Description

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In the Temple of the Philistines contains memories, notes, and documents from the authors ongoing attempts to find out the truth of his life and how it has been used to maintain an age of illusion under the aegis of the American Presidency and the British Crown. It follows six other volumes of writings that assert that much of what we know as history, science, and medicine is untrue. The assassination of John F. Kennedy is the chief of these false events. Chen suggests that it was staged to provide a pretext for removing the President when he became guilty of a crime considered too sordid to put before the public: the murder of a troublesome woman, possibly a prostitute. Chen suggests that Kennedys scandal was added to a slightly similar one that had been inherited from the past of Franklin D. Roosevelt, one that Americans chose to laugh off, to reject as foreign, and eventually to embrace out of stubborn patriotism. Both FDRs and JFKs secrets, Chen believes, lie buried in New York City, where Chen himself has lived since shortly after the Second World War and where his life has been made the captive basis of fictions, jokes, shams, and illusions: a temple of the Philistines.

Besides touching on such conspiracy theories, the papers in this book include glimpses into the authors ordinary life, which he has also described in his other books; some errata; and an index to all his books.

About the Author

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Victor Chen was born in China in 1945 and has lived in New York City since 1949. He earned degrees from Yale, Harvard, and Oxford, and was on the staff of The New Yorker in the 1970s. His previous books are The Age of Illusion (first and second editions), Unintended Results, Lines in the Dirt, Willingly Published, and Anti-politics.