Montalbán/Cockburn/IanBrady

Today I read the next fifty pages of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s The Buenos Aires Quintet. In this section of the novel, we begin to get a better sense of what exactly Raúl is searching for, although this issue remains somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand, he is looking for his missing daughter, taken from he and his wife Berta when she was a baby. Raúl has not yet found out that his daughter has been adopted and raised by the villainous Captain. On the other hand, Raúl is looking for himself. The years he spent in exile in Spain seem to be an empty time for him. He has never stopped thinking of himself as Argentine, but given how much Argentina has changed during his exile, he is no longer sure what being Argentine means. In these ways, Raúl’s search, and in particular, the responses of various characters to Raúl’s return, give Montalbán a way to explore the meanings of history, the connections between private and state violence, the malleability of identity, and a host of other subjects, all through the prism of the crime novel, a genre supposedly committed to the restoration of order. Early in the novel, however, Carvalho has already pointed out that private detectives do not restore order; instead, they merely uncover disorder. It’s reasonable to expect that Montalbán will do the same.

I also read the next fifty pages of Alexander Cockburn’s A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip Through Political Scandal, Corruption, and American Culture. In commenting on Obama’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, Cockburn points out that former Presidential recipients of the prize (Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter) were also inappropriately undeserving of the honor in their various ways. The lesson Cockburn takes from this is amusing: “People marvel at the idiocy of these Nobel awards, but there’s method in the madness, since in the end they train people to accept without demur or protest absurdity as part and parcel of the human condition.” Unfortunately, absurdity also characterizes many of Cockburn’s observations in this section of the book. How else to describe his approval of Bob Barr’s political platform in his assessment of the failings of the 2008 presidential candidates? Or his singling out of the Supreme Court’s 2008 defense of the Second Amendment (with the majority opinion written by Antonin Scalia) as a bright patch “in the gloom in Bush time”? Or his admiration of his neighbor’s gun collection and his readiness to defend himself at a moment’s notice? The strong streak of libertarianism that runs through Cockburn’s work all too often makes A Colossal Wreck an unfortunately apposite title for this book. But at least there is a shout-out for Buffalo. “Si monumentum requiris, go to downtown Buffalo and weep.”

I also watched Ian Brady: Endgames of a Psychopath, a 2012 documentary by Paddy Wivell on the British serial killer Ian Brady. This documentary was the focus of controversy in Britain when it was originally aired because it was claimed that one of its interviewees was in possession of a letter from Brady that revealed the location of his last unfound victim. Despite the patina of novelty that this controversy lent the film, however, on the whole it resembles closely both most other ‘exposés’ of the Moors Murders case in particular and the genre of the true crime documentary as a whole. First, Endgames asks nothing but rhetorical questions. Although it claims to want to determine whether or not Brady is a manipulative psychopath, it has already decided the answer to that question and every other question it asks before the film was even made. Second, in the questions it asks, the answers it gives, the people it interviews, and in every other respect, there is nothing new about Endgames. It recycles the same facts, pictures, and outrage as every other film on the subject. Third, precisely to disguise its lack of novelty, Endgames, like every other film on the subject, must claim to be novel and different in order to pretend to social utility and disguise both its lack of originality and its moribund and morbid fascination with the case. Fourth and finally, although the aim of Endgames is apparently to deflate Brady’s grandiosity and to challenge his control of the narrative of his life, this film inevitably bolsters both by both reiterating and updating the components of the Brady legend. This is not a dilemma with any easy resolution.