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Peter Trachtenberg's avatar

What happens to Cameron at the end also distantly recalls the Vietnamese Buddhists who immolated themselves in protest against the war (and also against the anti-Buddhist policies of the Diem regime). There's no rational case that they contributed to the failure of the American occupation, but you could say that those monks and nuns embodied a kind of ultra-soft power against which napalm and Agent Orange were useless. But the I Ching has a hexagram called The Taming Power of the Small. A beautiful essay.

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DeepArcher's avatar

Impressive! Philip K. would've been proud of your noninability to draw correlation between high-low culture. In his exegesis he wrote about "sacred trash" unspotlit moments that only writerly-minded notice. DeLillo also talked about "wordless shock" of solitary moments of awareness. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, there is no one to share it with. Love it and trust it and leave. (P.S. Please write me back some day!)

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