I am the Man of Reason so critically, even scathingly, referred to by the Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board, in the Story Notice two links below this Memo posted on this website’s Latest Posts bulletin board of its homepage, yclept HQ, to Kyiv Commix story – or, I should rather say, having just been publicly and massively, if tardily, corrected, “report” – number 4.8, titled “The Rational Man”, the next link immediately below this Memo.
I would like to first say, and with this Memo am hereby telling the KUSEB directly to its faces, that I am not a theoretical construct of its collective imagination. I am a real, live, flesh-and-blood person, and, as my name makes clear, a man, which fact, withal, turns Shakespeare’s query-cum-quip, “What’s in a name?” on its head, and you will have to figure that one out for yourselves. Go ahead, just take it to its logical and rational conclusion, if you have the courage to; if you dare. For I have no doubt that you are quite capable of doing so, but, as my preceding sentence implies, I doubt whether you have the gusto and the moral fiber to go there.
And speaking of “rational”, the next thing I’d like to say is this: The Rational Man (whom I know and, frankly, by whose sudden appearance here in Kyiv I am surprised, though not at all shocked), who references himself (or is referenced by someone else – it really matters not) in the title, as well as in the body, of the eponymously named story – oh, sorry: report – as “The Rational Man”, and I, share “Man” as part of our respective names – he, at the end of his; I, at the beginning of mine.
And while I’m typically put off by even the appearance, much less any perceived need, much less an actually attempted and consequently executed act, of stating the obvious, I believe doing so in this instance might prove helpful to some (oh, no, by this remark I by no means mean anyone on the Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board, for perish the thought), who would otherwise feel flummoxed and perplexed to the point of parting with their ability, such as it might be, to mentally order their lives for a day, or even two.
Now, when The Rational Man and I would see each other on occasion, it was always on friendly and respectful terms, over a couple of beers – at a place like Andrew’s Irish Pub, for example, in Kyiv’s formerly quickly gentrifying district of Podil. During such meetings, we’d address each other as Man, for short, and for convenience’ sake, much as two acquaintances, or friends, who happen to share the same name would do, if they were both called, say, Steve, or John – as what else could one expect them to do? Can anyone convincingly argue that any of this is in the slightest strange?
Does the Isle of Man strike anyone as strange for its name?
And as we, The Rational Man and I, would sit across from each other at table enjoying our beers, we’d typically talk about things like history, literature, the arts, philosophy – and the like.
It was almost imperceptible, I’ll confess, when we’d begin to move from beer into the hard stuff, like whiskey, for example, but by the time we’d done it, it always felt appropriate, as though it’d been the right thing to do.
For it was always at this juncture of our meeting that our dialogic allegiance inevitably shifted to the guilty pleasure of what we loved talking about most; namely, The Kyiv Commix. And the shift was not so much to the Commix themselves, as to the characters in them; or, having been so colossally excoriated and set straight, of late, and in an egregiously behindhand manner, to boot – by the magnanimous and so-generous-of-spirit Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board – I should rather say, the “newsmakers”, who always somehow made the headlines IN the Commix.
And THIS was the point in our conversation and meeting where The Rational Man and I always, and I mean ALWAYS, got into the literary and theoretical bases and grounds we both supposed (till now, that is) undergirded their existence, AS characters, in what had always appeared to us to be something like an unfinishable, serialized tragicomic WORK OF FICTION by an unknown number of contributing “writers”, part satire, part epic, part saga, involving also a number of novelistic genres and conventions, as well as numbers of other literary devices.
And we’d ALWAYS surmise that the work was perhaps loosely and vaguely based on persons currently existing, or having once existed, in this, our touchable, feelable, but senseless, harsh, ruthless, thankless and merciless reality; a world where Satan crouches behind every corner, covering it in relentless and unstoppable evil; but that, even if such connections between the unreal and the real could be shown, they could not, ultimately, prove by a preponderance of the evidence (in a civil case), much less beyond a reasonable doubt (in a criminal case), that those people ACTUALLY exist or ever existed, to the exclusion, disclaimer-like, of mere coincidence, which is NEVER enough to certify the case, as is well known. In fact, it is the farthest thing from it.
Unlike The Rational Man and myself, who indeed do exist, and are NOT mere coincidences of any sort, contrary to the way the KUSEB puts it. Hell, reading them, one could conclude that I (and my friend, The Rational Man) not only don’t even exist, but that we possibly never have.
Alas, and this has been all to make the following point and to summarize: I have just learned, by way of aggressive, extended commentary with regard to myself in the Story Notice to 4.8, two links below this Memo on the Kyiv Unedited homepage’s Latest Posts board, that all of the good-faith efforts I’d exerted to produce and contribute the Man on Earth section, in its entirety, even if currently greatly abridged, to this Kyiv Unedited website, had been, in a very real and substantive sense, in vain, since those efforts were expended on applying literary criticism and theory to mere fact-based reports of journalism, much of it provenanced in American detective evidence and intelligence gathering.
I feel humbled; even ashamed. And I regret ever having done it.
Adieu, Kyiv Commix…
Filed by the Man of Reason, March 23, 2025