Word: confession
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...guts reportage is not enough to explain why The Forgotten Soldier has been a bestseller in France and Germany, or why Sajer so belatedly wrote it. Beneath its artillery-barrage surface hides another war-the struggle, equally intense though never acknowledged, between an autobiographer's impulse to confess and his impulse to self-justify. With a kind of death grip, Sajer holds on to his reader, simultaneously appealing to him for absolution and denying his right to judge. He pictures the reader sitting in an armchair by the fire, curled up in a comfortably moral position. Out of anguish...
...process of breaking a strong man by inquisition begins. At first, Gerard is obdurate, refusing to confess to trumped-up charges of treason, or even believe that the party to which he has consecrated his life is behind his bewildering plight...
Long buffeted by internal conflict, the four defense lawyers had finally agreed that the best defense was no defense. They had good reason. The three girls on trial with Manson had insisted that they were going to confess their part in the grisly Sharon Tate murder case. The lawyers wanted to stop them. Amid the confusion of legal argument, Manson himself won Judge Charles Older's permission to take the stand outside the jury's presence. "I've killed no one," he insisted. "I've ordered no one to be killed. These children who come...
...judge called him "incompetent" to run his defense, and well aware that the climate against him was overwhelming, Manson weeks ago devised a weird ploy that no lawyer, even a bad one, could abide. The guru determined that the girls from his "family" should take the stand, sweetly confess all and say that he had nothing to do with it. Then Manson would testify, both to confirm his innocence and tell the world his special truths. Fitzgerald vainly argued the obvious: not only would the girls be convicted, but Manson would damn himself by demonstrating the prosecution's contention...
...that point, Manson sprang up, asked to take the stand and delivered 90 minutes of extraordinary sermonizing about himself and society in general (sec box). When he finally finished, he whispered to the girls that they now should not confess. Then, apparently satisfied he had reached the audience he cared about, Manson said he would not repeat any of his testimony for the jurors. So they will not hear any defense witnesses after all. The attorneys, if they can find any pieces to gather, will present final arguments next week...