Shakespeare was Theodora’s favorite playwright, and she persisted in requesting that we visit the Folger Shakespeare Library. Eventually, I agreed to go to Washington, D.C. with her. A fellow participant at one of our platonic orgies had suggested that we visit Victor Virga while we were in D.C. because he was looking for people like us who would work at his new place of business. Until then capitalism had failed to recognize my unique talents, and consequently, I had been forced to live a less than luxurious life. I wanted the life of a poor, suffering artist to be a cliché, not a reality.
Victor had just opened up the Kennedy Center for the Performing Parts a few months before, and he was having only moderate success. Victor had held numerous jobs with various companies before then, but had rarely stayed with one for more than a few years because he didn’t follow the rules like he should have. Verily, here was a man after my own heart. He had gotten tired of working for others and this time was running his own business. Victor’s forte was in being able to sniff out a market, create a product or service, and provide that famous American managerial know-how to turn a profit.
He knew plenty of people from the upper crusts of society, one happy consequence of going to the right schools, and of getting fired too many times, and he was determined to use this knowledge to his advantage. Victor was corporate handsome, not model handsome, and was slim, both because he kept in shape and because he was constantly, frenetically moving around. He was headstrong with a temper, something I could easily identify with. When he was angry, he could launch into a tolutiloquent tirade that would tax anyone’s tolerance of him. He seemed to edit words out of his sentences so as not to waste time. Like the Russians, he found definite and indefinite articles to be a waste of time and rarely used them, but other than that, this capitalist had little in common with his communistic counterparts.
Some people thought Victor worshipped Mammon as others worshipped Christ, but to Victor money was just a way of keeping score. He thrived on the whole process of competition and the creative destruction that drove it. Victor knew where to build, whom to hire, how to lure the elites in, and what the elites really wanted.
Victor’s inspiration for the Kennedy Center came from one of his visits to the Bohemian Grove in upstate California which he had been invited to through his contacts in the government and in the motion picture industry. His idea was to create a year-round Bohemian Grove, though with women available, where the elites could gather. “Great nations of past had cultured demi-mondes for the rich—Japan, France, Rome. Sign of high cultural achievement. Why shouldn’t we?” Victor asked Theodora and me.
To get ideas for my artistic creations, I asked myself, what did Washingtonians want from life? Why were they in the nation’s capital? What services could we provide that would draw them in like lemmings? A visitor only has to be in Washington for a few minutes and see the marble and stone Cathedrals of Government Power that the politolatrous Bureaucrats built to themselves to realize that most of Washington’s automatons probably think God is just another taxpayer to serve them. It was quite obvious to me why there was no official Patron Saint of Government Workers.
After spending a month in the capital, the answer to my Marketing 101 questions seemed obvious. Washingtonians are a bunch of cultured, egotistical, lumpen-elitist snobs who live in their own dream world completely divorced from the rest of the country. Everything they do had to show that they The Bureaucrats are superior to the poor miserable souls in the rest of the country who only exist to pay for their masters’ existence. To ensure this, the government provides cultural events galore for its workers. One need only visit the city and see all the galleries, theaters, orchestras, ballets, and other centers of artistic creation, happily supported by government grants, to discover how true this is.
What is the essential nature of a Washingtonian? (God, I’m beginning to sound like Aquinas). Whether they are politicians, members of the military, businessmen, foreign diplomats, reporters or lobbyists, Washingtonians want power. They want to be at the center of action where they can control and manipulate their chosen area of political interference
The Kennedy Center as created as a mollitious Mecca for millionaires and politicians where all their dreams could come true. We created an ersatz cultural milieu at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Parts so visitors could escape their dull bureaucratic lives and the pressures of daily power plays to live in the aristocratic world they knew they deserved. Who in Washington wouldn’t want to bethink themselves a member of royalty served by artists who could provide mental and sexual stimulation? Money created a world of fantasy that had never existed, but which the customers wanted to believe in. Thus the Kennedy Center, which never received any money from the National Endowment for the Arts, took on those inveterate values of good taste, elegance, and culture that were the secrets of its success.
The officials and bureaucrats in Washington wanted to change the world, and I wanted to change them. At last I had the forum I needed to convert Washington to my Weltanshauung. As I saw it, in America, there was a revolving door of power between Washington, Wall Street and the Ivy League academics. Influence one and you influence them all.
Nuns just want to have fun! But when three former Catholic nuns have too much fun and get in trouble with the law, they become nuns on the run.
Driving back to Washington D.C. where they work at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Parts, the three sisters are arrested in Tennessee. After defeating the local deputy in strip poker, they escape from jail, and are pursued by the zealous Detective Schmuck Hole, who has personally offered a $10,000 reward for their capture on The 700 Club. Little do they know that when the three sisters visit the Washington Monument, their lives will change forever.
Set in 1979, The Three Sisters is a sacrilegious satire that skewers not only organized religion, but the government, the media, intellectuals, corporate greed and every other part of the establishment. Maybe not the greatest story ever told, but possibly the funniest.
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Genre – Humor, Satire, Catholicism, Politics
Rating – R
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Website www.threesistersnovel.com
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