"An American Eden", "The American Inferno", "America" Trylogy

An American Eden: "They say that only the fool quotes himself, and I confess that along with ample reserves of stupidity I have also cursed with an excess of vanity, so the reader will forgive me if I quote myself: "The real America can only be found not in desires but in the purity of its landscape." This remark is commonplace enough, but in my commonplace mind it resonated since I wrote it in a second-rate book a few years ago. What did I mean by it? When I wrote it, I did not very much by it. I merely liked the turn of phrase. But since then this idea has captured my mind. America is a land that is captivated by its own appetites. Of that, there can be no doubt. We are taught to cherish only the temporary feelings of satiety that repeated binging upon our appetites can ensure. Yet, this is not liberty. We are not free merely to choose a poison. We are free to think, to feel and to be. We are free to live in this landscape, in this Eden, if we choose it so to be and live free from unceasing desires. The very things that have plagued European man since the Enlightenment. The great sea of desires that leads to all of mankind's assorted folly. Here in this landscape so perfectly cherished by our Native cousins, we, they and all those who value it, are free to worship at God's truest altar. The Altar of the actual America. The soil, rock and trees that make this vast and perfect place so perfect. Yet we bespoil it with European delusions. The delusions that we can compete with God. That our built environment can transcend his. That our factories and the squalid conditions that arise in the towns in which they are built will somehow allow us to be happy. We are not fools, for fools cannot see their idiocy. We are somehow, worse than fools, for we will ourselves to do things of such profound stupidity despite knowing that we hate what we have built. Who likes a factory? Which man's soul was ever lifted by a tenement building? Who enjoys seeing working men reduced to wretches and their wives and children treated not as cherished members of a family but as an awful burden? We need better, and yer better is all around, better is America. By attempting to transform it into a poor impersonation of Europe, we are as Adam, eating once more of the apple, only this time knowing full well of the consequences. To free the American soul, the New World soul, we must free the American spirit from the prison in which we have placed it, we must return from the prison in which we have placed it, we must return to the American landscape. We must seek our solace, our comfort, our very heaven in the perfection and splendor of this place."