Pa02Nov19b About The Moralist

The reading was a success, about a dozen people showed up, some relaxing at the coffeeshop and just happened to overhear what was going on. I sold six books, but the real success was the 45-minutes of questions and answers that followed, a lively intelligent discussion, thoughtful, not necessarily in agreement but not crazy. I heard later that the crazies held their comments for the bookshop manager after it was over. They didn't have the guts to join the discussion. Sample questions attached.

Also attached, another piece for my reading in Sacramento, the capital city of California.

You said NAMBLA had become ineffective as a political force. Where do you think this case can be made?

That’s not exactly accurate, and there are other organizations around the world who have also been diminished by the witch-hunt. They play a valuable role to remind us all that we are not alone … and to exert their influence by their very existence. To answer your question, the new morality comes from our arts and science. This book, The Moralist, is a work of literary art. The Rind-Bauserman-Tromovich study on which the Cobb-Orlofsky study is based – there are some differences in adapting it to the plot – belongs to science. This is the next battleground – art and science.

Is your title The Moralist a reference to Gide’s The Immoralist?

Yes, an extension and elaboration. I’m definitely in the Wilde-Gide-Genet camp.

Gide’s title refers to the moral environment that Michel violates. The Moralist takes the issue one step further by articulating an alternative moral perspective based on the idea of morality as an impulse and an appetite … not a principle. The dirty little secret of moral principle is authority, and the morality of love is anathema to that. Like Red says in The Moralist, “Love blows through culture like a Texas tornado.” Love is the Dionysiac force that creates new life. Love is the revolution.

Why did you spend six years writing this book?

A number of reasons. Partly it’s what Red expresses in The Moralist – he’s mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore. I feel the same way. It’s time for artists to speak out against the destruction of our civil liberties – our constitutional rights of free expression, privacy, and due process – the attack on our love relationships, all of them … think about the time you put your arm around your son or your nephew or a student or a young athlete – do you wonder “Is there something wrong with this?” That’s the poison. It’s not the sex, it’s the love they want to control. Sex is just a smokescreen. Red says this in The Moralist. When his best friend’s house is torched, he decides to speak out against the injustice perpetrated on decent, caring people … and that’s what he’s doing in the piece I just read.

You mentioned a moral perspective based on the idea of morality as an appetite. What do you mean by that?

Let’s start with the literature of Western civilization for the past five hundred years. It consistently contrasts the good hearted hero and the man of moral principle. From Henry Fielding to Mark Twain to Charles Dickens to Fyodor Dostoyevsky … our literature expresses a morality of the good heart in contrast to the Tartuffes, Blifls, and Elmer Gantry’s of moral principle. The dirty little secret of righteousness is self-righteousness. It’s what the literary critic Lionel Trilling calls “the specious good,” in contrast to the good of the loving heart. So why not say it? Our real morality is the morality of our literature and art, not some conventional notion of authority. I’m Jonathan Doolittle – our nation’s most original moralist!