acquaintance of mine of the pres-
ent generation texted me, Friday,
to whisper that his sources pre-
dict the firing of the American
Attorney General today. Of course
one's first instinct is to feel
remorse for one's contact, who'd
not been around for Richard Nixon.
His massacre wasn't of a henchman.
Nabokov's story, Despair,
in Fassbinder's movie with
Dirk Bogarde - a man who is
able to conceive of a crime
as an entertainment, and
therefore permissible to
continue. This has always
been the frame of reference
of the perpetrator we know,
ironically, as President.
But his genius for sustain-
able suspense is touched,
equally, by a gnawing, per-
sistent sense of being re-
jected, mocked, betrayed,
shaping him as Mercury of
a sadly compromised base.
We do not deny, the mas-
sacre is mythic, if not le-
gitimately tragic anymore.
Dirk Bogarde
1978
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