BEGGARS BANQUET introduces one into a peculiar empire of the homeless. They range from severely both mentally and physically ill, anxious, abnormal, abusive, dark, indifferent, illiterate, incompetent, defecated, dirty, disheveled, malodorous, professional, taciturn, hopeless, delusional, disoriented, withdrawn, dumb, individual, unpredictable, fake to just different, groomed, attentive, articulate, lucid, angry, knowledgeable, eccentric, esoteric, responsible, social, amateurish, happy.
Also in their world hierarchy works. Asher the Beyondist, the ultimate embodiment of supreme authority, is aware of widening the gap between rich and poor and cares for his marginal community. He is not a tyrant, he is a good-natured emperor, gracious and just, therefore loved and adored by his nation. But still, there are some get-rich-quick rebels and go-getters plotting against him and his homeless empire. However, everybody within his reach must conform his or her conduct to the requirements of the law.
There is a world outside posing a major threat to the unusual prosperity of Asher's empire. The New York Times carries a front-page story under the headline "Mentally Ill Homeless Taken Off New York Streets". The article explains how vans carrying a psychiatrist, a nurse, and a social worker were dispatched to begin a "vigorous campaign to remove severely mentally ill homeless people from Manhattan streets, parks, and byways" so that the city could forcibly provide them with medical and psychiatric care. The roundup program is even called a breakthrough.
Asher the Beyondist is seriously worried about the fate of his people when he is picked up and taken to the Morgue alive (Bellevue Hospital Center). Asher wonders what he has done wrong.
"When I ask for a quarter and somebody gives me three quarters it is quite natural I'm going to throw the other two away because I want and need only one. Sometimes passersby stop and give me money, but I won't take it, I don't need their money. Around some Christmas time they tell me I am the only one they know who rips up $ 100 and $ 50 bills. I just love it. Also, I like to burn the money. It keeps me warm. The people are very strange, don't you think?"
Now hospitalized, he believes that his rights are being violated. A staff attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union receives a call from Asher the Beyondist who wants help getting out of the Morgue, not only because he is still alive, knowing that in New York involuntarily committed patients must be given a hearing within 5 days.
Of Asher the Beyondist (they cannot identify him) the attorney says, he is "lucid and extremely articulate and angry...he is aware of his rights and feels strongly that they have been violated." Asher himself sounds "I like the streets, and I am entitled to live the way I want to live...in this day and age, in what you call the United States of America, where everyone comes to be free, my rights are being violated. With regard to my burning of money, I do it because I am sometimes insulted when passersby throw money at me."
The hearing is conducted to determine whether New York City has the right to take Mr Asher the Beyondist off the street and treat him in a psychiatric ward against his will. Psychiatrists for the city testify that Asher is suffering from schizophrenia. But the defense attorneys challenge that allegation and argue that Mr Asher the Beyondist is only an eccentric who chooses to live on the streets and wishes to be left alone.
On cross-examination, the city officials admit that they have no evidence that Asher has ever harmed himself or anyone else. Furthermore, the defense reads hospital records in which it is stated that Asher "has a delusion that he is unfairly incarcerated." The attorney then asks whether he will also be judged to have a delusion if he feels that Mr Asher the Beyondist has been incarcerated unfairly. The psychiatrist on the stand says no.
A particularly noteworthy fact about the hearing is that, throughout the proceedings, Asher is portrayed as well groomed and attentive. In addition, as in his earlier comments, he is consistently articulate, lucid, and knowledgeable. He describes how he talks with passersby who claim to be executives, lawyers, and doctors about motion pictures, so called restaurants, current events, their families and problems.
He has heard individuals say: "Please take my money! You know, it makes me feel good. I mean helping the poor, the homeless, the helpless. Just take it!" However, sometimes he simply answers: "Is it my job to make you feel good by taking your money, rich beggars?" Then he explains that he can live effectively on a budget of $ 15 a day and that he easily panhandles between $ 20 and $ 5000 per day.
He certainly does not fit the stereotype of the disoriented homeless person. Everybody in the courtroom is impressed or just would like to think to himself or herself it is only entertainment, as though he were making fun of all of them, knowing it is not. It must be a fair trial.
The judge rules for Mr Asher the Beyondist, "he has chosen an unconventional lifestyle in which he functions effectively and poses no threat to others, he is able to care for himself.
Upon his release, the Harvard Law School, the best in the country, invites the multimedia hero to lecture on his extraordinary case, melodramatically asking the large audience to cross their fingers for the homeless empire to survive, expressing his longing to get back. Indeed, he returns. The return to the BEGGARS BANQUET.
Asher the Beyondist stands thankful at the Statue of Liberty.
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BEGGARS BANQUET is filled with very sad and also very comic, very serious and also very funny scenes and disturbing comparisons. Overall, it is sophisticated entertainment dealing with various issues in a most unique manner. It might belong to the same category as the movies FOREST GUMP, PHILADELPHIA, etc. Very special attention is paid to the psychology of the characters and their language. It is a work of the absurd. Supposedly a bestseller?
