OF POSSIBILITY AND PROBABILITY

By David Beilstein

CAN the writer of exalted ambitions forget the beauty of Sir David Lean’s 1963 masterpiece, Lawrence of Arabia? Can said writer, unknown, without name (as of yet), gazing upon the blank page, look upon the future, prescribed in the past; a spoonful of enigma against the vagaries of tribe or maudlin or blood - of idiosyncratic human striving and lamentation - approach something as original, as hauntingly timeless?

For something like four years, this author has tried. He was working, in his own mind, on the greatest clandestine operative movie ever written. In his search, he has taken something from the Bible, something from the best of Eric Ambler, William F Buckley, and a host of hard driven, poetical journalistic prose by Mark Bowden and Sebastian Junger to boot - yet the teleology and the grip of a fictional world that can reveal larger sweeps of humanities’ dramatic story, eludes him.

The plan was a large epic; an espionage movie that answered modern questions of history, human frailty; of violence and blood, and hate, visually and poetically; the way St Augustine did 1400 years ago in City of God.

 Nobody, not in this author’s humble opinion, holds anything on St Augustine of Hippo.

So, all that the writer admired - loathed too, would be included and avoided. He had felt like he could say something different in a genre packed with dramatic complexity; an airtight case to reveal through a singular story, concerning specific individuals, something true about the larger world around him.

The landscape matters. Sir David Lean showed this in Lawrence. The British maverick’s directorial eye captured all those wide-angle shots, revealing the limitation of man against endless desert, and searing fortresses of rock. And though unpopular in our day, the writer was mindful of the sensitivity of Dickens, his eye for class and circumstance; the engine of human conflict and meaning.

It would be less than honest to say, said author had not hit a snag on the line.

Or, better yet, found his line had been snapped by God knows what on the end of it, biting down like a fierce and angry bastard; gnashing and throwing itself into the serf. It was not an easy fight; it is almost never an easy fight when everything matters.

Good enough, perhaps, for the author had been boasting for some time of the catch awaiting him.

Persistence gets the better of talent, sometimes. And so, onward the journey goes. It revolves back to the beginning where some semblance of quality can be glimpsed.  In the end, the story must be true regardless of symbolism; it must encapsulate the nature of people.

Writer, Jazz critic, Stanley Crouch once wrote an essay entitled “Up With Characters, Down With Message.” The piece was in that seminal book of essays, setting Crouch up as the bull in the critical china shop, Notes of A Hanging Judge. The former Village Voice writer, and resident contrarian’s point being, I think, was to elude that when characters are earthy enough, bloody enough, raw enough; exploding with sweat and surprise; of the hero and villain being two sides of the same coin - the author has already achieved the greatest message of all.

So there is Dickens, always. And Lean too; him and his masterpiece, Lawrence of Arabia. Never dismiss St Augustine’s City of God. Never. There isn’t a greater book out there explaining history.

Pleasant company, one would think. Even, as it were, if one had an ounce of talent. But one never knows about talent. It’s mist, baby, is all. One is always reaching; trying for something special. And the only way one can ever write something special is when inspired, when the pistons are going, the mind working…

When some kind of life, however tragic, however seemingly absurd - is, get this, perfectly rational; for it has always been intended for some ulterior - an ultimate - dramatic purpose.

One above and beyond the whims and desires of men.