Letter from the Editor: On Being Late, or
The Big Push-back
Ho Lin
And it's too late, baby, now it's too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died
And I can't hide and I just can't fake it
—Carole King
Of late (so to speak), it seems as if lateness has become a permanent state of things. Late-stage capitalism, the endgame of democracy, fin de siècle served up twenty-first-century style. As Yogi Berra once said, "It gets late early out there," and one can’t help but think that maybe we’ve passed an invisible point of no return, like a car on an endless highway with the gas needle inching to E. To hear it from critics—cultural, political, what have you—we’ve already metabolized the seeds of our own demise. It’s a given that things will get worse; the scary notion is that they may never get better.
How did this all come to pass? People more erudite than this editor will have their own explanations, all of which are probably true. What once passed for debate now stuffed with ad hominems, straw men, generalizations, and slippery slopes. Powerful people wanting to become even more powerful. Fear and prejudice, gullibility and ignorance. However you want to apportion the blame, the result is the result: the unshakeable impression of decline, chaos and hopelessness.
Of course, intimations of doom and despair are a spectator sport as old as civilization. Seven thousand years ago, the Assyrians had it down pat: “Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book…” If an apocalypse of abundant book writers has yet to come to pass (what a pity), substitute the words “become a social media influencer” to “write a book,” and matters appear to have improved not a whit over the past seven millennia.
But to get serious for a moment, and address the very real dangers of today, what to do when the very act of speaking one’s mind risks censure, penalty, or (maybe even worse) indifference? When we’re informed the answers to all our problems are one more tariff, one less tax, or one fewer outspoken immigrant? When those with influence are incompetent, venal, or both? When everything that has propped us up, both good and bad, is getting ripped away, like a slapstick gag in which the chair is yanked out from under us just as we’re about to sit on it?
We don’t pretend to have answers; in fact, we may have to accept the fact that there are no answers to our country’s current predicament, save maybe bowing out from all the hubbub and taking that early retirement to Lisbon, as this editor has often fantasized about (of course the Portuguese, ever more leery of expatriates, may have something to say about that). And as this editor faces down the vagaries of middle age, confronting the fin de siècle of his own profession, as the specter of AI and “targeted content” looms, one must wonder if new paradigms are unavoidable, and if literature in general is just a passing fancy, a tiny cry in the wilderness just before we’re all steamrolled to make way for the next post-whatever monstrosity.
To all that, we say, it may be late in the evening, but if this party is nearing its end, we’re damn well going to enjoy what’s left of it. If that means getting high enough on our own supply to push back at orthodoxy and get off a few brash parting shots in the process, so be it. (After all, what can they do except deport us, which just means this editor’s Lisbon plans may come to fruition sooner than expected.) And if any act of artistic creation seems inadequate to the task of adding ballast to this torpedoed ship we call democracy, then maybe a few thousand years from now, the current denizens of this planet will look back on what we’ve left behind and take just a little time to reflect, and even “recall the ruin of a smile,” as Emil Cioran would put it. Or as André Derain writes, “No one can stop us from imagining the world in the way that pleases us most.” Not until we have microchips implanted in our brains, at least.
So in the vein of pleasing ourselves, pushing back against the incoming tidal wave and having our say no matter how early it gets late out there, we present to you this latest assemblage of art, prose and poetry. From calls to renewal (Stella Brice’s “The Resurgence” and James Croal Jackson’s “it’s happening new series of birds”) to intersections of life, art and politics (Caveat editor Jonah Raskin’s “My Symmetrical Life”) to bemused musings on the state of modern living (Joseph Serra’s poetry, Caveat principal Steven Hill’s short shorts, John Cody Bennett’s “Audience of One”), we’re in full engagement with this hurly-burly time.
And just to declare which side we’re on, we’re featuring editor Christopher Bernard’s mammoth reimagining of Alfred Jarry’s pro-Dadaist play Ubu Roi, which demonstrates that the Absurdists, just like the Assyrians, have something to say about our current state. Speaking of the end of civilization, we would be remiss not to note that in October, Regent Press will be reissuing Christopher's debut novel, A Spy in the Ruins, to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. Let’s just say that you won’t find many apocalypses (and deconstructions) more engrossing.
For the final word, I’ll defer to Ocean Vuong, whose poem “Dear Rose” is about endings and loss, but also contains an ever-present spark of hope, no matter how dark it gets out there.
bullets salvaged & exiled
by art Ma my art these
corpses I lay
side by side on
the page to tell you
our present tense
was not too late
Ho Lin is the co-editor of Caveat Lector. He is a writer and musician who resides in San Francisco. His work has appeared in Foreword Reviews, The New York Journal of Books, Your Impossible Voice and The Adirondack Review. His books include China Girl and Other Stories and Bond Movies: A Retrospective. More of his work is featured on www.holinauthor.com.