Long Island, New Yorker Adam Engel has written many irreverent, cutting essays that tackle many topics. Engler has examined, in his inimical way, patriotism, religion, militarism, colonialism, Zionism, capitalism, marijuana, human nature, etc. Now, a collection of Engel’s essays has come out in a book, I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague.
His articles catch attention with snappy, quirky titles like, “I, Clitoris,” “A Good Man Is Hard to Misfit,” and “Lizard Brain on Line for the log Flume.”
Even his bios keep readers riveted to the end, as he frequently changes it while offering a trenchant observation.
In Engel style, I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague comes with a conspicuous title and a provocatively erotic cover. I won’t pretend to grasp the symbolism of the cover.
I had read many of Engel’s essays before, but a second read made a much deeper impression than the first time (the previous impression also being favorable of course, which is why I review the book).
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
By Adam Engel
Publisher: Oliver Arts and Open Press, New York, 2010
Paperback: 267 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9819891-9-8
Engel has a refreshing and a daring wit.
Although progressivist, his mind is not beholden to the dichotomous thinking of Left and Right. For instance, in his essay “Damned Right to Bear Arms,” he writes, “Self defense is the right of all human beings.” It seems a no-brainer, but it is one topic that many progressives can not bend their minds around, as so many adamantly oppose gun ownership. As Engel points out, it is the state (or in his words, “THE MAN”) that is the major arms bearer and violent user of arms.
“I’ll be damned if I’m going to ask THE MAN, whose pursuing death and destruction at home and abroad with a multi-trillion dollar Military/Police apparatus for permission to defend myself against … THE MAN,” argues Engel.
Of American democracy, he writes, “The country IS and always has been a democracy for Our Masters—rich, propertied, white men.” A simple truism, and yet so many people discuss democracy as if it exists or ever did exist. When talking about extant political systems, pseudo- should at the very least be prefixed to the word democracy.
In “Domicide,” Engel asks, “Where did the UN get the authority to give any land to anyone without consulting the people who lived there?” Of course he is referring to the migrant Jews’s dispossession of indigenous Palestinians, a genocidal act that was entrenched by UN dictate, undermining its own charter’s declared respect for self-determination.
In “Duel Use of Uncle Sam Weird Society,” he takes on “the five-trillion dollar death machine” by himself. However, all that is really needed, says Engel is “Ten million MATURE HUMANS … to just sit down and do nothing.”
So why is he alone? In the essay, “Enough Is Too Much,” Engel mentions “the dead sheep shuffle,” a metaphor for people’s unwillingness to confront the killing machine on so many fronts.
Who are Americans? In “Support Our Robots,” the New Yorker asks, “What kind of monsters fire on retreating troops AND fleeing civilians?” Engel wryly suggests imagining that “… Iraqis are actually human beings.”
Of American warring, there is no knee-jerk support for killers by Engel. He states, “It’s pure cowardice, killing without having to put troops in harm’s way.”
“But just as we pay the airlines for the privilege of cattle-hood, we pay THE MAN to make life miserable all over the world. Our only consolation is that we’re “free.” That is, it’s not as bad as in other places THE MAN has devastated.”
He loathes the corporate media, but Engel wonders whether readers do not have responsibility for what they choose to read. In “The Worst Writers in the World, or the Worst Readers,” he notes a turd of an article by New York Times writer David Brooks who “perpetuate[s] the fiction that ‘the War in Iraq’ is anything but an unprovoked slaughter and absolute betrayal of ‘our’ troops.” He ends the piece by asking whether “journalists” like Brooks should be thanked “for sparing us the humiliation of our own desuetude.”
Engel doesn’t sternly cite facts and formulate rigorous logic; he crafts words that paint a vivid picture and evoke emotion. His evocative prose illustrates his attention to words and language. Although irreverent in style, he is also respectful. “…I believe the left, in order to create a new world, must toss the racism, sexism, egotism, etc., that is inherent in ‘regular’ language…,” posits Engel.
One can well understand the five trillion dollar fighting machine from Engel’s choice of t-shirts. One was emblazoned with the bathetic slogan “Homeland Security … Fighting Terrorism Since 1492” and a large photo of Goyaa?é (Geronimo) and friends. After all, it was the genocide on Turtle Island that provided a new base for launching violence on the rest of the world.
Engel captures THE MAN’s greed and bloodlust in I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague – a thought-provoking collection of essays. Read them and weep.