The Blue Wound - part VIII - the war of 1950

Check here for parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI and VII of the Blue Wound live blog.

Chapter 14 was the final major chapter in Blue Wound. (Chapter 15 is but a brief epilogue to the plot.) Chapter 14 applies all of the allegories of the first 13 chapters to the future of America. Mered, the key character, gives his traveling companion - the narrator - a glimpse into the world of 1950.

Chapter 14 is Garrett's opportunity to predict one potential future for the United States. Essentially, Garrett predicts World War II with one major difference. Garrett, knowing nothing more than the world of 1921, foresees a military alliance between 1950 Germany and other European powers and one [unnamed] "of the great Asiatic nations." (p. 165). The major difference that Garrett foresees is that the United States, by 1950, has descended into a state of dependency that we would not, in fact, experience until our own time.

The U.S. of the early 21st century is dependant on foreign goods as never before. Not only manufactured goods and consumer products, but raw materials such as oil flow into this country through vulnerable umbilical cords. Even agriculture is headed in that direction. Garrett has unknowingly projected the United States of the 21st century onto World War II. America's dependence in Chapter 14 of the Blue Wound creates predictable results.

Much of Garrett's story centers on U.S.' dependence on the foreign chemical industry.

Predictions for the future are often less "wrong" than they are ill-timed. In this case, Chapter 14 was "wrong" only insofar as Garrett's facts occurred all at once. In the real world, these facts have occurred at different times. America's dependence on foreign industry arose long after World War II.

Garrett provides numerous additional predictions for the world of 1950, most of which I will not explain in detail. Each similarity is like a buried treasure to be discovered in Garrett's pages. Garrett predicts changes in the news distribution business that are vaguely and crudely reminiscent of our own information age. (p. 147). Garrett anticipates the age of nuclear warfare (as much as one could expect from a man writing 24 years before Hiroshima) - fictionalizing a chemical process by which an entire city (and more) could be destroyed with one bomb. (pp. 174-181). Garrett could not predict exactly how the introduction of the submarine and the airplane would affect shipping. (pp. 154-155). Garrett hinted at the third world debt forgiveness movement of our time. (pp. 166-167).

Blue Wound, including Chapter 14, hints at the themes present in Bubble that Broke the World. Because the financial crisis had not exploded by 1921, the financial themes took a back seat to the industrial and military themes in Blue Wound.

The biggest focus of those who would learn from Chapter 14 should be on the modern U.S.' relationship with and dependence on China for manufactured goods. This Chapter (and the entire book) can be promoted as a blueprint for avoiding a future disaster resulting from our dependence on China.

Chapter 14 should not be used crudely as proof that the U.S. should be either pro-war or anti-war. This Chapter has few lessons for our present battle against the jihadis (except for our dependence on foreign oil). While Garrett did not foresee the environmental regulations that make it difficult to build oil refineries in our time, such policies fit perfectly into the theme of Chapter 14.

America's current dependence on foreign industry is not popular to discuss because the solutions are difficult to arrive at and implement. But a book like Blue Wound that warned us of and even fictionalized this problem long before it occurred is a good place to start.
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click here for part IX.

The Blue Wound - part VI - Ivory and Apes and Peacocks

Check here for parts I, II, III, IV and V of the Blue Wound live blog.

The key to understanding Garrett's writing is the New Deal. The New Deal was the defining moment not only for the United States and its journey from republic to empire, but for Garrett's writing. Read the Foreward to People's Pottage for more details. With the coming of the New Deal, all of the class envy propaganda that had existed for decades found an outlet and came sharply into focus. As a result of this revolutionary government program, the battle lines were drawn. All other issues took a back seat. Garrett (and others) would write specifically against the very concepts of class warfare, envy and anti-rich demonization.

But in the decade prior to the New Deal, it was not unusual for Garrett to pursue arguments on tangential subjects in which the class envy issue was obscure. In "Ivory Apes and Peacocks" - Chapter 11 - Garrett appears to be critical of wealth and ostentation. In fact, the truth is more subtle. Garrett is critical of those who waste labor for the purpose of ostentation. He points out that the "unrich, aping the rich, waste very much more in the same spirit." (p. 104). Garrett argues that ostentation is one's way of showing superiority by wasting the labor of others. Singled out for special criticism are those who waste the labor of others while complaining about waste, ostentation and their own poverty.

The character Mered refers to ostentatious waste as "conspicuous . . . and for that reason it provokes social complaint and excites envy in the hearts of the multitude." (p. 102). This sentiment conflicts with Garrett's "Notes of These Times," October 8, 1932 (chapter #1 of Salvos Against the New Deal). The difference is that by 1932, Garrett was more focused on the class envy issue and the need to be clear that his opposition to destructive conduct was not intended to support class warfare and other weapons that the left would exploit for the purpose of social revolution.
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update
Click here for part VII

Blue Wound - part II - the perspective of time.

Click here for part I or here for part III.

I have read three chapters of the Blue Wound thus far. I have noticed an element that I often see in Garrett's writings. Garrett writes allegorically.

It is often impossible to discuss ultimate issues in the language of a simple narrative. It is impossible to understand ultimate issues unless the writer adds some element to the story. In Garrett's case, that element is perspective. Garrett's writings have always been about perspective and Garrett always finds a way to provide perspective.

In the early chapters of Blue Wound, Garrett provides the perspective of time. Garrett presents the image of an open plain in which many cities rise and fall, such as would happen over many centuries. The main character is permitted to watch, from a distance, as cities spring into being, become wealthy and ostentatious and are destroyed by marauding hordes. He provides the following explanation:

A city is like a giant hanging by the umbilical cord. Its belly is outside of itself, at a distance, in the keeping of others. Cut it off from its belly and it surrenders or dies. As the first city was so the last one is. No city endures.

pp. 23-24 (italics added)

The narrator then sees multiple cities rising on the same distant plain, only to attack one another. The surviving city possessed a "great tower" and ". . . was the most beautiful one and I had almost prayed that it should have the victory, for I hated to see it fall."









But even that city succumbed. It succumbed to internal strife instead of marauders from beyond its walls. The result was the same. "The tower burned and fell." (p. 25).

I read and promote Garet Garrett not because I believe him to have possessed psychic powers. I read his works because he had perspective. He could observe events of the 1920's and draw the right conclusions. By thinking forward, ignoring petty political arguments of the moment, and remembering history, he could write words that future generations might confuse with prophesy.

In fact, Garrett drew on the lessons of Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Babylon, Dehli, and countless other cities that fell to internal strife or marauding hordes or both. From those lessons and the trends Garrett observed in his own time, it was not hard for Garrett to filter out the "issues of the day" and predict the events of the future.

Garrett presents his story by speeding up the chronology and allowing one observer to narrate centuries of history in two or three pages. When we see the centuries unfold before our eyes, we gain perspective. We see the forest instead of a few trees.

Garrett was not some Nostradamus, predicting specific future events like an oracle to be deciphered. He possessed wisdom and experience, not intuition. He provides perspective, not revelation.

Garrett wrote in the age when the skyscraper was rapidly overtaking the landscape of modern cities. Knowing the fate of previous civilizations, knowing the reasons for those fates and seeing the path upon which America was then beginning to embark - it was not difficult for Garrett to foresee the future of our greatest cities. He never knew of the World Trade Center and did not predict which marauders would destroy it. But had Garrett seen the film from our own recent history that has become ingrained in our own memory, he would not have been surprised.

At the time of Blue Wound's publication (1921), the New Deal was little more than a decade away. The intellectual forces that propelled us down that road already existed. Those forces had found voice in academic institutions and were rapidly remaking the intellectual landscape of our culture. By the 1920's, those voices were quite loud and militant. Those voices had already found safe haven around the world. America was one catalyst away from crossing a Rubicon of its own making.

I don't expect all of the answers from Blue Wound. But I expect a little more insight into the world of 1921 and how we fell into the clutches of the New Deal and, ultimately, our present situation.

The Blue Wound - "live blog"

As promised, I begin my "live blog" of Garet Garrett's Blue Wound, published in 1921. Blue Wound was Garrett's first novel.

Prior to this week, my only knowledge of this book came from Bruce Ramsey's brief description in the "Introduction" to Salvos Against the New Deal. Ramsey (p. 12) described Garrett as having imagined, in 1921, a war of the future taking place in 1950.





I have read the foreward (or "Proemial"), which begins the plot by depicting a newspaper office. A mysterious visitor leaves a manuscript describing the visitor's quest to discover and interview the man responsible for starting "the war".

On that note, the story is off and running. I will not provide spoilers in this "live blog." I will not describe the plot twists as I discover them. Instead, I will provide my own impressions and the lessons that Blue Wound has for all of us.


The Garrett works I have read have always been imaginitive. His fictional works create scenarios out of historical events that provide insight and perspective. My experiences reading these works have created expectations for me. The Proemial has sharpened these expectations. I hope not only to enjoy a story but to benefit from Garrett's message about the world of 1921 and his expectations for the world of 1950.

I want to see not only how close Garrett's predictions were to the actual world of 1950, I want to learn something about 1921 that the intervening years prevent us from seeing. Garrett's novels have always remained as mysterious as the fictional manuscript that the editor found on his desk in Blue Wound. Little is known about these novels, as they have become quite rare. But Garrett was favorably reviewed and somewhat influential in his time.

Today, with a financial crisis looming over the United States and government growth out of control, I am driven to discover how Garrett's writings may help lead the way back to the Republic that once existed in this country.

update - click here for part II.

Coming in 2007 - The Blue Wound

1921