Dancing in the Dark by Morris Dickstein

Author:Morris Dickstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2009-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

For a final curtain, they brought out an enormous wooden mallet labeled “The Works” and with it completely demolished our hero. His toupee flew off, his eye and teeth popped out, and his wooden leg was knocked into the audience.

At the sight of the wooden leg, the presence of which they had not even suspected, the spectators were convulsed with joy. (171)

This was a period when roving thugs were liberally administering beatings in the streets of German and other cities. After Lem is assassinated, he is translated into myth, like Horst Wessel, the Nazi “martyr,” or John Birch, or like the “Horatio Alger hero.” The National Revolutionary Party takes possession of his history, and the novel ends with Whipple’s speech over what remains of his body, a speech that mingles the clichés of the American Dream with the clichés of fascist demagoguery. He speaks of “the right of every American boy to go into the world and there receive fair play and a chance to make his fortune by industry and probity without being laughed at or conspired against by sophisticated aliens.” He lovingly details the stages of Lem’s “dismantling” and concludes with a mock-peroration:

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