The Literary Aficionado Review

According to the dictionary definition, `The Möbius strip is a surface with only one side and only one boundary component. The Möbius strip has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. It can be realized as a ruled surface. It has several curious properties. A line drawn starting from the seam down the middle will meet back at the seam but at the “other side”. If continued the line will meet the starting point and will be double the length of the original strip. This single continuous curve demonstrates that the Möbius strip has only one boundary.’

The concept has confounded many thinkers and writers but in the hands of Mathias B. Freese the essence of the meaning of the concept is defined in a series of essays that represent some of the most sensitive and profound thinking of the past few years. Freese writes about psychology, philosophy, thought, family, memories both good and sad, and ramblings about the lives and works of such disparate characters as Buster Keaton, Orson Welles, Nikos Kazantzakis, Peter Lorre to Federico Fellini’s `La Dolce Vita.’

In many ways Freese’s essays are feelings of discontent with the American way of life, his disappointments not only in his career as a teacher, but in many aspects of the way we perceive worth. He often bemoans the manner in which we trash art, spiritual concerns, and creativity in favor of crass commercialism. His previous, highly honored writings about the Holocaust surface here and there and are profoundly moving. In `A Spousal Interview: `After all my years of writing about the Holocaust, the one great learning for me is that it is repeatable; that we learn a little form it, but it will be massaged and kneaded into a sweetener as a historical lesson and not much metabolized by future generations …”Never Again” is an inept, inane and useless slogan, representing more of the ache and agony of the generations after the Holocaust. The Holocaust will be mostly forgotten centuries hence and will be so attenuated that in American textbooks it will take its place alongside the genocide of the American Indian, a paragraph or two or three. If you want a measure of life in this existence, find love, find meaningful work; the rest is illusion.’

These essays are so important for us all to read, so full of richness and quotations that deserve repeating, as the following form `Things Kazantzakis: ` We are spendthrifts with existence, we use it badly. I struggle with “reach what you cannot fine” all the time. No, I will not end up transfigured on a cross, but the struggle, dear reader, the struggle has made my life richer – and dearer.’

Another coupling of essays shares the profundity of his mind. In one titled “About Caryn’ he praises his daughter stricken with Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) for the courage she demonstrates in coping with her station in life, and that essay is followed by `I had a daughter once’ in which he describes Caryn’s suicide (`she rotted for a week before someone inquired about her.’) and the grieving a father for a daughter has rarely reached such heights of profound tenderness.

This is one of those books that belongs in the library of every thinking and concerned human being. It is a treasure, at times exceedingly painful to read, at times exhilarating. Highly Recommended.

Grady Harp, December 2012

TITLE: This Möbius Strip of Ifs
AUTHOR: MATHIAS B. FREESE
PUBLISHER: WHEATMARK
ISBN: 9781604947236