PraxisPoetica I Writing and Publishing Process

Self-portrait of a mid-century refugee (late 1980s)

Nov 19, 2025 - 10 min read - 2100 words

Author of `Denying The Amerikan Dream. Wandering into the Promised Land`

PraxisPoetica I Writing and Publishing Process

Intro

The first in a series of notes (see PraxisPoetica) intended as a review of the writing and publishing process ever-present during the creation of the first novel in the Denying The Amerikan Dream series Wandering Into The Promised Land. Who Promised What To Who, Now? Community Edition

The Blue Folder

Writing my first novel of the Denying the Amerikan Dream series: Wandering Into The Promised Land. Who Promised What To Who, Now? It’s spark, though, goes all the way back to the early 1980’s. In this blue notebook right here.

So, what’s inside? Here are the pages, here’s the spark and their sparks that I wrote down in the early fractal 1980’s.

Of course a lot’s changed since the early 1980’s. Some things are much more profound now, others much less. Others suffered qualitative leaps of inner tearing and others, of joy.

It’s all change and growth, though, isn’t it? Which is why all (except for Aristotle, obvio) of these fundamental pillars supporting the writing process in my life are all Marxists; living and dreaming and dying, in dialectics:

Aristotle, Poetics
- 👉 Note: A necessary work; but we reject (as do all who follow) his placing plot over character in conflict and contradiction with other characters, hegemonies and anti-hegemonies (“worlds”) as the motor of story
Alberto Mediza, Taller de Poesía (you’ll see a lot more of him around here later)
Richard Wright, Blueprint for Negro Writing (you’ll see a lot more of him around here later)
Lajos Egri, The Art of Dramatic Writing, 1946 (you’ll see a lot more of him around here later)
Lajos Egri, The Art of Dramatic Writing, 1965 (you’ll see a lot more of him around here later)
Arnold Hauser, Sozialgeschichte der Kunst und Literatur (English translation: The Social History of Art and Literature), 1951
Ernst Fischer, Von der Notwendigkeit der Kunst. 1959 (English translation: The Necessity of Art. 1963)

So, where had I gotten to inside that blue folder of the early nineteen eighties, with Bob Marley (the power of philosophy floats through my head.. light like a feather, heavy as lead), together with Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut swirling also, in my brain; something about the death of the father, WWII, and the end but not the death of the genocidal military coup right after the Malvinas War here in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Spark, spark, spark…

Basically (some names changed to avoid mistaken associations with real life persons (none appear here)), but Wandering Into The Promised Land names not adopted yet; still it’s the spark, next articles will be the current (2017-2025) spark names and stuff in the following notes), here’s what’s inside that Blue Folder:

Original Title for Wandering Into The Promised Land

Self-Portrait of a Mid-Centry Refugee

Original What If? (a.k.a. logline) for the novel

What if a young immigrant searching for his future in Argentina, participating together with many revolutionary groups forming in the pre-revolutionary sea of the early seventies in that country, flourishes as he joined in that struggle; only to become one of the tens of thousands of prisoners kidnapped during the genocidal military coup of 1976-1983; but manages to write up talks he gave or heard while in prison, and have them smuggled out as a book, Prison Lectures, even though it is not known if he was ever freed from imprisonment or whether he actually was murdered while still in captivity.

Original premise hidden in the middle of the folder

The principal anecdote of the novel is Jack Vincent’s emigration, starting with The Promised Land, then completion of the emigration cycle, finally, arriving in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Just the place for him, he fit in from the first day (“¡es un lujo tener un inglés en la unidad básica!”)

👉 The amazing thing is that this is very close to the premise of the novel over its more latest and most lasting period of gestation: 2017-present

front-matter list of inspiring quotes

👉 Note: (Jack Vincent was the original name of the protagonist for the novel in this initial “blue folder” 1980’s spark for Wandering Into The Promised Land)

The following quotes were written down to be included in the novel’s frontmatter (or perhaps all just part of the spark).

…so we may conclude that the expression mid-century refers to the increasingly manifest crisis whose fundamental cause in to be found in the West’s violent and schitzoid reaction to the profound changes marking the start of this century and epoch, in the West’s violent and schizoid suppression of reality and in man’s socialist future… —Jack Vincent, Prison Lectures

👉 The protagonist himself shows, in light of his own backstory, that in the course of the novel, he will have to be dealing with certain aspects of the “West’s” hegemony… firmly entrenched in his own being from a young age:

…so we can conclude that the expression ‘mid-century’ refers to the crisis caused by the West’s running away from and trying to hide from the fundamental revolutionary changes having taken place at the start of the twentieth century… —Jack Vincent, Prison lectures

(In reference to the Vietnamese, fighting against US Imperialist War against them) You can’t stop them; once a people start rising up, they can’t be stopped, you’ll never stop them… —Benjamin Vincent, Jack Vincent’s father

…I’m warning you, never sign any petitions… —Benjamin Vincent, Jack Vincent’s father, who taught him how to be highly contradictory just like that

Why do you use four letter words in the prayers you write down? —Benjamin Vincent

Where did you learn such words? —Benjamin Vincent

Inspiring Sources

All of Rolling Stones
- i.e. Who Wants Yesterday’s Papers
All of Bob Dylan
All of Bob Marley
Marx & Engels
Lenin
- noteworthy: Materialism and Empirio-criticism

Real Life Events and Spontaneous Memories

When I was about 20 years old, the flashing on and off of the lights by the girl dressed only in white underpants the first time I ever take LSD… she wants to help me get “tripping”. Looking at her I begin to comprehend the difference between male face and female face; and to see that there is no difference, everyone is unisex, bearing a monotonous but not boring unisex expression.

another LSD experience… sitting on a couch, looking at a blank wall and seeing workers marching, chanting, marching towards revolution… in another seeing a text which revealed to me something deeply, wondrously profound that I could never remember

👉 I’ve only taken LSD a few times in my life, always back in the late sixties; wish I had taken more.

👉 A girlfriend taking me to the Paramahansa Yogananda Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine the day after I first took LSD. This greatly affected my approach to pantheism as the basis of for my identification with being Jewish during the years I observed Jewish religious practice; in general as a world-view, and in relation to my experience with Jewish prayers and bruchas in the period leading up to my participation in the Jewish Radical Community in early 1969 after the fundamental experience of going to study to be a Rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

Actual Year at the Jewish Theological Seminary

First, during last year at UCLA and in the months after graduating, studying to be a Rabbi
Journey to Jewish Theological Seminary in New York
Lasts a single lective year
Period includes fiancé
- Protagonist finally learns of love
- fiancé’s pregnancy, uncertainty and final termination of pregnancy
- parents come to New York to “help” (they left in disgust after fiancé decided to terminate pregnancy)
- separation with fiancé
Return to Los Angeles, intense political experience in the Jewish Radical Community, whole new experience

Things my father told me

…for the very first time when they came to New York in 1968 when I was 21 years old.

My father told me about his militancy in the Young Communist League, facing repression in the streets fighting the fascists and protesting against Franco in Spain. Now I understood the mention of how the Vietnamese could never be stopped some years before (and the reaction of my mother, the sweet shop owner’s daughter, in trying to shush him up for “talking about that”).

So where did “Kapelman” come from?

👉 Which is why my father changed our last name to “Kane” when my brother and I were nine years old. But I was born Victor Opas Kapelman. My father changed his last name because he was planning on emigrating to the USA with the express purpose of working for the US imperialist war machine as an aircraft design engineer, and he thought his pro Spanish Revolution stance would prevent him from getting a security clearance. Or he was ashamed of being a Jew. Or both. But I’m proud of him for his militant past and for firmly being Jewish. The author of these works has that surname: Kapelman. And is proud of it. See more of what I have to say on the subject of the name of the author of these works, my works, in the intro page to the Works section of this site.

My father told me about something horrible that happened to him when he was a youth, when his education was interrupted:

The day when [he] was cruelly tricked and rejected, and bitterly disappointed into giving up his artistic career after being one of four semi-finalists in the whole city of London for an art scholarship which his own father refused to minimally support even with a small amount of money. His tears at telling me this. the Impression caused on “young tender Jack Vincent” at the time.

Jewish Radical Community

Back in L.A.

Activities of the Jewish Radical Community in which I participated: anti-Vietnam War rallies and activities, against Angela Davis being fired by the University of California, student uprisings at UCLA; specifically, the Jewish Radical Community visited synagogues for Friday evening services and ceremonies and attempted to collect funds and other forms of support for the Black Panther Party.

In Jewish-political terms, I once publically tore up my “modernistic, assimilationist” tallit and drew around me a more orthodox, large size, black rather than blue-lined, more “authentic” tallit, worthy of use by Jews proud to be real Jews, who compared their identity as analagous to Black people worthy of being members of the Black Panthers, in struggle.

In this regard, see Conference of Jewish Action, Davka website (May 9-11, 1969); where at the bottom of the page it is noted by the webmaster:

I still (believe it or not!) have the roster of those who attended… regarding sources for radical Jewish attitudes among Jews. Victor Kane (now a Conservative rabbi in Washington state (?)) burned his Tallit as a statement of protest (like burning a draft card). Morele Bar-On was there along with Paul Jacobs. Quite an event, I’d say. —Mark Hurvitz, Davka website

I’ve tried to contact the website to inform of the actual events of my life’s journey (will be easier once this novel is published here!!!); but never got an answer.

See also, on the same website, for additional context, The Jewish Left.

Fortunately, I actually have a photo of this, a lifelong treasure; taken seconds before the actual tearing and discarding of the assimilationist blue tallit.

Tearing the tallit as in burning the draft card (protesting pseudo-Jewishness as assimilation to establishment USA)

Actual years following

Return to New York and a New York Version of the Jewish Radical Community
Intense political struggle against racisim and against the war in Vietnam; involvement in the G.I. Coffee Shops movement; huge political growth
Return to Los Angeles
Emigration with fiancé to The Promised Land
End of relationship with fiancé
Marriage to Argentine woman
Many, many sporadic memories of life leading to emigration fulfillment, but no clear timeline at all
Emigration to Argentina
- The actual arrival in the Port of Buenos Aires in December, 1972

Outro

The Blue Folder was religiously kept, sometimes taken up and looked through with a shudder, but never retaken and studied in detail as actual Spark for this novel, until, well, 2017, but actually, more, right now as I’m getting ready to finish (start?) the First Draft. Soon.