions of Film Noir

Certainly, there was a time of disillusionment following the Second World War, when waves of suspicion, cynicism, and despair swept across the continental philosophies like a great funereal shroud, sounding the death knell for both innocence and optimism regarding the elevated nature of man. Steeped in the bitter dregs of Darwinian struggles, Nietzschean nihilism, and Freudian psychosexual rationale, it is no wonder that continental philosophy turned to a darker shade of pessimism in an effort to embrace and explain the sinister side of human nature.

The philosophical revolt against the positivisms of the Enlightenment, along with the erosion of religious sentiments, reflected these horrific, damaging consequences on the cultural psyche of artists as well as intellectuals. Indeed, it was not only the modern academic philosophers of war-torn Europe who brought down the pessimistic, nihilistic, fatalistic curtains of the night—with such novels and plays as Nausea (Sartre), The Stranger (Camus), and No Exit (Sartre)—the darker shroud of existentialism was already seen advancing in the United States, as evidenced by the narrative forms of fiction and cinema that is known as American noir.  From American hard-boiled crime fiction of the 1930’s to Hollywood film noir, this distinctively darker shade of existentialism gradually took root on American soil—while fear, despair, paranoia, mistrust, and loss-of-innocence motifs set-in as its dramatic means of expression—while lust, greed, corruption, and vice set-in as its attendant motivational conventions.

Cut to our postmodern times:  to the great American frontier—to the post-Darwinian, post-Nietzschean, post-Freudian, post-Jungian, post-Einsteinian, post-Aldous Huxlean, post-Walt Disneyan, post-Bohemian, post-Derridean, post-beat, post-hip, post-war, post-graduate, post-perspicuous persona non grata that represents the inspired individual (i.e., the artist) in our Graceless Age of the Inner Dark.  It is in this context that the intents and purposes of Konrad Ventana’s Post-Lux Trilogy (literally after the light) can best be understood and appreciated. It is only by understanding the insidious nature and progression of this “Inner Dark” more fully—as it exists and is manifested in our postmodern times—that we as individuals and as artists can possibly stand opposed to its bleak and dire consequences with an equal and opposite force.

Each individual novel of the Post-Lux Trilogy explores and exposes a distinctive aspect(s) of the “Inner Dark” as it is dramatically expressed in the purposeful, indelible terms of literary fiction:

For Wade, the outlaw biochemist in A Desperado’s Daily Bread (Book One), the “Inner Dark” is expressed symphonically as (i) the corruption of our academic institutions, (ii) nightmare hosts of the living dead (“…men and women and children—lepers all, with rotting flesh dissolving onto naked bone; some barely recognizable, barely human, with boils, ulcers, tumors, gangrenous, suppurating cankers, and vacant sarcophagean eyes.”), and (iii) the vile abuses of authority:

“The voice of lamentation carried over great distances—it carried with it the history of men and nations, it carried with it the terrible shame of abomination, it carried with it the inner darkness of all mankind, like a shadow creature crying pain, pain, pain—and the shrillness of its punctuated phrases did nothing to help Wade’s cause.”

For the gaggle of unfortunate characters dramatized in The Unbearable Sadness of Zilch, a Hollywood neo-noir, it would be the loss of artistic inspiration:  “… it would take a special kind of nursing to restore a confidence so badly damaged, to coax a man’s flagging vigorousness back to life, to assuage the persistent insomnia of someone who has suddenly become terrified of his own inner dark.” Another aspect of the “Inner Dark” described in SadZilch is shown with dramatic visual special effects (VFX) in an outrageous Tech Noir: “Indeed there was bitterness, as in the bitterness of life and hope defeated, but the fear that was being created was not the fear of the high technology but the fear of what dark forces lie simmering within ourselves.” Finally, the “Inner Dark” in SadZilch-the novel  is dramatized as the imp of the perverse:

“And now I find myself backed up into a dark corner, forced to examine the countervailing coercion of mankind—the imp of the perverse—that primal bestial instinct that betrays creative genius and plants the vile seeds of annihilation into the material and spiritual filaments of the cosmos.”

“How in the world could someone have ended the life of such a beautiful, such an innately glamorous creature?  What vile malevolence could be responsible?  What ‘imp of the perverse,’ dredged from the nethermost depths of Poe’s catacombs, has been unleashed upon us?”

At risk of overstepping the boundaries of this author’s literary Weblog, I suggest that there are many allegorical aspects of the “Inner Dark” to be explored and discovered in Questing for Uberjoy, the grand finale of the Post-Lux Trilogy—from the predatory nature of men and nations, to the evils of human trafficking and child soldiers; from the physical diseases we know as cancer (Weblog, The Scariest Campfire Scene Ever!!!), to the metaphysical demons of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Suffice it for me to reveal, and to complete this composition, with two exemplary quotations from the heartsick hero who comes alive as drama, flesh, and blood:

“He was no longer blind to the desperate needs and pathos of the uncivilized world at large. In his rude awakening, Orion was forced to realize that there were still real monsters and dragons that needed to be hunted down and slain. Moreover, he was forced to realize that these lingering monsters, these internecine demons, were not external to the human condition and could no more be removed with the flight of an arrow or the stroke of a sword than the demons of envy, greed, lust, and predatory behavior could be banished from the human personality; no more than the monstrous ego itself could be removed from the labyrinth of the human psyche.”

“… As he began to question the value of all his previous values, he started to realize that he may be the only human being alive who was so unreasonably equipped and compelled—compelled by an inexplicable burden of passion and desire, fused with his rather extreme determination and capability—to make such a momentous and irrational decision. For Orion, the decision not to try and save his beloved Uberjoy would be a far greater tragedy.”

Indeed, for intellectuals and artists of the postmodern present, the decision not to try … to explore … to expose … and thereby to oppose the destructive tendencies of the “Inner Dark” with an equal and opposite force would be our greatest tragedy.

Cheers and Happy Trails from Konrad Ventana

Note: the hand-drawn images of the Boulder Flatirons, “Desperado” Chapter Frontispieces, were provided by the artful hand of Heather Colleen Gordon

I can still recall the first time I visited Walden Pond on a misty winter’s day.  Having read deeply, or rather “sucked out all the marrow” from Henry David Thoreau’s literary retreat into the woods, I vowed that one day I too would live so deliberately, so solitarily, so close to nature that I might feel that inspiration which is lovelier than diamonds descending all around me like heaven’s crystalline tears. Back then, I was a college student in Boston and there were classes to attend, unfinished reports and exams to consider—not to mention the constant demands of friends and lovers. My time for getting “snowed in” to read and write deliberately would have to wait.

While I always held the idea of a purposeful writer’s retreat in my mind, my life dictated other priorities, and it turned out that my own soirée into the lofty realm of creative writing would have to be made on the run, on the fly, catch-as-catch-can. Far from the invigorating solitude of Walden Pond, my aspiring work in literary fiction, like many other contemporary writers, would have to be crammed into the bursting seams of an already overcrowded day. Fortunately, I discovered that creative writing is its own reward—whether that writing occurs on an urban subway train, the back of an airport limousine, or the shoulder of a California freeway, where one has stopped momentarily to capture a sudden downpour of figurative diamonds. It is in that purposeful “swink” of one’s own thoughts and writings: that exquisite effort unto exhaustion that deliberately places the mundane world temporarily on hold, that there is both solitude and bliss to be found.

And then there are those blessed days and nights when one’s fictional characters are developed to the point where they have recognizable voices and urges of their own; days and nights when they wake you up and urgently tug on your sleeves to draw you further into their adventures/romances/journeys. Indeed, there are days and nights when your computer is miles away and your favorite writer’s journal and quill give way to a simple scrap of paper and a pencil, or even a napkin; for that is all that is required for you to walk on the wild side. Those crystalline tears from heaven itself come pouring down upon you, be they the winter snows of the high Himalayas or simply some flakes of ash wafting to earth from a nearby California wildfire.

Many years later, having paid my dues and made my contributions to society as a research scientist, a university professor, and a corporate CEO, I had an opportunity to purchase some remote ranch land in Southern Colorado and to gradually build a cabin—little by little, year by year—which would someday serve as a writer’s retreat.  There is a pristine lake that is now frozen over for the season, a span of majestic mountains along the horizon, and a sparkling blanket of snow on the ground. This year, I hope to inhabit this place more often and to get “snowed in” for dramatic effect. It is easy to feel the call of the wild and to admire the face of nature in a place like this. Yet, every time I press my pencil to the paper, I am reminded that the solitude of a Walden Pond, the simplicity of a rustic cabin, and the sincerity of effort that leads a writer back to the wilderness is but a dream of beauty that comes into being every now and then on the landscapes of a writer’s mind.

Cheers and Happy Trails from Konrad Ventana

As a university professor, I tutored and trained a number of elite-tier students who were well on their way to achieving success in their chosen professions, yet I have always had an affinity for those unique and capable individuals who carried within them an elevated sense of “mission” and “purpose” throughout their studies—as though they were striving for something beyond a lucrative occupation, something beyond a conventional run-of-the-mill contribution: something vital, beyond the ordinary, which set them apart from their peers.  Such gifted individuals seem to carry within them an aesthetic ideal and an elevated desire that seems, to some, as the desire of the moth for the star; but to me, that splendid effort to reach a greater level of understanding and accomplishment is simply, innately artistic.

Such artistic individuals, whether they are college students, or distinguished colleagues, or merely friends of ours, also seem to suffer more greatly the slings and arrows of both daily living and outrageous fortune … taking arms against an unseen sea of troubles … taking on inordinate responsibilities for creativity, or for humanity, which may, at times, seem crushing. It is in support of such “imprudent individuals”—those rare and noble artistic souls who would dare to imagine, to strive, to suffer for some elusive Dream of Beauty that appertains to themselves and eternity alone—that I make the following pronouncement: “Don’t worry, dear hearts. You are still on the path.”

These supportive sentiments were recently recast in a scene from Questing for Uberjoy, where the heartsick hero is panicked and in deep despair, thinking that he just blew his one and only chance to rescue the love of his life who was kidnapped in Nepal in the midst of the People’s (Maoist) War.

Orion looked around several times and then, for lack of anything else to go on, slid his pack and then himself into the backseat of the tiny automobile. His mind reeled at the thought that his hero’s journey had come to an end before it had even begun. Lamentations poured from his heart as they drove away in silence. No! his mind cried. He wanted to protest out loud, to beg the driver to turn around. His mind raced. Surely, they could go back; surely, he could convince the translator that he had the right answer after all. Think, he told himself, forcing his mind to calm. What should I have said? He tried to search the corners of his mind and heart for the proper interaction that would have led him on a different course, not this one along which the silent taxi was now descending—descending from the promise and expectation of the sacred temple, descending into the harsh traffic and congestion of the bleak capital city, descending down toward the oily tarmac of the airport that represented nothing but failure. Orion was filled with a penetrating sense of hopelessness and despair that was very nearly inconsolable.

“Don’t worry, sahib,” said the driver to Orion. “You are still on the path.”

May these assuring sentiments come to mind, to those in need, when such words are needed most.

Cheers and Happy Trails from Konrad Ventana

Note: the attached photo, a Chapter Frontispiece, was kindly provided by Tom Dempsey at Photoseek.com.

Having received several inquiries regarding the frightening “Campfire Scene” (Chapter 7) in my latest novel, Questing for Uberjoy, I am delighted with such reader’s interest and I am willing to confirm that that the real-life source of this material is both tragic and true.  The heroic victim of this terrifying campfire story is actually a composite of two young men who lived and died quite bravely.

The scene begins when Orion—the sincere but naive Lifeguard/Eagle Scout/Ski Patroller—finds himself among a hard-core band of mercenary brothers, high in the Himalayas of Nepal in search for his fiancée, a beautiful Peace Corps volunteer teacher who has been kidnapped by the Maoists who are taking over the country. After a brief skirmish and a hard day of wilderness trekking, a member of the Deep Reconnaissance Patrol asks Orion, what’s the worst kind of rescue situation he has ever encountered as a civilian:

The men sat together in silence, watching the hypnotic flames of the campfire as they fluctuated entrancingly in the gusts of the cool evening breezes. They were all physically tired enough to sleep standing up, but their minds were still reeling from the drama of their narrow escape, and they were not yet ready for slumber.

“Tell me, Deadly Do-Right,” said LaFleche abruptly, “now that you have been formally initiated into our little band of brothers, tell us what life is like in your neck of the woods. Tell us what it’s like to be a national ski patroller out on a civilian search-and-rescue mission.”

“Do you really want to know, or are you just being sarcastic?”

“I mean it, man. Tell us your favorite story about a ski rescue mission that went bad or something—something badass that we might be able to relate to.”

“Yeah, tell us something really dark and scary that we can relate to.”

“I don’t think you guys are serious enough for me to even bother, and it’s too bad.”

“No, really, dude, I promise you that we will be all ears. Come on, man, you’ve got a captive audience.”

Orion thought about it for a while. And then he rose to his feet, placed several large sticks onto the wuthering campfire, and began to tell his story.

The campfire story itself I leave for future readers to discover and enjoy, as is the intention of all literary fiction. However, in response to the reader’s queries, I affirm that there was indeed an American teenager who broke his leg skiing at Lake Tahoe, only to find that his fateful descent down that icy ski run was just the beginning of a darker descent into the tragedy of bone cancer and the netherworld of so-called modern medicine where he would be cut and burned and poisoned again and again in a declivitous spiral of loss and woe; and yet he continued to “fight like a soldier,” inspiring those around him to move mountains in search of a remedy that he would not live to see. There was, indeed, a second teenager who was similarly stricken with terminal bone cancer and was nearing death’s door; and yet, due to the advent of an experimental targeted genetic medicine, this boy received clinical benefit to such an extent that he was able to complete all the arduous requirements to become an Eagle Scout.  The implicit connection between these two young men—like the theme of this novel—is that “each and every life well-lived” may be of significant benefit to another.

What makes this campfire story particularly horrifying to the reader—as well as the members of the Deep Reconnaissance Patrol, who were used to facing life and death on their own terms—is a creeping awareness of the inescapable reality that those grievous errors in cellular replication, which lead to cancer, could happen to each and every one of us on any given day or night.

Note: the attached photo, a Chapter Frontispiece, was kindly provided by Tom Dempsey at Photoseek.com.

Having recently completed and published the third and final volume of the Post-Lux Trilogy, a number of astute readers have expressed genuine interest in learning more about that unique and compelling narrative/cognitive perspective which I advanced in these postmodern novels as a “Post-Perspicuous” point of view. Of course, I am delighted when such savvy readers seek to look beyond the obvious: beyond the author’s photographic persona, beyond the monocle of Sad-Zilch the movie mogul to “look behind the curtains” of the stories for the hidden philosophical, literary, and dramatic elements at hand. 

It was none other than Edgar Allan Poe—that champion of artistic Truth (the satisfaction of the intellect) with a semblance of Passion (stirrings of the heart) and a keen sense of Beauty (that which excites the sensitive soul to tears)—who first encouraged would-be creative writers to eschew the banal, the conventional, and the quaint in defense of “the true,” as he put it:

“The demands of truth are severe. She has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that is indispensable in song is all with which she has nothing to do. To deck her in [gaudy] robes is to render her a harlot. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers…. Let us then be simple and distinct. To convey “the true” we are required to dismiss from the attention all inessentials. We must be perspicuous, precise, terse.”

Adding a tincture of Veracity to the concept of intellectual clarity, we infuse our narratives with Poe’s supreme dictum: “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” The exquisite horror of the “Inner Dark”—those figurative and literal realities that are opposed by the Outlaw Biochemist in A Desperado’s Daily Bread—can be appreciated, not only by postmodern writers, but by any modern-day rock climber who has eschewed all three cardinal rules of rock climbing and attempted a flash (first climb), free-solo (without protection), well beyond his experience level (and, thus, is experiencing the death-wobbles).

“It was here in the midst of the Dreaded Big Wall Epic that things had taken a turn for the worse. For self-doubt is an insidious thing under the best of circumstances, but here in the immediate kairosis time of a free soloist on the uppermost reaches of the Pages [rock formation], it can be disastrous…. The certainty of death resulting from a tragic fall at this point on Pages Wall, along with its attendant horror, was fast becoming exquisitely real. Wade’s whole body began to tremble with the emergence of a quivering terror, and he started to freak with the realization that he had just trapped himself on Pages Wall without a secure foothold.”

Adding a dash of Luminosity and a pinch of Death to the seminal concept of Perspicacity is Victor Hugo: a man standing upon the brink of an abyss … upon the brink of death … striving to distinguish the world of shadow from that of light. Thus, combining E.A. Poe’s Perspicacity and Victor Hugo’s Luminosity in The Unbearable Sadness of Zilch, we find Doctor Joseph Metropolis, PhD, LPC, Philosophical Counselor to the Hollywood Stars and Movie Moguls:

“I’m a very important man in this town, a real big shot, if I do say so myself.” Zilch glanced around [my] office as if to compare his lofty appointment with the meagerness of its trappings…. “I have several thousand people who work for me.” Zilch continued, “and when I tell them to do this or that, they do it, and quick!”

“I see,” I said as I focused on that dull glimmer of helplessness that stood defiantly in the furrows between the blackness of his pupils and the dull metallic gray of his muscular irises that locked onto you like a Saturday-night special in a dark alley.

When a prospective client is talking to you, you listen to what he says with his eyes.  It might seem strange to say but the luminous world is a nearly invisible world…  In the words of a French playwright, “Our eyes of flesh see only noir.” The demands for luminosity, like the demands for truth, are severe… Yet, in the process of seeking this elusive luminosity, we verify our gifts of insight and intuition. In probing for these psychological truths, we descend from metaphorical supposition; we become simple and distinct. In the words of Edgar Alan Poe, patron saint of the detective-fiction genre, “To convey ‘the true’ we are required to dismiss from the attention all inessentials.” To find true luminosity, we must become, in a word, Perspicuous!

I simply nodded in affirmation, for I had heard enough and seen enough to engender a necessary degree of sympathy for the man named Zilch.  So I’m his last hope. He’s lost his gal, and he feels all dead inside. He’s backed up into a dark corner and he doesn’t know who’s hitting him. It’s like I’ve heard this all before, like the voice of a hard-boiled Private Detective in an old black-and-white movie reel. Only, now, in the ultra-neo-noir of our contemporary high society, it is not the Private Eye who is called upon to find some hidden Truth, it is the Perspicuous Eye who is called upon to find the lost Beauty.”

In future posts, we will see how these “Post-Lux” concepts of Perspicacity, Literal Reality, Inner Darkness, and Luminosity all come together in the grand finale of the narrative series—that is, the postmodern Hero’s Journey depicted in the outlandish novel Questing for Uberjoy.