A review by blackoxford
The Businessman by Thomas M. Disch
4.0
Voices From the Grave
I am fascinated by the abiding religious influence of ‘secular’ writers, especially when they demonstrate a commonality which is otherwise difficult to articulate. The Catholic Thomas Disch, for example, is remarkably like the Jewish Stanley Elkin. Each wrote about the specific cultic guilt of his tribe with profound wit and wry humour. Disch’s epigraph in The Businessman quoting President Eisenhower could have been used by either man: “The issue always and at bottom is spiritual.” They both flippantly reject the modern idea that evil is merely “a quality and not a substance; an adjective and not a noun.” On the other hand, both would probably agree with Disch’s angelic escort, “Who ever suggested that heaven is fair? Is predestination fair, would you say?”
Justice, that is, has little to do with grace. Which is why both writers are fascinated by their respective religion’s doctrines of grace, that mysterious, entirely arbitrary, haplessness-inducing force which seems to control our lives as we bounce from event to event like a cosmic billiard ball. In Elkin, as in his The Franchiser, this shows itself in a sort of persistent fatalism. In Disch’s The Businessman, the tone is almost Zen: “The source of grace has its favorite bloodlines, for which there is no accounting... it has no relation to merit... For the source of grace -- let us be honest and call it God -- is also an ironist and a dweller in paradoxes; He produces good from evil as a matter of course.” Forget the mutual historical objections of Judaism and Catholicism; it is their shared sense of irony that unites them.
So it isn’t surprising that Disch and Elkin share the occasional trope - in this case, the buried body with an axe to grind, and friends on the outside who can supply the necessary oomph to wield it. Elkin’s The Living End as well as The Rabbi of Ludalso have the dead influencing the action from the grave, not as ghosts but as a living presence. The oppressive weight of tradition - the dead in all the multitude of their respective communities of saints - is something else the two share after all. So Disch comments through his narrator: “Time past passed the time.” And “Hell is a tape loop that keeps playing the same stupid tune over and over and over forever and ever and ever” Heaven, on the other hand requires crawling out from under since it is “no more than a fantasm generated by the excess energies of the pooled imaginations of the blessed.” Both hell and heaven are ‘merely’ shared metaphors of imaginative thought.
Maybe it’s the imagination to overcome the weight of time and tradition that accounts for the similarity in humour, most notably the dead pan commentary on one’s own prejudices. Disch’s departed female soul could be a character out of several of Elkin’s novels as “She was of the widely held opinion that at bottom everyone believed what she believed, if only they'd be honest with themselves.” Disch’s cultural asides are equally Elkinesque: “not even automobiles require as large and constant a cash outlay as children. The Roman matron who said that her children were her jewels was not exaggerating.” And so too is there a shared presumption of impending salvation in the observation by Disch’s narrator that “The work was the thing that kept him going. The work and the idea that somehow things were going to change, that he was on the verge of something important.”
Being on the verge of something important is, for me, the subtle theme throughout the work of both writers - like an 11 year old with oppressive parents “All they've got is the distant hope of parole.” This barely suggested attitude of anticipation, perhaps even hope - in the first or the second coming of the messiah; it makes little difference - is what I find most fascinating about them despite their frequent irony, sarcasm, tribal criticism. For example, in contemplating the motto inscribed on a five dollar bill, “IN GOD WE TRUST. Yes. Of all possible messages this was surely the most urgent.” Sometimes, in other words, a cigar is just a joke.
I am fascinated by the abiding religious influence of ‘secular’ writers, especially when they demonstrate a commonality which is otherwise difficult to articulate. The Catholic Thomas Disch, for example, is remarkably like the Jewish Stanley Elkin. Each wrote about the specific cultic guilt of his tribe with profound wit and wry humour. Disch’s epigraph in The Businessman quoting President Eisenhower could have been used by either man: “The issue always and at bottom is spiritual.” They both flippantly reject the modern idea that evil is merely “a quality and not a substance; an adjective and not a noun.” On the other hand, both would probably agree with Disch’s angelic escort, “Who ever suggested that heaven is fair? Is predestination fair, would you say?”
Justice, that is, has little to do with grace. Which is why both writers are fascinated by their respective religion’s doctrines of grace, that mysterious, entirely arbitrary, haplessness-inducing force which seems to control our lives as we bounce from event to event like a cosmic billiard ball. In Elkin, as in his The Franchiser, this shows itself in a sort of persistent fatalism. In Disch’s The Businessman, the tone is almost Zen: “The source of grace has its favorite bloodlines, for which there is no accounting... it has no relation to merit... For the source of grace -- let us be honest and call it God -- is also an ironist and a dweller in paradoxes; He produces good from evil as a matter of course.” Forget the mutual historical objections of Judaism and Catholicism; it is their shared sense of irony that unites them.
So it isn’t surprising that Disch and Elkin share the occasional trope - in this case, the buried body with an axe to grind, and friends on the outside who can supply the necessary oomph to wield it. Elkin’s The Living End as well as The Rabbi of Ludalso have the dead influencing the action from the grave, not as ghosts but as a living presence. The oppressive weight of tradition - the dead in all the multitude of their respective communities of saints - is something else the two share after all. So Disch comments through his narrator: “Time past passed the time.” And “Hell is a tape loop that keeps playing the same stupid tune over and over and over forever and ever and ever” Heaven, on the other hand requires crawling out from under since it is “no more than a fantasm generated by the excess energies of the pooled imaginations of the blessed.” Both hell and heaven are ‘merely’ shared metaphors of imaginative thought.
Maybe it’s the imagination to overcome the weight of time and tradition that accounts for the similarity in humour, most notably the dead pan commentary on one’s own prejudices. Disch’s departed female soul could be a character out of several of Elkin’s novels as “She was of the widely held opinion that at bottom everyone believed what she believed, if only they'd be honest with themselves.” Disch’s cultural asides are equally Elkinesque: “not even automobiles require as large and constant a cash outlay as children. The Roman matron who said that her children were her jewels was not exaggerating.” And so too is there a shared presumption of impending salvation in the observation by Disch’s narrator that “The work was the thing that kept him going. The work and the idea that somehow things were going to change, that he was on the verge of something important.”
Being on the verge of something important is, for me, the subtle theme throughout the work of both writers - like an 11 year old with oppressive parents “All they've got is the distant hope of parole.” This barely suggested attitude of anticipation, perhaps even hope - in the first or the second coming of the messiah; it makes little difference - is what I find most fascinating about them despite their frequent irony, sarcasm, tribal criticism. For example, in contemplating the motto inscribed on a five dollar bill, “IN GOD WE TRUST. Yes. Of all possible messages this was surely the most urgent.” Sometimes, in other words, a cigar is just a joke.