Rendered
Infamous by
Stephen Gaskin
A Book of
Political Reality |
| |
|
Copyright 1981 The Book
Publishing Company.
ISBN 0-913990-40-X.
$10.00, hardcover nonfiction,
262 pps.
|
|
|
"Rendered Infamous is an unsentimental look at recent
American history through the eyes of a marine in Korea,
an inmate behind the walls of the Tennessee State Penitentiary,
and the founder of an international relief and development
organization. Stephen Gaskin is all of these people. He
is also a clear-eyed observer who offers in this book a
cure for political naiveté and a call for coalition."
|
| |
|
"I
see [Stephen Gaskin] as a cross between Maclcolm X and Albert
Schweitzer: laid-back, cool, and nonviolent. It's Gaskin's
knack... to render the core of his thoughts on subjects
ranging from prison life to gun control to war and peace
in a language as plain and commonsensical as the language
used to write the Constitution.
"[Rendered
Infamous] is not kiss-and-tell-book. In chapters 22 and
27, Gaskin declines to list the media folk he shared joints
with, the cops who told him they smoked pot "while they
were arresting me for smoking marijuana," and "all of the
counselors and psychologists who told me they smoked marijuana
while they were candling my head to see if I was crazy because
I smoked marijuana." —Dolph Honicker, Tennessean Sunday Bookcase
|
| |
|
|
An Excerpt: Usury and Sharp Practices
The
myth of the free market assumes some parity among the horsetraders.
In olden times, there were proscriptions against usury that
were in effect from the church, when usury was against the
law. Not only usury, but there was a level short of
usury which was considered, if not a legal matter, at least
an ecclesiastical matter, and people would be warned against
the un-Christian nature of "sharp practices."
Sharp practices included the kind of farming mentality that
confused husbandry with being sure to plant the fruit trees
on the side of the property close to the fence, so the shade
would fall on your neighbor's property and the fruit would
fall on your own.
But the Bible taught that the first two rows along the
edge of the road were dedicated to passing travelers who
in those days of non-frozen or concentrated foods, could
not possibly carry enough food for a very long journey,
and probably didn't have any actual money on their persons
as they traveled.
These were cultural norms. Some may say that is naive and
it was easier then, and there are more people now and times
are harder. But two rows alongside the field of a giant
complicated farm is virtually insignificant. There are huge
quantities of food produced and harvested these days, but
two rows could still be done without damage to the industry.
It is merely that sharp practices have become "normal",
which is to say not right or acceptable, but done by so
many people that the curve describing the frequency of that
action is near the norm.
|
|
