Passion and Punishment

photo from http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/chimage.php?image=2005/1963/demolition_nelson.jpg


There's something wrong with George III and has been ever since I started writing it. It doesn't have a core.

My writing buddy, Paul, eyed it immediately when he suggested Conclude with a purely personal perspective on either: a. your feelings about the things you saw/ feelings about the events themselves (minor key) or; b. what the historical event tells you about human nature or how it illuminates history in general (major key) And so it is.

What do I feel passionately about this story? Is it just amusing or an entertaining sidelight on the American revolution? If so, I could as easily write about Betsy Ross or the place of taverns in early Boston history. But, given the fact that I'm a sculpture freak, the statues grabbed my soul. Why?

After an AM of mooning around trying to figure it out, I finally nailed it. It's not so much that the William Pitt was destroyed by the Brits that grabbed my butt, nor that he stands pretty much forgotten in the tomb that is the Historical Society of New York, but that he was destroyed as punishment, not in the heat of rage. Bloodlessly. Like an academic exercise. And that's no way for iconoclasts to act.

Iconoclasm, good iconoclasm, noteworthy iconoclasm, world-class iconoclasm, is always cathartic. It screams its name. It refuses to be ignored. There is something satisfying to the people that do it. They look at the empty hole the next AM, stretch their arms out wide and yell, "YESSSS!!!"

And Pitt was not a victim of this. In spite of the fact that he was raised in gratitude by a grateful nation, he was toppled by some (presumably drunken) soldiers and then roundly ignored ever after except as a landmark.

Slowly, slowly, the soul of this book reveals itself...