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Lawyers and Literature John William Corrington's "The Actes and Monuments" [Rand McNally has committed suicide, in an act in which, according to Harry Cohen has "determined to do justice to himself." On the same evening, Cohen learns that Rand McNally has committed suicide, he has a second heart attack. Cohen contends that what then took place "within the futureless glow of Coronary": "I was constructing my soul." Cohen does now, what he tells us, he must: "Because I need to tell it. That is why we do things always, isn't it? Because we must. Not because we should." Harry Cohen goes on to say in the "futureless glow of Coronary" he saw: Randy McNally and the Joan of Arc (he calls her Joan of Lorraine), Raymond of toulouse, and Anne Albright. All in coronary, yes, Dr. Freud. Being a man dead, there is no reason one must honor time or space, chronology or sequence, in his hallucinations." Describing the hallucination, Cohen says: "It was the Happy Isles, where I was, looking much like the country around Sausalito. There was worship and diversion, of course, and the smoky odor of terror. Two Mississippi deputies dragged Raymond before the Inquisition. Anne Albright was condemned once more for having denied the doctrine of Transubsegregation. I think I saw Jesus, now only an elderly Jew, in a side street weeping, blowing his nose, shaking his head as the Grand Inquisitor passed in triumphant procession, giving us both a piercing stare, blowing us kisses. Behind him in chains marched Giordano Bruno and John Huss, Mac Parker and Emmett Till. Savonarola was handcuffed to Malcolm X and Michael Servetus walked painfully, side by side with Bobby Hutton. The line went on forever, I thought, filled with faces I did not know: those who had blessed us with their pain, those suffering now, those yet to come. I wondered why I was not among them, but old Jesus, who was kind, and whom they ignored, said that there were those who must act and those who must see. It was given, God help me, that I should see." ["The Actes and Monuments," in John William Corrington, The Actes and Monuments 1-35 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978) [reprinted: 26 Legal Stud. F. 181 (2002)] [first published in the Sewanee Review in 1975; Corrington was a 3rd year law student] Mac Parker | Mack Charles Parker (1936-1959) Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) Michael Servetus (1509/15ll-1553) Rand McNally: "That Terrible Brotherhood" Charles Starkweather (1938-1959) W.C. Grierson and his "Cases"
Raymond of Toulouse
Anne Albright
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