The Wit’s Guide to Vengeance
Or, first venge, then revenge
The most important thing to say when you’re in the market for vengeance is that you’re simply seeking justice. The former makes you seem bloodthirsty and irrational; the latter appeals to the better angels of our nature, even if you’re planning to laugh maniacally whilst plucking the wings off those angels.
“Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.”
— Paul Gauguin
Is every great plot a revenge plot? Hamlet, The Odyssey, Titus Andronicus, Moby Dick, Gone Girl, Carrie, John Wick, The Great Gatsby, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Oldboy, Sweeney Todd, Gladiator, Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus — again and again, we cheer for the wronged party seeking vengeance even as we know they’ll invariably end up covered in pig’s blood at White Castle. But everyone wants to see I Spit On Your Grave; no one’s clamoring for Oh, Is That Your Grave? I Didn’t Notice Because I’m Out Here Living My Best Life.
“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. ”
— Susan Sontag
Can we agree that it’s much better to concoct elaborate revenge fantasies than to act upon them? Certainly if you’re the one being acted upon. One night in 1915, dinner party conversation among a group of Russian revolutionaries turned to life’s greatest pleasures. One Bolshevik said women; another said the progress of dialectical materialism towards the workers’ paradise. (They had been drinking heavily.) And then a young Joseph Stalin piped up with “My greatest pleasure is to choose one’s victim, prepare one’s plans minutely, slake an implacable vengeance, and then go to bed. There’s nothing sweeter in the world.” In his book Young Stalin, Simon Montefiore doesn’t record what his tablemates said next (“Speaking of bed, look at the time!”) but he does report that they died in Stalin’s purges.
“Dinners are given mostly in the middle classes by way of revenge.”
— William Thackeray
A sure sign of the fitful progress of our species is the widespread adoption of the truth and reconciliation model of historical redress. The fact that it’s become verbal wallpaper shouldn’t obscure what a big step forward it is in conflict resolution: First we get everyone on the record about some mutually acceptable version of events, then we at least propose some steps to make it right.
“There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.”
— Josh Billings
Imagine if they’d had a truth and reconciliation commission in Sicily in 1282, when a French soldier insulted a local woman on her way to church and the Sicilians retaliated by killing 13,000 French people. Perhaps the Sicilian love of the vendetta could have been smothered in the crib! But then, they’d want justice.
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
— Orson Welles
Before you set out for revenge, dig two graves: One for the cold dish that no one wants to eat, and one for all the eyes you’re about to gouge out. Unpleasant! Maybe just serve the dishes to some friends while they’re hot?
October’s Riposte Card!
Deeply chuffed to announce that Sandi Falconer is October’s Riposte Carder! The illustrator and printmaker in Windsor, Ontario, is consistently excellent, and the subscription money you send this way went to her this month. Her work ought to be arriving in your mailboxes this week, and I’ll reveal the Riposte Card in this space next week. In the meantime, upgrade your subscription, visit Sandi’s print shop, and follow her good advice:
October, Surmised
My Toronto Star news quiz last week covered the tawdry history of the October Surprise, the very same week that Jimmy Carter celebrated his 100th birthday. Maybe living long is the best revenge? Or maybe peanuts are just really good for you?
Quote Vote
“Life is all vendetta, conspiracy, strong feeling, roused pride, self-belief, belief in the justice of its tides and floods.”
— Martin Amis
You can look at all of life as a series of acts of revenge. We bulldoze the rainforest and we get pandemics. We diet more and are fatter than ever. We invent antibiotics and we get superbugs. Or, you can not look at it that way. It’s all the same to the superbugs.
If they could see GWQ No. 275 now, eh? Boy, that’d show them! Who? Um, I forget. But publishing a newsletter each week is such a bizarre form of revenge, I’m sure they’ll never see it coming. Or going. I forgive everyone who didn’t read Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting, if only because there are so many of you. Tap the ❤️ below to slake a totally placable vengeance.
dear benjamin,
great quotes! i love this one:
“There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.”
— Josh Billings
thank you for sharing as always!
love
myq
That fifth quote should, of course, be credited not to Orson Welles but to Graham Greene, who wrote THE THIRD MAN.