The Seventh Sentence

Weighing in at 389 pounds, Simeon Saint-Simone was doing just fine. He enjoyed laying on his cardiac tilt table next to a window facing the sea, gazing at scantily clad young people frolicking on the beach, drinking ouzo, and philosophizing about The Jerry Springer Show with Jerome, a homeless Cuban man he hired to curate his opus, The Garden of Memory, which looked like a cluttered junkyard to his uninitiated and unenlightened neighbors. Unfortunately, when Simeon's father suddenly dies, his father's concubine and brother-turned-sister decide to invade his home, disrupting the peace as they argue over the Saint-Simone fortune. Newly qualified to be on Lives of the Rich and Famous, Simeon feels his life disintegrating until he reaches his final, great fall.I have read and re-read the theater of Raymond Barfield's The Seventh Sentence and along with its corporeal and unforgettable someone - Simeon Saint-Simone - have sensed that humanity just has to be "divine." Here the Human Comedy is seasoned to our age of fluid monomania and remorseless consumption with threat and savor, hunger and echoing regret. Raymond Barfield is a philosopher, a Rabelais, empath, jester, pathologist - and one intrepid writer. Frederick Ramey