Deep Structure Comedy

Hardship dogs us all, and tragedy follows
at its heels, yet experience also contains patches of laughter in pursuit of the elusive fox, happiness. Tragi-comedy is the genre most consonant with my experience; Shakespeare's mature judgment rested in
an examination of this genre.

Unique experience, full of serious trial, but examined with clarity, told with some eloquence and humour, and ending in a joyful consummation to many readers is rewarding. From age 17 to age 28, I overcame a bipolar mood disorder with occasional aspects of spiritual possession. In the same period I attended Canadian prairie universities for ten consecutive years as a full-time student and earned two degrees. I did things ascribed
to Greek gods in mythology, won the love of a chemistry major from the University of Manitoba named Barb, a Grey Nun, and then defeated Satan as Apollo Sauroktonos defeated Python, the evil spirit haunting Delphi.

Deep Structure Comedy begins with a free verse poem "Fear and Trembling", rendered here in prose, which sketches the narrative to follow.

A father of Faith once took his trembling son, urgently upon command of God, in filial devotion against filial succession as somber sacrifice upon Mount Moriah; so sinful Abraham raised the binding knife, concerted in his saddest piety, but from the trial God permitted Grace; the father and the son returned rejoicing; the almost ended family would have sons. Much later Michael Kierkegaard cursed God from high upon a hill on Jutland heath, and sinned in primal ways with kindred blood before the binding vows of bride and groom; the first and last of seven children lived. The youngest son, Søren, was sacrificed within a well of deep and caustic thought, but early, lacking faith, he lost his love — a sacrifice to keep her from their fate, but from the trial God permitted Grace, the son in won posterity rejoices.

So God would sacrifice another son to Fear: a father's son, of little sin, possessed, made deep on insane heaths, but strengthen-ed in tenacious faith — like Saemund with his book upon the seal. The games of Satan permeate the test, but true as Job, his virtue turned to love; the Adversary lost the wager laid, as he has lost in instances before. And from the trial God permitted Grace, the Adversary's foe is paid with love — muliebrity enrobed in Light and lace; a not too common comedy resolved (7-8).

On the narrative level, this true meta-physical saga may hold the attention of many readers and for those well versed in literature, primarily British, American and Icelandic, the text offers extra thrills and nuance. On the typological level it is a working out of a Messianic complex, but with the addition of humour and epiphanies that hold joyful hope for all human beings, like Ludwig Von Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with Schiller's text Ode to Joy. One reading of the text is as a modern Hamlet (but with a final obviation of the tragedy) or as a parody of the New Testament.

I made the final improvements to Deep Structure Comedy while living in Osaka, my work teaching English in Japan having provided me with time to further my studies of metaphysics and providing final emotional distance on the experience narrated. While living and working in Osaka my manuscript was accepted for publication by PublishAmerica of Baltimore, Maryland.

My next book will be a satire on politics and philosophy with a naive narrator like Swift's Gulliver. One of the societies he will visit is the Land of Wa; you have probably visited the place yourself! I loved my time in Kansai and, indeed, may soon be returning;
it provides, I believe, an environment conducive for writing and supportive of the fulfillment of one's self, in a society so like our own and also so separate.

Deep Structure Comedy (ISBN 1-4137-4205-X)
by Kevin Jon Johnson (173 pages) is available at www.publishamerica.com or www.amazon.com

Text: Kevin Jon Johnson