Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Incurious Case of Alex Zinc

WEAVER: My name? Alex Zinc.
JUDGE: Where were you born?
W: Oh, in Nuremberg--that illustrious ancient city; rightly famous, honest judge.  First, because certain laws were passed there, that are of no interest here.  Second, for a debatable trial.  Third, because the best toys in the whole world are produced there.
J: Tell me...how you lived; and don't lie.  It would be useless here.
W: Oh, I was hardworking, your honor.  Stone on top of stone; deutsche mark after deutsche mark.  I founded a model industry.  The best buckram, the finest felt were made by the Zinc Company.  I was a humane and diligent boss: honest prices, generous salaries, never a complaint from my consumers, customers.  And above all, as I was telling you, the best felt produced in Europe.
J: Did you use...good wool?
W: Oh, extraordinary wool, your honor.  Loose, or in braids; wool of which I had the monopoly; black wool, and chestnut; tawny and blonde; and more often...gray...or...white.
J: From what flocks?
W: Oh I don't know!  It didn't interest me.  I paid for it in cash.
J: Tell me, have your dreams been tranquil?
W: Well...usually, yes judge.  Though...sometimes...in my dreams...I've heard grieving ghosts...groan.
J: Weaver, step down.
Primo Levi?, as quoted by Ralph Williams


This week's The New Yorker  attempts to answer why, in the Information Age, so many are so virulently misinformed, transcending even the willful ignorance that allowed Alex Zinc to purchase Birkenau "wool" with a clean conscious (not conscience).  Desultory Eclecticism, in an attempt to perpetuate its own brand of misinformation, prescribes (with the caveat that, in the fearful words of Yahweh, when people work together "nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do" Gen 1:6, and that one good individual planting himself on his ideals can do quite a bit as well)  prayer:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish 
the one from the other. 

Reinhold Niebuhr

2 comments:

  1. Yes, it is by Primo Levi. You had a question mark next to his name, but I've attended a lecture given by Prof. Ralph Williams in which he recited that poem, although in the handout I have, Alex's last name is spelled Zink, and the final line is "Weaver, _stand_ down" (rather than "step down").

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