Newman (fwd)
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 02:10:19 -0600
From: Allen Adler <ad...@pulsar.cs.wku.edu>
To: jo...@iecc.com, ad...@pulsar.cs.wku.edu, rug...@interport.net
Subject: Newman
I just read the article one of you posted on
soc.religion.unitarian-univ about the New Alliance
Party, Newmanites, Larouchians, etc.
Your history of Newman starts in 1968. I'm not sure but
I think that Newman might have been involved in the
group Aesthetic Realism before that. The reason I think
so is that my aunt, much to the regret of the rest of
my family, became a member of Aesthetic Realism a long
time ago and I happened to visit her around 1966 or 67
and she brought me along to one or two meetings of
Aesthetic Realism. At that that time, Aesthetic Realism
was a kind of personality cult centering around the
writings of Eli Siegel and, while they thought that
Eli Siegel was right up there with Christ and Buddha,
they were nevertheless tolerant of people who weren't
into it.
There was someone named Newman who had joined
the group, actually, he and his brother, described, as
I vaguely recall, as a recovering drug addict. They
had started some kind of purge within the group over
the issue of "contempt for Mr.Siegel" and had gained
a lot of influence as a result. In this connection,
it is important to explain that the Aesthetic Realists
had evolved their own specialized vocabulary as a
result if determining what they regarded as the true
meanings of certain words, such as "respect". These meanings
were in general at variance with the meanings used in
common parlance by people outside the group but the Aesthetic
Realists would use their own meanings even when talking
to outsiders and without explanation. As a result, the
group tended to isolate itself through its language.
They held their meetings on saturday nights but they
meetings were staged events. They would rehearse their
meetings on thursday nights ("I think there ought to be
more laughter after that item.") You paid to get into to the
meeting and you paid to get into the rehearsal.
At a certain level, the ideology had to do with the aesthetics inherent
in opposites. For example, one of the pamphlets of Eli Siegel that
I read expressed the view that the way to deal with one's own
conflicts was to learn to view them as aesthetic. Somehow, this
notion of the aesthetics of contradiction got elevated to
a political position as well.
When I visited my aunt a few years later, the tolerance for outsiders had
vanished. They were outraged that major newspapers don't carry
information about Aesthetic Realism and picketed in front of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which which was across the street
from the apartment of Sulzberger from the New York Times and wore
buttons saying, Victim of the Press.
A friend of mine worked for a while in the New York City Board
of Education and told me that the office he worked in was
completely dominated by Aesthetic Realists. They took him
out to lunch the first day and tried to get him interested
in Aesthetic Realism. When he indicated that he wasn't interested,
they accepted that, but from then on, it was hello in the morning
and goodbye in the afternoon and none of them talked to him
except about the job. My friend says that his boss actually
did some good and creative things, in terms of the work he did there,
but I won't describe them now. Accordingly, I'm not suggesting that
Aesthetic Realism is in the same category as the Larouchians or the
Newmanites. I'm only asking whether the changes I observed in them
were perhaps the influence of this same Newman before he went onto
bigger things.
Allan Adler
ad...@pulsar.cs.wku.edu