by Gerald Dworkin

In October, 1961, I was sitting in The Jazz Workshop, a San Francisco nightclub, listening to Lenny Bruce doing his infamous routine Are there any Niggers here tonight?

It begins with asking that question and proceeds to make comments using racial slurs for every racial group he could–kikes, guineas, wops, spics, polacks, sheenies, etc. His point, as he explains in the routine, was to routinize the words, so that they lost their shocking impact and obtained the status, as he says, of "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" He was arrested that night not for the racial slurs but for obscenity—his "to is a preposition, come is a verb" routine.

Bruce spent most of his professional life being arrested and prosecuted by the police in various jurisdictions—always for obscenity. He was convicted in New York State, died during the appeals process, and in 2003 given a posthumous pardon by Governor Pataki.

I was therefore both amused and shocked to see in recent weeks that Bruce was under attack again. This time by some angry students and faculty of Brandeis University. An alumnus of the University had written a play about Bruce and it was scheduled to be performed on campus.

Some members of the theatre department raised objections and felt that more time was needed to produce the play "appropriately" and some students objected that the portrayal of its black characters was "ridiculous and vicious." The playwright decided to take the play elsewhere for its premiere.

This was one of the calmer instances of an attack on expression. In recent months student protests have led to cancellation of speaker talks, to disruption of invited speakers, to violence and destruction on campus. The names of Charles Murray, Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro, Ann Coulter, Richard Spencer and the campuses of Evergreen State College, Middlebury, University of Michigan, UC Berkeley, University of Florida, Yale, University of Missouri, are known to many. For a view of what one such protest looks, and sounds, like, click here.

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Fang Zhaoling. Flowering Branches on Cliffs, 1978.

Ink and color on paper.

More here and here.

by Brooks Riley

“They are shape, form, waiting to emerge. They present the plastic possibilities of life,” Albrecht Dürer said this of the pillows in various states of rumpled use that he drew on the back of a piece of paper he had been using to draw hands, wasting no surface to explore the ‘plastic possibilities‘ of everything. I see him wake up in the morning and look down at the pillow where his head had been, punching it a few times, contemplating the mutability of its form, and arriving at that morning epiphany about art itself.

The impression of a tousled head still lurking in the pillow’s shadowed indentation conjures a ghost whose presence can be felt if not seen, with an imagined long single golden strand of hair left behind within its folds. A hint of Dürer’s personality emerges from this fantasy, of a man who found wonder in all things—a pillow, a weeded piece of turf, a hare, a deformed pig, a rhinoceros, an iris, a beached whale. He would spend a lifetime exploring the elusive secrets of beauty and mathematics in nature, and nature and beauty in mathematics.

Personality is like ether, it hovers in the atmosphere long after death. Decades, even centuries later, long after the end of memories, traces of it move through the air like a fleet aroma caught at just the right odd moment. Where did that come from? It is elusive, and cannot be captured or bottled or even explained. Such is the personality of Dürer. It rises like a mist from a certain landscape seen from the train. It lurks in the amusing portraits of friends like Stefan Paumgartner as St. George, or Willibald Pirckheimer imbibing at the baths, or the selfie pointing to the pain in his spleen. It rages in two haunting, nude sketches of himself. Or radiates in that iconic self-portrait from 1500, which hung in his atelier, never for sale but as constant reminder of the perfection he would strive for with his self-proclaimed ‘diligence‘, that most German of virtues—a quasi-blasphemous Christ-like pose that sanctified his art through his person. Thomas Hoving once called it ‘the single most arrogant, annoying and gorgeous portrait ever created,‘ missing the point—or perhaps not. It was so life-like, Dürer’s dog ran over to it and started licking it before the paint was quite dry. Of the plethora of explanations for this work, I like to think he painted it in case the Apocalypse predicted for 1500 really happened. I will survive, it says. And he did.

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Doctor Qureshi Dares My Mother

“Maryam Jaan,” he says, “You must be proud
of your son Farouk, his wealth —praise Allah—
how he has made himself great in America.”

The doctor’s white hair is unruly like mine,
his bi-focals tipsy, his elbows rest
on the mahogany table hand-crafted

in Mexico for Ethan Allen,
classic Yankee firm Farouk reinvented
over the past 30 years over and over again

to help those who need help to make their homes
beautiful. He sits as usual at the head, his dark hair
slicked back, eyebrows arched at the dare.

Waitaminute, how unfair of the doctor
who goads my ami to choose favorites between
two sons, her betas, a Chairman of the Board

bankroller of Ami’s pricey healthcare,
and a dim bulb in the six light trumpet
chandelier bouncing of the buffed grain.

Dear doctor, faithful friend, first Pakistani champ
of the Scarsdale Bridge Club—mashallah—keep on
injecting Ami with B12, her weekly fix,

hear her heart beat, hold her gnarled hands as she
begs you use your wealth of healing savvy,
even declare martial law to please stop

voices, only voices always in her head,
but don’t provoke her as she sits up on
a Chippendale, sips saffron-infused Kashmiri

kahva from a china cup gold-rimmed hem
dupatta slips to her shoulders, “Doctor
Qureshi sahib,” she says, meeting his gaze

across the wide expanse of burnished veneer,
more geography than physiology on her face,
“I am proud of all my children.” Soaring

along the shoreline of Long Island Sound,
I’m as far from New Rochelle
as America is from a crescent zoon.

Urdu/English: jaan/my life; mashallah/praise allah; dupatta/veil
Kashmiri/English: zoon / moon

by Rafiq Kathwari, for Ejaz Qureshi

by Claire Chambers

At a Sheikh Zayed Book Award event in 2017, Marina Warner told the audience that the Arabic root word for water and story is the same. Both nouns, she claimed, relate to the verb 'to transfer', rawin being one way to say 'storyteller', while rawiya is 'to drink one's fill' or 'to be irrigated'. If the link between liquidity and storytelling is less immediately apparent in Urdu and other South Asian languages than it is in Arabic, nonetheless in the eleventh century Somadeva collected together Indian myths as the Kathā Sarit Sāgara ('Ocean of the Streams of Stories'), suggesting a similar understanding of the link between words and watery worlds.

All this resonates with my new book, Rivers of Ink: Selected Essays, which was published by Oxford University Press last month. I eventually chose Rivers of Ink as my title when I realized how many words I'd written in my journalistic outpourings for this fine blog 3 Quarks Daily, as well as for Dawn and other outlets, over the course of five years. The phrase comes from the Spanish idiom verter ríos de tinta meaning to pour rivers of ink, corresponding to the English saying, 'much ink has been spilt'. If even a fraction of the ink cartridges I drained over the last half-decade were in service of equality, anti-racism, and internationalism, or (re)introduced readers to a confident and diverse body of texts, I will be happy.

Coincidentally, Rivers of Ink recalls the titles of two influential subcontinental novels: Qurratulain Hyder's Aag ka darya (River of Fire), which deals, amongst other subjects, with Partition and the post-Second World War South Asian diaspora; and River of Smoke, in which the nineteenth-century Opium Wars enable Amitav Ghosh to impart wisdom on present-day globalization and the political grounds of free trade arguments.

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by Mathangi Krishnamurthy

I have come to the beach to drown out the heartbreak and listlessness and senselessness of life in the moment. I look at these waves that swallow everything. Tishani Doshi writes in "What the Sea Brought In", of a laundry list of things suddenly seen:

"Brooms, brassieres, empty bottles

of booze. The tip of my brother's

missing forefinger. Bulbs, toothpaste

caps,

instruments for grooming. Chestnuts,

carcass of coconut, crows, crabs.

Three dying fish, four dead

grandparents.

Slippers of every stripe: rubber, leather,

Rexine, felt."

I stare at the sea, and draw my own list of things to send back. Twenty seven photographs, two concert ticket stubs, three new years' parties, two hundred and eight measures of gin and tonic, a body, three sets of new sheets, five coffee mugs, three wine glasses (one broken), a foot board, three dogs (one disappeared), a rash vest, a pack of cards, a seventh grade mark sheet, a polka dotted dress, my first résumé, a coffee machine, two home videos, one voice recording, too many words to count, fifty seven lines of control, five long weeks of silence. I am tired.

Like Aragorn, I look left, right, east, west, something, and at just the opportune moment, I espy fireworks, orange, fuschia, and dazzlingly green; I am momentarily light.

Perhaps, this is why that moment in "The Two Towers", when awash in golden light, Gandalf and the Rohirrim arrive in deus ex machina fashion is on my top ten list of movie-manipulated affects. When younger, I loved myself some death and glory. Now older, I look for hope and redemption.

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by Brooks Riley

by Max Sirak

"If you wish to be happy, Eragon, think not of what is to come nor of that which you have no control over but rather of the now and of that which you are able to change." (Christopher Paolini, Brisingr)

"I believe that humans are primarily driven to seek greater happiness, but the definition of such is personal and cannot be dictated and should not be controlled by any group.." (Michael Shermer, The Science Of Good and Evil)

"It seems to me that every thing in the light and air ought to be happy, / Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough." (Walt Whitman, "Sleepers")

"Don't let millionaires and billionaires ruin your day." (Terry Pluto, The Cleveland Plain Dealer)

A Young Adult fantasy author, a science writer, an American poet, and a local sports columnist walk into a bar, grab a drink, bundle up, and then to go to a parade…

Given the international, cosmopolitan flavor of 3qd, I'm not sure how many readers pay attention to American Football. Were I a betting man, I'd venture to guess Futbol trumps Football when it comes to our fan base. However, I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again, so who knows?

Either way – today I'd like to call a time out and talk a little about sports, fandom, and philosophy. Take a knee, gang.

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by Christopher Bacas

When the real estate agent parked in front of the office it was dark; an August day dwindling to eighty-five humid degrees. Air conditioners whirred and dripped from upstairs windows. He got out and stood by the stairs, tie and shirt collar crisp and taut above his suit jacket. In waves of steamy funk, his rectitude and wardrobe contrasted our clammy sandals, shorts and sundress. We entered the railroad first floor of a row house. The entryway was dark, on the right, two bare work desks. Next off the hall, a dining room table with neatly tucked, high backed chairs. The manager, Michael, handled the lease. Our agent sat quietly.

We’d been at these tables before. Something always derailed the deal. Once, ready to sign, Beth mentioned I was a musician. That manager slid the lease out from under her hands. Then, he hustled her out of the building. Another management office, Orthodox-run, gave us keys and an address to visit. When we got there, the front door of the brownstone swung back. Inside,a battered staircase listed to the right. Up the stairs, smells of stewing meat, garlic and ammonia. Boleros blasted through a chipped door. The third floor unit was wide open. On the door, the marshal’s eviction notice peeled under a graffiti tag. Inside the unit, moretags covered every wall. Garbage bags, smashed appliances and shards of glass spread the floors. In the bathroom, a dead bird swam with crack vials in a scarred tub. The toilet, a cornucopia of trash. I laughed at first. By the time I got to the car, anger dripped out of my pores.

“It looks great!”I told the young Orthodox woman in the office.

She was blasé; never bothering to look up while pulling a clipboard with paperwork affixed.

“You need to fill out an application. We need three references, six months of pay stubs and twelve months of cancelled rent checks. There’s a credit check,too. Forty dollars.”

I spit out “Place is a DISASTER! Garbage and graffiti everywhere. Dead animals! The front door doesn’t have a lock.”

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