Dear Editor,
I remain forever cagey and invariably reluctant about commending some esteemed, distinguished individuals for fear of being snubbed or slighted. Oh yes! Some of these folks can be very haughty. However, notwithstanding the above, I sincerely feel the ‘vibes’ to humbly do so with respect to Dr Ian McDonald. As many others have done before I have to tip my hat to Dr McDonald, a highly respected literary personality, long known and celebrated for his superb literary craftsmanship.
One has got to give it to him; having been playing in this arena for so long as he himself has stated, he can shut his eyes and still get it right! In any event, this is one department where a fertile imagination, voracious and indiscriminate reading, seeing beneath the surface, discipline, a propensity for writing, all combine to create real work of substance and value that can capture the mind.
I am a regular reader of Dr McDonald’s ‘Ian on Sunday’. The man is indeed a heavyweight; his column ‘Despair’ (Sunday Stabroek July 24) about the atrocities that took place at the German concentration camp Auschwitz as told by Elie Wiesel, a survivor, had me going. Editor, every time I read about the evil that took place at those camps, I become more convinced that the masterminds of those dastardly acts were the servants of dark forces. I couldn’t agree more with Dr McDonald when he said that the questions raised by Elie Wiesel in his book Night sicken the soul.
“Why were his friends and neighbours put into sealed cattle cars, travelled for almost two days without food or water?” “Why were they delivered to a place fogged with the stench of human flesh, where pits of fire devoured the bodies of babies and children?” “What led him to ignore his dying father’s request for water when his father was the dearest thing he had left in the world?”
Those are just three of the many sickening questions among others I have picked out.
But like I’m wont to say, Dr McDonald knows where it’s at, and I was caught. As I paused to ponder, allowing my thoughts to flow as I often do whenever I’m reading an expressive book or an account etc, I stopped and wrote the following: If every action must produce an equal and opposite reaction, then I need ask where are the good opposite reactions to balance things out?
Only to read immediately upon resumption in his following paragraph: “On this basis at least we poor mortals might be sure that the total quantity of evil in the universe should not exceed the quantity of good, and likewise that the total quantity of suffering should not exceed its equivalent of joy. For every murder of a small child, there should be somewhere a huge explosion of joy”. Boy oh boy, I could do nothing more but smile; I was cancelled out, and that’s what I’m saying, the man misses not a beat.
And what better and provoking summation can one ask for as he wonders aloud as to the creator’s next move, “[A]s we survey the darkening scene of horror and vengeance in a thousand places, the fear creeps in that the universal law may have been repealed and that even God, cocooned in His chrysalis of perfect goodness, may have washed His hands of His own imperfect world and decided that there is no longer any point in being born again.” Isn’t this wonderful? As some would say, food for thought.
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe
