Returning to Trotskyism and its influences on both bodies of work, I found more of an acceptance (set against itself) within Bennett's gift, than Bolaño's stolen tongue in cheek. That is not to say that ideas such as Permanent Revolution and regulated global economics do not find their place within Bennett's narratives. No One Loves A Kamikaze expounds several observations that lay subtle claim to need for a more closely monitored global market—the message metaphorically strewn out over mountainsides, littered with oxygen tanks and chumps without change.
"Once men climbed mountains with the air in their lungs in big clumsy boots wearing animal-pelt parkas. Now they do it in lightweight synthetic clothing for kicks and endorsements, and the slopes of Mt. Everest are littered with oxygen tanks."
Still, it seems that Bennett is more comfortable, as is typical of the American author, to return the focus of financial or political ordeal into a nationalistic scope. In this instance, the lack of narrowness, often found in such viewpoints, was refreshing and completely absolved the content of any claims to international indifference.
Trotsky himself believed that the United States had established itself as "the foundry in which the fate of man is to be forged" during his stay in New York early 1917. (http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/MyLife/00000033.htm)
And even though Trotsky would someday denounce his Menshevik affiliation (because of their insisted alliance with Russia and their inability to reconcile with Lenin's Bolshevik majority), he would never really change his stance on the topics of Pacifism and democracy.
"Pacifism is of the same historical lineage as democracy."
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1917/xx/pacifism.htm)
That is what I ultimately took from Bennett's No One Loves A Kamikaze. Even though the truth or tactic will lead you onto the steepest incline of a slippery shit pile, you find there are more people at the peak than what you expected. They all smell the same, and everyone is waiting for the first person to make the slide downhill. But before mounting the summit, expecting any kind of answer whatsoever (and hopefully you're not planning on it always being something profound and awe- inspiring), you should ask yourself the initial question:
Aren't you used to the smell by now?
"I saw a magazine photo of a cluster of rainbow men planting a flag in the sky. The photo was all asses and elbows. Over- population at the peak of a five-mile-high mountain. Twenty minutes after the picture was snapped, they were dead. A storm came out of nowhere and snuffed them.
The photo lay trapped in the camera, like the voice of a prophet, waiting for the right moment to speak out."
Frankie Metro is the Chief Rocknrolla at Unlikely Stories: Episode IV. He reviews, analyzes, and sometimes features music and literary art. You can learn more about him at his bio page.
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