Prison Notebooks of Phoenix Quinn, part 2

Day 3,531, 15:12 Published in USA USA by Pfenix Quinn
Prison Notebooks of Phoenix Quinn, part 2





As part of my re-entry duties and practice of general penance for, you know, being a terrible trouble-maker and stuff, I've been working on cleaning up and recycling the awful mess inside the SFP's secret undersea lair. Evidently when these SFP's say "Party", they really mean "PPPAAAAARRT-EEE!!!".


Dang! I'M TELLING YOU. A mountain of empty beer bottles. More than a few smelly old cracked bongs, most with "Property of J.C." scratched onto them. Luckily, some of them repairable...



And piles and piles of spent cartridges. Some look like they go back to V1. All kinds of pictures of bears too. Go figger.



On a more useful bent, been digging through reams and reams of e-paper and paraphernalia. Trying to just catalog the weird scribbles, drawings and artifacts. But I keep getting drawn in, you know? Some pretty weird shit. Proposed Party logos featuring flying socialist dinosaurs. Journals from what looks like a few internationalist-tribal poetry slams. Some kind of multi-part story about a gypsy caravan?

Oh! And these scratchy session recordings. Sounds like a late-70's-Austin-commie-punk-influenced cross-over surf / heavy-metal / mariachi band? Or something like that.

And, as previously noted, I have uncovered the mother lode: the collected notebooks of that dearly departed writer, pan-handler, layabout nogoodnik, wild-haired professor and cantankerous windbag known as "PQ", He ironically (or not?) labeled this collection of stuff: "My Prison Notebooks"





Not only are many of the pages nearly unreadable gibberish, written in chicken-scratchings that look like a weird cross between occult runes and badly constructed Perl code, done in penmanship that can only be described as either childish or the work of a person of very advanced age, the notebooks are also voluminous. I mean, they go on and on and on...

So it will take some seriously dedicated effort to make sense of it. No worries, though. I am on the job. And will stick to it as long as I can stand it. Or not. But then I don't really have much else to do. So. Yeah. Stick to it it is.





This week I thought I'd pull together just a tiny smattering of notes and observations.

One thing I want to share today finding the original notes on and each of the subsequently published copies of Quinn's most often-reprinted work. Dating all the way back to the V1 era, the "Analysis of Classes in eRepublik" was re-published in several left-wing e-newspapers, including a Spanish translation. I'd say that, in my literary-critter opinion, if there was any one article that most completely captures what might be meant by "PQ Thought", it was probably that one.

PQ signed off on the original version of the "Analysis of Classes" article simply as "Phoenix Quinn, pro-revolutionary".






Despite his penchant for inflammatory rhetoric, PQ's tone in the "Prison Notebooks" tends to be pretty calm. He often refers to the influence that other players have had on his e-world-view.

For example, according to some of the scribblings I've been able to decipher, his defense of and friendship with the Christian Socialist intellectual Bishop Sam Seabury slightly startled some of his more hard-core commie-atheist friends and allies. As did his willingness, following several long discussions with well-known left-libertarian Lysander Spooner 2, to re-characterize the SFP as "anarchist" rather than "socialist". There are other cases where his thinking clearly evolved over time.

On the other hand, there are many bold and even angry marginal notations and whatnot, along with several long screeds, denouncing any attempt to remove the word "Socialist" from the name of the party.



Taken all together, after having pored through many, many, many pages -- interrupted only by the occasional spark of a ritual nod, if you get my drift, to the Great Commander of the Bear Cavalry and Many-Times Party Chief, that Cherished-if-a-bit-Rambunctious Leader who brought the SFP at long last up from the Lower Realms and into the Five -- I can state with little doubt that the two strongest influencers on his e-world-view were, over the long haul, all things considered, and with many, many turns, detours, back flips and so forth, the Legendary Chairman of the SFP, Osmany Ramon, and another SFP leader who later wrote several scholarly works in defense of socialism in eRepublik: Comrade Vincent Nolan, for whom PQ wrote a eulogy after Vincent left the game for the first time. In fact, Nolan was the only player for whom Brother-Bear Quinn ever bestowed such an honor.




~~~~ Oh, hey! Cool. Got another one of those "J.C." bongs repaired now. Nodding reverently once again to the spirit of Brother Connors. Just a sec. ~~~~~


Aaaaaaaand. Exhale..




Right. So this week I dug through PQ's interviews with and about Osmany Ramon and Vincent Nolan, and tried to jot down some notes summarizing key ideas from the "Analysis of Classes" along with some of the notes about it. For today, I will just remark that it is very obviously a "through a glass darkly" re-rendition of Mao Zedong's famous "An Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society".

I hope that my penitential curation work will, in some small way, bring into sharper relief for both Party historians and for those who brave few who still aspire to the e-GASM, what I have been referring to, somewhat sheepishly, in my previous articles as "Ramonism-Nolanism, PQ Thought". As some of you may have detected, this is my own meagre attempt at a "PQ"-style joke. The phrasing alludes to the oddly-shaped 1960's/1970's proto-Maoist New Left neologism: "Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought", complete with that confabulated hyphen and a comma.

Perhaps now the dot-connecting will be more apparent. PQ's most famous early work was a clear riff on one of Mao's most famous early works.

And given the difficulty that anybody would have in pinning down what a "PQ-ism", in and of itself, might consist of, I find the oddly-placed comma even more usefully appositive in our e-case. So I hope you appreciate the humor in that.




An aside to the PQ fans and loyalists out there, of whom I consider myself a principal one: let me say that I intend no criticism in what I am about to say. Still, in the interest of honesty, it must be said. It is only a true and honest reflection of the famous player's character, to observe that Phoenix Quinn was a true dilettante in every sense of the word. Not only did he revel in obscure and techincal language, but his interminable obsession with occulted allusions and his absolute delight in pounding together an endless stream of bizarre pastiches on real-world sources, as if it were his sacred duty to bend and twist the lines between the "real" and the "e" worlds, were, when all is said and done, perhaps his only truly unique contribution to the game world.

So let us celebrate that kind of entertainment for what it is. They say (whoever they are) that Picasso once said "Good artists borrow, great artists steal." Obviously that can be an excuse to be lazy, to produce non-transformative "works" with little redeeming value. Or it can be a masterful kind of distorted mirroring that makes us re-examine our internal stories and everyday illusions. Or it can just be a bit of fun.

Each reader who encounters PQ will have to decide that for themselves.






But we should frankly admit that it can also sometimes be a bit challenging to decode PQ. So I've decided, as I go through this revolutionary cataloging work that I have undertaken, to consider adding a few footnotes and references here and there, which I hope will enhance the meaning of the original PQ-ist materials.





To wrap up for this week, here are a few fun... notes.

Younger revolutionaries may be intrigued to learn that one of Phoenix Quinn's many failures (in collaboration with others, as usual) was an attempt to introduce a completely new revolutionary-anarcho-socialist currency into the New World. It was intended to represent electronic exchanges managed via the "SFP Store".

The ideas behind this scheme grew out of an some very interesting discussions which I will not bother to relate here. But let me just say that they pre-dated the introduction of Bitcoin to the e-world... (Cue dramatic and mysterious music.)

For today I just wanted to share the following designs which were proposed to represent various denominations of "Socialist Freedom Reserve Notes":




















OK. OK, just one more for today...another failed venture. This one I am sure no one ever saw....



There is a funny little drawing in one of the Notebooks. As far as I can tell by PQ's hand. Of an assembly of animated characters in what looks like a Union Hall setting, with a militant mouse addressing them. You can make out who they are from the backs of their heads -- there is Pluto, Donald, Bart, Marge, Batman, and many others.


Behind the speaker is large banner than reads:

Animated Workers and Cartoon Characters of the e-World, we have nothing to lose but our chains of boredom! We have an e-World to Win!




Then there's a little marginal note explains how PQ intended to start an in-game graphic novel tracing the militant socialist adventures of....


Mousey Tongue.










May the Glorious Red Banner of Mark Valshannar Style Fulminations Against the e-Bourgeoisie Fly High Forever!
For an e-World Full of Civilized Anarchy!
For Enclaves of Socialist Autonomy!
For a Good Time!



Drinks for my friends!