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EVERGREEN REVIEW
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N U M B E R 10

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1959

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EVERGREEN
contributors
SAMUEL BECKElT has two books in production at Grove Press: the trilogy Molloy, Molone Dies, and The Unnamable, which will be published as a single volume in January, and a book of short plays and mimes, which will be published in the spring. PAUL BLACKBURNS anthology of troubadour poetry is scheduled for spring publication by Macmillan. His second book of poems, The Dissoloing Fabric, is available from Jonathan P. R. BROWN is a young English poet. PAUL Williams. CORNEILLE lives and works CARROLL is editor of Big Table. in Paris. His parents are Dutch, and be was awarded the Guggenheim Prize for the Netherlands in 1957. WILLIAM EASTIAKE lives on a ranch in New Mexico. His second novel, Bronc People, was reviewed in Eoergreen Review 8. B. H. FRIEDMAN edited the Evergreen Gallery Book, School of New York: Some Younger ALLEN GINSBERG recently ended a series of chance Artists. readings at Oxford, Harvard, Chicago, Columbia, etc. and returned to San Francisco to read new work and make a tape of Howl for Fantasy Records. His Kaddish: Poems 1956-59 will be published by City Lights in January. Ginsberg goes to India with a knapsack full of carrots in 1960. In Eoergreen Review 9 HENRY MILLER defended Sexzrs (Part I of The Rosy Crucifixion) from the charge of obscene writing. BARBARA MORAFF is one of Three Young Lady American Poets ( a book to be pubBRUCE MORRISSETTE is Professor of lished by Totem Press). Romance Languages at Washington University, St. Louis. HENRYK MUSIALOWICZ is a young Polish artist. Fiction, nonfiction, and poems of CYNTHIA OZICK have appeared in Commentary, Sun Francisco Review, Botteghe Oscure, and other magazines.

(Contintiad on p . 192)

VOLUME 3 NUMBER 10

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1959

contants

10 John Rechy: The City of Lost Angels 28 Samuel Beckett: Embers 42 Sin&: These Weapons Will Still Remain 47 Feng Meng Lung: Song 47 Barbara MoraR: Tune 48 Cynthia Ozick: We Ignoble Savages 53 Paul Carroll: George Swimming at Barnes Hole, But It Got Too Cold 55 P. R. Brown: Africa and Small Poem 56 Corneille: Journal of a Painter in Ethiopia 68 Henry MiIler: From Nexus 83 Paul Blackbum: Sirventes 87 William Eastlake: Three Heroes und a Clown 98 Henryk Musialowicz: Three Drawings 103 Bruce Morrissette: New Structure in the Nooel: Jealousy, by Alain Robbe-Grillet
VIEWS and REVIEWS

108 B. H. Friedman: The Most Expensive Restaurant Eoer Built 117 Jerry Tallmer: Bye Bye Blackbird 132 Allen Ginsherg: Notes Written on Finally Recording Howl 136 Martin Williams: Funk for Sale 192 Censors Are Wrong (An Editorial from The hlinneapolis Star)
C w e r dimwing h j HennJk Uusiolowicz

JOHN RECHY

The C i t yo f Lost Angels

Southern California, which is shaped somewhat like a coffin, is a giant sanitorium with flowers where people come to be cured of life itself in whatever way. The sign on Crenshaw, surrounded by roses, said: WE 'l'REAT THE SOLES OF YOUR FEET FOR INNER PEACEt. . . . This is the last stop before the sun gives up and sinks into the black, black ocean, and night-usually starless here-cc imes. You came here to find the wish fulfilled in 3-D among the flowers-the evasive childworld (som e figurative something to hold hands with like you used to urith Mommie until you discovered Masturbation), the makebedieve among the palmtrees that the legend of the Movies (soda-fountains and stardom and the thousand realized dreams whiich that alone implies), of mess of gray . . . lost . perpetual sun (never the lonesome1 winter, say, or of the shrieking winga), the legend of The Last Frontier of Glorious Liberty (go bmefoot and shirtless along Hollywood Boulevard) have promi!sed us longdistance for oh so long. You shut the windows, drew thc3 blinds, bolted the doors. Still, life came screaming at you. So you came to Southern C n l i k m i n tn ,Inch vnrirrdf I nnninrt .--~".. b it. Like inmates in other sanitoriums, of course, those who came to be cured sometimes die prematurely-but among the roses and the sun: in a swinging haven. So this is why you stay if you stay or come back if you come back: You can rot here without feeling it . . . and what more have you been led to expect if youve lived this long? And although youre still separated from the Sky, trapped down here by the blanket of smog and haze locking you from Heaven, still theres the sun almost all year round, enough-importantly-to tan you healthy Gold . . . and palmtrees . . greengrass . . . roses, roses1 . . , the cool, cool blessed evenings even when the afternoons are fierce.
1 . . . 1 . . . 1

..

,---"-.-

10

JOHN R E C m

11

And the newspaper in its Forecast of the Stars omits The Cancer and replaces it politely with The Sign of sign of the Moonchildren in its gentle Zodiac. And what you came hoping to be cured with (which is what someone else came to be cured of-your sickness being someone elses cure) is certainly here, all here, among the flowers and the grass, the palmtrees, the blessed evenings: sex and religion and cops and nymphs and cults and sex and religion and junk-and these, along with Hollywood Boulevard and Main Street downtown, Laguna Beach, Laurel Canyon, La Jolla in the sun, etc., flowers, palmtrees, smog, Sunset Strip, greengrass all year round, roses, Strip City, all-night movies, fairies, religion, roses, sex, manufactured dreams (and the doctor that can create clouds and stars) and sex and flowers and junk and religion, fairies and sick, sick cops make Southern California The City of Lost Angels as I would like to tell you about it now.

...

...

...

...

Its dainty blue flowers you think how phony, theyre paperbut theyre truly real this time, outside the bank on Hill Street off 8th downtown (with the poetic street-names: Hope, Flower, Grand, Spring) where the man put up a sign: WE WILL BE OPEN SUNDAY YOU BUY FLOWERS FOR MOTHERflowers like white Easter, plants and vines inside the buildings when you go see your attorney-flowers illuminated outside by lights hidden beneath the green tropical-leafed plants across the street, among other places, from The Church of the Open Door over which like in the old college cartoon the sign flashes neonbrightly JESUS SAVES like an advertisement for the bank around the comer. , Oh, yes, flowers flowers from the Garden o f the Roses by Exposition Park next to the Dodgers, flowers into the hillsorange and yellow poppies like just-lit matches sputtering in the breez-arpets of flowers even at places bordering the frenetic freeways where cars race madly in semicircles-the Harbor Freeway crashes into the Santa Ana Freeway, into the Hollywood Freeway, and when the traffic is clear, cars in long rows in opposite lanes, like two armies out for blood, create a

...

. .

12

Evergreen Reoiew

whoooooshl that repeating itself is like the sound of the windswept ocean, and the cars wind in and out dashing nowhere, somewhere, anywhere. Where? To for example the golden beaches; L a y n a and the Artists and Mamma Gabor; La Jolla and the Elite, set like a jewel in a ring of gleaming sand, next to the mysterious c a v s a n d the sailors nearby flooding San Diego with make-it; Santa Monica and everyone, where pretty girls and boys turn brown in the hazy sun lazily rotting like mangoes but they dont h o w it, beside the frenzy of Pacific Ocean Park (dig: POP)-"Crystal" Beach-Jack's and the Girls and the would-be kept boys the waves lapping at the sand like frothing tongues-and Long Beach-and the rollercoaster that went hurtling like a rocket and sent the youngman plunging into the ground like a bullet while his girl laughed convulsed at the impossible absurdity the now-ghost of Muscle Beach where the men with the balloons for muscles posed for each other, until The Authorities of Santa Monica (Aghast and Indignant) Found Three of Them Shacked with Two Negro Girls, One Twelve, the Other Thirteen, and the city council of Santa Monica, why, it proTo Venice and the beat claimed: like this is The End. generation in stores where the man like a slightly smaller, slightly less hairy gorilla encouraged his urine-scented little girl to play in the traffic while he read a swinging Ode to Allen Ginsberg, amid the heat odor of urine and beer, while away along the Long Beach Pike, teenage girls with painted lips hustled sailors in the park and tough merchant mariners looked for Negro women in San Pedro. It's more flowers: birds of paradise with long pointed tongues; blue and purple lupin; joshua trees with incredible hunches of flowers held high like torches-along long, long rows of phallic palmtrees everywhere with sunbleached pubic hair. Even downtown if you stand at 9th Street looking up at San-Francisco-like-ascendingGrand Avenue (do this on one of those rare Los Angeles mornings that come suddenly like a miracle, when the sky is clear of smog and haze, truly Blue, depthless Blue like a Texas Sky, and youre liberated into it as

...

...

...

...

JOHN R X C W

13

it were Heaven), you see-magic!-a row of palmtrees! They lead you out, farther, out along Wilshire Boulevard, into Beverly Hills and the jacaranda trees-more flowers (flame-red hibiscus for the rich, rich peopl+PaIm Springs, especially: resort, USA .), Amarillo lilies-and Be1 Air and Laurel Canyon, Mulholland Drive and Marlon Brandos wife, and into: houses hiding in the trees crouched low (the witch-house out of Hansel and Gretel-and I have to tell you the lady in slacks, shades and calypso hat walking her pink poodle)-houses hiding snobbish or embarrassed, others brazenly shooting up, or trying for clean air, desperately piercing the smog; stooped over like vultures in the hills, wings spread in imitation of Flight. And I like to think Valentinos falconhouse will make it, to tango-swinging angels. soaring away-away

..

...

...

Los Angeles is Cliftons Cafeteria. On Olive. Next to Pershing Square. And its draped in verdure outside somehow like a demented Southern plantation in a movie. But inside! Inside, to the tune of Anniversary Waltz palmtrees burst into lush neonlife! erupt into fourth-of-July-sky-rocketpink! and blue! and green!-phony trees and flowers outlined with nmn tubes all over, and the walls of the cafeteria simulate rocks. All around are rainhuts-but surprisingly no rain-draped with lonesome yellow thatch. As you walk upstairs, balancing your all-you-can-eat $1.25 tray-passing the of course American flag, theres the organ, and the man playing (against the sound of waterfalls gushing over phonyrocks and sometimes into your tray) Anniversary Walk for the couple from Kansas here to celebrate their anniversary, who11 write the Cafeteria Folks expressing their Sincere Gratitude (and their letter, thurmillingly, will he printed in the Food for Thot, which is the brochure published weekly by the Cafeteria, full of Inspirational Poetry (Walking, for example, Through the Dark Holding Hands With Thee) and Friendly Thots for the Miseries of the Day). And if youre out and out, you can get for a nickeI (or

1 4

Evergreen Review

nothing if you aint got that) a pint of multipurpose food containing every swinging vitamin and necessary mineral to get you through the infernal day, and the Citizens of Skidsville stand hands extended for their box of vitamins and minerals before the lush counters of meats and fruity desserts and gaudy salads that look like theyll bite back-all neonlighted among the simulated caverns and the waterfalls, the thatched huts, strains of Anniversary Waltz, the American Flag, the tough chick with the camera and the leis about her neck: Can I take your picture honey for The Folks Back Home?-and a neonlighted Cross. Suddenly, that junked-up day, along the serviceline, the cat from New York rubs his pupiled eyes like he cant place the scene: dig the woman in the long flowing drag, man. She was dressed in a kind of robe, with like a turban, green and blue and purple, and sandals, and bright-gleaming anachronistic bifocals which reflected the neonlighted flowers like miniature searchlights. She had the air about her usually reserved for someone who has just enjoyed A Death In The Family. Well, she glides through the serviceline with a truly virginal air, sits down, smoothing the folds of her drag-away from the crowd-but benignly, all hushed words and Virginity. Finally she gets up-she ascends. We followed her, like hypnotized, to a place to the right of the entrancestill, remember, in the neon cafeteria-where a sign says: THE GARDEN. Down the narrow panel of stairs directly under the toilet with many mirrors and Hawaiian scenes in the Lounge. Past the picture of The Founder. Into The Room-where the lady in drag replaces another lady as virginal as herself-like holy sentinels changing the guard. Now The RoomAnd here is The Loom, and the lady is suddenly explaining to us, standing like that picture of Ruth St Denis, that this is a replica of a loom used in the time of Mary. Dig, she drones on like a holy record (we turning her you11 pardon me on), the tables, all genuine replicas; dig the benches; the beautiful

JOHN RWHY

15

parchment books with the Holy words. Soon, she will allow us to pass into The Garden. And when we passed into The Garden, through a replica of a wooden door, the bifocaled lady stayed behind like a dream when you wake and its gone-and we stooped into a kind of cave and sat in the dim murky gray light. I could detect the faintly stagnant odor of probably a phony brook somewhere. Then a voice booms out from somewhere: MILLIONS HAVE PERISHED I N WAR AND TERROR. We survive. It tells us how lucky we are. Then The Voice tells us about Christ. It tells us about Sacrifice. Then leading to it I forget just how (the tune of Anniversary Waltz kept running persistently through my mind, though you cant really hear the organ down here), The Voice ends with: WHAT SHALL I DO???? Maybe this is not what The Voice had in mind, but what we did was what the bifocaled lady had told us to do-why, we Grotto of Meditation. passed into-lo and behold!-The Under the lush neon jungle erupting upstairs, beyond the tough chick taking pictures with leis around her good-looking neck, under the gushing fountains and the multipurpose vitamin food-under the sad yellow thatch rainhnts and the American flag, and the organ now playing Happy Birthday, directly beneath the head and the mirrors and the South Seas scenes: Theres Christ. A giant white statue, kneeling before a rock, hands clenched. And then the lights hidden somewhere behind the cavelike rocks (like the lights hidden all over the city to illuminate flowers, or a statue, or a cannon) become brighter, slightly, slowly, then dim-slightly, slightly. And in the weird light, Christ seems to shift uncomfortably. As we came out for air like submarines, the lady in blue and green drag and the crazy-gleaming searchlight bifocals, still basking in the radiance of someone whose Dear has just Recently Departed, standing behind the Things For Sale, her wrists touching each other delicately, palms creating a U before her face, said:

. . .

...

.. .

16

Evergreen Review

0 boys why dont you buy some colored slides of our Beautiful Garden-they make Lovely gifts to send home-or just plain old Souvenirs? . . .
Motionpicture theaters downtown featuring three movies and hard floors for sleeping when you dont, dont care-strung along Broadway and Main Street like a cheap glass necklace-Main Street between say 4th and 6th with jukeboxes rattling rock and roll sexsounds, blinking manycolored, and Main Street is mean looks and the arcade and magazine stores with hundreds of photographs for sale of chesty faraway nevertobetonched women in black stockings and spiked heels, and the vagrant youngmen trying to score no matter how-along the arcade and the stripmovies, the live New Follies and the flesh-show where the young boy with his hands in his pockets pled with the nymph bumping brutally before him, please, please, please honey do it some more, right here!! while she Did It on the apron of the stage, snatch crowning the inaccessible V of her spread legs, and he sighed and sank into the seat . . and even on Main Street: its Dreamland-Dreamlmd where the girls in tight reddresses dance for hire in the speckled light and crowded Marty lonesomeness extending to Roseland on Spring Street ( a title for, say, a musical play by Tennessee Williams), while at the Greyhound station leading everywhere the Vice squad vengefully haunts the head and you cant tell them from the real-life fruits; move to the Waldorf or Harolds on Main Street with the long accusing mirrors where you can hustle the lonely fairies for anywhere from a fin to whatever you can clinch or clip-even, expediently, in the head-very, very quickly-for say a deuce standing before, once, the scrawled message: IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED FAIRIES & THEY MADE MEN . . or Chi-Chis with the femme queens, the sad youngmen with sallow painted faces-shadow of the 3-2-6, now closed, downtown on Spring, where outside, the junkie who looked like Christ asked you right out did you want him to turn you on? And moved to East Los Angeles where the spade after-hours club seethes with conflict, swings with junk and jazz-black-

JOHN RECHY

17

gleaming faces crying hate the fayboys, not so much h the other largely spade bar farther away on Broadway where outcasts from everything hang, and in the head sweat-gleaming fay and spade faces focus intensely on the dice, cramped bodies in the tiny room exploding with the odor of maryjane smoke more powerful than at Glorias downstairs when the heat is Off -while the spade chicks with the classic butts squeezed into gold and orange hugging dresses wait outside, and on the dancefloor the bulldikes and the femme-queens dance with each other-the roles of cburse reversed but legal-broadshouldered women and waistsqueezed youngmen. The dikes are leading the queens. Main Street again and the surrounding area to Skid Row: sweaty apartment houses squeezed tightly against each other (but not far from the green ebony trees, the carnations .), Spring Street, Los Angeles Street-Skid Row: squeezed hotly protesting against each other, walls greasily containing food from days cheap cooking, cobwebbed lightbulhs feebly hiding from sweaty plaster peeling in horrendous childhood-nightmare leper shapes snapping at you, windowscreens if any, smooth as velvet with grime-rooms squashed in by lonesomeness where for a buck a night you die that night easily until checkout time-and you can face the day again in that endless Resurrection-among the roses nearby somewhere-the flowered trees before the courthouse on Wall Street, and you step out having paid a fine and see them-lavender and yellow flowers-and a short, short palmtree, with arched leaves shrugging what the hell. And the Skid-rowers (now talking about them at night without pad), flying on Thunderbird in this sunny rosy havenpast the owlfaces of the Salvation Army fighting evil with no help from Cod or the cops, wonder, these citizens of the country of Skids, shall they go to the Mission (and surrender to the owlfaces and the empty uplifting words before the lambstew) or just give up right here, now, on this comer, now on this doorstep, surrender for the night into the pool of their own urine-a surprise to discover-until the heat patrol comes by and makes up their minds, and they wake up hung over

...

..

18
in the drunk tank: then out-into flowers.

Evergreen Reoiew

...

the green, green grass, the

Oh, Pershing Square. They tell me it used to be a jungle of Expression as opposed to now (relative) Repression. They cut down the bushes. Gay fountains gush in the midst of the wellkept grass-a stream of colored water, amber, blue. Once, on Christmas (when the Vice squad couple, a woman and a man, fatherlymotherly spoke to the young vagrants about why dont you go home and get a job-before the bulls took them, the young vags, for a ride in the wagon to the fingerprinting glasshouse) - once , as I say, oh, on Christmas, they had The Dancing Waters on Pershing Square. The bums and the studhustlers and the queens and the vagchicks and the preachers and The Visitors stood on the grass in the middle of the park before the fiercely perspiring man manipulating a set of keys which caused like spurts of water to change colors as it gushed into the air, swaying to the rhythm of the corn-music. , Very pretty very, very pretty. And on Easter, the cops roll eggs for the lonesome children, future, probably, delinquents, whom later they11 spreadeagle against the black and white car with red searchlights like science-fiction eyes-rousting them for mean kicks. Pershing Square. Its bordered on the Hill Street comer, a t 5th, by a statue of a general, and on the 6th Street side theres a statue of a soldier. They love soldiers and generals in queer parks. On the Olive Street Side, at the comer of Bth, is a tough cannon pointing at Cliftons Cafeteria. And on the 5th Street comer is a statue of-really-Beethoven with a stick, and he is glowering, I mean to tell you, at the Pershing Square menagerie: at, say, Ollie talking sometimes sense, mostly not, mostly rot, and once they threw a firecracker at him which landed on the flowers and sputtered. Ollie was then going to make a Citizens Arrest, like he says Officer Temple, the fat cop, told him he could-but Ollie, oh, he didnt, figuring, rightly, the Lord couldnt be on the side of the bulls.

.. .

JOHNRECHY

19

Talking about Citizens Arrests-whereby anyone c& come up to you and say I saw you do such-and-such you are under mes t - onc e this chick clipped a fatlooking score trying to make it with her sweetboy, and a square caught the scene and marches to the clipping chick and says she is under arrest, he is making a Citizens Arrest because he pinned her clipping the score. All the swinging hustlers from Persbing Square, oh, they gathered round, while the chick, checking the mean-it faces all with her, said to the square, Like youre going to make a what arrest, man? The Square naturally walks away, leaving the chick with the clipped wallet: a Fine example of Togetherness. And the statue of Beethoven (getting back) glowers fiercely at the studhustlers coming, coming, and the lonesome fruits coming after them; hears, daily-brutally-Holy Moses strumming a soulful guitar; sees the hungry nymph who haunts the park around the mens head, searching the homeless youngmen, so used to being clipped she leaves her bread on the dresser of the rented room to make it easy; and Beethoven glares at the bucktoothed Jenny Lu, singing spirituals; at the Negro woman sweating quivering in coming-lord-type ecstasy, for sometimes hours, bumping and grinding (lord-uh! . . mercyuh! . . . halleluj-uh!) at each uh! in a long religious orgasm; at the tough stray teenage chicks making it from night to night with the studhustlers at Coopers coffee-and-donuts-for-a-dime; at the epileptic youngman thanking God for his infirmity among the roses and the warm sun; and the five white Angel sisters, standing like white candles while their old man preaches, and they hold in turns a picture of Christ crucified. The blood is wax. It gleams in the sun. And the cutest of the angel sisters, my of course favorite, with paradoxically alive freckles snapping orange in the sun, and alive red sparkling hair, is always giggling in the warm Los Angeles smogafternoon among the palmkees-but the oldest is quivering and wailing, and one day, why, the little angel sister, she will see theres nothing to giggle about, her old man having come across at last with the rough Message, and of wurse she will start to quiver and wail where once she smiled, freckles popping in the sun. All this to the piped paradox of the Welkian-Lombardian

20

Evergreen Review

school of corn. Downstairs, in a little tool hut, hidden in typical sneak-cop fashion, is the baby-joint, like, where the fat bull daily interrogates the new butch-hustlers in the park-and downstairs, like a swollen toad, the bull sits before the pictures of the wanted angels. . And Miss Trudi, the swinging queen whose stud husband got busted by this hull, periodically starts rumors about 05cer Temple and how she saw him in the mensroom doing you-know-what. . . But when the heat is On in Pershing Square, watch out. Like not long ago. The studhustler who used to hang in the park snapping a whip around the water fountain killed the chick like 17 years, who was having such a great time, wheeeeee, and he killed her with an iron. Then he strangled her. Vengefully-vengefully for not having spotted the psyched-up stud before the papers implicated them-the bulls stormed the park. And everyone, hiding out on Main or Spring or Miramar, said, That lousy psycho, man, screwing up for everyone, had to go and kill that chick. And didnt recognize that the greatwinged bird had merely chosen the guise of Murder to swoop ridiculously upon him.

...

..

Longing for a Texas Sky . . The sky here is usually a scrambled jigsaw puzzle-all indefinable smears of grayish-blue. And longing for a Texas Sky, I went to Gri5th Park Observatory, made famous by James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause (and the Lord, oh, He took him away to savc the pardon me go-mankind, and left us Marlon Brando in a suit). Its circular, the planetarium where they reproduce the Skyshaped like half a womb-like the Hollywood Bowl-and in back of your seat there are headrests so you can look up comfortably. In a moment, they will simulate the most beautiful Sky you11 see in the City of Lost Angels-an imitation Texas Sky. Here it comes1 A skyline . hint of clouds the black night creeping up the stars appear. . Youre truly goneas if the half-womb had opened magically and carried you into the real Sky. But now a Voice announces this is such a planet,

. ..

. .

..

...

JOHN RECHY

21

such a star, drones on, shattering the illusion-and then there appear Walt-Disney-like cartoons of the figures of the Zodiac on the simulated sky. The illusion is over. Youre sitting in a slick shellshaped auditorium with a voice telling you about distances, etc. They play Afternoon of a Faun. Now the shellsky turns, spinning, churning you out of the dream. The lights come up. You walk into the smoggy day. , , , To Forest Lawn, to gloat at the tombs. See the hills all green, the tasteful stones-the marble Depiction of Life (or Love?) in a garden, with benches. Sit in as a fourteenth guest on the duplication of The Last Supper. A super mosaic. Then you go to the actual Crucifixion. A cinemascopic painting presented first in sections, then you see it all-and the sick voice of the nhiquitous announcer (is it the same Voice? . . .) tells you again about Christ like talking about the local boy made good-in such a way I thought this cats flipped-hes a sadist digging the Crucifixion. You came to find the dream fulfilled, the evasive childworld. You go to Disneyland, and you walk through an umbilical tunnel (dig) and you enter the mouth of a whale (Dig) and (Digl) pass through replicas of nursery dreams! and I dont wonder that when you came out you looked for Mommie and you were stooped over, like curling up. And went to Santas Village later-and believed in Santa Claus-because there he is, with all his helpers, before your longing eyes. . . . And Knotts Berry Farm, tribute to live TV Westerns ( I wanna he a cowboy when I grow up), and they held up the stagecoach, and the chorus girls did a Can-Can, flinging out their garters coyly at the adult tourists shouting with naughty delight. (Their wives thus have an anecdote for The Folks, how the Can-Can girl looked straight at Harry All Through The Show.) Remembering the swallows, to the Chapel of Capistrano with the giant hell and the sunken gardens where the fruit that day later going to Laguna Beach the long, long way said to hell with the swallows, wheres the monks? . . And I with my time-obsession stand longingly before the Hollywood Ranch Market watching the clock moue backwards. . .

22

Evergreen Review

Dash like a crazy somekind animal on the Hollywood Freeway, into Sunset Boulevard (and remember Gloria Swanson going mad thinking shes playing Salome for Cecil B DeMille in knickers but the flick was shot on Wilshire Boulevard where the slick building now commands attention-a modern act of faith-and Erich Von Stroheim, said Mr Brackett at USC, insisted there should be a scene of him ironing her panties), to Vine and the recordstore and the TV studio where the visiting ladies in the live studio say oh hes much handsomer on television, and at home say oh hes much handsomer in personto Hollywood Boulevard, most disappointing street in America -expecting to see The Stars in limousines, and extras in costumes-and see instead the long rows on either side of stores and counter-restaurants and B-girled bars and moviehousesand, happily, that day, a giant picture of Susan Hayward, the swingingest star in the movies-in a sexpose screaming out against the railroading LA cops I WANT TO LIVE!!!! Toward the end of the stretch of more-or-less activity, before the street turns into softlawned houses and apartment units where starlets live lonesomely wondering will they make it, finding no substitute for stardom in the carefully rationed joints of maryjane for manufactured dreams-there (before the softlawned swimmingpooled houses) is a coffeehouse for teenage queers. Inside the mosaicked windows like in a church, the dike with pencil and pad, stocked up on bees, writes love poems to the femmetype teenage fairies. After 2 in the morning, they wait in line to come in. Now heres the Chinese Theater. Your own big foot can rest where The Great Stars tiny one rested, impressed in the cement -though sometimes, tough to say, not quite so tiny, and youre disappointed to find that Marilyn Monroe (sigh) and Jane Russell are represented by their hands, and on premiere days at the Pantages the unenchanted crowd forms early to glimpse the enchanted men and women-and the searchlights screw the sky-while the lady from say Iowa sighs ahhhhh . writing mental postcards, and the twin Boswells of the Golden Cinema World-the screeching ladies with the hats and the weird-one of them-persona1 grudges against Lolita-record the phony

..

JOHN RECHY

23

fable of the Stars, from the dim nightclubs on the Strip-and' Chasen's. While the cafeteria in Beverly Hills serves caviar hors d'oeuvres . O f f Las Palmas, along-but on the opposite side-the outdoor newsstand where professional existentialists with or without sandals leaf through a paperback Sartre and the horse-o-manes (going tomorrow to the races where theyll see Lucille Ball) leaf through the racing forms, and the fairies cruise each other by the physique books and the same lady from Iowa staying at the Biltmore for a convention of the PTA buys a moviehook --offLas Palmas on Saturday nights the oldman graduate of Pershing Square writes Bible inscriptions on the street, in chalk, neat, incredibly beautiful letters. The young highschool delinquents with flattops proclaiming their youth heckle him cruelly in merciless teenage fashion while he dashes out his prophecies of not-unlikely doom, and the fairies having crossed the street on their way to the Ivy (where Miss Ana Mae plays her organ coyly) say my dear she is Too Much why doesnt she get a Man and swish on giggling wondering nervously does it show (which ruins a birl) and will they make it tonight and if so will it.be someone Nice and early please God so they wont have to add to the shadows on Selma-while the queen who left her telephone number in the toilet at Coffee Dan's waits -this is only conjecture-nervously by her telephone wondering will someone call? The palmtrees look down apathetically-but green-from the surrounding hills. Mmmmmrrrrrrumphl The motorcycles dash by on the Boulevard-ghosts of the Cinema Bar where the sadists and the masochists, now scattered, used to hang, rubbing leather-jackets and staring at belts and boots and exchanging notes with sketched whips across the bar now slowly transferring far out (intentional) to the Satellite and the Jupiter. Away. . .

. .

...

Away, beyond the house hidden in the hills where the Doctor of Something Divine stood on the balcony like a fairytale

24

Evergreen Review

II

wizard-highpriest of a cult-making clouds and stars appear where there were none-blessing the world from the balconyand later, inside, preaching love and fraternity, serenity and subsequent contentment, while he padded our legs fraternally, serenely, contentedly-away, away, outside, beyond the spiritualists and the Holy Ghost Services, the maps of Life, dividing life into tiny blocks like beehives-far from the fat Negro woman sprawled like chocolate pudding on Main Street, snoring, the copies of Tbe Watchtower falling from her lap to her fat tired feet-beyond MacArthur Park and the little boats where if you aint got a pad but.got a willing fish you rent a boat and screw her on the pond, surrounded by grass, darkgreen in the light night, under the stars-the odor of, of course, flowers, and justmown greengrass-beyond the other side of the park where hot mouths lurk in the, hushes and the spade cat killed a cop while the ducks shivering out of the water made a noise like laughter-beyond the miles of flowers and greengrass, plants in the downtown buildings, away from the fruit Y where the fairies sunbathe naked with semihqdons-heyond the signs on the sidewalks that say LAWD and you think of a religious Negro but it stands for Los Angeles Water Department-far from Strip City on Western and the nymphs with the tantalizing G-strings feeding on hungry yearning eyesbeyond the gossip at Schwabs on the Strip in the afternoons where the beautiful girls and boys go to be Discovered in one way or another (and one of them put a doublepage insidespread ad in the daily variety film journal, with an almost naked sexpicture of herself, a mans shirt clinging wet to her nipples, open in a V almost revealing her own-and the ad said shes available to Furnish New Blood To Hollywood-she is The Challenge to the movies-call her up and see, and soon after, another ad-and another sex picture. HOLLYWOOD HAS ANSWERED!!!! And very soon after, why, a young cowboy without shut, he does the same thing, and he says he too is available to furnish, this time, New Masculine Blood To Hollywood-he also is A Challenge to the movies-and soon, why, Hollywood has answered him too, the ad says, and it shows another picture of the cowboy-and a new phone num- .

JOHN R E C m

25

ber) (and the starlet who advertised two months ago now advertises shes back in t o m again)-and, oh, away, still moving away, from the existentialists who used to grace the Unicorn and Cosmo Alley until they became famous as beats and now the tourists pay 75 cents for a cup of coffee and stare at each other wondering is he one? beyond Coffee Dans and the young punks, the bars on the Boulevard and the B-girls looking at their watches, the bar on Cahuenga and the B-boys looking at their watches where the maleprostitute walked into the far from womens toilet and the flashy woman followed him as real as a hot Juarez ruby beyond the Chinatown Mens glamorshop on Sunset, where in a penthouse lavishly decorated the select clientele of gentlemen chauge the color of their hair subtly, gossiping ahout the Stars over a cup of Italian coffee in the natural light from the windows overlooking the trees and the flowers-heyond the sirens incessantly screaming-away, beyond the miles of geraniums and grass, past in the summer the stands of youngmen and oldmen selling strawherries and corn a t bargain prices-beyond all, all this . . up there on a hill, threatening heaven, piercing the sky brazenly, all glass and vines, the ocean thrashing beneath it, is The Church of the Wayfarer designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Im glad to tell you that now at last it has been properly immortalized by J a p e Mansfield when she wed there in kewpiedoll I think pink.

...

... ...

To Southem California everyone comes: to be Discovered and get in the movies, to be loved by the world, to find out if indeed your Brother is your keeper, to find the evasive childworld, or to find God in fruit or vegetables or in the sun or ghosts-or standing on a balcony creating stars and clouds or to bask in the sun-to rot without really knowing it , to think you11 be cured, with sex, religion, junk, cool nights, etc. . or to cater to personal grudges by joining the Los Angeles Police Force and so attain to holydom and omnipotence and wear the stick like a mighty scepter and the badge like a sort of misplaced halo-and become merely another gang in a

. .. . .

..

JOHN RECW

thinking abo

or maybe sa: lost if they had roses and poppies and sun and grass and palmtrees swaying in the cool, cool breeze-and childhood dreams in 3-D: a maze shaped at the same time conveniently like a coffin. And I was thinking about this when I saw her, coming out of Kresss on the Boulevard: a wild gypsy-looking old woman, like a fugitive from a movie set-she was dark, screamingly painted kaleidoscopic earrings , a red and orange wide blue skirt, lowcnt scarf about her long black hair blouse-an old frantic woman with demented burning eyes, and as she stepped into the bright Hollywood street, almost running into the suntanned platinum blonde getting into a Cadillac, this old flashy woman began a series of the same gestures: her right hand would rise frantically over her eyes, as if tearing some horrible spectacle from her sight. But halfway down toward her breast, the gesture of her hand mellowed, slowed, lost its franticness. And she seemed now instead to he blessing the terrible spectacle she had first tried to tear from her sight. I heard a siren scream, dashing along the palmtrees.

...

...

. .

Nordenstrh

SAMUEL BECKETT

Embers
( A Play for Radio)
Sea scarcely audible. HENRYS boots on shingle. H e halts. Sea a little louder.
HENRY

On. (Sea. Voice louder.) On! ( H e moves on. Boots m a shingle. As he goes.) Stop. (Boots on shingle. As h e goes, louder.) Stop! ( H e halts. Sea a little louder.) Down. (Sea. Voice louder.) Down! (Slither of shingle as he sits. Sea, still faint, audible throughout what follows whenever pause indicated.) Who is beside m6 now? (Pause.) An old man, blind and foolish. (Pause.) My father, back from the dead, to be with me. (Pnuse.) As if he hadnt died. (Pause.) No, simply hack from the dead, to he with me, in this strange place. (Pause.) Can he hear me? (Pause.) Yes, he must hear me. (Pause.) To answer me? (Pause.) No, he doesnt answer me. (Pause.) Jnst be with me. (Pause.) That sound you hear is the sea. (Pause. Louder.) I say that sound you hear is the sea, we are sitting on the strand. (Pause.) I mention it because the sound is so strange, so unlike the sound of the sea, that if you didnt see what it was you wouldnt know what it was. (Pause.) Hooves! (Pause. Louder.) Hooves1 (Sound of hooves walking on hard road. They die rapidly away. Pause.) Again! (Hooves as before. Pause. Excitedly.) Train it to mark time! Shoe it with steel and tie it up in the yard, have it stamp all day! (Pause.) A ten ton mammoth hack from the dead, shoe it with steel and have it tramp the world down! (Pause.) Listen to it! (Pause.) Listen to the light now, you always loved light, not long past noon and all the shore in shadow and the sea out as far as the island. (Pause.) You would never live this side of the bay, you wanted the sun on the water

28

SAMUEL BECKETP

29

for that evening bathe you took once too often. But \;hen I got your money I moved across, as perhaps you may know. (Pause.) We never found your body, you know, that held up probate an unconscionable time, they said there was nothing to prove you hadnt run away from us all and alive and well under a false name in the Argentine for example, that grieved mother greatly. (Pause.) Im like you in that, cant stay away from it, but I never go in, no, I think the last time I went in was with you. (Pause.) Just be near it. (Pufcse.) Today its calm, but I often hear it above in the house and walking the roads and start talking, oh just loud enough to drown it, nobody notices. (Pause.) But Id he talking now no matter where I was, I once went to Switzerland to get away from the cursed thing and never stopped all the time I was there. (Pause.) I usent to need anyone, just to myself, stories, there was a great one about an old fellow called Bolton, I never finished it, I never finished any of them, I never finished anything, everything always went on for ever. (Pause.) Bolton. (Pause. Louder.) Bolton! (Pause.) There before the fire. (Pause.) Before the fire with all the shutters . . no, hangings, hangings, all the hangings drawn and the light, no light, only the light of the fire, sitting there in the no, standing, standing there on the hearthrng in the dark before the fire with his arms on the chimney-piece and his head on his arms, standing there waiting in the dark before the fire in his old red dressing-gown and no sound in the house of any kind, only the sound of the fire. (Pause.) Standing there in his old red dressing-gown might go on fire any minute like when he was a child, no, that was his pyjamas, standing there waiting in the dark, no light, only the light of the b e , and no sound of any kind, only the fire, an old man in great trouble. (Puuse.) Ring then at the door and over he goes to the window and looks out between the hangings, fine old chap, very big and strong, bright winters night, snow everywhere, hitter cold, white world, cedar boughs bending under load, and then as the ann goes up to ring again recognizes Holloway (long pause)

...

...

...

30

Evergreen Review
yes, Holloway, recognizes Holloway, goes down and opens. (Pause.) Outside all still, not a sound, dogs chain mayhe or a bough groaning if you stood there listening long enough, white world, Holloway with his little black bag, not a sound, bitter cold, full moon small and white, crooked trail of Holloways galoshes, Vega in the Lyre very green. (Pause.) Vega in the Lyre very green. (Pause.) Following conversation then on the step, no, in the room, back in the room, following conversation then back in the room, Holloway: My dear Bolton, it is now past midnight, if you would be good enough-, gets no further, Bolton: Please! PLEASE! Dead silence then, not a sound, only the fire, all coal, burning down now, Holloway on the hearthrug trying to toast his arse, Bolton, wheres Bolton, no light, only the fire, Bolton at the window, his back to the hangings, holding them a little apart with his hand, looking out, white world, even the spire, white to the vane, most unusual, silence in the house, not a sound, only the fire, no flames now, embers. (Pause.) Embers. (Pause.) Shifting, lapsing, furtive like, dreadful sound, Holloway on the rug, fine old chap, six foot, burly, legs apart, hands behind his back holding up the tails of his old macfarlane, Bolton at the window, grand old figure in his old red dressing-gown, hack against the hangings, hand stretched out widening the chink, looking out, white world, great trouble, not a sound, only the embers, sound of dying, dying glow, Holloway, Bolton, Bolton, Holloway, old men, great trouble, white world, not a sound. (Pause.) Listen to it! (Pause.) Close your eyes and listen to it, what would you think it was? (Pause. Vehement.) A drip! A drip! (Sound of drip, rapidly amplif e d , suddenly Cut off.) Again! (Drip again. Amplification begins.) No! (Drip cut off. Pause.) Father! (Pause. Agitated.) Stories, stories, years and years of stories, till the need came on me, for someone, to be with me, anyone, a stranger, to talk to, imagine he hears me, years of that, and then, now, for someone who . . knew me, in the old days, anyone, to be with me, imagine he hears me, what I am, now. (Pause.) No good either. (Pause.) Not there either.

...

SAMUEL BECKElT

31

(Pause.) Try again. (Pause.) White world, not a sound. (Pause.) Holloway. (Pause.) Holloway says hell go, damned if hell sit up all night before a black grate. doesnt understand, call a man out, an old friend, in the cold and dark, an old friend, urgent need, bring the hag, then not a word, no explanation, no heat, no light, Bolton: Pleasel PLEASE!, Holloway, no refreshment, no welcome, chilled to the medulla, catch his death, cant understand, strange treatment, old friend, says hell go, doesnt move, not a sound, fire dying, white beam from window, ghastly scene, wishes to God h e hadnt come, no good, fire out, bitter cold, great frouble, white world, not a sound, no good. (Pause.) No good. (Pause.) Cant do it. (Pause.) Listen to it1 (Pause.) Father! (Pause.) You wouldnt know me now, youd be sorry you ever had me, but you were that already, a washout, thats the last I heard from you, a washout. (Pause. Imitating fathers voice.) Are you coming for a dip? No. Come on, come on. No. Glare, stump to door, turn, glare. A washout, thats all you are, a washout! (Violent slam of door. Pause.) Again! (Slam. Pause.) Slam life shut like that! (Pause.) Washout. (Pause.) Wish to Christ she had. (Pause.) Never met Ada, did you, or did you, I cant remember, no matter, no oned know her now. (Pause.) What turned her against me do you think, the child I suppose, horrid little creature, wish to God wed never had her, I used to walk with her in the fields, Jesus that was awful, she wouldnt let go my hand and I mad to talk. Run along now, Addie, and look at the lambs. (Imitating m n d s voice.) No papa. Go on now, go on. (Plaintive.) No papa. (Violent.) Go on with you now when youre told and look at the lambs! (mnrds loud wail. Pause.) Ada too, conversation with her, that was something, thats what hell will be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead. (Pause.) Price of margarine fifty years ago. (Pause.) And now. (Pause. With solemn indignation.) Price of blueband now! (Pause.) Father! (Pause.) Tired of talking to you. (Pause.) That was always the way, walk

32

Evergreen Review
all over the mountains with you talking and talking and then suddenly mum and home in misery and not a word to a soul for weeks, sulky little bastard, better off dead, better off dead. (Long pause.) Ada. (Pause. Louder.) Ada!

ADA

(low remote voice throughout). Yes.

Have you been there long? Some little time. (Pause.) Why do you stop, dont mind me. (Pause.) Do you want me to go away? (Pause.) Where is Addie?

HENRY
ADA

Pause.
HENRY

With her music master. (Pause.) Are you going to answer me today?

ADA

You shouldnt be sitting on the cold stones, theyre bad for your growths. Raise yourself up till I slip my shawl under you. (Pause.) Is that better?

HENRY

No comparison, no comparison. (Pause.) Are you going to sit down beside me?

ADA

Yes. ( N o sound as She sits.) Like that? (Pause.) Or do you prefer like that? (Pause.) You dont care. (Pause.) Chilly enough I imagine, I hope you put on your jaegers. (Pause.) Did you put on your jaegers, Henry?

What happened was this, I put them on and then I took them off again and then I put them on again and then I took them off again and then I took them on again and then IADA Have you them on now? HENRY I dont know. (Pause.) Hooves1 (Pause. Louder.) Hooves! (Sound of hooves walking on hard mad. They die rapidly away.) Again1 Hooves as before. Pause. ADA Did you hear them? HENRY Not well.
IIENRY

SAMUEL BECKETT
ADA

33

Galloping?
y

No. (Pause.) Could a horse mark time?

PaUSE.

I ' m not sure that I know what you mean. HENRY (irritably). Could a horse be trained to stand still and
ADA

mark time with its four legs?

ADA

Oh. (Pause.)The ones I used to fancy all did. (She laughs. Pause.) Laugh, Henry, it's not every day I crack a joke. (Pause.) Laugh, H e n r y ,do that for me.

HENRY
ADA

You wish me to laugh?

You laughed so charmingly once, I think that's what first attracted me to you. That and your smile. (Pause.) Come on, it will be like old times.

Pause. He tries to laugh, fails.

HENRY

Perhaps I should begin with the smile. (Pause for mile.) Did that attract you? (Pause.) Now I11 try again. (Long horrible laugh.) Any of the old charm there? OhHenry!

ADA

Pause.
HENRY

Listen to it! (Pause.) Lips and claws! (Pause.) Get away from it! Wh'ere it Codkt get at me! h e Pakpas! What? Calm yourself.

ADA

HENRY

And I live on the brink of it1 Why? Professional obligations? (Brief laugh.) Reasons of health? (Brief laugh.) Family ties? (Brief laugh.) A woman? (Laugh in which she ioins.) Some old grave I cannot tear myself away from? (Pause.) Listen to it! What is it like?

ADA

It is like an old sound I used to hear. (Pause.) It is like another time, in the same place. (Pause.) It was rough, the

34

Evergreen Review
spray came flying over us. (Pause.) Strange it should have been rough then. (Pause.) And calm now.

Pause.
HENRY
ADA

Let us get up and go.

Go? Where? And Addie? She would be very distressed if she eame and found you had gone without her. (Pause.) What do you suppose is keeping her?

Smart blow of cylindrical ruler on piano case. Unsteadily, ascending and descending, ADDIE plays scale of A Flat Maior, hands first together, then reversed. Pause.
MUSIC MASTER

(Italian accent). Santa Cecilia!

Pause.
ADDIE

Will I play my piece now please?

Pause. MUSIC MASTER beats two bars of waltz time with ruler on piano case. ADDIE plays opening bars of Chopins 5th Waltz in A Flat Major, SIC MASTER benting time lightly with ruler as she play,y. In first chord of bass, bar 5, she plays E instead of F. Resounding blow of ruler on piano case. ADDIE stops playing.
MUSIC MASTER

(ViOhtly). Fa1

ADDIE

(tearfully). What? (violently). Effl Effl tearfully). Where?

MUSIC MASTER
ADDIE-(

MUSIC MASTER

(violently). Qua1 (He thumps note.) Fa1 Pause. ADDIE begins again, MUSIC MASTER beating time lightly with ruler. When she comes to bar 5 she makes same mistake. Tremendous blow of r u l e r on piano case. ADDIE stops playing, begins to wail. (frenziedly). Eff! Effl ( H e hammers note.) Eff! (He hammers note.) Eff!

MUSIC MASTER

SAMUEL B - n

35

Hammered note, ef! and ADDIES wail amplified to paroxysm, then suddenly cut off. Pause.
ADA

you are silent today.

It was not enough to drag her into the world, now she must play the piano. She must learn. She shall learn. That-and
Hooves walking.

HENRY

ADA

riding

DING

MASTER Now Miss! Elbows in Miss! Hands down Missl (Hoooes trotting.) Now Miss! Back straight Miss! Knees in Miss! (Hoooes cantering.) Now Missl Tummy in Missl Chin up Missl (Hoooes galloping.) Now Miss! Eyes front Miss! (ADDIE begigins to wail.) Now Miss! Now Miss!

Galloping hooves, now A4iss! and ADDIES wail amplified to pamysm, then suddenly cut off. Pause.
ADA

What are you thinking of? (Pause.) I was never taught, until it was too late. A11 my life I regretted it. What was your strong point, I forget.

HENRY
ADA

Oh . . . geometry I suppose, plane and solid. (Pause.) First plane, then solid. (Shingle as he gets up,) Why do you get up? HENRY I thought I might try and get as far as the waters edge. (Pause. With a sigh.) And hack. (Pause.) Stretch my old hones.
Pause.
ADA

Well why dont you? (Pause.) Dont stand there thinking ahout it. (Pause.) Dont stand there staring. (Pause. He goes towards sea. Boots on shingle, say ten step. He halts a t waters edge. Pause. Sea a little louder. Distant.) Dont wet your good hook. Pause.
y

Dont, dont

..

I
36
Sea suddenly rough.
ADA

Euergreen Review (twenty years earlier, imploring). Dontl Dont! (do., urgent). Darling! (do., erultantltj). Darling! (do., more feebly). Dontl Rough sea. ADA cries out. Cry and sea amplified, cut off. End of evocation. Pause. Sea calm. He goes back up deeply shelving beach. Boots laborious.on shingle. He halts. Pause. He moves on. He halts. Pause. Sea calm and faint.

HENRY
ADA

HENRY

ADA

Dont stand there gaping. Sit down. (Pause. Shingle as he

sits.) On the shawl. (Pause.) Are you afraid we might

touch? (Pause.) Henry.

HENRY
ADA

Yes.

You should see a doctor about your talking, its worse, what must it he like for Addie? (Pause.) Do you know what she said to me once, when she was still quite small, she said, Mummy, why does Daddy keep on talking all the time? She heard you in the lavatory. I didnt know what to answer.
Daddy! Addie! (Pause.) I told you to tell her I was praying. (Pause.) Roaring prayers at God and his saints. Its very had for the child. (Pause.) Its silly to say it keeps you from hearing it, it doesnt keep you from hearing it and even if it does you shouldnt be hearing it, there must he something wrong with your brain.

HENRY

ADA

Pause.
HENRY
ADA

That1 I shouldnt he hearing that1

I dont think you are hearing it. And if you are whats wrong with it, its a lovely peaceful gentle soothing sound, why do you hate it? (Pause.) And if you hate it why dont you keep away from it? Why are you always coming down

SAMUEL BECKElT

37

here? (Pause.) Theres something wrong with your brain, you ought to see Holloway, hes alive still, isnt he?

Pause.
HENRY

(wildly). Thuds, I want thuds! Like this1 ( H e fzIlnbZes in the shingle, catches vp two big stones and starts dashing them together.) Stonel (Clash.) Stone! (Clash. Stone!and clash amplified, cut off. Pause. He throws one stone away. Sound of its fall.) Thats life1 ( H e throws the other stone away. Sound of its falZ. ) Not this . . . (pause) . . sucking1

ADA

And why life? (Pause.) Why life, Henry? (Pause.) Is there anyone about? Not a living soul.

HENRY

ADA

I thought as much. (Pause.) When we longed to have it to owselves there was always someone. Now that it does not matter the place is deserted.
Yes, you were always very sensitive to being seen in gallant conversation. The least feather of smoke on the horizon and you adjusted your dress and became immersed in the Manchester Guardian. (Pause.) The hole is still there, after all these years. (Pause. Louder.) The hole is still there. What hole? The earth is full of holes.

HENRY

ADA

HENRY Where we did it at last

ADA

for the first time.

Ah yes, I think I remember. (Pawe.) The place has not changed. Oh yes it has, I can see it. (Confidentially.) There is a levelling going on! (Pause.) What age is she now?

HENRY

ADA

I have lost count of time.

Twelve? Thirteen? (Pause.) Fourteen?

HENRY
ADA

I really could not tell you, Henry.

I t took us a long time to have her. (Pause.) Years we kept hammering away at it. (Pause.) But we did it in the

HENRY

38

Eoergreen Review
end. (Pause. Sigh.) We had her in the end. (Pause.) Listen to it1 (Pause.) Its not so bad when you get out on it. (Pause.) Perhaps I should have gone into the merchant navy.

ADA

Its only on the surface, you know. Underneath all is as quiet as the grave. Not a sound. All day, all night, not a sound.
Pause.

HENRY

Now I walk about with the gramophone. But I forgot it today.

ADA

There is no sense in that, (Pause.) There is no sense in trying to drown it. (Pause.) See Holloway.
Pause.

HENRY

Let us go for a row.

ADA

A row? And Addie? She would be very distressed if she came and found you had gone for a row without her. (Pause.) Who were you with just now? (Pause.) Before you spoke to me.
I was trying to be with my father. Oh. (Pause.) No difficulty about that. I mean I was trying to get him to be with me. (Pause.) You seem a little cruder than usual today, Ada. (Pause.) I was asking him if he had ever met you, I couldnt remember. Well? He doesnt answer any more.

HENRY

ADA

HENRY

ADA
HENRY ADA

I suppose you have worn him out. (Pause.) You wore him out living and now you are wearing him out dead. (Pause.) The time comes when one cannot speak to you any more. (pame.) The time will wme when no one will speak to YOU at all, not even complete strangers. (pause.) you will

SAMUEL BECKElT

39

be quite alone with yonr voice, there will be no other voice in the world but yours. (Pause.) Do you hear me?

Pause.
m y

I cant remember if he met you,

ADA HENRY

You know he met me.

No, Ada, I dont know, Im sorry, I have forgotten almost everything connected with you.

ADA

You werent there. Just your mother and sister. I had called to fetch you, as arranged. We were to go bathing together.

Pause.
HENRY

(irritably). Drive on, drive on! Why do people always stop in the middle of what they are saying?

ADA

None of them knew where you were. Your bed had not been slept in. They were all shouting at one another. Your f f the cliff. Your sister said she would throw herself o father got up and went out, slamming the door. I left soon afterwards and passed him on the road. He did not see me. He was sitting on a rock looking out to sea. I never forgot his posture. And yet it was a common one. You used to have it sometimes. Perhaps just the stillness, as if he had been turned to stone. I could never make it out.

Pause.
HENRY Keep on, keep on! (Imploringly.)

Keep it going, Ada,

every syllable is a second gained.

ADA

Thats all, Im afraid. (Pause.) Go on now with your father or your stories or whatever you were doing, dont mind me any more.

I cant! (Pause.) I cant do it any more! ADA You were doing it a moment ago, before you spoke to me. HENRY (angrily). I cant do it any more now! (Pause.) Christ! Pause.
HENRY

40
ADA

Evergreen R m * e w
Yes, you b o w what I mean, there are attitudes remain in ones mind for reasons that are clear, the carriage of a head for example, bowed when one would have thought it should be lifted, and vice versa, or a hand suspended in mid air, as if unowned. That kind of thing. But with your father sitting on the rock that day nothing of the kind, no detail you could put your finger on and say, How very peculiar! No, I could never make it out. Perhaps, as I said, just the great stillness of the whole body, as if all the breath had left it. (Pause.) Is this rubbish a help to you, Henry? (Pause.) I can by and go on a little if you wish. (Pause.) No? (Pause.) Then I think Ill be getting back. Not yet! You neednt speak. Just listen. Not even. Be with me. (Pause.) Ada! (Pause. Louder.) Ada1 (Pause.) Christl (Pause.) Hooves! (Pause. Louder.) Hoovesl (Pause.) Christl (Long pause.) Left soon afterwards, passed you on the road, didnt see her, looking out to . (Pause.) Cant have been looking out to sea. (Pause.) Unless you had gone round the other side. (Pause.) Had you gone round the cliff side? (Pause.) Father1 (Pause.) Must have I suppose. (Pause.) Stands watching you a moment, then on down path to tram, up on open top and sits down in front. (Pause.) Sits down in front. (Pause.) Suddenly feels uneasy and gets down again, conductor: Changed your mind, Miss?, goes back up path, no sign of you. (Pause.) Very unhappy and uneasy, hangs round a hit, not a soul about, cold wind coming in off sea, goes back down path and takes tram home. (Pause.) Takes tram home. (Pause.) Christ! (Pause.) My dear Bolton . . (Pause.) If its an injection you want, Bolton, let down your trousers and Ill give you one, I have a panhysterectomy at nine, meaning of course the anaesthetic. (Pause.) Fire oiit, hitter cold, white world, great trouble, not a sound. (Pause.) Bolton starts playing with the curtain, no, hanging, difficult to describe, draws it back, no, kind of gathers it towards him and the moon comes flooding in, then lets it fall back, heavy velvet &air, and pitch black in the room, then towards him again,

HENRY

. .

SAMUEL BECKETT

41 white, black, white, black, Holloway: Stop that for the love of God, Bolton, do you want to h i s h me? (Pause.) Black, white, black, white, maddening thing. (Pause.)Then he suddenly strikes a match, Bolton does, lights a candle, catches it up above his head, walks over and looks Holloway full in the eye. (Pause.)Not a word, just the look, the old blue eye, very glassy, lids worn thin, lashes gone, whole thing swimming, and the candle shaking over his head. (Pause.) Tears? (Pause. Long laugh.) Good God no! (Pause.)Not a word, just the look, the old blue eye, Holloway: If you want a shot say so and let me get to hell out of here. (Pause.)Weve had this before, Bolton, dont ask me to go through it again. (Pause.)Bolton: Please! (Pause.) Please! (Pause.) Please, Holloway! (Pause.) Candle shaking and guttering all over the place, lower now, old ann tired, takes it in the other hand and holds it high again, thats it, that was always it, night, and the embers cold, and the glim shaking in your old fist, saying, Please! Please! (Pause.)Begging. (Pause.) Of the poor. (Pause.) Ada! (Pause.) Father! (Pause.) Christ! (Pause.) Holds it high again, naughty world, fixes Holloway, eyes drowned, wont ask again, just the look, Holloway covers his face, not a sound, white world, bitter cold, ghastly scene, old men, great trouble, no good. (Pause.) No good. (Pause.) Christ! (Pause.Shingle as he gets up. He goes towards sea. Boots on shingle. He halts. Pause. Sea a ZittZe louder.) On. (Pause.He moues on. Boots on shingle. H e halts at waters edge. Pause. Sea a little louder.) Little book. (Pause.)This (Pause.)Nothing this evening. (Pause.) Toevening tomorrow plumber at nine, then nothing. morrow (Pause.Puzzled.) Plumber at nine? (Pause.) Ah yes, the waste. (Pause.) Words. (Pause.) Saturday nothing. . Sunday nothing all day. (Pause.)Nothing, Sunday l night nothing. (Pause.) all day nothing. (Pause.)All day d Not a sound.

... ...

...

..

. ..

...

Sea.

These Weapons Will Still Remain

As a result of Sings anti-militaristic campaigns, Mr. Khrushchev made a proposal not long ago before the United Nations to abolish a11 nuclear and conventional weapons. This is a step fonvard, says Sink. But its not enough. For there will still be other arms. For example , . , . . . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . . .

42

Voodoo

Ridicule

Matches

Darts

Love

Banana peel

FENG MENG-LUNG (died 1646)

Song
Dont set sail! The wind is rising and the weather none too good. Far better come back to my house. If there is anything you want, just tell me. If you are cold, my body is warm. Let us be happy together this one night. Tomorrow the wind will have dropped; Then you can go, and I shant worry about you.

-Translated

by Arthur Waley

BARBARA MORAFF

Tune
I pace a cold meadow spectral, the moon in the river following me
lots of fresh bodies curved (patiently) in the roselight of nightwind willowing lots of fresh girl-bodies

I sing for them

0 pluck my twisted bloom

47

CYNTHIA OZICK

We Ignoble Savages

My first, and most impressive, encounter with the spirit of human malevolence happened long ago, in an obscure northern comer of New York City which I shall call Trilhams Inlet. That halfrural place and the lusterless octet of those years between 1933 and 1941, unpenetrated by any hint of catastrophe or violence in the world, are now shrunken by the sad disciplines of urhanization and the historicity of grislier tyrannies. Among all these new little houses-high-stooped and adohe-squat, still pocked with lime, which the fertile Italians have introduced in profusion wherever cattails once nodded in green swamps, and which tum up every morning like surprising dominoes on cracked familiar roads to set the sun-slant awry and drum out old singing mysteries with shrieks of fearless summer television-among these only the school, it seems, has not altered. Whether the character of its government has, I do not know, although it is the inclination of any self-perpetuating order to despise the minority: and children, always and everywhere, are the first minority Perhaps it is too much to ask of a superintending group not composed of saints that it resist its natural temptation to deceive children, who do not know they are being deceived. The child understands an abstraction like justice or truth only when it is acted out to his gain or detriment-only after he has seen the palpable consequences of the notion. He has no collection of experiences out of which he
48

CYNTHIA OZICK

49

can abstract a concept, so that his first discovery of a hostility hetween reason and action, the queer splintering-off of intentions and words and gestures from actuality, is as shattering and awesome as a Revelation. That was, for me, the form taken by the Miss Eff OBrien episode. I have particularly had to qualify malevolence by the term spirit, because there was a kind of evanescence about the incident from beginning to end: nothing fell out on purpose, events settled dreadfully into place with no reference to motivation-what you meant to he had no connection with what yon were-and terror owned a purity and a power to which perhaps only savages are accessible. To make plain the sort of atmosphere-murky, frightening, above all mysterious-in which I spent my years between the ages of five and thirteen, I must tell what our school-life was like. At the beginning of the thirties P.S. 71 was perhaps no more than a dozen years old. Architecturally it resembled many other public school buildings in New York City, with its two rectangular wings joined by a block of stairs and corridors to form a U-shape, and the school yard enclosed in the cup of the U. It was five stories high, of common courthouse-red brick, with a line of white running across the top; and in front, behind a pronged steel fence, a flight of sun-dazzled steps led to an attractive white Georgian portico, where no pupil was permitted to set foot. A t a cautious distance you could watch the portcr polish the brass door handles and knockers, but only the teachers achially walked through the gate and up the steps and past the gleaming columns into the marble lobby that was rumored to he within. We pupils used the side entrances or the yard doors, never the front one-not even for fire drills; no emergency, supposodly, could he grcat enough to risk muddying that splendid lohhy. Insidc, the furnishings were up-to-date, though oppressively uniform to the point of confusion ( s o that you had to find your way by numbcrs in the identical corridors). Every classroom had iis three sets of great windows, its one tall window-pole hooked at the cnd, and its one tall window-pole monitor, usually the biggest boy in the class. The height of the desks rose with the grades, and the lowest grades were housed on the lowest stories, the middle grades halfway up, and so on. At the right of each room was a series of

50

Evergreen Review

hI

closets. First were the supply shelves, presided over by the namby-pamby paper monitor, the sort of little drudge who liked to volunteer for the niggling jobs, like clapping chalk dust out of blackboard erasers. Here were kept, on the top shelf, the small yellow slips, used for daily short-answer tests and, before the vogue of the unsanitary etched wooden block, for passes to the lavatory. (Later, when the block was introduced as an indestructible, permanent pass, it used to rest on the rim of the blackboard, near the door. In the upper grades it was no longer required that you raise your hand for permission to leave the room; the removal of the block became the signal. The block itself, on the face of which some boy in Shop class would have carved out the legend CLASS 6B1-LAVATORY PASS with arty twists and elegances, was always stained a sort of blue-black from frequent fingering. It had a hole bored at the top, and through this was threaded a greasy string, from which you were supposed to dangle it. The whole contraption smelled strongly of urine, and there were often barely identifiable chewing-gum blotches on it. It was never washed, and the teacher, who held a daily inspection of hands because dirt breeds germs, children, did not seem to mind. Many teachers, in fact, preferred the block, since it saved them the trouble of signing a great many paper passes all day long; and it had the added advantage of insuring that only one pupil at a time could be out of the room.) Beneath the yellow slips were stacked medium-sized white sheets, ruled for Spelling and plain for Arithmetic; and below these the dreaded large sheets which were used solely for the frightening Friday Morning Test Periods. There were also boxes of broken-off and dwarfed crayons, and a huge pile of yellowish drawing paper, the only kind distributed without the usual waming about waste. Next to the supply shelves was the teachers closet, always locked, which had a shelf for hats, a honk for an umbrella, and, actually, a coat-hanger. It was the only place you were likely to see a coat-hanger; we pupils hung our outer clothing on pointed hooks, which (even when a mother with foresight sewed in a band) always tore the collar. The teachers closet was for us the nearest thing to an idol-except for the flag, toward which our attitude was far more wholesome. The egg-

CYNTHIA OZICK

51

shaped brass doorknob, with its intricate little keyhole surrounded by calligraphic numbers and letters, was itself enough to thrill you by its cold consecrated touch: her fingers had clasped it, and it was almost as though you were touching the fingers themselves. For the teachers body was sacred. I do not recall how we acquired this notion, but I knowwe all believed it. The teachers hair, spectacles, teeth, dress, belt-buckle, rings, handkerchief and even shoes each had some holy, untouchable, perfect quality. Her perfume in particular was magical in its effects; when she passed, her fragrant wake was somehow beneficent. The same dizzying aura that hung about her like an assurance of immortality wafted also from her closet, and at dismissaltime it was an especial prerogative to hold the door so that the mirror on its inner face was slanted towsdd the teacher while she powdered her nose or put on her hat-you stwd motionless, afloat, lost in the delicacies of her perfume, overcame-and this was a reality, our reverence for the teachers person, whether we f she brushed against were despised by her or were a favorite. I us and politely said Excuse me, dear, we would cry, Oh, thats all right! as if to suggest the stupendous privilege of any accidental pressure from her. She, on her side, must have been aware of our primitive belief in emanations-certainly she felt our detailed, cautious, worshipping scrutiny-but I never knew a teacher who did anything to discourage the rites that accompanied her every gesture. If, after demonstrating how a test paper was to be folded, she gave that sheet to a nearby pupil to use, he considered himself fortunate as he watched the others imitating his prize: for he knew in his heart that there was only one perfectly-folded sheet of paper in the world, and it was his alone. When the teacher dropped a piece of chalk, four or five f she agile runners came swooping down at her feet after it. I sneezed, there was a roar of blessings. If she told a little joke, even her worst enemies held their sides. There were no cynics among us, although an occasional dispute broke out over whether a teacher really had to go to the bathroom: no one, it was true, had ever seen her leave the room except when summoned. Finally, covering most of the wall on the right of the classroom, was the long, narrow wardrobe closet with its ominous sliding

52

Evergreen Review

doors. The biggest and most disobedient boys sometimes had to stand inside in the terrible dark, with the doors closed, but this was a rare and extreme punishment. For lesser infringements we were sent to cower in a rear comer, burning with the indignity of separation, until at last the teachers voice would address the back of the head: Well, are you ready to join the rest of us now? Silence; the head would drop. Do you think you can sit in your seat like a little lady (or little man)? Yes. Yes, what? Yes, Miss So-and-So. Very well, you may take your seat. The wardrobe, however, served another purpose apart from punishment or clothes-storage: it helped to regulate our physical movements, and it taught us to think of ourselves as nameless numbers. When the three oclockbell rang, any signs of exuberance immediately jeopardized our chances for a speedy dismissal. Did I say class dismissed? Did anyone hear me say class dismissed? Please be seated at once. I dont remember telling anyone to stand. Now-hands folded. We would place our fists, tightly, whitely clasped, on the edge of our desks. Then-All right now. Row Six, stand. Row Six, farthest from the wardrobe, would rise. Row Six, Seats One and Two, may get their coats. Slowly. Walk, do not run. Seats Three, Four, and Five. Very well. Row Five is very noisy. Row Five will place hands on head and remain seated. Row Four, stand. Seats One and Two may get their coats. Seat Three, face front-did I give you the signal yet? All right, Seat Three, you may now get yonr coat. The length of this rigmarole would be directly proportional to the shortness of our patience. Nor was this the end; next, we had to form a double line in size places, the little ones in the lead, and the tallest bringing up the rear, which was the official phrase for it. (For a long time I was puzzled by these words: as the smallest the long line, and I thought bringing up the rear, whatever it implied, for logically it had no meaning for me, required some special ceremony which I used to miss again and again.) In addition, onr formation divided us by sex; the girls preceded the boys, and in this way, with not a whisper allowed, we were marched down the staircase, across the bleak green inner yard and at last to the doors, out of which we shot thunderously into the street. (Continued on page 141)

PAUL CARROLL

George Swimming at Barnes Hole, But It Got Too Cold

Yes. But must it always, with you. turn sour in the end? Last night, the talk intense & good as usual: though even at the start there is an intimation of November in your voicebruise of sleet, that whithering. And also in the way your he-boned hands thrash, talking: as if you always have to underline how youve had to traffic with the other ways of dying than the bodys. Talking, you seem to take a trip, Joan, back to the roots of why you paint: the father, whose hands on you were & always will apparently be those of a competent surgeon. Mother, brilliant. But a ghost. And that old photo of you they keep: the 1940 Brenda Frazier hairdo; but something primitive about the way

53

54

Eoergreen Reoiew
those adolescent breasts, that crook of neck communicate spite, an anger at your innocence. Something primitive too about the look brooding on your poodle George. Who died.

But not the memory of that ecstatic afternoon

you spent with him at Barnes Hole on Long Island:

dark wet fur bristly with lights as he zigzagged in the grass or paddled about the pool: that barbaric yellow spring you suddenly, there, discovered in yourself-unique

as an act of love. And yet,

that afternoon apparently was good enough to hurt forever. Joan, I've never seen your New York studio: but I imagine from our talks a girl staring or slashing at a canvas on the wallthrashing hands delicate & instinctive as a dream. Those hardbitten illuminations in the act of painting-a way, perhaps, to find the guts to face the fact that love is the name we give our terror.

P. R. BROWN

Africa
I need to go to Africa. I keep muttering: Mum, Dad, I must go to Africa,
But they dont listen to me.

...

Small Poem
I wrote a poem
Then threw it in the river. The fish thought it was bread And they ate it.

55

CORNEILLE

Journal of a Painter in Ethiopia

In 1953, strolling one Sunduy morning through the j7ea murket in Rome with the Flemish poet, Hugo C h w , I found and bought a putnting of unknown origin, brightly colored and nuioely erecuted. The painting depicts sixteen figures, three of whom are carrying a canopy, and one playing a mysterim instrument. Cortege or procession? To the right is a curious circular construction with a weathervane on the roof-dnubtless a church! The softness of the landscape in the background, and the shupe of its trees, are reminiscent of the Tuscan countryside. I n one corner of the picture is some lettering which I first took to be Hebrew, but later learned was Amharic (Ethiopian script). For a long time the painting remained hanging above my bed. With my eyes, I would wander leisurely through it, enthralled.. . . February 11. Ethiopia! Here we are in a country that differs completely from all other parts of Africa, It is as if we had traveled back through time into a past which, though close to us, is still quite disturbing. (Gone is the broad white grin of the Negro.) We are in the Middle Ages, the age of strongholds, bandits, ecstatic faith, magic, corporal punishments, vexations and annoyances of all kinds. . . An ugly and harsh atmosphere with moments of sudden sweetness. We are spellbound. . . .

...

February 12. After the vast, flat plain of dry, seared earth broiled and scorched to tints ranging from saffron yellow to russet brown and passing through a l l possible shades of ochre, a green belt has now begun, . . . Is the frontier this greenness into which we have moved? February 13. The first faces, hermetic. Glowering warriors down from the mountains raise their hands to their curved daggers-at the slightest gesture we make. This of course is quite a change from the Negroes we have so far come across since our departure from Dakar, all so gay and friendly and garrulous! I well remember the frank, uproarious laughter we provoked every morning when, after waking, we brushed our teeth. The Negroes loved to imitate us, displaying the talent of born actors. Here we are met with silence and lowering looks. What makes up for them in my eyes is that these creatures who have come down from the high Abyssinian mountains have a most extraordi-

56

Left: The great stele at Axum, call "the Obelisk."

Right: A portion of the fallen ste at Axum.

ConternPoran tombstones of Soul ern Ethiopia.

60
nary mop of hair. This thatch incidentally serves them as a larder: it is abundantly moistened with (very rancid) butter which has stopped attracting flies and now rather puts them to flight, and this hairy matting is milked like a cow every evening at mealtime. But these primitive men have an amazingly discerning taste and a keen sense of artistry-they wear Paul Klees in their hair-eacb one with his finely etched comb. , , The English call these mountaindwellers Fuzzy-Wnzzies. . .

Evergreen Review
are hewn from a single block of extremely hard stone (like granite) -an almost incredible technical feat. Some are lying in pieces on the ground, others lie in the brook; the women use these huge blocks for their laundering which doesnt bother me at all, for in this way the monoliths humanize themselves, become useful again since man has lost their original meaning. The monoliths no longer point haughtily towards the sky, hut are humble pieces of carved stone trodden on by womens feet. And the river perhaps adds a few chisel marks of its own to them. Today, visits to several churches. In order to get the key, which is never found on the spot, we sometimes have to go to the other end of town. Countless palavers, interminable visits to wan old abbds. The hours are spent asking favors. After endless bowing, enjoined upon us by the priests, we finally have to sit down, uncomfortably, on oddly-shaped cushions. At last the church-doors opened: a real feast for our eyes was waiting for us. I am overwhelmed by these naive religious paintings-the only example of Ethiopian painting that I had set eyes upon had given me no inkling of its wealth and variety. Inside the churches are covered with paintings: the ceiling, the floor, the walls, columns, niches, every nook and cranny. . . . I would like to buy a painting. Tomorrow I shall he taken to one of the artists who still paint in the old style; in fact, the very painter who is entrusted with the task of brightening up the paintings I have

February 15. Axum-I love the sound of this word. . . . It is through the eyes that love enters the soul, said Enripides. Women here attach a capital importance to all that can adorn them and thus enhance their personal charms. They roll their hair into a hall and then bundle it into a haimet or a muslin square. Seen from afar, these women with their monumental hairdress look like walking ninepins with their big round heads. (Oscar Schlemmer used to see and paint his figures just like this.) February 16. At times h u m looks like a Russian village; I am thinking of a Chagall painting-Vitehsk-with its streets bordered by painted wooden houses, built of rough, lopsided planks from which the nails protrude. The giant monoliths of Axnm (astonishing remains of an unknown civiIization) tower above the center of the Holy City. Some of them rise as high as 120 ft., and

CORNEILLE

61
those obsessive eyes-rows of eyes, frequently all on the same level, staring out of pale faces, pressed cheek to jowl. (Thev dont see or paint themselves as black-skinned.) There is always this proliferation of heads in their pictures; quite often one finds, at the extreme edge of the canvas, yet another pair of eyes. And always the same grave, strangely fixed gaze. In the streets, I see everywhere around me this obsessing gaze from under very high, slightly bulging foreheads. With its eucalyptuses, those gentle, silvery, strongly redolent trees, its incomparable churches stirringly alive with all their murals, and its fascinating monuments, Axum will remain unforgettable for me. February 21. The landscape before our eyes this morning: high, cold mountain ranges, bristling with giant spurges, cactuses, thistles, aloes studded with little orange-red bells-all of breathtaking dimensions. February 22. Pictures my eyes have gleaned as the kilometers speed by: a nobleman with a black goatee, on horseback; his spouse following him with her tall sunshade of plaited straw; a great and haughty lord escorted by his equerries on foot, carrying their masters weapons: a mighty sabre and long, finely-wrought rifles; a fiery horseman with blazin eyes on his way to a feast, w i t his spear and shield; peasant women in a long line, bending under the load of big pitchers of beautiful, ancient

just seen. These murals are touched up-almost repainted-at regular intervals, which explain their astonishing freshness. The Ethiopians have no complexes in this respect, and tradition is still so much alive that an artist can, without fear of doing damage, touch up paintings that are three or four hundred years old. February 17. In the market places and public squares, the Ethiopians look like a multitude of white pigeons-they never wear colored garments, always white ones; their paintings are not at all realistic, they daub their figures clothes with gaudy colors. Homer already knew the Ethiopians and spoke of them in the following terms: Unsullied Abvssinians whose sacrifices are the most agreeable to the gods. At 4 P.M. today we went to see the who received us very Through the intermediary of a young boy, I was able to discuss technique and materials with this dignified old man, and buy from him a picture painted on wood, which he was keeping in a dark miner of his studio where I discovered it by chance (he would certainly never have shown it to . us). It is a St. George, running the dragon through with his spear. St. George is the patron saint of Ethiopia. Before we left, the artist consented, with the same dignity, to pose for a last photograph with my new purchase in his hands.

f i $ z

February 18. In Ethiopian paintings, always

64
one finds rotting houses, lost in the tall grass into which the eucalyptus trees eternally drain. This never-ending city is as vast as Paris, yet it resembles a big forest. Addis Abbaha, the embryo of a city, has but a few streets dug out of its soil. The rest are lines moving straight off into space, descents, upward fiights, the merest traces of gardens-to-be, thatched huts from which rises a very blue smoke, wide empty spaces, which look all the more naked as one emerges from narrow, waspwaisted lanes, buried under a green foliage that has been polished to a high shine by ceaseless rainfall. Ones feet sink ankle-deep in black, heavy earth. A long street. The brothel. Small rooms, sparsely furnished: a round table with the inevitable tea-service, some seats, a bed in the corner, an orgy of colors on the wall: large sheets of paper are tacked to it, one next to the other-a folklore art, singing, shouting with vitality. What a delight1 The shapes of the bodies are simplified to the utmost and have a certain stiffness (a little like images dgpinal-popular French color prints), hut what wealth of invention, what variety in the color combinations1 Most of the pictures represent the Virgin (Miriam) and Child; Solomon and his lions, which look like fat tom-cats; the King of Kings, the Emperor Haile Selassie on horseback, at a hunt, at war, always victorious; scenes of work in the fields; now and then a likeness of one of the ladies of this place (I w a s lucky to be able to

Euergreen Review
buy one of these portraits), with her hair rolled into a hall and held up by a silk square knotted at the nape, and adorned with an enormous tattoo lightly drawn around the neck: necklaces, crosses, TOsettes, triangles, squares, and circles form a decoration that reaches down to between her breasts. The girls spin cotton with quick, light movements, they have a bird-like grace.

March 3. The temperature of a steam bath. We miss the thin, bracing air of the high altitudes. The flies which our car attracts are traveling along with us. They have been with us since Dakar, are harassing us without respite, while the heat roasts us properly. I dream of a painting which would be like the natural unfolding of the hours here (with the same underlying cruelty), the slow wandering of the clouds over these immense plains, with their treacherous long rnsset grass where jackals lurk, waiting for the sated lions to leave them a morsel of blackand-white striped zebra. Heavy warm drops splash against the verdure. For several days now the sky has been unloosing its tropical rain, which brightens the colors, restores the gray, drab, listless plants to polished green youthfulness. Our car plows through seas of mud, slipping, skidding; we no longer cover more than a few miles a day in the direction of Kenya. We pass fleeing, frightened creatures, the villages have vanished, the kids walk barefoot, some shield them-

A mural painting in the Church of Tekde Haymanot a t Axurn.

A woman of the Gallas tribe of Southern Ethiopia.

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weeks, the tombs of the Arrussi warriors are silhouetted. These steles are sometimes grouped in fours-one in each direction: North, Sooth, East and West. They are all decorated with rudimentary signs-suns, moons, wheels and various patterns. Even today, in the south of Ethiopia, these gravestones are still being hewn, decorated with etchings, erected everywhere. For me, they bear a kinship with the abstract art of the Scandinavian Bronze Age. . . .
-Transluted

selves with banana leaves, the men drape themselves as best they can in pieces of material that are too scanty, the women wear leather dresses and tinkling jewelry. The rain falls hard, and almost never lets up, the plants strain madly towards the falling water, and twist and entwine in inextricable knots around us. In all this, a most poignant melancholy.
March 6. In the plain, which replaces the

orgy of green foliage of these past

by Rita Barisse.

HENRY MILLER

From Nexus

Why should we always go out of our way to describe the wretchedness and the imperfections of our life, and to unearth characters from wild and remote comers of our country? Thus Gogol begins Part I1 of his unfinished novel. I was now well into the novel-my own-but still I had no clear idea where it was leading me, nor did it matter, since Pop was pleased with all that had been shown him thus far, the money was always forthcoming, we ate and drank well, the birds were scarcer now but still they sang, Thanksgiving had come and gone, and my chess game had improved somewhat. Moreover, no one had discovered OUT whereabouts, none of my pestilential cronies, I mean. Thus I was able to explore the streets at will, which I did with a vengeance because the air was sharp and biting, the wind whistled, and my brain ever in a whirl drove me on reIentIessly, forced me to ferret out streets, memories, buildings, odors (of rotting vegetables 1, abandoned ferry slips, storekeepers long dead, saloons converted into dime stores, cemeteries still redolent with the punk of mourners. The wild and remote comers of the earth were all about me, only a stones throw from the boundary which marked off our aristocratic precinct. I had only to cross the line, the Grenze, and I was in the familiar world of childhood, the land of the poor and happily demented, the junkyard where all that was dilapidated, useless, and germ-ridden was salvaged by the rats who refused to desert the ship. As I roamed about gazing into shop windows, peering into alleyways, and never anything but drear desolation, I thought of the Negroes whom we visited regularly and of how uncoh-

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taminated they appeared to be. The sickness of the Gentiles had not destroyed their laughter, their gift of speech, their easy-going ways. They had all our diseases to combat, and our prejudices as well, yet they remained impervious. The one who owned the collection of erotica had grown very fond of me; I had to be on guard lest he drive me into a comer and pinch my ass. Never did I dream that one day he would he seizing my books too and adding them to his astounding collection. He was a wonderful pianist, I should add. He had that %-pedal technique I relished so much in Count Basie and Fats Waller. They could all play some instrument, these lovable souls. And if there were no instrument they made music with fingers and palms-on table tops, barrels, or anything to hand. I had introduced no unearthed characters as yet in the novel. I was still timid. More in love with words than with psychopathic devaginations. I could spend hours at a stretch with Walter Pater, or even Henry James, in the hope of lifting a beautifully turned phrase. Or I might sit and gaze at a Japanese print, say The Fickle Type of Utamaro, in the effort to force a bridge between a vague, dreamy fugue of an image and a living colored wood-block. I was ever frantically climbing ladders to pluck a ripe fig from some exotic overhanging garden of the past. The illustrated pages of a magazine like the Geographic could hold me spellbound for hours. How work in a cryptic reference to some remote region of Asia Minor, some little known site, for example, where a Hittite monster of a monarch had left colossal statues to commemorate his flea-blown ego? Or I might dig up an old history book-one of Mommsens, let us say-in order to fetch up with a brilliant analogy between the skyscrapered canyons of Wall Street and the congested districts of Rome under the Emperors. Or I might become interested in sewers, the great sewers of Paris, Vienna, or some other metropolis, whereupon it would occur to me that Hugo or some other French writer had made use of such a theme and I would take up the life of this novelist merely to 6nd out what had impelled him to take such an interest in
sewers.

Meanwhile, as 1 say, the wild and remote comers of our

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Eoergreen Review

country were right to hand. I had only to stop and buy a bunch of radishes to unearth a weird character. Did an Italian funeral parlor look intriguing I would step inside and inquire the price of a coffin. Everything that was beyond the Grenze excited me. Some of my most cherished cosmococcic miscreants, I discovered, inhabited this land of desolation. Patrick Garstin, the Egyptologist, was one. (H e had come to look more like a gold-digger than an archaeologist.) Donato lived here too. Donato, the Sicilian lad, who in taking an axe to his old man bad luckily chopped off only one arm. What aspirations he had, this budding patricide! At seventeen he was dreaming of getting a job in the Vatican. Why? In order to become better acquainted with St. Francis! Making the rounds from one alkali bed to another, I brought my geography, ethnology, folklore and gunnery up to date. The architecture teemed with atavistic anomalies. There were dwellings seemingly transplanted from the shores of the Caspian, huts out of Anderseds fairy tales, shops from the cool labyrinths of Fez, spare cart wheels and sulkies without shafts, bird cages galore and always empty, chamber pots, often of majolica and decorated with pansies or sun flowers, corsets, crutches, and the handles and ribs of umbrellas . . an endless array of bric-abrac all marked manufactured in Hagia Triada. And what midgets1 One who pretended to speak only Bulgarian-he was really a Moldavian-lived in a dog kennel in the rear of his shack. He ate with the dog-out of the same tin plate. When he smiled he showed only two teeth, huge ones, like a canines. He could bark too, or sniff and growl like a cur. None of this did I dare to put into the novel. No, the novel I kept like a boudoir. No dreck. Not that all the characters were respectable or impeccable. Ah no! Some whom I had dragged in for color were plain schmucks. (Prepucelos) The hero, who was also the narrator and to whom I bore a slight resemblance, had the air of a trapezoid cerebralist. It was his function to keep the merry-go-round turning. Now and then he treated himself to a free ride. What element there was of the bizarre and the outlandish intrigued Pop no end. He had wondered-openly-how a young

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woman, the author, in other words, came by such thoughts, such images. It had never occurred to Mona to say: From another incarnationl Frankly, I would hardly have known what to say myself. Some of the goofiest images had been stolen from almanacs, others were born of wet dreams. What Pop truly enjoyed, it seemed, was the occasional introduction of a dog or a cat. (He couldnt know, of course, that I was mortally afraid of dogs or that I loathed cats.) But I could make a dog talk. And it was doggy talk, no mistake about it. My true reason for inserting these creatures of a lower order was to show contempt for certain characters in the hook who had gotten out of hand. A dog, properly inspired, can make an ass of a queen. Besides, if I wished to ridicule a current idea which was anathema to me, all I had to do was to impersonate a mutt, lift my hind leg and piss on it. Despite all the foolery, all the shenanigans, I nevertheless managed to create a sort of antique glaze. My purpose was to impart such a finish, such a patina, that every page would gleam like star dust. This was the business of authorship, as I then conceived it. Make mud puddles, if necessary, but see to it that they reflect the galactic varnish. When giving an idiot voice mix the jabberwocky with high-flown allusions to such subjects as paleontology, quadratics, hyperhoreanism. A line from one of the mad Caesars was always pertinent. Or a curse from the lips of a scrofulous dwarf. Or just a sly Hamsunesque quip, like-Going for a walk, Frdken? The cowslips are dying of thirst. Sly, I say, because the allusion, though farfetched, was to Frokens habit of spreading her legs, when she thought she was well out of sight, and making water. These rambles taken to relax or to obtain fresh inspirationoften only to aerate my testicles-had a disturbing effect upon the work in progress. Rounding a corner at a sixty-degree angle, it could happen that a conversation (with a locomotive engineer or a jobless hod-carrier) ended only a few minutes previously would suddenly blossom into a dialogue of such length, such extravagance, that I would find it impossible, on returning to my desk, to resume the thread of my narrative. For every thought that entered my head the hod-carrier or whoever would

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Evergreen Review

have some comment to make. No matter what answer I made the conversation continued. It was as if these corky nobodies had made up their minds to derail me. Occasionally this sort of bitchery would start up with statues, particularly chipped and dismantled ones. I might be loitering in some backyard gazing absent-mindedly at a marble head with one ear missing and presto! it would be talking to me . talking in the language of a pro-Consul. Some crazy urge would seize me to caress the battered features, whereupon, as if the touch of my hand had restored it to life, it would smile at me. A smile of gratitude, needless to say. Then an even stranger thing might happen. An hour later, say, passing the plate-glass window of an empty shop, who would greet me from the murky depths but the same pro-Consul! Terror-stricken, I would press my nose against the show-window and stare. There he wasan ear missing, the nose bitten off. And his lips moving! A retinal haemorrhage, I would murmur to myself, and move on. God help me if he visits me in my sleep! Thus, not so strangely, I developed a kind of painters eye. How often I made it my business to return to a certain spot in order to review a still life which I had passed too hurriedly the day before or three days before. The still life, as I term it, might be an artless arrangement of objects which no one in his senses would have bothered to look at twice. For example -a few playing cards lying face up on the sidewalk and next to them a toy pistol or the head of a missing chicken. Or an open parasol torn to shreds sticking out of a lumberjacks boot, and beside the boot a tattered copy of The Golden Ass pierced with a rusty jack-knife. Wondering what so fascinated me in these chance arrangements, it would suddenly dawn on me that I had detected similar configurations in the painters world. Then it would be an all-night task to recall which painting, which painter, and where I had first stumbled upon it. Extraordinary, when one takes up the pursuit of such chimeras, to discover what amazing trivia, what sheer insanity, infests some of the great masterpieces of art. But the most distinctive feature associated with these jaunts, rambles, forays and reconnoiterings was the realm, panoramic

..

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in recollection, of gesture. Human gestures. All borrowed from the animal and insect worlds. Even those of refined individuals, or pseudo-refined, such as morticians, lackeys, ministers of the gospel, major-domos. The way a certain nobody when taken by surprise threw back his head and whinnied would stick in my crop long after I had ceased to remember his words and deeds. There were novelists, I discovered, who made a specialty of exploiting such idiosyncrasies, who thought nothing of resorting to a little trick like the whinnying of a horse when they wished to remind the reader of a character mentioned sixty pages back. Craftsmen, the critics called them. Crafty, certainly. Yes, in my stumbling, humbling way I was making all manner of discoveries. One of them was that one cannot hide his identity under cover of the third person, nor could one establish his identity solely through the use of the first person singular. Another was-not to think before a blank page. Ce nest pas moi, le roi, cest Ihutondme. Not I, hut the Father within me, in other words. Quite a discipline, to get the words to trickle without fanning them with a feather or stirring them with a silver spoon. To learn to wait, wait patiently, like a bird of prey, even though the flies were biting like mad and the birds chirping insanely. Before Abraham was. . Yes, before the Olympian Goethe, before the great Shakespeare, before the divine Dante or the immortal Homer, there was the Voice and the Voice was with every man. Man has never lacked for words. The difficulty arose only when man forced the words to do his bidding. Be still, and wait the coming of the Lord! Erase all thought, observe the still movement of the heavens! All is flow and movement, light and shadow. What is more still than a mirror, the frozen glassiness of glass-yet what frenzy, what fury its still surface can yield! I wish that you would kindly have the men of the Park Department prune, trim, and pare off all the dead wood, twigs, sprigs, stumps, stickers, shooters, sucker-pieces, dirty and shaggy pieces, low, extra low and overhanging boughs and branches from the good trees and to prune them extra close to the hark

..

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Etiergreen Review

and to have all the good trees thoroughly and properly sprayed from the base to the very top parts and all through along by all parts of each street, avenue, place, court, lane, boulevard and so on . . . and thereby give a great deal more light, more natural light, more air, more beauty to all the surrounding areas. That was the sort of message I should like to have dispatched at intervals to the god of the literarv realm so that I might be delivered from confusion, rescued from chaos, freed of obsessive admiration for authors living and dead whose words, phrases, images barricaded my way. And what was it prevented my o w n unique thoughts from breaking out and flooding the page? For many a year now I had been scurrying to and fro like a pack-rat, borrowing this and that from the beloved masters, hiding them away, my treasures, forgetting where I had stored them, and always searching for more, more, more. In some deep, forgotten pit were buried all the thoughts and experiences which I might properly call my own, which were certainly unique, but which I lacked the courage to resuscitate. Had someone cast a spell over me that I should labor with arthritic stumps instead of two hold fists? Had someone stood aver me in my sleep and whispered: You will never do it, never do it! (Not Stanley certainly, for h e would disdain to whisper. Could he not hiss like a snake?) Who then? Or was it that I was still in the cocoon stage, a worm not yet sufficiently intoxicated with the splendor and magnificence of life? How does one know that one day he will take wing, that like the hummingbird he will quiver in mid-air and dazzle with iridescent sheen? One doesnt. One hopes and prays and bashes his head against the wall. But it knows. I t can hide its time. I t knows that all the errors, all the detours, all the failures and frustrations will be turned to account. To be born an eagle one must get accustomed to high places; to be born a writer one must learn to like privation, suffering, humiliation. Above all, one must learn to live apart. Like the sloth, the writer clings to his limb while beneath him life surges by, steady, persistent, tumultuous. When ready plop! h e falls into the stream and battles for life. Is it not something like that? Or is there a fair,

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smiling land where at an early age the budding writer is taken aside, instructed in his art, guided by loving masters and, instead of falling thwack into mid-stream he glides like an eel through sludge, mire, and ooze? I had time unending for such vagaries in the course of my daily routine; like poplars they sprang up beside me as I labored in thought, as I walked the streets for inspiration, or as I put my head on the pillow to drown myself in sleep. What a wonderful life, the literary life! I would sometimes say to myself. Meaning this in-hetween realm crowded with interlacing, intertwining boughs, branches, leaves, stickers, suckers and whatnot. The mild activity associated with my work not only failed to drain my energy but stimulated it. I was forever buzzing, buzzing. If now and then I complained of exhaustion it was from not being able to write, never from writing too much. Did I fear, unconsciously, that if I succeeded in letting myself go I would he speaking with my own voice? Did I fear that once I found that buried treasure which I had hidden away I would never again know peace, never know surcease from toil? The very thought of creation-how absolutely unapproachable it is! Or its opposite, chaos. Impossible even to posit such a thing as the uncreated. The more deeply we gaze the more we discover of order in disorder, the more of law in lawlessness, the more of light in darkness. Negation-the absence of things-is unthinkable; it is the ghost of a thought. Everything is humming, pushing, waxing, waning, changing-has been so since eternity. And all according to inscrutable urges, forces, which, when we recognize them, we call laws. Chaos! We know nothing of chaos. Silence! Only the dead know it. Nothingness! Blow as hard as you like, something always remains. When and where does creation cease? And what can a mere writer create that has not already been created? Nothing. The writer rearranges the gray matter in his noodle. He makes a beginning and an end-the very opposite of creation!-and in between, where he shuffles around, or more properly is shuffled around, there is born the imitation of reality: a book. Some books have altered the face of the world. Rearrangement, nothing more. The problems of life remain. A face may he lifted,

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Evergreen Review

hut ones age is indelible. Books have no effect. Authors have no effect. The effect was given in the first Cause. Where wert thou when I created the world? Answer that and you have solved the riddle of creation! We write, knowing we are licked before we start. Every day we beg for fresh torment. The more we itch and scratch the better we feel. And when our readers also begin to itch and scratch we feel sublime. Let no one die of inanition! The airs must ever swarm with arrows of thought delivered by Zes hommes de Zettfes. Letters, mind you. How well put! Letters strung together with invisible wires charged with imponderable magnetic currents. All this travail forced upon a brain that was intended to work like a charm, to work without working. Is it a person coming toward you or a mind? A mind divided into books, pages, sentences replete with commas, periods, semicolons, dashes and asterisks. One author receives a prize or a seat in the Academy for his efforts, another a worm-eaten bone. The names of some are lent to streets and boulevards, of others to gallows and almshouses. And when all these creations have been finally read and digested men will still be buggering one another. No author, not even the greatest, has been able to get round that hard, cold fact. A grand life just the same. The literary life, I mean. Who wants to alter the world? (Let it rot, let it die, let it fade awayl) Tettrazini practicing her trills, Caruso shattering the chandeliers, Cortot waltzing like a blind mouse, the great Vladimir horrorizing the keyboard-was it of creation or salvation they were thinking? Perhaps not even of constipation. . . . The road smokes under your horses hooves, the bridges rumble, the heavens fall backwards. What is the meaning of it all? The air, tom to shreds, rushes by. Everything is flying by, bells, collar buttons, moustachios, pomegranates, hand grenades. We draw aside to make way for yon, you fiery steeds. And for you, dear Jascha Heifetz, dear Joseph Szigeti, dear Yehudi Menuhin. We draw aside, humbly-do you hear? No answer. Only the sound of their collar bells. Nights when everything is going wish whoosh! when all the unearthed characters slink out of their hiding-places to perform

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on the roof-top of my brain, arguing, screaming, yodeling, cartwheeling, whinnying too-what horsed-I know that this is the only life, this life of the writer, and the world may stay put, get worse, sicken and die, all one, because I no longer belong to the world, a world that sickens and dies, that stabs itself over and over, that wobbles like an amputated crab. . . I have my own world, a Graben of a world, cluttered with Vespasiennes, Mir6s and Heideggers, bidets, a lone Yeshiva Bocher, cantors who sing like clarinets, divas who swim in their own fat, bugle busters and troikas that rush like the wind. . , . Napoleon has no place here, nor Goethe, nor even those gentle souls with power over birds, such as St. Francis, Milosz the Lithuanian, and Wittgenstein. Even lying on my back, pinned down hy dwarfs and gremlins, my power is vast and unyielding. My minions obey me; they pop like corn on the griddle, they whirl into line to form sentences, paragraphs, pages. And in some far-off place, in some heavenly day to come, others geared to the music of words will respond to the message and storm heaven itself to spread unbounded delirium. Who knows why these things should be, or why cantiltas and oratorios? W e know only that they are, that their magic is law, and that by observing them, heeding them, reverencing them, we add joy to joy, miscry to misery, death to death. Nothing is so creative as creation itself. AbeI begot Bogul, and Bogul begot Mogul, and Mogul begot Zobel. Catheter, blatherer, shatterer. One letter added to another makes for a word; one word added to another makes for a phrase; phrase upon phrase, sentence upon sentence, paragraph upon pnragraph; chapter after chapter, book after book, epic after epic: a tower of Babel stretching almost, hut not quite, to the lips of the Great I Am. Humility is the word! Or, as my dear, beloved Master explains: We must remember our close connection with things like insects, pterodactyls, saurians, slowworms, moles, skunks, and those little flying squirrels called polatouches. But let us also not forget, when creation drags us by the hair, that every atom, every molecule, every single element of the universe is in league with us, egging us on and trimming us down, all to remind us that we must never think

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Ecergreen Review

of dirt as dirt or God as God but ever of all combined, making us to race like comets after our own tails, and thereby giving the lie to motion, matter, energy and all the other conceptual flub-dub clinging to the ass-hole of creation like bleeding piles. (My straw hat mingles with the straw hats of the riceplanters.) It is unnecessary, in this beamish realm, to feast on human dung or copulate with the dead, after the manncr of certain disciplined souls, nor is it necessary to abstain from food, alcohol, sex and drugs, after the manner of anchorites. Ncither is it incumbent upon any one to practice hour after hour the major and minor scales, the arpeggios, pizzicati, or cadenzas, as did the progeny of Liszt, Czeroy, and other pyrotechnical virtuosi. Nor should one slave to make words explode like firecrackers, in conformance to the ballistic regulations of inebriated semanticists. It is enough and marc to stretch, yawn, wheeze, f a t and whinny. Rules are for barbarians, technic for the troglodytes. Away with the Minnesingers, even those of Cappadocia! Thus, whilst sedulously and slavishly imitating thc ways of the masters-tools and technic, in other words-my instincts were rising up in revolt. If I craved magical powers it was not to rear new structures, not to add to the Tower of Babel, but to destroy, to undermine. The novel I liar1 to write. Point dhonnew. But after that , , , ? After that, vcngcancc! Ravngc, lay waste the land: make of Culture an open sewer, so that the stench of it would remain forever in the nostrils of mcmory. All my idols-and I possessed a veritable pantheon-I would offer up as sacrifices. Mhat powcrs of utterance they had given me I would use to curse and blaspheme. Had not the prophets of old promised destruction? Had they cvcr hcsitated to befoul their speech, in order to awaken the dead? If for companions I had ncvcr aught hut dcrclicts and wastrels, was thcre not a purpose in it? \Vere not my idols also derelicts and wastrels -in a profound sense? Did they not float on the tide of culture, were they not tossed hither and thither likc the unlettered wretches of the workaday world? Were their daemons not as heartless and ruthless as any slave-driver? Did not everything

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conspire-the gr,md, the noble, the perfect works as well as the low, the sordid, the mean-to render life more unlivable each day? Of what use the poems of death, the maxims and counsels of the sage ones, the codes and tablets of the law-givers, of what use leaders, thinkers, men of art, if the very elements that made up the fabric of life were incapable of being transformed? Only to one who has not yet found his way is it permitted to ask all the wrong questions, to tread all the wrong paths, to hope and pray for the destruction of all existent modes and forms. Puzzled and perplexed, yinked this way and that, muddled and befuddled, striving and cursing, sneering and jeering, small wonder that in the midst of a thought, a perfect jewel of a thought, I sometimes caught myself staring straight ahead, mind blank, like a chimpnnz,ce in the act of mounting another chimpanzee. It was in this wise that Abel begot Rogul and Bog111 begot Mogul. I was the last of the line, a dog of a Zobel with a hone hetwocn my jaws which I coiild neither chew nor grind, which I had teased and worried, and spat on and shat on. Soon I \vould piss on it and bury it. And the name of the bone was Rahcl. A grand life, thc literary life. Never would I have it better. Such tools! Such technic! How conld anyone, nnless he hugged m e likc a sliadow, know the myriads of waste p1;rccs I freqncnted in my search for ore? Or the varictics of birds that sang for m e as I dug my pits and shafts? Or the cackling, chortling gnomcs and elves who waited on me as I lahorcd, who faitlrfully tickled my halls, rchearsod my lines, or revealed to me the mystcries hidden in pebhlos, twigs, flcas, lice and pollen? Who conld possibly know the confidences rcvealcd by my idols who were cver sending me night messages, or the sccrct codcs imparted to me whereby I learned to read between the lines, to correct false biographical data and makc light of gnostic commentaries? Nevcr was there a more solid terra firma beneath my fvet than whcn grappling with this shifting, floating world created by the vandals of culture on whom I finally learned to turn my ass. And who, I ask, who but a master of reality could imagine that the first step into the world of creation must be accom-

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panied with a loud, evil-smelling fart, as if experiencing for the first time the significance of shell-fire? Advance always! The generals of literature sleep soundly in their cozy bunks. We, the hairy ones, do the fighting. From that trench which must be taken there is no returning. Get thee behind us, ye laureates of Satan! If it be cleavers we must fight with, let us use them to full advantage. Faugh a balla! Get those greasy ducks! Avanti, avanti! The battle is endless. It had no beginning, nor will it know an end. We who babble and froth at the mouth have been at it since eternity. Spare us further instruction! Are we to make green lawns as we advance from trench to trench? Are we landscape artists as well as butchers? hlust we storm to victory perfumed like whores? For whom are we mopping up? How fortunate that I had only one reader! Such an indulgent one, too. Every time I sat down to write a page for him I readjusted my skirt, primped my hair-do and powdered my nose. If only he could see me at work, dear Pop! If only he knew the pains I took to give his novel the proper literary cast. What a Marius he had in me! What an Epicurean! Somewhere Paul Valhry has said: What is of value to us alone (meaning the poets of literature) has no value. This is the law of literature. Iss dot so now? Tsch, tsch! True, our Valery was discussing the art of poetry, discussing the poets task and purpose, his roison ddtre. hlyself, I have ncvcr understood poetry as poetry. For me the mark of the poet is everywhere, in everything. To distill thought until it hangs in the alembic of a poem, revealing not a speck, not a shadow, not a vaporous breath of the impurities from which it was decocted, that for me is a meaningless, worthless pursuit, even though it be the sworn and solemn function of those midwives who toil in the name of Beauty, Form, Intelligence, and so on. I speak of the poet because I was then, in my blissful embryonic state, more nearly that than ever since. I never thought, as did Diderot, that my ideas are my whores. Why would I want whores? No, my ideas were a garden of delights. An absent-minded gardener I was, who, though tender and observing, did not attach too much importance to the presence of

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weeds, thorns, nettles, but craved only the joy of frequenting this place apart, this intimate domain peopled with shrubs, blossoms, Rowers, bees, birds, hugs of every variety. I never walked the garden as a pimp, nor even in a fornicating frame of mind. Neither did I invest it as a botanist, an entomologist, or a horticulturist. I studied nothing, not even my own wonder. Nor did I christen any blessed thing. The look of a Rower was enough, or its perfume. How did the flower come to be? How did anything come to be? If I questioned, it was to ask-"Are you there, little friend? Are the dcwdrops still clinging to your petals?" What could be more considerate-better manners-than to treat thoughts, ideas, inspirational Rashes, as Rowers of delight? What better work habits than to greet them with a smile each day or walk among them musing on their evanescent glory? True, now and then I might make so bold as to pluck one for my buttonhole. But to exploit it, to send it out to work like a whore or a stock-broker-unthinkable. For me it was enough to have been inspired, not to be perpetually inspired. I was neither a poet nor a drudge. I was simply out of step. Heimatlos. My only reader. , . . Later I will exchange him for the ideal reader, that intimate rascal, that beloved scamp, to whom I may speak as if nothing had any value but to him-and to me. Why add-to me? Can he be any other, this ideal reader, than my alter ego? Why create a world of one's own if it must also make sense to every Tom, Dick, and Harry? Have not the others this world of everyday, which they profess to despise yet cling to like drowning rats? Is it not strange how they who refuse, or are too lazy, to create a world of their own insist on invading ours? Who is it tramples the Rower beds at night? Who is it leaves cigarette stubs in the bird bath? Who is it pees on the blushing violets and wilts their bloom? We know how you ravage the pages of literature in search of what pleases you. We discover the footprints of your blundering spirit everywhere. It is you who kill genius, you who cripple the giants. You, you, whether through love and adoration or through envy, spite, and hatred. Who writes for you writes his own death warrant.

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Little sparrow, Mind, mind out of the way, Mr. Horse is coming. Issa-San wrote that. Tell me its value!

Evergreen Review

[This text is a fragment from the first volume of Nexus, which is the third and last book of The Rosy Crucl#ion. Nexus will be published from Paris, n unexpurgated edition-in English. probably by the Olympia Press, in a When Volume I1 is published I shall have reached the end of m y autobiographical romances, beginning with the Troplc of Cancer, and working counter clockwise to Ne*us.-Hmm MILLER.]

PAUL BLACKBURN

S irventes
Un sircentes ai fach Contral ciutat de Tolosa On mavia pretz ostalatge D u n sen salvatge e famosa Del mons . . PB / 1956

I have made a sirventes against the city of Toulouse and it cost me plenty garlic: and if I have a brother, say, or a cousin, or a second-cousin, Ill tell him to stay out too. As for me, Henri,

Id rather be in Espafia pegging pemod thru a pajita or yagrelling a luk

jedamput en Jugoslavije, jowels wide & yowels not permitted to emergeor even in emergency slopping slivovitsa tliru the hrlog in the luk. I mean Im not particular, but to be in the Midi now that rain is here, to be sitting in Toulouse the slop tapping in the court for another year

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to stop typing just at ten and the wet-rot setting in and the price is always plus, I mean, please, must I?

Whole damn year teaching trifles to these trout with trousers tramping thru the damp with gout up to my gut taking all the guff, sweet jesus crypt, god of the he brews, she blows, it bawls, & Boses (by dose is stuffed) by the balls of the livid saviour, lead be back hindn eegypt-la-aad before I'b canned for indiscihlidnary reasons. 0 god. The Hallowed halls the ivy-covered walls the fishwife calls & the rain falls BASTAL! Jove, god of tourists, thc whores in Barcelona are beautiful, you would understand. Weren't there Europa and Io? and Aegina twin-sister of Thebe both daughters of Asopus? and Maia and Antiope and Niohe of the Thebans? Eagle, ant, bull, heaver, flame, otter, how not? Remember Leda? I swan, you never felt old. Your shower of rain at least was a shower of gold. A gentle white bull with dewlaps. The bulls in Barcelona are beautiful, Jove,

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need no persuasion, are themselves as brave. My old Guillem, who once stole this town, thinking your wifes name enuf reason to . .

St. Julian, patron of Travellers, mi des mercey! Who else invoke? Who else to save a damned poet impaled by a betteraue? Mercury! Post of Heaven, you old thief, deliver me from this ravel-streeted, louse-ridden, down-river, gutter-sniping rent-gouging, hard-hearted, complacent provincial town, where they have forgotten all that made this country the belly of courage, the body of beauty, the hands of heresy, the legs of the individual spirit, the heart of song! That mad Vidal would spit on it, that I as his maddened double dotoo changed, too changed, o deranged master of song, master of the viol and the lute master of those sounds, I join you in public madness, in the street I piss on French politesse that has wracked all passion from the sound of speech. A leech that sucks the blood is less a lesion. Speech! this imposed imposing imported courtliness, that the more you hear it the more its meaningless & without feeling. The peel is off the grape and theres not much left and what is left is soured if clean: if I go off my heam, some

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small vengeance would be sweet, something definite and neat, say total destruction.

Jove, father, cast your bolts and down these bourgeois dolts! Raise a wave, a glaive of light, Poscidon, inundate this fish-bait! Hermes, keep my song from the dull rhythms of rain. Apollo, hurl your darts, cleanse these abysmal farts out from this dripping cave in the name of Love.

.......

. .

W I L L I A M EASTLAKE

Three Heroes and a Clown

Two bronc riders and one clown were sitting in a cafe four miles out of Montrose, Colorado, all watching another bronc man, Ralph Clearboy, watching and listening, listening hut not quite catching until Clearhoy removed a battered cigar, replacing this, to a bright, cut lip, with a clear bourbon, then he held the fragmented cigar and the empty bourbon glass in either hand and confronted the others with a pure, blank stare. What was you fixin to say? Willard Moss said. A white Lincoln, Clearhoy said. What about it? I bought one, Clearboy said. I bought a white Lincoln. And what is the moral of that? the clown said. What does the Good Book say about that? I wonder. Wonder no longer my boy. We are off. Where to? To Gunnison, the clown said. Where else? The rodeos at Gunnison. The clown stood up. He had a sign on his hack and he waved his arms as though he might fly away but before he took off he would make a speech. The clown pounded the table for attention and embarrassed everyone in the cafe. And we will pay a visit to Marias joint. We will he the first cowboys to ride from hlontrose to Gunnison in three hours including a two hour stopover at Marias. The first. Clearboy remained seated. In a white Lincoln, Clearhoy said quietly. The clown was talking to Clearboy, a professional bronc rider. A clown seems to be only the comic character that entertains you between the rodeo acts but actually his main purpose in the arena is to entice, cajole or pull the Brahma hull or the bronc horse off the rider after the rider has been thrown, to keep those sharp raging hooves of the bronc or the needle

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horns of the bull from killing the cowboy. The clown is, of course, a contract man, different from a bronc rider. A bronc rider shows up at any show he shows up at and if he shows at no show it makes no difference, it is only his entry fee that allows him to compete for the money anyway. His entry fee and his card in the R.C.A., the Rodeo Cowboys Association. The cowboys got a union too. Do you know this cowboys got a sore rear end? The clown did not say this. They were in the white Lincoln now, where you go over Blue Mesa just before Cimarron between Montrose and Gunnison, and Clearboy, Ralph Clearboy, said it and stuck one foot ont the window whilst the white Lincoln was going one hundred miles an hour. The clown never said anything funny. His name was Morg or Morgan Beltone and all the stuff he said and did at the show was written for him. What was most appealing about the clown was that, as a contract man he drew a regular sal;ary. The white Lincoln used a great deal of gasoline. Hi-test Flite-fuel, forty-one cents a gallon in Aztec. At these prices you cant ride with a better man than a contract clown. Four men on a trip to Gunnison in a white Lincoln, including a colored cowboy and a clown. The colored cowboys name was Willard Moss. Moss is the only colored cowboy who belongs to the R.C.A. outside of Marvel Rogers. If he draws a good horse Marvel is worth the admission price. Willard Moss, the colored bronc man who rode in the rear seat of the Lincoln is not quite so good as Marvel Rogers hut Willard Moss is very good. Ralph Clearboy was the best. He drove and owned the Lincoln and was the best. Together with the finance company he owned the Lincoln, but he was still the best. We are doing one hundred and ten miles an hour, Ralph Clearboy announced to the saddle sitting beside him in the front seat. I dont get paid for this, Willard Moss said. You dont get paid for anything if we dont make Cunnison in time, Abe Proper said. Abe Proper sat near the right window alongside the clown and Willard Moss in the back seat.

WILLIAM EASTLAKE

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That made four cowboys in the car plus a saddle that couldnt fit in the trunk with the other saddles. They all wore tight Levis and tight bright Miller shirts and twisted Stetsons and Justin boots. Except the clown who had a sign embroidered on his shirt back announcing Lee Rider Wear. Abe Proper made a cigarette at a hundred and ten miles an hour. He was the only cowboy in the bunch who rolled his own, maybe because he was brought up in New York and found making them exotic, an accomplishment, a badge. Proper had not gotten into bronc riding until he was fifteen, nine years ago, but he was pushing Ralph Clearhoy for total points or total dollars earned for the All Around Champion Prize. Actually Abe Proper was ahead right now since Montrose where Abe took first money in the second bareback go round. But no one expected it to last. Proper did not expect it to last. One hundred and twelve miles an hour, Ralph Clcarboy announced. The white Lincoln mounted by four cowboys from the Spanish Trails Fiesta at Durango, from Colorado Springs, from Butte, Montana, and Cheyenne, from the Rodeo de Santa Fe, from the Monte Vista Roundup and back to Durango and then Albuquerque and now bent for the Cattlemens Days at Gunnison. Four cowboys in hat-winged hats, orange and red shirts, mounting a white Lincoln, their flowing chrome horse a high, white streak on dark Blue hlesa above the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Like as not-. Like as not what? Abe said. Like as not, the clown said, well make it irito Gunnison okay. If we dont make it into the Gunnison. One hundred fourteen, Clearboy said. The turn! Willard Moss said. Too late! The white Lincoln did not even try for the turn, did not even seem to know its front wheels were turned but continued to go straight, even to gain some altitude, to zoom out in flight, hang there in the quiet, high sky an endless moment before it

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began to fall off on one tail fin, not as though the car were not made to fly but as though the pilot, the cowboy at the controls, had quit and lost control and she went into a long slanting dive down the mountain, began to clip clip the pointed spruce trees with an awful whack whack whack, then the white car fell off on her lcft tail fin, crump crumped into some scrub oak, made a weak attempt to become airborne again, then slithered to final rest in weird and abrupt silence at the exact edge of another black cliff where there was a fall to infinity to the river, the last slide down into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The white Lincoln hung there. I was just fixing to make a cigarette, Abe Proper said. Proper wiped the blood and tobacco from the side of his face. Is everyone here? Clearhoy said. I think the clown stepped ont, someone said. Without a chute? Clearboy felt around for his saddle. Its back here, Willard Moss said. And Ive found the clown under the saddle. Did I make a good ride? the clown said. Were not even at Gunnison yet. I reckon we missed. We missed a turn on the road, Clearboy said. Again? the clown said. Youd think I made a practice of trying to fly this thing. One of us should take lessons. Willard Moss discovered now that the Lee Rider ad on the back of the clowns shirt was being vandalized with blood, Propers blood. Ife ceased suddenly however his attempt at humor as he made another discovery. Now he said gently, No one move. Why? No one even talk. Why? Because this thing is balancing on the edge of a cliff. Oh? Yes, Willard continucd gently. Any movement, even vibration-. If we could, Clearboy whispered, Slip out each door without almost breathing.

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91

But the clowns in the middle, someone whispered. Then suddenly. All climb out suddenly. I think its beginning to move. Shes moving. Shes going. Everybody out! They all tore out and fell into the oak brush except the clown. He stayed put. The car moved slightly then hung delicately on the final edge balancing lightly, waving there, a seesaw with the clown sitting in the car on the pivot, reading something. Get out! Moss hollrred to the clown. Shes going to go! The clown looked up from his reading. I cant seem to move, he said. You mean youre hurt? No. I seem frozen. Something broken? No, scared. Kind of frozcn. Scared. Thcn relax, Abe Proper said holding up a red hand. Relax. Forget where you are. The car has just drove up to the front of hiadison Square Garden. Theyre waiting for you in there. Get out. Come on, get out. No, the clown said. I cant get out. Listen, Willard hioss said. Thc car has just drove u p in front of Marias joint. Theyre waiting for you in there. Get out. No, the clown said. I cant get out. If yon dont get out youre a dead clown. I cant get out. You yellow? I still cant move. If I move I know the car will go. Willard now tried to think of something else. We will all grab the car and try to hold it. Dont! Dont torich the car! the clown said. If you touch the car the car will go. The clown and everyone else were silent for a while and then the clown said, Clearboy was driving fast because h e didnt want to get to Gunnison because he knew Proper would

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take him at GuMison like he took him at Durango, like he took h i m at Santa Fe, the clown said evenly. Everyone was quiet and then the clown said, Clearboy lost his nerve at Santa Fe when War Paint nearly killed him hut he didnt know hed lost anything till Proper took him three in a row. He didnt know he lost anything until suddenly he was going one hundred fourteen miles an hour and he didnt really know what he was up to then, didnt know he was trying to cash out the easy way hecause hed lost his nerve. Clearboy was down on one knee searching for his hat. Now he found the remains of a hat and looked up at the clown. If youve got any nerve, Clearboy said, just get out of that car before she goes. I never had any nerve, the clown said. Thats why I never took up bronc riding, never thought of riding War Paint. Jumping off a building either. Never thought of riding War Paint. You started riding me in Montrose. I started riding you in Durango, the clown said. I started riding you when you stopped riding horses. The clown could not resist adding, Properly. Abe Prop= got up now from a scrub oak and said, For Gods sake get off Clearboy and get out of the damn car before she goes. Shes going, the clown said. And she was too, very slowly at first as though the seesaw car were being tilted downward by an invisible hand toward the invisible void. Now the car picked up a slight momentum then it hesitated before it made the long slow bounce down the cliff as though in a dream. The clown in a white car down a black canyon as in a dream or a very slow motion film with no reality at all except that finally now the car and the clown were gone. The three bronc riders were left standing there on a lonely slope horseless-carless anyway, and without the clown --clownless and breathless too. I was just saying-and there I was left talking to the air, Willard Moss said. I saw the car enter the water, Clearboy said.

WILLIAM EASTLAKE

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And like as not, Abe Proper pulled down the shapeless remnants of a cowboy hat. Like as not-. Well, I cant believe it. Believe what? That the clown would do it. He didnt. Oh, yes he did. I mean a purpose. I dont care how he did it, he did it. Thats true. He was quite a clown. Yes, he was. What do you mean, was? Clearboy said. I am fixin to ~o down and get him. Thats impossible. Its impossible that anyone can call me a coward. Clearboy knelt down to study the canyon wall. And die to get away with it. They all thought about this a while. You mean hes still alive? Of course he is, Clearboy said. Ive seen him dive off a high platform without a river, into only fifty gallons of water, without no river at all and without a car, without any car to protect him. Clearboy looked down carefully into the dark shadows of the canyon. Without my car, Clearboy said, and then he spit and said quickly, I see a path down. He didnt call yon a coward, Clearboy. He said I lost my nerve. Its one and the same thing. Well, you have been looking bad lately. I been drawing had horses. But why dont you spur them out of the chute? Because I dont want to make had horses look worse. Oh? Yes, Clearboy said. Yon want to take all the blame? Yes, Clearboy said. And yes, well, maybe Im not doing too good myself but thats not why I tried to kill the clown. All of us.

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Well, the clown thought I was trying to kill him particular, Clearboy paused, because he was riding me. I was not trying to kill nobody. I was only trying to get to Gunnison on time. He said you didnt really know it. It was your sub something, Willard said. Your subconsciousness was driving the car while he was riding you, Abe Proper said. Its all those books the clown reads, Clcarhoy said. And hes reading one of them right now. Clearboy stood up. In my car. They all followed behind Clearboy nntil he got to the path he had spottcd and then they continued to follow him but far hack and cautiously. After fiftcen minutes of awful descent, lost down there, hidden from the blaze of noon above, Clearboy suddenly halted and they all hunched into him. This is as far down as the path goes, Clearboy said. The deer or whatever made it must have quit here. Or committed suicide. Yes, Clearboy said, invisible and canyodost, his voice quickly lost too in river noise. Out there and down there, Clearboy said louder. The car. My car. They could make oiit, after studying ahead and down, a white car shape all right. But we cant get to it, the voice of Abc Proper said. Its only abont a fifteen foot drop, the voice of Clearboy said from somewhere. He made it sixty feet in my car. But you cant. There was rnshing noise and then a splash. But he did, Willard hloss finished. I reckon we hetter get hack up. Yes, Willard moss^ said. We better get back up and hold some kind of a funeral or something. Yes, Abe Proper said. Something nice. Something to-, Proper paused, invisible and hushed, climbing up ahead somewhere to the sun. Yes, a funeral, the voice of Abe Proper continued. Something to make it legal. We didnt have to jump to prove anything.

WILLIAM EASTLAKE

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No. All weve got to do, Willard Moss said, greeting the torch of noon with upturned face, is to hold something to make it legal. They lay down on the mesa top as though thrown there on the dark igneous rock, two bright-costumed and beaten cowboys beneath a wild sun. Abe Proper tried to pull his remnant of Stetson over his eyes. And, oh God-, Proper said weakly. What? Willard said. I just remembered. What? Both of our saddles are buried down there. Oh, Willard hloss said and then he said, laying a dark hand on darker rock and \rincing quickly, Amen. When Ralph Clearbov hit the water h e hit just ahove the car and allowed himself to drift down to it. He went through an opcn door, felt all through the car including the front seat. He felt a saddlr, nothing more. No cloivn. He went out through the open window of the other door and got up on the roof which was well ahove water to think, \\here was the clown hiding? The clown was not hiding. He was sitting on a sandbar fifty yards below the car holding the unreadable remains of a book. Hc had made it down okay by wedging himself in a ball between the front of the rear seat and the back of the front seat before the car took its first bounce. IIe was hanged up quite a bit and was bleeding red from his ear but the clown was okay. The book he held was an awful mess. Down here! the clown hollered. Where? Down here! Clearboy started to drop off the car and drift down to where the clown was sitting but the car moved until it got stuck again on the clowns sandbar. Well, you havent lost your nerve then, Clearboy, the clown said, watching Clearboy dismount. And you didnt lose your hook, Clearboy said, only now

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I didnt know I had it, the clown said, letting it drop. It was only something to hold on to, I guess. I guess, Clearboy said, his teeth chattering from the icy water. How do you guess we are going to get out of here? Ive fished below here, the clown said. Its not too far down to a boat landing near Marias place. I guess youve done everything, Clearboy said, still iced and chattering. The clown thought about Marias place and then he looked up toward the tall canyon wall he had come down. Now I guess I have, the clown said. The clown paused and added, >> -Except-. Except what? Ride War Paint. You still riding me? No, Im not, the clown said standing up. You will ride War Paint. Lets get down to Marias place. You think so? Of course well get to Marias place, the clown said. Follow me. And Clearhoy did and regretted it. Even when they were sitting on the dry boat landing he still regretted it. He regretted following a crazy clown. The moral is you dont follow a crazy clown to prove nothing. The moral is you ride a horse when you have to ride a horse but you dont invent a ride to please a clown. Until he met War Paint agnin Clearboy would settle for this. War Paint and himself would make it together, uninfluenced by nobody. I wonder what happened to the other two cowboys? Willard and Proper? Yes. Theyre probably having a funeral over us. Well, Clearboy said, beginning to warm in the sun, the next guy who has a funeral over me when Im having had luck is going to be tied to War Paint and throwed in this canyon, then you will be the first dead clown to ride down the Gunnison River on a horse. Do you understand?

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I think I understand, the clown said weakly. They sat there on the dock in the sun, resting and nursing their wounds. Look, the clown said, theres the car. The current must h , the have freed it and brought it down. That makes us t clown paused and stood up. That makes us the first two cowboys to go down the Gunnison River in an automobile. Clearboy remained sitting watching with a blank, enchanted fixity where the clown watched, watching as children must watch an empty gondola emerge from the tunnel of love. Anyway I reckon we was the last ones down in a white Lincoln, Clearboy said. The clown thought about this a long while without being able to top it. The clown had a button nose and small red cheeks and now, standing all oozing wet with his Lee Rider ad running red, he pointed his finger to the sky. Someones been praying for me. Here I am all alive because a cowboy got the nerve to jump down a canyon to rescue a clown. To rescu-. Clearboy got up, placed a yellow square of tobacco into his square, hard face still blued from the water and began to wade out toward the huge, slow-turning object. My white Lincoln, Clearby finished. The clown, Morgan Beltone, watched Clearboy guide the white car onto the beach. He decided no help was needed and f f toward Marias place. moved o Here you are, Maria said, across the mahogany bar. Here you are supposed to be at the rodeo in Gunnison and here you been swimming. Wheres Clearboy? Wheres Roper? Wheres Moss? Whereb your partners? Morgan Beltone wiped some water off his face. We decided to fly in the car to Gunnison this time and we came down near here a little bit ago, the clown said. Will you give me a drink? Maria, her wide Spanish face puzzled, poured the drink. T o all the bronc men I saved from getting killed in the arena and never got DO appreciation from. To all those cowboy heroes and to progress, Morgan Beltone said, raising the glass.

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Today I have pioneered a new route in a new kind of machine, cutting off half the distance across Blue Mesa. Why, perhaps some day I will be appreciated very much. The clown drank the drink down and looked plaintively through the window at all the big world he had not conquered. The clown-and so wrongly so, Morgan Beltone thought-had never been loved or appreciated very much. Honey, save it for the show, Maria said. You want another drink? Why not? the clown said.

Henryk Musialowicz graduated from the Warsaw Academy of Fine arts in 1947. An exhibition of his work inaugurated the art season in the lobby of the National Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw, in the spring of 1958. After employing many media including tapestry and stained-glass windows, he has settled on what he calls black and white technique, which is a synthesis of painting and drawing.

BRUCE MORRISSETTE

New Structure in the Novel: Jealousy, by Alain Robbe-Grillet

It is exceptionally difficult, in reading literature (which is never an easy undertaking), to isolate and examine the basic aspects of an unusually complex work. Yet the more resistant to analysis the work appears to be, or the more disconcerting its structure, the more necessary and important the critics task becomes. Alain Robhe-Grillets Jealousy is a case in point. This compact, powerful narrative, which has already marked a decisive step in the development of the French Nouueou Roman or New Novel, requires and descrves the closest scrutiny. Why? What does this highly unusual novel offer? Rohbe-Grillet himself has described (in a statement printed on the back of the first French edition) the general form in which the narrative content of Jealousy is orgmized. The story with its three characters-the husband, the wife, the presumed lover-is narrated by the husband, a tropical planter who, from vantage points in his banana plantation house, surrounded on three sides by its wide veranda, suspiciously keeps watch over his wife. Guided by this authors statement, the reader is able to find his bearings fairly quickly in a narrative of the first person which contains not a single I, me, or other verbal reference to self. The serious study of the fictional use of narrative pronouns has only begun: following the appearance of Jealousy in France, the subsequent success of a namative you in Michel Butors prize-winning A Chnnge of Heart led certain critics to start an investigation of the problems raised by the use of I, he, and the like in novel technique, and to propose some tentative classifications of these points of view. Much remains to be said on this subject, and research will undoubtedly show popular antecedents (e.g., radio scripts) for

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many recent developments. While the point of view is a well-known concept in novel analysis outside of France, it has been neglected by French critics, except those concerned with the esthetics of the film, who write of little else than points of view, camera angles, travelling shots, etc. The narrative orientation of Jealousy-its use of what one would term the je-neant or the absent I-is one of several conventional headings (such as description, vocabulary, images, use of dialogue, etc.) which might conceivably be used to study the novel. Since it is apparent however from the start that what dominates everything else in Jealousy is the structure of the novel, it is through concepts especially applicable to this structure that the greatest clarification may be achieved. The difficulty is that this idea of structure proliferates, disintegrates even, under examination, rejoining other categories from which it resists separation: the plot and its chronology, the apparently chaotic sequence of scenes, the repetitions and the variations, the role of formal themes and objects, the use of objective psychology, and so forth. Paradoxically, in the case of this fundamentally anti-chronological novel, it is by first construcing a linear rkurn6 of the plot that we can best penetrate into the labyrinth of its structure. A few words of caution are necessary: this method is in no sense a proposal to rectify the chronology of the plot; its excuse is solely that it provides a means of studying a new novelistic technique. It is a laboratory experiment in analysis, not an explication of the novel. The chronological novelty of Jealousy fits into the framework, n the moreover, of many trends in the treatment of chronology i modem novel, most of which, in turn, go back to the beginnings of narrative literature (cf. the flashbacks in Ulysses story-telling in Homer). Readers interested in a general survey of the variations in the use of time in twentieth-century literature may consult Temps et Roman by Jean Pouillon, or the article by Jean Onimus on The Expression of Time in the Contemporary Novel in the Reoue de Littbrature Cornparbe (JulySeptember, 1954). What is involved in Jealousy is not a retreat into the past

BRUCE MOHRISSETTE

105

(Proust), nor the construction of multiple duration (Gide, Dos Passos, Sartre), nor the blending of several chronologically ambiguous plots (Faulkner), nor the use of interpenetrations of past and present (Huxley, Graham Greene), nor the construction of a false time to prepare for a surprise dbnouement (as in certain detective stories), nor the now-conventionalized mixhue of past and present made familiar by the flashbacks of the movies. If one had to state briefly exactly what is involved in Jealousy, one might say, at the risk of oversimplifying the novel, that the work attempts to create, as objectively as possible, the mental content of a jealous narrator: what this man, during a rather short and concentrated period of time ( a few days, a few weeks a t most), sees, hears, touches, and imagines. During the time of the novel the protagonist observes, lives, suffers, and remembers the events of the plot, and makes of them, through his dynamic imagination, the experience which is the novel itself. The result is a great formal freedom (variations of scenes, reiterations of themes with shifting emphasis, developments of episodes, metamorphoses of external elements and objects, etc.) bearing an analogy to musical strncture, in which the composer may feel free to return at will to any previous theme, or to rearrange the order of his themes (always, of course, in terms of the musical integration appropriate to the composers style). But, like all analogies this too is inexact, and risks falsifying the true essence of a literary structure made not of the materials of music (sounds organized by rhythms and expressed in harmonies and discords) but of forms of language, phrases imbued with psychological reminiscences and incrusted with semantic layers of meaning. Furthermore, the formal liberty of Jealousy is primarily a matter of its apparent or exterior chronology; interior, or psychological chronology pursues, as we shall see, a rigorous line of development in the direction of progressive psychological tension. Jealousy is composed or structured, then, on the basis of the interior order of a mans vision-that of the jealous husband, who, though he may progress in time, that is, though he may

106

Evergreen Review

live the episodes that he describes (or better, that the text presents), at the same time re-lives other episodes, re-examines them, compares them, directs new questions at them, and transforms or metamorphoses them by the action of his imagination. There is an over-all linear chronological movement from a beginning of initial suspicion towards a final appeasement following the apparent failure of the affair between wife and lover. But it is a linear progression which is almost immediately intcrrupted, twisted by repetitions, sidetracked by reversions into the past, troubled hy anticipations and recapitulations, and which seems to reach a dead-end in the fourth of the nine parts of the novel. After Part IV we find nothing really new in the plot-apart from the absence of A. . . . Yet the high point of the novel, the crisis of jealousy that is reached in Part VII, is attained only after further astonishing and brilliant developments of already familiar materials, and is in turn followed by a diminuendo and coda of exceptional beauty and virtuosity. Two levels of action may in general be distinguished: the l e d of the scenes whiclr-apparently at least-happen at the same time that the narrator presents them to us (without, however, their forming a chronological sequence in themselves), and the level of the scenes which the narrator (in accordance with principles to be examined later) recalls, recreates, or even imagines. What may appear to be chaotic, then-the tcxtual order of scenes-is in reality, a perfectly coherent artistic unity. Admitting this, we may without prejudice to the work extract from it a linear plot. This implies no setting in order, no rectification. What is involved is forging a tool of research and investigation for an enterprise of understanding a difficult fictional structure; later, when it has served its purpose, the tool will be laid aside. To salvage and place, with any degree of exactitude, the facts of the plot of Iealotrsy in chronological order, it becomcs necessary to see clearly in the distorting mirror of the hushands vision, in which events and objects are caught and reflected. We must constantly separate ourselves from this jealous husband that we become as we read, whose tormenting emotion we share, whose perceptions and ideas haunt us, who h a g s us with

BRUCE MORRISSElTE

107

him into his eternal cycle of obsessive visions that annihilates all chronology. It becomes necessary, in a word, for the reader, having become a man sick with jealousy, to be cured of his disease, to be brought back to normal. What linear plot do we find, then, taking all necessary precautions, in Jealousy?

* * *

The book unfolds in a tropical banana plantation, perhaps in the Antilles, but not in Africa (though the description of the region in many ways suggests Africa rather than the Antilles). W e are installed (after a few pages no one can doubt this) in the mind, in the sense fields, of a narrator or pseudo-narrator who from the first sentence trains upon everything that surrounds him the most minute attention: the form and structure of his square house, its veranda columns that function like a kind of sun dial, the geometrical arrangement of his banana trees, the smallest details of his exterior world. This man at the center of the narrative, who never refers to himself (does one refer to himself in his own thoughts?), directs this scrupulous attention even more minutely at his wife A . . . . (Is tliis absence of the complete name a kind of psychological short-cut, or an effect of timidity in the narrator?) But when A . . . turns her head towards her husband, the latter no longer dares look toward her, and the text that we read whirls immediately in another direction, stopping on a baluster of the veranda, or upon some sector of the plantation. From the beginning of the novel, the husbands anxiety concerning his wifes actions is felt in tbe manner in which be watches A . . . : As she writes a letter; as she reads, in a veranda chair, a novel givcn to her by Franck, a neighboring planter; as she hastily orders removed from the dinner table the place set for Christiane, Francks wife, when Christiane (who suffers from some vague illness) fails to arrive with her husband. A , , . seems to listen with special attention to Francks conversation. His energetic manner disturbs the husband and seems tn impress his young wife. . . . Fragments of conversation accumulate: Franck talks about (Continired on 11. 164)

EWS
B . H. FRIEDMAN

The Most Expensive Restaurant Ever Built

The best writing about the Four Seasons Restaurant was done almost 2000 years ago, by Petronius in his Satyric0n-e.g.:
We were invited to take our seats, and the meal began with sumptuous hors doeuvres. As for wine, we were fairly swimming in it, and it w~lsfine Falernian at that. After several more courses we had begun to doze sleepily off, when Quartilla said: No sleeping, gentlemen. Must I remind you again that the whole night hos been comecrated to Priapus.71 For Priapus read Seagram House. For Seagram House read money or power. Rising 38 stories from its sterile plaza on Park Avenue, the building, with its testicles hunched to the East on 52nd and 53rd Street, should, of course, have been made of gold, solid gold (not gold-anodized aluminum, like its neighbor on tex1 The Satyricon, copyright by William Arrowsmith 1959, published by the University of Michigan Press.

ington Avenue), hut the vulgarity ofNew York, 1959 is more subtle than that of Neros Rome: The hnildiug is bronze. The consumption is inconspicuous. Mr. Bronfman, the principal stockholder of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., may or may not he Mr. Trimalchio. Samuel Bronfman, encouraged, and perhaps persuaded, by his daughter Phyllis Lambert, decided to build a monument. At the time (circa 1955), Mrs. Lambert, with the help of Philip Johnson, who was then director of architecture at The Museum of Modern Art, began a 2%month, cross-countq talent search, which was widely publicized. She discovered Mies van der Rohe, then 69, buried in a mid-Western city called Chicago. (At the same time other people were reviving other aspects of the Twenties like Chanel heads, dixieland jazz, cloches, blazers and racoon coats.) Mies and Philip Johnson, his long-time disciple and propagandist-with the architectural f i r m of Kahn and Jacobs, to handle such necessary humdrum details as adequate elevatoring and toilet facilities-succeeded. in

108

Bar and portion of gill1 room looking down main Stairway t o entrance lobby. Scuipture by Richard Lippald over the bar; Miro t a p e s t r y partially visible on lobby wall. (Photo by Ezra Stoiler, courtesy of Restaurant Associates.)

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Evergreen Review
designing the most expensive skyscraper, per square foot, ever built ($43,000,000 for about 850,000 gross feet, or 550,000 net). The building proved, once and for all, that less is more, though not in the sense that Mies originally meant his famous words. The next step was to design what would be the most luxurious -and, axiomatically in this school of architecture, the most expensive --restaurant ever built. This plum was given to Philip Johnson, solo, but he did have the help of a few experts: William Pahlmnnn Associates, interior designers; Garth and Ada Louise Huxtable, industrial designers; Eleanor Charles, uniform designer; Karl Linn, landscape architect; Emil Antonucci, graphic artist; Richard Kelly, lighting consultant; Dr. 0. Wesley Davidson, horticultural consultant. . . . The credits are almost complete, the screen darkens for a few seconds. and then in hold bpography (perhaps designed by Antonuccii: PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY RESTAURANT ASSOCIATES. INC. As with Hollywood movies, where Wall Street lurks in the background but seeks no public credit, The Four Seasons has its anonymous institutional tie, too, a very strong and close one. It is with The Museum of Modern Art. The wedding of talents is like an incestuous eangbang. So enter Restaurant Associates, known to Seagram, Bronfman, Lambert, Johnson, and to almost weryone with an expense account, as the operators of The Forum of the Twelve Caesars, a Cadillac

representing GLADYS WERTHEIM BACHRACH ROBERT BUCKER LILLIAN COlTON WILLIAM CLUTZ SACHA KOLlN

FRANK MASON PEETAR MONK ROBERT NUNNELLEY GEORGE TERASKI PENNERTON WEST

and others

24 E. 67 ST. New York * YU 8-33

B. H. FRIEDMAN

style restaurant which opened on the south shore of Rockefeller Center in 1957, and from which it was expected a Rolls-Royce could be forged. To understand the orientation of The Four Seasons, look first at The Forum, and then watch the evolutionary process at work. The Forum restaurant was designed by William Pahlmann and ". his associates, who were inspired" by twelve bigger-than-lifesize 17th century portraits of the Imperial Caesars. The paintings are attributed to Cnmillo Procaccini, whoever he may he. They have nothing to do with art, much to do with decor. Twelve bronze busts of the Caesars echo the theme in the bar, where there is also a Roman mosaic mural. None are any more distinguished than the paintings, and not quite as interesting as the curtain of colored beads covering the bar windows which front on 48th Street. The entrance and bar are paneled in cherry. The walls of the main dining room are covered in red Italian Fortuny, banquettes around the perimeter of this room in dark brown leather, and those in the center in beige leather tooled in gold, dining chairs in red leather studded with brass tacks. The table linens, silverware and appointments are imported from Italy and modelled on Renaissance Rome. The salt cellars are supported by pairs of elephants. They look too heavy to steal. The menu, printed on handsome creamy paper, is bound with purple faille, held together by gold sealing wax (with staples underneath). The typography is in a

BRATA
GALLERY

CON EMPORARY
ART

89 East 10th St.

N.V., N.V.
GR 5-9240

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Evergreen Review

heavily seriffed Roman style, black by the Museum of Modern Art for and red, with various decorative The Four Seasons. On the walls garlands in gold and gray. The of the entrance lobby are three variety of dishes listed is over- Miro tapestries, two of which are whelming--e.g. such PRO- about seven feet by eight, and the L O G U E items as King Crab- other almost seven feet square. meat and Pink Caviar-A LU- They are reported to have cost CULLAN FANTASY 2.75; Bel- more than original works of simieic Pate with Wild Boar. Sauce of lar size by any living artist under Damascus Plums 3.00; THE fifty, and as much as the original GREAT FORUM ARTICHOKE. paintings by Miro would have cost Filled with a Puree of Oysters ten or less years ago. This entrance 1.65; and such A HARVEST lobby is a spacious travertine FROM THE SEAS and RIVERS womb, a cool womb. The art it as An Ocean Perch Aflame houses does little to raise the temon Rosemary Herbs, Lemon perature. The detailing thronghGinger Sauce 3.95; and Planked out, as elsewhere in the restauWhitefish Broiled with Mussels, rant, is clinically perfect. The OLYMPIAN Butter 4 . 2 5 ; such phone booths and private switchSUMPTUOUS DISHES FROM board operators room must have ALL THE EMPIRE DE GUSTI- cost more than the average AmerBUS NON EST DISPUTAN- ican home. The mens and womDUM as Double Cutlet of ens rooms are palaces: the former Meadow Veal, Sauteed with in Bardiglio Fiorioto marble and Smoked Salmon and Gruvere. Macassar ehony; the latter in Rose HELVETIAN CREAM 4.50; such Portas, rosewood, and gold ForBIRDS-WILD AND OTHER- tuny, with theatrical vanities SUIWISE as Truffle Stuffed Quail, rounded by bulbs. There are marCLEOPATRA-Wrapped in MAC- ble shelves containing ashtrays adEDONIAN VINE LEAVES, Baked joining each stool. An almost free-standing traverin Hot Ashes 9.00; and three kinds of crepes; and five kinds of coffee; tine stair invites you to walk around it before climbing to the etc.; etc. The Forum is supposed to be dining rooms. You try, and fail, a fun place, a place to entertain unless you. are a midget or willing in-town and out-of-town customers. to crawl. As you walk up the stairs you wonder how they neIt works. The Four Seasons is supposed to glected to install a gold (or be art. The art hits you as you bronze) escalator or a king-size enter the lobby east of Park pneumatic lift which would shoot Avenue on 52nd Street. Facing you right to your table. Wonderyou, theres a sculpture by Hadju, ing, you enter the bar and grill. The bar is a square island. called La T$te Blanche, on one of those moderne lucite pedestals. (Well, no bar is an island.) It is Theres a placard at the base which defined above by a canopy of states that the piece was selected clusters of square gold-dipped brass

B. H. FRIEDMAN

rods, of varying lengths, designed hy Richard Lippold. Over a section of the grill mezzanine theres a smaller, related piece by Lippold. At a distance, both have a surprising visual density-intensely illuminated, as they are, by MI. Kellys lighting, and almost iovisihly supported by fine wires. When one walks closer, or sits at the bar, they become delicate and airy. But neither up close nor at a distance do they work as sculpture. There is no sense of emotional content or of spacial conquat. They work, rather, as decor, and in this context they are overwhelmed by the scale and opulence of their surroundings. They dont even have the power of the Caesar busts a t The Forum. They become simply another good design appointment. The ceiling is about 20 feet high, which for the comparative area of the bar and grill (or the main dining room, when we come to it) is roughly equal to more than the height of a typical Wall St. main banking floor, about equal to that of a Metropolitan train station, and not quite equal to that of a Gothic cathedral. This scale is emphasized by the simply detailed interior walls, and particularly the floor-to-ceiling windows at the perimeter of the building. Spaced about five feet apart and separated by vertical mullions. the windows are covered with three tones of gold-anodized aluminum chain in the style of Vienna curtains. These chains, as brilliantly illuminated as the Lippolds, and undulating upward because of the draft from the floor-

LEO CASTELLI
4 E . 7 7 S T . , N. Y.
Paintings hy: Norman Bluhm Paul Bra& Naseoe Daphnis Jasper Johns Robert Rausehenberg Ludwig Sander Salvatore Scarpitta Frank Stella Cy Twomhly Sculptures by: Gabriel Kohn Marie01

Sky
Columns
Presence

NEVELSON~
to nov. 21

1 1 4
level air-conditioning convectors (reportedly an accident), gives something like the effect of a series of upside-down waterfalls. A familiar-looking bartender, wearing a raw linen mess-jacket, and green vest (summer uniform), said to me, as he may say to everyone who sits at the bar, Id hate to run on that, pointing up at the Lippold, barefoot, upsidedown. At a loss for a reply, except that I would hate to run barefoot, upside-down on anything, I asked him if J & B was the scotch most in demand. Thats what I was drinking and I had beard several other people ask for it. Its called for, he replied, its quite popular, but the bar Scotch-White Horse-is more popular. A woman who was drinking a grasshopper several seats away held a cigarette to her mouth. The bartender got to her fast and lit the cigarette with a grand flourish. Suddenly I remembered where I had seen him before. He had worked at Chambord, where the bar scotch was Martins 20-year-old. I also remembered that White Horses American distributor is Seagram. On the w x from t k , bar and grill room to e main dming room, I passed, fist, a concierge, in another travertine womb (this time a small one) who handles such things as hotel, travel, and theater reservations, and then a very large Picasso, which might just as well as have been signed Frocaccini. (Might just as well, except for the price which is supposed to have been considerably in excess of $100,000). The work, on a stage curtain about 20 feet by 22

Evergreen Review
feet, was originally executed by Picasso for Diaghilevs Ballets RUSSES production of Le Tricorne in 1919. It is neo-classic Picasso, literal and unemotional, though quite sentimental. The view into a bull ring may have been successful as a stage curtain seen from a low and fairly distant seat in Londons Alhambra Theater. Its even moderately successful as seen from the lob? of Seagram House through e glass wall of the narrow passage in which it hangs. But it is com letely unsuccessful when seen as c ose up as one must see it in the passage. It has no interest as a painting per SE, and little as a sketch drawing. Even the distraction of sleek alabaster fioor fixtures doesnt help. Nor does the next entertainment: a wine cellar (above ground and behind glass), a walnut honeycomb filled with perfectly arranged bottles, whose orderly image is reflected in a mirrored wall. The main dining room is at the same scale as the bar and grill, and the golden aluminum waterfalls are still flowing upward. Somewhat off center theres a marhle pool about 20 feet square, fianked by four fig trees that almost reach the ceiling. (Ficus decoru, natures ift to nude art.) Feeling the sca e of this space, one realizes again, as in the bar, that an existing space was taken and turned into a restaurant, with no consideration given to use, to human need for intimacy. This main dining room, like most architecture of the Miesian school, is not intended for people. People become insignificant in these sumoundings. The space is

B. H. FRIEDMAN

115

designed for a pool, and for fumiture, and for fig trees (that organic touch), and for the Vogue models who will ultimately pose here. All is angular elegance: Mies 1930 Bmo chairs (less familiar than his Barcelona chairs, which are downstairs in the lobby), banquettes designed hy Philip Johnson, service wagons that are engineered like sports cars (with gas burners fed from pressure cans), selected rawhide panels on the interior walls set in French walnut, hand-loomed carpeting, specially designed china and glassware, flatware and holloware imported from England, France, and Italy, etc. You are at a good design show at the Museum of Modern Art. About everything is done according to the official rules. These are not only esthetic, but even include not meeting the budget, which was originally $Z,SO0,000 and had to be upped to $4,500,000. It seems as though you have left the world of The Forum behind-and mayhe you miss it. If you do, you neednt for long. The menu will remind you that you are eating - on the other side of the

1 BETTY PARSONS !
GALLERY

Kenro Okada
Alfonso Oosorio Thomas George

15 East 57th Street New York, N. Y.

same coin. The paper that this menu is bound in is rather more fashionable, sort of Japanese, and the typography and layout are as hi0 as the latest Container Como&ion ad. But theres BOUQUET O F CRUDITES, Hot Anchovv Dressing 1.75; and Small Clams with Green Onions and TRUFFLE 1.65; and BEEF MARROW in Bouillon or Cream 1.65; and Crisped Shrimp Filled with Mustard Fruits 1.85; and Rack of Lamb Persill6 with ROBUST

II

Dee. 15-Jan.

THE SCHOOL OF NEW YORK

I stable gallery
I

Some Younger Artists

924 7th ave., n.y.c.

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Evergreen Review

HERBS, for Two 13.00; and statement Rothko made for the Stuffed Breast of Chicken with Museum of Modern Arts 15 AmerTARRAGON, Demi-Deuil 4.85; icans show in 1952 was: A picand Avocado with Sliced WHITE ture lives by companionship, exRADISH 4.25; and three kinds panding and quickening in the of crepes, again; and six kinds of eyes of the sensitive observer. It coffee (seven, including iced cof- dies by the same token. It is fee, which is listed separately and therefor a risky act to send it out priced 25c more than the hot); into the world. Since then Rothko and, of course, no dollar signs. In has played his own distribution short, everything hut Van Goghs close to the vest, picking his spots ear. carefully. This one i s challenging. Across from the main dining Well see. room on a mezzanine, there is one With so much at The Four Seawork that is clearly art, Jackson sons, it is surprising they dont Pollocks Blue Poles (1952). It have musicmusic, that is, not turns out that this painting was Muzac. Todays equivalent of a rented from a private collector by small string orchestra playing VivSeagram until a commission by aldi (though not necessarily The Mark Rothko is completed. Pol- Four Seasons) would he the Modlocks painting, seven feet by six- em Jazz Quartet. But where are teen, would he perfect in shape they? The lights dim. The waiters and scale for the space presently in their green vests go off to disoccupied by the Picasso. But, more tant corner tables where they eat important than its architectural ap- their supper. The place is silent, propriateness, would he its rich- and almost empty, the way it is ness, density, complexity, ecstasy supposed to be, the way Johnson -in short, its humanity. I t is impossible to know at this time how (and Mies) must like it. I want to return often, as often well Rothko will fulfill his commisas my money lasts, because I besion, hut it is not impossible to guess why it was given to him: his lieve this restaurant is a culminatposition is considerably more 06- ing symbol of the Fifties, as percia1 here and now, in 1959, than fect for its time as the Rikers was Picassos in 1919 Paris, before chain (also owned by Restaurant the concept of museums of mod- Associates) was for the Thirties, ern art existed. From the point of And also, in the ecclesiastical atview of such museums and that of mosphere of The Four Seasons, I the architects approved by them, want often to ponder a question of Rothkos more recent and regi- taste: What is the real difference mented paintings can hardly exist, between a Cadillac and a Rollsexcept as historical objects. It will Royce? Its the sort of question be a surprise if he, any more than which might have intrigued EnLippold, transcends decor. Part of a colpius at Trimalchios banquet.

JERRY TALLMER

Bye Bye Blackbird

I am sitting here on this lovely late Friday afternoon early evening, the blocks smallest kids are happy-screaming through all the back yards, my wife Louise is making the big first experiment with veal scallopini on the double hot-plate, Im on my second vodka tonic, shes on her second vodka tonic, and now over the radio comes the news that some poor miserable misbegotten angel of mercy at Metropolitan Hospital, the second or third hospital she finally got into after damn near dying like Bessie Smith while being kept out of a number of other loving Christian joints in New York City in 1959, has turned in Billie Holiday for possession of narcotics, a little powder in her purse, thats heroin, man, thats criminal, thats practically Devils Island; and while the Lady is dying there, or close to it, so says the radio, the cops have booked a charge against her (by telephone) and have posted a guard around her room and are giving her the good old business; if you dont think they do it you dont deserve to think, come on, Billie, come on, sister, come on, youre gonna kick the bucket anyway, you might as well make it easy for yourself, whered you get it, who brought it in, who, where, how, who? So there she is, Lady Day, after
a couple of years in the (almost) clear, right hack where they want her, where theyve always wanted her and almost always had her, and can once again feel good and clean and right and thoroughly coplike about it, I am so dragged by this information, I dont usually use words like drag in what I write, that I simply dont know what to do about it except to work it off in the writers usual noble and vicarious manner, thats twice Ive used usual in this sentence, by sitting here and typing down come what may what I think of the gutlessness of this lovely age into which, at closing 40, Ive (question mark) matured. Louise dear you are going to have to keep the scallopini under control for maybe another five minutes, experiment or no experiment, because I know, I have just heard you express, the depthlessness of your nausea too Over this latest immediate little turn of events in our heroic life and times. Tonight as I came home I read the newspaper crossing Seventh Avenue and saw Ted Postons story about how it was for him personally at Tallahassee, the way it always is for him at those trials he, this Negro, somewhere inside himself has the balls that I or you shall never have, dear reader, dear nurse, dear cops, dear Harry F.

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Amlinger, to go and covet and in the morning on the other direction across the avenue I read about how that great and insightful literary expert and Chevvy salesman our postmaster general had searched his insides and come up with the Truth and the Word and the Position on Lady Chatterleys Loner; and I am still not quite yet able to get over the all-around attractive electoral manhood of Battling Bob the Boy Mayor in (among many other things) the oh so nonessential inconsequential case of the Erosive Shakespeare of Central Park, but now it is completely the end of afternoon and the radio is blasting and the kids are yelling and fading away home as their parents herd them in, and I am forced to exclude all of these and think only, if I can, of Lady Day. Let me think. I first discovered her, I would suppose, when Lucille Kron made me listen to Strange Fruit and Fine and Mellow, along about 1938-37-38, when I like Lucille aud all the rest of us was 18 going on 18, the tenth grade or so. But that was only the first discovery, and every Friday or Saturday night in those years we would all go to one anothers houses and play the records, Billie, BG, TD, the whole hit (a word not known then), and hold hands and talk sophisticated and neck and dance. And I can remember this difference between Billies and all the others: the others made you glad to be young. smack in the teeth of the Depression and the sit-down strikes and the onrushing war; but hers just
~

Evergreen Review
made you shiver, melt, and want to grow up. Then some years later I finally made it (another new phrase) to 52nd Street, and there she was, big, stunning, thrilling, the real thing. I went back and back, and sometimes I went back alone, old Holden Caulfield right down to all but the hunting cap. One night I stayed late, alone, until closing. Or maybe it was just a late break between sets, I dont know, I am now on my third vodka scallopini several hundred thousand light years later. Anyway, just as I reached the steps the canopy and the sidewalk, she reached the steps the canopy and the sidewalk, and up and out of the place there came along with her this great huge shaggy gray oaf of a dog with Lady half towing it and half in tow, crooning to it, making love to it, stumbling over it, cursing it, adoring it, following it, leading it up those stairs-and in any and every event very clearly selecting and preferring it absolutely over any other animal on earth, fourlegged or two, white or Negro, male or female, friend or foe, myself the gawking CaulGeld not excluded. She and I were both then something like 20 years old, she a year or six older than me, and I do believe I must have stood there in the night and looked at her and silently implored: Wait, Billie, wait, let me wdk with you and talk with you, I like you, I like your dog, no one feels your singing the way I do, no one thinks youre as beautiful 11s I do, its 3 in the morning, Billie, let me take

Billie Holiday a t Loews Shenam. (Photo by Gin Bnags.)

120
you somewhere quiet off these streets. She threw me one splitsewnd, wholly summarizing glance which cut me instantly down from 20 years old to 10; then to the dog she said: Lets go, sugar, and with a rich secret giggle she went careening off with it, eastward, into the dark. And it is getting dark outside this window now too, and dark where she lies on that crank-u bed, and I somehow still fee and have the pride to feel that I sensed, intuited, even then, an overeducated uneducated young fool alone on an emptying sidewalk, all the whole story of the 20 years that were hers, not mine, and no not becopped beautiful nigger slum singer songstress already prostitute lesbo dope addict big star and idol ofay-hating whorewme bitter done dead learned made placed hip (new word) hep they are repeating that bulletin it is 7 P.M. Louise I shall stop this soon girl great singer of our age stylist entrailtwister and artist, the only real word of them all, let postmasters cops sheri5s mayors congressmen generals doctors nurses put that in their pipes and smoke on it until Hell freezes over and kingdom come. We take you now Mr. and Mrs. North America some 20 years more or less into the future which is some two or three years into the immediate past, and I am now in a 1958 powder-blue push-button Chrysler, honest to God the only one I ever saw that close or sat in or drove, maring at 80, 90 miles an hour, I am not exaggerating, up the Turnpike from Philly to

Ewergreen Rewiew
here, once again at almost 3 in the morning, and that shaggy dog I spoke of shrunk to a tiny little ratlike widget, and .

Ctn%

..

THATMUCH did I write, with the vcdka and the anger inside me, my own sort of (unplanned) experiment, on a lovely Friday afternoon and early evening perhaps a month or so ago. At which point a fuse blew and the scallopini had to come out, ready or no. They were great. The next morning and all the Following mornings I let it lie, not daring or wishing to pick it up. It was Louise who finally did so and said: Look at it. I looked at it and thought about the way I wdd see I must have been planning, that day, to end it, but now the vodka was out of me and the anger was too mngealed, already almost boring, so I put it back down. And then, three weeks later, in Metropolitan Hospital, at 44, Billie Holiday slipped back from her gains and suffered a relapse quite possibly as a side-effect of withdrawal symptoms, and died. Today as I come back to t h i s machine, they are putting her into the ground. But I prefer to remember the powderblue Chrysler, and the little chihuahua jittering in the back seat, and what Louis said in Philadelphia and the Lady said in New York at the two ends of that crazy dash. a w u d e of summers ago, through the -night. Two summers aeo The Vilhge Voice, a Greenwich-Village weekly newspaper which I help run, decided to co-sponsor a Saturday-

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Evergreen Review
midnight jazz concert at hews Sheridan, a 2500-seat movie theatre a few blocks from ow o6ce. The star and main attraction would be Billie Holiday, who for the past decade had not been perillustrated by bans mitted to sing in any New York from the Chinese. bar or night club by police fiat. There was no edict, however, which would prevent her from taldng part in a concert in a theatre. The Village is full of middling-young people with long memories or very young people By Chang Chen-Chi with unfulfilled nostalgias and a deep wish to find out; we knew that just the name of Billie Holiday would ack the Sheridan, and we knew t at we ourselves were dying to hear her in person once again, even if they said her voice was going or gone. We knew she needed the break and the money and that, come what may, she would put on a hell of a show. The JAMES A. MICHENER tickets went like wild6re as soon follows the triumph of as they were placed on sale, and THE HOKUSAI SKETCHBOOKS np until the morning of the night c a l l e d the most e n t i c i n g a n d of the concert everything moved graphic work of the year, with along about as smoothly as YOU what will surely be can ever hope for on such occathe most sought-after sions. And then Art DLugoff, the entrepreneurial half of the sponsorthe most appreeioted Christmas Gift Book ship, called my office,and reached me, and said: Whos going to JAPANESE PRINTS, from fetch her up from Philadelphia? Early Masters to t h e Modern I said: Philadelphia? and Art 5 5 prints in faithful color, 202 said: Yes. shes booked through prints in black and white. 934 x 12% x 2,268 pps., hoond in raw 11 oclock toniFht in a night club i n Philadelphia and I said: YOU silk and hoxed. mean by car? Its about two hours $15.00 from Philadelphia to New York, isnt it? And what car? CHARLES E. TUTTLE COMPANY Tokyo, Jamon Rullond, Vl. Art said: Yes, by car, as long as she gets up to the Sheridan some time between 1and 2 it11 be

JERRY TALLMEH

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Doesnt Jack have a car? Art said. He meant Jack Coleman, the then advertising manager of The ViUage Voice. I said yes, but have you ever seen Jacks car? And have you ever seen Jack drive? Well, Art said, see if you cant work it out somehow, and Ill try around, too, from up here. And hows your driving? I said okay. I did not say what had suddenly, blazingly entered my head: that the one thing in all this world that I most wanted at just that moment, and would go on wanting, was for it to be me and nobody else in this world who would drive down to Philadelphia and bring Billie Holiday back for our concert. So I offhandedly said I would iry around and I said good-bye and hung up. Jack came in a little later, an extremely instinctual type, and

all right, well put the other musicians on first, doesnt the paper have a car? I said yes, the paper did have a car, hut it was one that was formerly my own 49 Olds, a handme-down then and falling to pieces now, and I didnt have any confidence it would make it up from Philly in two hours if at all, and anyway it wasnt very big, how many people would he coming up from Philadelphia? And Art said Billy and her husband and her accompanist Ma1 Waldron and maybe one or two others, he wasnt sure. I said uh-uh, not the O l d s a n d as a matter of fact that was one of the wisest things I ever said, because less than two weeks later, I think it was, the Olds suddenly and positively gave up the ghost for good.

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JERRY TALLMER

125
empty. Following Art DLugoffs instructions, I asked around for Louis McKay, the husband and manager from whom Billie Holiday was later to he separated-until he flew to her side during her final illness. A Negro who seemed to me to he about eight feet tall and three feet wide-I am not s h o r t a e tached himself from a group at one of the tables. Im McKay, he said. Shes got another couple of sets to go. Have a drink. Then I saw the white gardenia and the glittering dress and Lady Day herself at the far end of his table. It was the whole 20 years, 15 anyway, since Id last seen her: sooner or later I would have recognized her, of course, but it would prohably have given me a half-hour of puzzlement if I hadnt come in knowing shed he there. She had been a big glorious-looking girl; now she was a big hulking-looking middle-aged woman, heavy in the jowls and shoulders, all her wonderful cheek-lines and jaw-lines squashed and broadened. Beneath them lay the hones, fine and handsome still, and her mouth was still that incredible combination of open wound and jungle flower; but it too was heavy now, and worn and bleared, going slack and apathetic between bursts of voluble dispute on some subject under debate within her party. I asked McKay for the time. It was ten of 11. At 11 oclock she got up to sing, and on the instant you could tell that it was tiue: her voice was all but gone. And yet it wasnt gone. It was rough, cracked, sandy, hoarse, at moments almost wither-

within two seconds we understood each other perfectly. We both wanted to he the one to go; he had the car (though not much of a better one than the Olds) and I had the far greater advantage as a driver. Everyone agreed with m e - I couldnt have been cooler in putting the case-thst if Jack tried to rush her hack from Philadelphia we would very likely wind up one advertising manager and one great singer the less. Even Jack agreed, behind his eyelids. He kept talking, however, and I went out for coffee. Right in front of our building, at the curb, there sat this great big powder-blue automobile that had obviously just come off the assembly line. At the wheel there sat a girl named Athena who sometimes hung around the offices of The Voice. I had seen her in the offices though I hadnt ever actually met her. I hadnt met Louise then, either, I had better say; wouldnt be getting to meet her for some months yet. I walked over to the blue Chrysler and said: Hello, arent you a friend of so and sos? That your car? How would you like to let me run it down to Philadelphia and hack tonight to bring Billie Holiday u p for the jazz concert? And thats how Jack Coleman never got to bring Billie Holiday up from Philadelphia. Or the several other potential and anxious candidates Ive eliminated from this narrative for the sake of brevity. THE PHILADELPHIA night club was just OE the main drag, not a had place but pretty dead and pretty

126
ing or choking away to nothing, but then it would keep coming back and back to hit now and again on just a few of those huest chords of loving agony we in our lifetimes shall ever have heard; and now and again it still vestigially slid and melted, as if in distant shadow play, over some of those soul-twisting spmngmelody transitions produced for us by only one female voice in our time. She finished the set to desultory applause and whipped out to a dressing room, glass in hand, to change. It was almost 11:30. I had stopped even thinking for a while about all those 2500 people waiting up in Loews Sheridan, two hours to the north, but now I began to sweat again on the double grounds of would we ever get there, and what would we h w e if we ever did. McKay brought me another drink. He stood over me as I sat and looked me u p and down and then straight between the eyes. Well get her out of here, he said, right after the next set. Nuther half hour. Ma1 and his girl go with you. (This was Ma1 Waldron, Billies young accompanist, now the leader of his own combination; the girl in question, a winsome young beauty, is now his wife.) Ill finish u p business here and come up later, McKay said. H e paused and looked at me very hard. Then he said: You get her to the concert, huh? I said yes. He said: You see they give the money to Mal? You see he gets it? I said yes. He said: You see she gets from the concert to our hotel in New York? You see to
~~

Euergreen Review
that? Yousee she gets to the hotel? I said yes. He gave me the name of a hotel I had never heard of just west of Columbus Circle, and his face softened for the first time as he smiled and sat down to finish his own drink at my table. After the second set, she had to go hack and change once more for the ride. We got out of there about a quarter past 12. Our departure was like a departure for the crusades, all of ns trooping in a parade through the smoky, halfempty night club, me in the lead to run out and bring around the car, then Louis McKay carrying the bags, Ma1 carrying other bags and bursting portfolios of music, Mals girl carrying Billies evening dresses, and Billie herself in the rear clutching her glass in one hand and her Chihuahua in the other. Nor should you forget Athena, the owner of the car, whom I cannot in pure fact drop entirely from this story, much as it might help the scallopini situation to do so. Once at the curb, it took us a b u t 10 more minutes to load u p and get Billie in and settled and satisfied. The little dog w a s passed back and forth between her and Mals girl about ten times, finally ending up for keeps on the lap of its mistress. I thanked whatever powers there be for that big blue boat of a Chrysler rather than any heap half its size of Jacks or mine. Billie was gabbling in outrage in the back seat against the local managements having kept her by contract to her very final set. Our engine was purring, our push-button gear-shift at the ready. Louis

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screeched over to the curb as in a gangster movie. Billie was clamhering over Ma1 and hlals girl and had the door open before we stopped rolling. I had my own door open before her feet touched the sidewalk. We exploded into the bar together, shoulder to shoulder. Billie slapped the bar-top and said: Gimme n shot. Double shot of anything. The barman looked at her and me and I said: Same for me. Double. Make it qriick. Then I cnt back toward the phone booth and dialed WA 9-2166 as quick as my prickling fingers could make it. Good evening, Loews AirConditioned Sheridnn, said a disembodied voice at 2:3S in the morning. Art DLugoff there? I snapped. Art came on the line. Where are yon? he asked, sounding preoccupied, not panicked. Canal Street, I said. Ill have her there in five minutes. Theres a 3 oclock curfew, he said. Saturday night. Its the law. I said: I know. Do something about it. Hows the crowd holding out? Fine, he said. There all here, waiting. I said: Wait for me in front, well he up in five minutes, and hung up. I ran out to the bar, gulped my double shot, made Billie down hers, threw down some money, and dragged her out by the elbow. The whole issue of the wee-wee was tacitly ignored by both of us, gone and forgotten, a dissimulation no longer to he considered or bothered about by adults. We piled back into the car and once again accelerated rip to 70 as we headed up Sixth Avenue, and then Greenwich Avenue, through all the red lights.

MeKay came to my window and quietly said: You get her up to that hotel, right? Again I said yes, and away we went. Halfway up Walnut Street, Billie Holiday said loudly: Whats this coucert were going to? I said a concert sponsored by my newspaper, The Villoge Voice. She said: What kind of newspapers that? I explained as best I coidd. She said: Whats your name? I said Jerry Tallmer. She said: Okay, Jerry, you get us there, and she immediately dropped off into a heavy sleep. She did not wake up when we got lost trying to find the entrance to the Turnpike, and she did not wake up when we roared for the next two hours up other highways and eventually the Turnpike itself until we finally made it to the Holland Tunnel approach, and she did not wake up when we roared through that tunnel at the same 80 miles an hour as Ma1 Waldrons watch was nearing 2:30. But the instant our wheels touched the asphalt of Manhattan Island, Billie Holiday suddenly sat bolt upright and awake. Ive got to make wee-wee, she firmly announced. You stop, boy, at the first bar. I said nothing, and headed at 70 miles an hour up Varick Street, Lady Day moaned: I gotta make wee-wee. You gotta stop. Ma1 said: Okay, Lady, hes going to stop. He touched me softly on the shoulder. We were flashing past Canal Street, and off to the right there was a red neon glow. Lady Day said: There! You stop there, hoyl I made one of those decisions of a lifetime and

128
Art was slowly pacing back and forth in front of the box ofice of the Sheridan. It was quarter to 3. Go around to the stage door, he said, and I took the car around in back and let them all get out. They all ran into the rear of the theatre and I went off alone to park the Car. As I made it through that stage door myself, I heard Art, out in front of the movie screen, announcing: Ladies and gentlemen, Billie Holiday is now in the house -a great cheer went up-and will be with us in a moment. It was ten of 3 and Billie and Mal and Mals girl were off on the side in a little cluster, getting Billie ready to go un. I said to one of the people from The Vuice: What ahout the curfew? He said: Dont worry about it, its been taken care of, greased, and theyll let her sing if she starts by 3. At 3 sharp Billie Holiday stepped from behind the movie screen with Ma1 Waldron for her first major appearance in New York in over a decade. She began slow, weak, wobbly, scratchy, the same thing I had heard down in Philadelphia only now further impaired by further exhaustion. Then, bit by bit, she picked up. and the audience picked up with her. From behind the screen, I a u l d not believe my ears. This was not the old Billie but it was not the present Billie either; it was some sweet and marvelous mixture of both. carrying somehow in gravelly pnrout over 2500 breathless heads. ix S e did her set and another set and they held here there for about five encores. Then it was over. No-

Evergreen Review
body left before it was over, and nobody felt cheated when it was over. Lady Day was back in New Ynrk. Ed Fancher, publisher of The Voice, came around and said: There71 be a party at my place on Christopher Street. Think shed want to mme? I said Id see. I watched Lady Day and Ma1 Waldron come back and watched from a respectful distance while I saw Art DLugoff go over to Ma1 and count bills into his hand. I saw Ma1 re-count them, and nod, and shake hands with Art. Then I went over to Ma1 and told him about the party. He said he and his girl would probably like to go, but hed have to ask Billie what she wanted to do. A little later he said she wanted to go too. The party was a typical good, late, crowded Village party. Most of the musicians from all the other groups were there, as well as Billie. Everybody was talking to everybody and I was talking to somebody when all of a sudden I noticed I didnt see Billie Holiday anywhere. Or Ma1 and his girl. I searched all the rooms and the bathroom. Then, with a sinking stomach, I ran downstairs. On the sidewalk I looked left and right. At the right, on the corner, under a lamppost, Ma1 and his girl were close together cuddling. They didnt look nervous. I went up and asked if they had seen Billie. Ma1 grinned and thumbed an indication to a newsstand-and-candy-store still open, at 4:30 in the morning, halfway down the block. I walked down to the store and there she was, sure

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enough, big as life, as they say, and twice as natural. She was stumbling all over and humming happily to herself and loading her arms with comic hooks and candy bars. She seemed almost nnconscious, almost incoherent. I had never seen anyone buy so many candy bars before. And in all that night I had never seen Lady Day look so wlnerable and soft, so relaxed, so feminine, or so attractive. Then I realized I wasnt the only one who thought so. In the same tiny store, his hack to the door and now sidling over to block the door, there stood a heavyset man of about 50, taking it all in. A grizzled, weathered, ice-eyed type straight out of the Mafia, which in case yon didnt know it is one of the dominant types in Greenwich Village. Billie had put her purse down on an upturned crate. The man stood there planted on his two feet, his glance traveling avariciously hack and forth between the singer and her purse, as if trying to decide whether to take the one, the other, or both at once. Lady Day kept stumbling and mumbling around the store, picking out her candy bars, giving the guy the back of her head, but the comer of her eye as well. The only thing I could think of to do was to plant my own feet as wide apart as possible and sweat it out. I wondered if Ma1 would bear me if I yelled. I wondered what good the slender Ma1 would he, anyway, or both of us together, for that matter. Lady hummed and reached for her purse and knocked it to the floor, its change and compacts spilling out.

Evergreen Review
Painfully, she stooped down to scrape them up. I thought Id better keep on standing. She finally got everything back in her purse and made a big play of collecting and paying for her whole huge armful of comic books and candy bars. In all this time she hadnt given the least flickering sign of being aware of my existence, or of having ever laid eyes on me before in her life, I felt placed exactly in the category of the thug by the door. And I waited. I waited until she was all square with the little-old-lady store owner, and then I made the second enormous decision of that long, long night, I said: Okay, now, lets go, and I marched as cooly and as arrogantly as I could straight for the door, pushing her before me, and at the very last instant the man at the door broke and turned away with a grimace and gave US the room to go through. We went out onto the street and there were Ma1 and his girl still under the lamppost, still happy, still cuddling. Lady Day looked neither this way nor that; she had definitely yet to look at me. I pushed and pulled her down to the Waldrons and pushed and pulled the three of them down another block to the car. They got in hack and I got in front. I reached down to turn on the ignition. Then, for the first time since, hours earlier, we had stopped at that bar near Canal Street, I heard Lady Day utter a word not in song. Whwo-eee! she shouted. Whweeel That old Jerry! That old b y ! She gave an immense gurgling giggle. That old Lomy

JERRY TALLMER

131
through 20 years of her life and mine to her hotel on Columbus Circle. May those who throughout 44 years helped take her from this life-those including herself, myself-now rest in peace thoughout eternitv.

tell that old Jerry to get me to the hotel, and that old Jerry h e make God damn sure I get to the hotel. That cruddy bastard ie the store think I didn't see him lookin' at me; he think all sorts of things, But old lenv he come in, he remember L h i t old Looey say, he just stand there and look at that bastard and he take me out of that store. Hey, yon1 Jerry! What the name of that newspaper you work for?" I told her the name of the paper, "Well, you send me a copy of that newspaper, you hear?" said Billie Holiday, and I turned on the ignition and started the car and headed it once again into the dark, away from Christopher Street, away from 52nd Street. and north

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ALLEN GINSBERG

Notes Written on Finally Recording Howl

By 1955 I wrote poetry adapted from prose seeds, journals, scratchings, arranged by phrasing or breath groups into little short-line patterns according to ideas of measure of American speech Id picked up from W. C. Williams imagist preoccupations. I suddenly turned aside in San Francisco, unemployment compensation leisure, to follow my romantic inspiration-Hebraic-Melvillean bardic breath. I thought I wouldnt write a poem, but just write what I wanted to without fear, let my imagination go, open secrecy, and scribble magic lines from my real mind-sum up my lifwomething I wouldnt be able to show anybody, writ for my own souls ear and a few other golden ears. So the first line of Howl, I saw the best minds etc., the whole first section typed out madly in one afternwn, a tragic custard-pie comedy of wild phrasing, meaningless images for the beauty of abstract =try of mind running along m&ng awkward combinations like Charlie Chaplins walk, long saxophone-like chorus lines I knew Kerouac would hear sound of-taking off from his own inspired prose line really a new poetv. I depended on the word who
1

Fantasy, Spoken Word Series.

Copyright 1959 by Fantasy Reco r b . Inc.

7008.

to keep the beat, a base to keep measure, return to and take off from again onto another streak of invention: who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars, continuing to prophesy what I really knew despite the drear consciousness of the world: who were visionary indian angels. Have I really been attacked for t h i s sort of joy? So the poem got awesome, I went on to what my imagination believed true to Eternity (for Id had a beatific illumination years before during which Id heard Blakes ancient voice and saw the universe unfold in my brain), h what my memory could reconstitute of the data of celestial experiences. But how sustain a long line in poetry (lest it lapse into prosaic)? Its natural inspiration of the moment that keeps it moving, disparate thinks put down together, shorthand notations of visual imagery, juxtapositions of hydrogen jukebox-abstract haiku sustain the m stery & put iron poetry back into t l e line: the last line of Sunflower Suha is the extreme, one stream of single word associations, summing up. Mind is shapely, Art is shapely. Meaning Mind rac ticed in spontaneity invents orms in its own image and gets to Last Thoughts. h e ghosts wailing for body try to invade the M i a of living men. I hear ghostly Academies in Limbo screeching about Form.

P -

132

ALLEN GINSBERG

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I11 was conceived and half-written same day as the beginning of Howl, I went back later and filled it ont. Part I, a lament for the Lamb in America with instances of remarkable lamblike youths; part I1 names the monster of mental consciousness that preys on the Lamb; Part I11 a litany of affirmation of the Lamb in its glory: 0 starryspangled shock of Mercy. The structure of Part 111, pyramidal, with a graduated longer response to the fixed base. I remembered the archetypal rhythm of Holy Holy Holy weeping in a bus on Kearny Street, & wrote most of it down in notebook there. That exhausted this set of experiments with a fixed base. I set it as Footnote to Howl because it was an extra variation of the form of Part 11. (Several variations on these forms, including stanzas of graduated litanies followed by fugues, will he seen in Kaddish.) A lot of these forms developed out of an extreme rhapsodic wail I once heard in a madhouse. Later I wondered if short quiet lyrical poems could be written using the long line. Cottage in Berkeley k Supermarket in California (written same day) fell in place later that year. Not purposely, I simply followed my Angel in the course of compositions. What if I just simply wrote, in long units and broken short lines, spontaneously noting prosaic realities mixed with emotional upsurges, solitaries? Transcription of Organ Music (sensual data), strange writing which passes from prose to poetry & back, like the mind.

Ideally each line of Howl is a single breath unit. My breath is long-thats the Measure, one physical-mental inspiration of thought contained in the elastic of a breath. It probably bugs Williams now, hut its a natural consequence, my own heightened conversation, not cooler average-dailytalk short breath. I get to mouth more madly this way. So these poems are a series of experiments with the formal organization of the long line. Explanations follow. I realized a t the time that Whitmans form had rarely been further explored (improved on even) in the U S Whihnan always a mountain too vast to be seen. Everybody assumes (with Pound?) (except Jeffers) that his line is a big freakish uncontrollable necessary prosaic goof. No attempts been made to use it in the light of early XX Century organization of new speech-rhythm prosedy to build up large organic structures. I had an apartment on Nob Hill, got high on Peyote, & saw an image of the robot skullface of Moloch in the upper stories of a big hotel glaring into my window; got high weeks later again, the Visage was still there in red smokey downtown Metropolis, I wandered down Powell street muttering, Moloch Moloch all night and wrote Howl I1 nearly intact in cafeteria at foot of Drake Hotel, deep in the hellish vale. Here the long line is used as a stanza form broken into exclamatory units punctuated by a base repetition, Moloch. The rhythmic paradigm for Part

Evergreen Review
What about poem with rhythmic buildup power equal to Howl without use of repetitive base to sustain it? The Sunflower Sutra (composition time 20 minutes, me at desk scribbling, Kerouac at cottage door waiting for me to finish so we could go off somewhere party) did that, it surprised me, one long Who. Next what happens if you mix long and short lines, single breath remaining the rule of measure? I didn't trust free flight yet, so went back to fixed base to sustain the flow, America. After that, a regular formal type long poem in parts, short and long breaths mixed a t random, no fixed base, sum of earlier experiments-Baggage Room at Greyhound. In Back of the Real shows what I was doing with short lines (see sentence 1 above) before I accidentally wrote Howl. Later I tried for a strong rhythm built up using free short syncopated lines, Europe! Europe! a prophecy written in Paris (Kaddish, City Lights, 1960). Last, the Proem to Kaddish (NY 1959 work)-finally, completely free composition, the long line breaking u p within itself into short staccato breath units-notations of one spontaneous phrase after another linked within the line by dashes mostly: the long line now perhaps a variahle stanzaic unit, measuring groups of related ideas, grouping them-a method of notation. Ending with a hymn in rhythm similar to the synagogue death lament. Passing into

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dactylic? says Williams? Perhaps not: at least the ear hears itself in Promethean natural measure, not in mechanical count of accent. All these poems are recorded now as best I can, tho with scared love, imperfect to an angelic trumpet in mind. I have quit reading in front of live audiences for a while. I began in obscurity to communicate a live poetry, it's become more a trap & duty than the spontaneous ball it was first. A word on the Academies: poetry has been attacked by an ignorant and frightened bunch uf bores who don't understand how it's made, & the trouble with these creeps is they wouldn't know poetry if it came up and huggered them in broad daylight. A word on the Politicians: my poetry is Angelical Ravings, and has nothing to do with dull materialistic vagaries about who should shoot who. The secrets of individual imagination-which are transconceptual & non-verhalI mean Unconditioned Spirit-are not for sale to this consciousness, are no use to this world, except perhaps to make it shut its trap & listen to the music of the Spheres. Who denies the music of the spheres denies poetry, denies man, & spits on Blake, Shelley, Christ, & Buddha. Meanwhile have a ball. The universe is a new Bower. America will be discovered. Who wants a war against roses will have it. Fate tells big lies, and the gay Creator dances on his own body in Eternity.

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MARTIN WILLIAMS

Funk for Sale

Trumpeter Clifford Brown will surely have a place in all future histories of jazz, and not for the usual reason that he died young. He will he in them because, in the face of the fad for cool jazz i n the fifties, he rose up and shouted to his contemporaries-even to h i s elders-that jazz would not ahnndon the other side of its unique emotional or technical heritage. As a man who seemed to he interpretiiig the innovations of Miles Davis through the manner of Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro, Brown announced that jazz was not to lose its way in the temporary dead end of an increasingly tepid cool style hut could find a crucial rebirth in a modified version of the hop style of thc forties--n style few Eastern musicians had ahandoned hut one which decidedly needed new life. Appropriately enough, when the style Brown encouraged acquired a name, it turned out to be hard bop. At about the same time, an Eastern pimist-composer named IIornce Silver, by digging around in the gospel music of Negro chnrches and in a kind of blues playing that had matured as long ago as the late twenties. was rediscovering an emotional basis on which jnzz could continue in the same kinds of sources from which it had originally sprung. Silver sounded something like a compromise between bop pianist Bud Powell and an elementary blues man like Speckled Red or Cow Cow Davenport, with constant allusions to the accompanist at a Sanctified church as well. Silver quickly acquired his imitators and his following. And the style acquired a name, funky-a term borrowed from Negro argot for a certain kind of body odor. Variously associated with both of these men was drummer Art Bliikey who has emerged as the drummer of the mid-fifties. With both Browns style-and-feeling and Silvers feeling-and-style as sources of inspiration, the lines of demarcation between hard hop and funky jazz were nut long in blurring. Obviously, jazz has experienced some kind of re-birth in the midfifties. The question is how healthy and how lcgitimate the offspring. The answcr seems to be that Brown and Silver were superb godparents hut that it takes mow than god-parents to raise a child. Clifford Browns w a s a curious combinntion of virtuosity and technical limitation, of progress and immaturity. His recordings (sessions with Blakey are un Blue Note 1526; his best single L P is probahly Prestige 7038) show him extending brass technique heyond anything previously conceived poss i b l c s o m e t h i n g each successive generation of jazz trumpeters has done, of course. But Brown could do that cooking improvising of his only at a few medium and fast

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beginnings. Clearly it became for at least some Negroes a way of reclaiming jazz as their music, a music growing out of their experience. Also, when Horace Silver was doing it so was rock and roll; almost half of the hit records of the past four years are clearly indebted to a kind of bowdlerized version of gospel song. But not only such naive or commercial gimmickry was involved in this phenomenon: adaptations from the gospel style have clearly re-vitalized the urban blues style through the work of a really excellent performer like Ray Charlcs (Atlantic 8025). And by the time that both jazz and nrhan blues were ready to turn to it for emotional replenishment, gospel had produced one of the major artists in all NegroAmerican music, Mahalia Jackson (Columbia CL1244). British critic Bruce King has suggested ( J a z z Monthly, January 1959) that this current elaboration of church music really goes back to the mid-forties and vihraphonist Milt Jackson, now of the Modern Jazz Quartet. My own feeling is that, whatever its importance, Silvers use of the gospel tradition as such, may not go as deep as has its use by some other men. Once hassist Charlie Mingus had turned his back on pseudoacademic pretentiousness and allowed the church idiom to affect his music directly and deeply, he produced such astonishing things as Pitlrecanthropus Erectus (Atlantic 1237), and Blue Cee and Haitian Fight Song (Atlantic 1260). Perhaps it was Silvers function to affirm the idiom and

tempos-a fact which often led him and many of his follows into an embarrassed double-timing in slow ballads after a very few bars. And his ideal as an improviser seems to have been the rather elementary one of keeping things going a t a sustained emotional pitch with as little apparent monotony of ideas and phrases as possible. Brown was dead in an automobile accident in 1956: he was twenty-five. Aside from the general inspiration he gnve the eastern jazzman and the revisions he brought about in the styles of some of his elders, Brown has two direct heirs on trumpet: Lee Morgan, who succeeded in meeting Browns challenge directly, and Art Farmer, who succeeded as a soloist by avoiding it. At eighteen, Morgan was an astonishing technician and by the time he was a member of the Art Blakey Quintet (Blue Note 4003), he was becoming a cohesive soloist. Farmer had been Browns section-mate in one of those hands Lionel Hampton forms periodically, and as long as he attempted Browns kind of virtuosity, he usually failed. When he began to draw more directly on the lyricism of Miles Davis and on his own melodic and spontaneous compositional gifts, he became one of the most promising soloists jazz had seen for years. Significantly perhaps, this maturity first showed itself when he played in Horace Silvers Quintet (Blue Note 1589). The fact that Silver turned so directly to the gospel idiom as a basis for his music was not an isolated phenomenon even in its

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it was left to others to be more abidingly affected ,by its content. All of which is hardly to say that Silvers music is unemotional, and it leaves unsaid the fact that his work has had a further and very important effect on jazz. Silvers style as a player and composer has changed little from his first records as leader-the trios on Blue Note 1520, and those as musical director of a sextet which was really Art Blakeys Jazz Messengers of the time (Blue Note 1518). In simplifying the hop style, Silver opened up what had been a thick, rapid succession of harmonies which threatened to become a matter of a chord changed on every beat. In so doing, he opened up a style that had become increasingly boxed in; the bop accompanist had somehow got the idea that he should actually make all the chords the soloist implied in passing. Silver indirectly exposed many of the adept fakers who merely ran the changes in familiar keys, jumping from one chord to the next with stock phrases; and he freed the soloist, throwing the emphasis in jazz improvisation back onto scales and larger melodic patterns. Small wonder that Farmer found his maturity while with Silver. Silver himself is a limited pianist (indeed, he is known to many as really a tenor saxophonist) and his passionate solos seem to have become less and less fluent and COhesive, and to depend more and more on interpolations--one solo is partly a disjointed string of several bugle calls. Art Blakey is a crucially transi-

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tional drummer for jazz. By the fifties, he had a firm and personal style, again based on a simplifcution of that of a bop musicianthe brilliant Max Roach of 1947. There have been times when Blakey seemed to imply that the way for a drummer to inspire a soloist is to coerce him loudly. (But he has said, Dont worry. If anything is really happening, youll hear it!) The most provocative thing in Blakeys playing is that at times it has almost ceased to he an accompaniment and become an interplaying percussive part, almost a polyphonic drum-line. As tenor saxophonist Bobby Jaspar has pointed out ( T h e luzi Reciew, February 1959), Blakeys style has been even further developed by his pupils Philly Joe Jones and Elvin Jones. Blakeys is only one of several rediscoveries that the by now fashionable swing to the hard bopfunky style has brought about. Another is the re-emergence of pianist composer Thelonious Monk (Riverside 12-226). And another is the re-birth of tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, earlier a betterthan-good be-bop soloist, by now probably one of the most significant born soloists in the history of jazz. Taking a hint in part from Monk, Rollins disciplines both his techniques and his melodies to improvise solos of many choruses of a continuity and developing M)hesion previously heard only in certain pianists. Hear especially Blue 7 on Prestige 7079, and Blues For Philly Joe on Blue Note 4001. The tenor saxophone style is by now probably the best known facet of the hard hop idiom, and it is largely because of Rollins that it

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is. It already has an exciting and exasperating innovator in John Coltrane (Blue Note 1577, Prestige 7123), who sometimes seems to want the rhythmic style of jazz further subdivided into sixteenthnotes and whose ear for harmonies is quite advanced. The fashion for this hard tenor style and its rougher tone has also led to some interesting and perhaps significant rediscoveries from even earlier generations: Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster. The former, an important jazzman since the mid-twenties and a man who seems to renew his powers about every ten years, responded with his best recording in years (Felsted 7005),and Webster offered an LP which, at least for his part of it, is as nearly perfect as any art can get (Verve 8274). In the midst of all this sometimes affected shouting and moaoing, however, functions the pianist Bill Evans. He, like Silver, drops the rapid successive chord changes, has outstanding rhythmic and melodic gifts, and commands the listener with melodic and rhythmic ideas, a fine pianistic technique, and a strong if seemingly understated emotional content (Coral 57230, Riverside 12-291). One of the most original young soloists in the idiom is an alto saxophonist, Ornette Coleman (Contemporary 3551, Atlantic 1317), who works not in New York but in California. He says that a soloist should not have to be inhibited by any chord changes that a pianist and bassist are making. H e shouldnt even have to follow them at all-they should follow biml

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cluded fewer listeners. A listener was a poor unfortunate who had been pronounced totally unable to sing: we (alas, I was one) were required to sit in the rear of the auditorium for an hour or more, with our right forefingers set s a y against our mouths as a badge of caste. (This practice must have retarded my enjoyment of all music for at least ten years.)-& consider the matter of penmanship: PALmer says swing one, SWING two, three, use your whole ARM and ELhow, four, five! Thats right, girls! Keep it going, keep that rainbow growing! But the boys were never similarly encouraged, sim ly because everyone understood it was innate in the young male to have a dreadful handwriting. The pupil who was chosen to mpy an exercise on the blackboard was always a girl. On the other hand, no boy ever volunteered; he would have been ridiculed for it by everyone. The girls, consequently, uniformly developed a large, slanted, precise, super-legible and astonishingly mindless penmanship, while the boys, considered hopeless to begin with and left to themselves, followed the normal bent of their nervous systems. (I suppose this explains why so many women in their twenties and thirties produce identical childlike characters, the so-called feminine handwriting, as opposed to the more individual. more intelligent-looking penmanship of men of the same age.) Here was another art in which I was incompetent. The teacher admonished me again and again not to grip my pen so tightly. Although

(Continued from page 5 2 ) We were divided by sex in other ways. For instance, a hostility between the sexes was certainly encouraged, if not actually invented, by the teachers, beginning in the primary grades. Girls, everyone knew, were cleaner, more studious, and better-behaved than boys. No propaganda was ever more successful. The girls believed it and were good, the boys believed it and were bad, the teachers themselves came to believe it and could make scientific predictions based on it. We were, for example, accustomed to ardent contests. In assembly, separated by the center aisle of the auditorium, the boys to the left, the girls to the right, we were exhorted to save the honor of our sex by singing louder than the other sex. The two music teachers, each with a baton for goad, whipped us into the competitive fury of a cockfight: All right, boys! Louder! You dont want the girls to get the better of you, do yon now? and there would follow a feverish bellow, W H O 0 0 is SYLLLviaAH, what is SHEEE , . .* Then the sustained screech of fity very young sopranos: THAT a l l her swains com-MEND herrr . . , And the second teacher, eschewing the principle of harmony, musical or social, would cajole, Oh come now, girls, that isnt like yon a t d l I can barely hear you! The girls never let the boys get ahead of them, do they? Open your mouth-0-pen-exhibiting an oral cavity of remarkable dimensions. For some reason the girk were always declared the winners, perhaps because their superior ranks in-

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I did use the Palmer system for the Palmer exercises, once t h e e were over I unhesitatingly reverted to my peculiar cramped hold on the pen. The trouble was that I had waited so long to learn to write, to be able to put down my own thoughts all by myself, that the words themselves threw me into a frenzy of delight, and I would forget all about forming the letters, pressing the pen point down hard in plain joy. The Palmer method did not allow for pleasure, however-Shamel Look how you hold that pen! Do you want to grow up with your finger all deformed? (I did.) And, worst calumny of all: No, Nicole, you may wt copy your composition on the blackboard. We all know you dont try to write like a girll Female superiority was acknowledged in another way. It was taken for granted that the president of the class-appointed, not electedwas always a girl. The vicepresident was usually a boy, but the office was merely honorific. The vice-president did nothing at all. But the president was a kind of assistant teacher, a co-disciplinarian. For years our class had the same president, a girl named Harriet. The new teacher would ask, W h o was president last termY and then Haniet would be appointed to succeed herself. Leadership became a habit with her; she wore her power (chiefly to suppress talking, which was forbidden, and to keep our marching-lines even), with an air of long-used grace. Certainly she was physically more mature than most of us-she

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married at fifteen, I learned laterbut it is a question whether 6er queenliness issued from the demands of her ofice, or whether the officewas bestowed cn her because of her natural authority. Nevertheless, whichever was true, the stability of the presidency (we had long ceased even to hope for rotation) crystallized our miniature world into a rigid caste society: the timid remained timid, and knew their place, and knew that nothing would change, aeon upon aeon. Yet within the matriarch), peculiarly, there were severe contradictions. For one thing, it had esca ed our notice that, whiIe it woul be against nature for our resident not to have been a gk, at the same t h e Mr. Roosevelt was President of the United States: this, however, was an external affair and did not touch our lives. But there was another and more interesting contradiction, more insidious because it lurked within our o w n system, side by side with the established values; it lodged, in fact, in the cumculum. And it could not have been more simple or more obvious. Girls are more artistic than boys, said the canon: but boys are more mechanical, better skilled with tools, handier. Hence the girls, in their homemade aprons and caps, learned to make white sauce in the very hour that the boys, in shop class, were fashioni r l s are more ing wooden artifacts. G studious than boys, said the code: but boys are more intelligent. Four hours a week, therefore, we girls were instructed in the arts of threading needles, cutting cloth,

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and wearing thimbles, and were initiated into the rites of hem, bias, selvage, tuck, and dart; and the creaking Singer machines, the most ancient of their species, loomed squat and imperious in the comers of the dim sewing-room. We had to he very, very careful of them; fearfully and tenderly our feet went rocking on the treadles, down and back, down and back, ankles aching, with Miss Uhlein, the sewing teacher, glaring over us, her eyebrows basted to the rims of her spectacles, her needle-nose pricking after error. A tremor in an otherwise even line, and rip! begin it again. Four stitches instead of three before hack-stitching, and rip1 you were likely to have two pieces of cloth instead of one. Miss Uhlein was infallible; worse yet, she was just. You could not plead ignorance before the law: the law hung on placards, in black letters, on all the walls. When at last we were freed from that bleak lace, joining the boys in our o&cial classroom, rumors of certain magics would reach us in an underground murmur: the boys had seen an experiment, they had seen something called litmus paper turn blue, turn red; they whispered of protoplasm, they croaked knowingly of paramecia.-While we sewed (what did we make? graduation dresses, begun two years ahead of time, frayed and grimy when the day finally came), the boys had Science, taught by a male teacher. We girls never set foot in the laboratory; glimpsing now and then a hunsen burner, we were of course curious, hut only within the limits of possi-

Esergreen Resiew
bility. We knew we would never know, we knew we were not horn to know, the secret of the paper that could change its color. But we had been long trained in the art of enduring the inscrutable. All this-the sewing, the woodworking, the cooking, as well as every other pursuit-as, I must make clear, conducted in the strictest silence. Talking, whispering, nudging, sign-language of the subtlest sort, note-passing-they were all forbidden, and there were degrees of punishment for each offense. We proceeded through the comdors in a fashion half-military, halfzombie-like, limbs at attention, queerly stiffened, like a crowd of cataleptics. Congregating in the school yard after lunch, in order to march upto afternoon classes, accompanied by the Fife and Dmm Corps, even under a free and patent sky we dared not utter an unscheduled word. The symmetrical rracks in the concrete governed our position: square on square, we covered infinity in precise mwsHere she comes1 Here she mmesl covertly cried, and the supercilious monitor would pass through, carrying her red felt banner inscribzd with 71 in white letters, ready to award it to the class with the stiffest posture, the straightest lines, the deepest silence. I fervently despised these yard-moritors. They were usually old girls, eighthgraders of thirteen or fourteen, inst beginning to show their breasts, and they wore the narrow skirts of the thirties, the hems clinging to their shins; they all walked with a kind of haughty s h d e , taking

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of harboring demons in our lmdies,

a few steps, stopping, breathing

briefly into our straining at-attention faces, whipping us with suspense. Then the bugles would start, and the drums, and the fifes, and the carillon with its bells, and the whole school singing the Star Spangled Banner. Next the Pledge of Allegiance, flung back at us in thunder-phrases from the echoing bricks: I PLEH JALLEE JENSTOTHEFLAH GOVTHEEYOLJNIGH TEDSTAY TSOVAMERICA - And finally the Corps would slide into The Minstrcl Boy to the Wars Is Gone, the banner would be received by the triumphant class, and the march-up would begin: the boys half of the yard flowing through the narrow neck of the boys entrance, the girls section swallowed up by the girW staircases. And now the vigil of the monitors was really under way. Like gargoyles they leered at us from their stations, one on each landing, their wails flying up and down the cramped, gray, busy stairflights: Quiet, girls1 No taking1 Shut up1 No pushing1 Hurry up, keep it moving1 Hurry up you, fill up that space1 Come on girls, no talking nowl until with relief we filed into our classrooms, where, rarely, a merciful teacher would declare a five-minute talking period while we put away our coats and settled ourselves. T h i s discouragement of communication began early, in the first grade. It was as though-small, inferior, and wicked as we were-we possessed some secret, unacc0ur.tHble, and glorious will to destroy. We ignoble savages were suspected

which some potent combination of spell-making syllables might accidentally conjure out-hence OUT perpetual lust for waggling our tonyes, and rowdying, and dnunming up a din. The most innment whisper brought a preventive fury on OUT heads; our mouths, so feared, felt evil and powerful. For our own safety we had to he sealed up.-Miss Vokell, the 1A teacher (she of the straight bright teeth and the plum-back bun), could not have felt the lively yellow heat ol the hlay sun that stage-lit her desk; how coolly and how slowly her fingers, long-nailed and oval-mooned, spun out the roll of sticking-tape, unwinding it like a terrible white worm1 I was near tho head of the summoned row of children (five and six years old), half-faint with fright. Then it was my turn. Come here. My shoulders were as high as the desk-top. Close your mouth. My eyes closed too, acd yet snmehow I saw it, I can this moment see it: the two inches of tipe measured off, snipped off with the scissirs, Miss Vokells pink-and-white moist tongue undulating over the glue. At the last instant my voice revived-Cant I use my own spit, please?-but it was too late, the cold sticky aper was pasted across my numb yips, bubbling-wet and loose. Her hand passed over my mouth and caressed the paper smooth. You may go to your seat. -I was sealed up; the demon was silenced. Nevertheless. when I was much older, about eleven, I was once sent tn the Detention Room for

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talking in the corridor. During changing, when we were parading from one class to another, the teachers would stand between the moving lines, arms folded, alerr for whispers. It was my misfortune to be just passing Miss Uhlein when Lgcille Behrens sneezed. I said, God bless you. Lucille, glancing up just in time to refrain from answering, flickered a warning. Then I heard Miss Uhlein: Who is the president of this class? Give me your section-book. She put a D-merit next to my name and instructed me to report to Miss Munsell that afternoon in the Detention Room. This happened before lunch. I had plenty of time to run home, eat nervously, and announce that I would be dismissed later than usual. For the rest of the afternoon the impending incarcerarion weighed on me; my hands shook; I could neither read nor write sensibly. Worse, all the teachers seemed to know that I had to go to the Detention Rrrm. The infmction seemed to me extremely minor, hut since no one asked me the nature of it, I did not explain. Certainly I would never have dared protest my near-innocence to Miss Uhlein; you could not plead etiquette before the law. There were very few offenders that day-three or four hardened criminals (boys who had been detained many times before and were more bored than frightened) and myself, Miss MunseIl was a stout, pleasant woman who wore what seemed to be the same black dress every day, and spoke with a lively brogue. I had imagined some kind

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of physical punishment, something like the stocks the Pilgrims had; there were no signs of anything of the sort. I came in and sat down in a rear seat. Miss Munsell called the roll of the offenders, then took some chalk and wrote on the hlackboard: WHY WE MUST NOT TALK IN THE HALLS. Write a composition on that topic, she told us (in a rather indifferent tone, it struck me), handing out the paper-Write until you are finished, and then pass your papers forward. For a few minutes I sat without moving. My heart was still rapidly fanning; but, I thought, it isnt so bad after all. Little by little the trembling ceased. I looked all around. I t was very quiet. Even the bad big boys were laboriously zigzagging their pencils. Up front Miss Munsell was turning the pages of a novel, pausing to scratch her head. There w a s no clock; I did not know how much time had passed. It seemed very long. One of the boys mumbled something in a voice that was heavy and already man-like. Miss Muusell glanced up without anger or interest: The soaner you finish, Vincent, the sooner you may go. So far I had written nothing; I picked at the pencil and tried to think what to say. I had just vacantly hegun to copy the words from the blackboard, as a starter, when, charged all at once with a rebellious inspiration, I crossed them out excitedly and m e instead: WHY TALKING IN SCHOOL SHOULD BE ALLOWED.

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She had her coat on and was tugging at the hrim of her hat. Its after four. I cant wait around here the whole afternoon. I nodded and scrambled for a quick triumphant altitudo to end with, and hastily folded the bundle of sheets in half, as we always did. Miss Mnnsell reached crisply for the sheaf and placed it on top of the other papers, which pleased me, for it meant she would read mine first. The boys compositions were, I conld just manage to see, very short, a paragraph or two: they had scribbled them off and left early. I buttoned up my sweater, Ianguidly glowing. It was the best composition I had ever written. Staring back greedily to catch the first rays of Miss Munsells astonishment, I started for the door.-And sure enough, she had the papers in her hands still, with mine on top. She stepped forward, sheathed by the waning light, and suddenly they came flowing down like a whirring snow, first in long thin strips, then in irregular mouse-teeth shapes, the words all rent and lost, falling more dead than any dying leaf into the green burial-month of the wastebasket. Then, seeing me-Well? What are you standing there for? Do you want the janitor to come and sweep you out? This was her little joke, for she was a very genial, and, withal, an innocent, woman. It is not an exaggeration to say that the a priori world we believed in was for us, logically and from the beginning, saturated with fraud. At the same time it was not a doubledealing fraud-i.e., although we were meant to he deceived, we

Radical1 Splendid1 Utopian! The possibility had never struck m e before that moment. I fell ecstatically into a projection of a mythical school where all the students chattered salubriously; I invented marvelous conversations for the incessantly talking Utopians. hly pencil galloped. New advantages and pleasures continued to stream into my head: the improvement of health thrmgh absence of restraint, the contribution to social understanding, the significance of talking in the psychology of children, and so on. I went for a fresh supply of paper, reflecting that my style had never been more magnificent. (Its principal characteristic was what was at that time customarily deprecated as flowery-ness.) Transported, I flourished every verbal gesture, unhusked ;. score of ornate adjectives, and grew dizzy with a messianic poetry. I saw Miss biunsell struck dumb by the glory of it; I saw her presenting my composition to the Board of Education, the members of which, a t first spellbound, then persuaded, would he converted on the spot (for I had read that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world): and the reform would begin. It was only fitting that the spark for such an insunection should have been lit in the Detention Room. . . . Arent you finished yet? Slowly and wonderingly I pulled out of my trance and came hack into the room. They boys had disappeared. I felt, somehow, that they had been gone a long while, Miss Munsell and I were alone. No-almost, Miss Miinsell.

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could never know we were being deceived. When you are unaware that a fraud i s being practiced on you, it is, from your point of view, not a fraud at all. The kind of trickery that was happening all the time (because we were miniature, defenseless, black with original sin or touched with the grace of inexperience: dependingon the teachers philosophic attachment) was self-contained and safe, for none of us could ever have seen through it. It was the First Cause, the premise and foundation of our lives. To imagine that things are not what they seem would not have heen heresyit would have been insanity. If, feeling along the frayed edges of fraud, you divined that something was not quite straight, your mind shut fast: what you felt as duplicity was only the axiomatic Mystery in things. Every discrepancy ended in the bosom of mutable, ineffable, terrifying Mystery. Hence, believing only that we could believe in very little, that yesterdays truth is todays lie, we had no morality. We did not recognize either injustice or irrationality because we lived in the heart of both. If I thought it cruel that anyone should require me to write a composition which she had no intention of reading, I certainly did not think it irrational. It may have heen a fraud; it may have been a trick (with an obvious purposeto create busywork, to punish) : but it was, primarily, a Mystery. There were other mysteries; there were delusions. The whole school shared in them. A haze of accusation of unknown, unreasonable, unexpressed, even un-human, guilts

Evergreen Review
veiled us. No one-not the popular, not the heroic, not even the selfsufficient-was safe from the vague terror of the haunted. We were scolded, we were lectured, we wme admonish&-scolded for what, lectured about what, admonished on account of what? I t was never explained. The guilty ones know who they are, we would be told, sententiously; or mystifyingly, Never mind what it was they did-the ones who did it know; or, ominously, The next boy or girl caught doing that is going to he even more severely punished. The criminals identity, the nature of the offsnse, the form of the punishment, all remained undisclosed. The silent nddle of our faces merely evoked another riddle: You all know the rules-obey the rules and you will never get into trouble. But it was not so simple as it sounded. Getting into trouble was only another amorphous phrase; it described little, it explained less. It could happen to anyone, with no notice. There were always tales of someone who had gotten into trouble. What, exactly, had he done? Who was he? What were they going to do to him? We never understood. A great filthy cloud of wonderment settled over us. For days after one o f these mysterious incidents, we would feel the teachers repugnance for us. We were evil little animals. We were all guilty, every single one. But what had we done? Evrntually we grew used to this communal guilt. In a school-wide assembly it no longer surprised us when the proceedings were interrupted, without explanation, and the entire congregation

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into the tiny orifice. The first look is agonizing. With your cheek flat against the scratchy wood, staring through the hole, you are disappointed to begin with-nothing in there hut an absence of light, black and formless. Then, little by little, as your vision grows accustomed to the woolly darkness, slowly and waveringly and silently the Thing hegins to glow, coming horribly to life, and now you are seeing what the others before you have seen, now it is absorbing and claiming youLet me look! Let me Iwk!-until you are pushed aside hy the next nervous viewer, and, out of rage and fear, you turn your head up to the sky and shriek like an animal. It is an eye in there-an eye, lidless, human, steady. One by one it happened to us in this way: we stared, waited, trembled, screamed. The eye leered out at the second peek, the third, the fourth, always with the same sinister luster, steadily gleaming, a real and corporeal eye. The next day it was still there, hut the group of explorers had swollen to a large crowd who had come to verify the chilling rumors: Whats in there? Its an eye! Is it real? I just nuw seen it myself. It aint no spook. Its a womans eye. And somehow, as the day; passed, we accepted the notion that the eye was indeed a womans. Where, then, was the woman? Any fool could guess that! She must be inside. Inside. Well-dead or alive, corpse ar mysterious prisoner? The increasing multitude of investigators split into two schools, those who favored bloodstains and a body, and those who were all for the white slave

condemned to ten maddening, utterly idle minutes of silent standingat-attention, as a penalty for some disturbance in the auditorium. What disturbance? Had we ourselves committed it, or had it happened across the aisle? Whom had we offended? How? No reason given. T k e guilty ones know who they are. We all lowered our eyes. It must be me, it must he me, it must he me they mean. One time I was in the very center of the enigmatic trouble. I am s t i l l not clear about what it was, but I know it had something to do with a certain shack that stood in an empty lot across from the school, where we often played during lunch period, before the first warning bugle sounded in the yard for the marchup. This shack, as I remember it (I must have been seven or eight at the time), was pot together out of old boards and slats, with a rusted piece of tin for a roof, hut it was well sealed at all points and there was no door, or any visible way of getting into it. It was built right up against the wall of a small brick house. All the paint had long been washed out of the boards, they were so weatherbeaten, and I suppose the shack had been standing in the comer of the lot against that house for a good many years before we children discovered it. I can no longer recall exactly what prompted the investigation, or who it was that found the hole in one of the hoards -an irregular slit, not a knothole, the size of a penny-but I remember the first suspenseful scream of recognition, and the crowd of children pushing against one another to peer

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trade. In less than a week the shack had become an institution, but hardly a familiar one. It was too awful for that. W e felt toward it as the Ancient Mariner felt toward the crcatures of the sea; disgust and horror enshrined it. Each look at the eye was eerier than the lastand did someone hear a coughing from within, the faintest hint of a moan? and had the eye not shifted its angle? was it not recessed farther into the hut, or come forward, straining balefully toward the viewer? Did it not seem bulbously enlarged, as though animated? or shriuelcd, like that (presumably) of a dying person?-But no one had imagincd the eye. Frenzied, accusing, hating, evil, the eye remained, and suffnsed the world with a taint of de:ith. Hairs on end, shivers up the spine-we had begun innocently enough with these, childishly; but now we were deeply in the affair, we were committed to seeking out the eye as smely as it was condemned to glare pitilessly back at us. W e were involved with it, and fright lurked in the marrow. Until onc afternoon, when MI. Laufer entered the scene. He was the assistant principal, an energetic, intelligent man who, I believe, rcally was what is called a !horn teacher. He was burdened with all sorts of major administrative duties, for it is still a joke in Trilhams Inlet that the principal himself was scarcely ever cold sober. Still, Mr. Laufer .somehow found time to come into o m classroom, like a merry Socrates, and cause us inadvertently to learn from one another. He knew everyones talents

Evergreen R e v i e w
by heart: hence, Joan Kuntz would amaze us by her sudden analyses of his little arithmetic tricks, and Anthony Ahearn would b e importuned to draw astonishingly lifelike tigers on the blackboard. He would shout his questions and wait impatiently for the answers-Well? Well? How ahout you?-and whenever he got the right answer hastily shrieked back at him by some bright boy or girl, Irc would almost explode with pleased excitement. John Bornholdt! Yes? Yes what? , sir. FVhat do you want to Ies, PIE? A paleontologist! Paleontologist whut? A paleontologist, sir. Ah yes. Now tell 11s what a paleontologist does. Sir, a paleontologist stndies fossils. Fossils! Fossils, is it? Now what do you suppose fossils are? Bones. sir. Bones! Yes, sir. You dont say! What kind of hunes? A n d so on. When h e left us, we would be breathless with exhilaration and infomation. But Mr. Laufer had another side, which we never saw in our classrniim. He was a disciplinarian so formidable that he could make even the most insolent of the bad big boys cower and clamor for mercy. And he, in return, w a s their special target: hardly a day went hy without a tack in his tire, or a broken bottle beneath his wheel. No matter how far from school he parked his antomobilc, it WIIS somehow always found and molested. Going by his offi,ce, wc would lrenr the sinners pleading -the giants of fourteen and fifteen who had languished, as long as any one could remember, in fiE-No, no, please, MI. Laufer, don call my fadder in, please! You don know
I

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his hack and teetered forward. It is being torn down, and no one in this school is ever to go near that place again . , , I dont ever want to hear of any boy or girl hanging around that lot again, at any time, even after school hours, and, hissing hushedly and appallingly, slapping his palms for emphasis, he told about trouble and shame, shame and trouble, and again and again he threatened us with vague dishonor if ever we ventured near that snot. All those who have zone withi; a yard of that shack raise their hands! A few arms were timidly elevated. Is that all? he sneered, and half the auditorium hecame a forest of reluctant sleeves. Now-is anyone in this room ever going there again? No one moved. Good!-You may return to your classes, and suddenly the assembly was over. But MI. Laufer bad told us nothing. H e had not even mentioned the eye, and surely it was the eye which had caused the shame and the trouble. What trouhle, what shame? At dismissaltime that day the shack was gone, with not a splinter left for a relic. Even the floor boards had been torn up, and from afar we could see only a square of dark empty weedless soil. And the eye? W e never knew. I still do not know, although a sensible explanation has since occurred to me. Suppose there were a broken bottle in there, or a bit of glass, o r even a piece of mirror? In that case it would be the reflection of my own eye I would see, and that would account for its dreadful expression. As for the principals

my Sadder, hes gonna get the hose and tear my skin off, I swearl Their elaborate entreaties, their loud yowls and incongruous deepthroated weepings, their implorings, supplications, demands, cackles, threats, and then again the noise of their deafening sobs-all this drifted menacingly around the bends of the hallways, so that almost every day some faraway pupil in the midst of a recitation would jump violently at a sudden thump! thwack!-the sound of Mr. Laufers vardstick being administered to a Aprits rump or head. He was as imnatient with the cruel and the spitefilly stupid as he was charming toward the virtuous and the intelligent. It was this second Mr. Laufer, in the mood of thump and thwack, who late one afternoon called a special assembly of the whole school. H e mounted the platform with the rapid walk of a short man, swooped to the middle of the stage and stood motionless, waiting impassively for the rustles and coughs and shnfflings to dwindle; now and again the ceiling lights flashed like semaphors over the grim surface of his rimless spectacles. H e had never appeared less genial. Not even the teachers, tensely pulling at the ears of their white handkerchiefs, seemed to know what was coming. At last he began to speak in a voice so subdued and taut that we sensed at once the danger we were in, There is that little building, that little wooden building, he said softly, you all know it, the one in the lot across the street, and it is being tom down- He stopped, clasped his hands behind

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taboo, I suppose the people in the brick house had complained ahout the noise we made milling around in the lot. Perhaps they even owned the lot and the shack, and it was a simple charge of trespass they had put against the school. That would explain the trouble, and the shame, of conrse, would he ours. But all this strikes me, even now, as too rational to he true. It is not faithful to my memory of Mr. Laufers susurrant warnings, and the shudder that echoed them. In childhood the plausible may he transmogrified into the grotesque, and yet I am convinced that we were touched, just that once, by the bare hone of of a mystery not invented by the teachers of P.S. 71. Still, as with everything else, nothing was explained. There was, however, one place where our pervasive fears could not penetrate. This was Miss Margaret OBriens Art Room. It was the precise opposite of everything else in the school. Not a fear-speck, not a murkiness, not a single riddle ever vexed us here among the untidy tables and the unregimented stools and the wide free paintings, hrilliant in the sunlight, which hahitually shed their thumbtacks and came crumpling down over the head of some passer-by. The room rang with a dozen happy noises: the slurp of brushes being washed at the sink; voices disputing, admiring, humming; the perpetual din of our random peregrinations, variously motivated, from group to group. Occasionally the clamor would suhside, warned by a mild cry of Ssh! Sshl sent forth without conviction

Evergreen Rcview
or hope of enforcement by Miss Em OBrien. (She was so called to distinguish her from the other OBrien in the school, Miss Florence, whom we referred to as Miss Eff OBrien.) And Miss Em OBrien herself had none of the stiff untouchability of the other teachers; she spoke to us as though we were her friends. I have no perspective from which to judge her age at that timealready there were ribbons of white in her orange-scarlet hair-hut I remember that we thought her beautiful. Her imperfections only impressed us with her humanity-for instance, her blouse was somehow always smeared with paint, her lenses usually sat askew among her Renoirtinted features, and she went ahout with a vaguely distraught air, as though she could not quite cope, an attitude which we thought oddly charming, even though we often took advantage of it. But even her rare fits of anger-genuine human anger, not the pale-lipped faked impatience of the other teachersfailed to unsettle us in the usual way; instead, we pitied her and reviled ourselves for our heartlessness. In the context of thc rest of the school her qualities, like her classroom, were full of contrasts, all of them pleasant negatives. She had not a trace of personal vanity, like (for instance) the young, blonde, implausible MIS. Cockerill, who wore a black velvet bolero and highheeled patent-leather pumps that flashed and clicked like a tapdancers. She was not arrogant, like the handsome algehraical Mr. Doherty, who concealed his hierarchical ambitions behind a Scott Fitz-

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herty, M i s s Eff OBrien-a cluster of them in the mrridor l i k e an asterisk pointing to some significant notation in a language we were too depraved to fathom-were crowned heads met in continual crisis. We skirted them curiously and without question, and the privileged among us escaped at last into the free principality of Miss Em OBriens Special Art Class. To be eligible for this (it was organized for the seventh and eighth grades) you had also to be eligihle for Special Reading, a progressive class for advanced readers. But Special Reading, although it offered the pleasure of choosing books from the school library at will, had catsin disadvantages. One was the tough and tiny Miss Hammer, who would pull your hair, deep from the roots. if you could not give a roper account of Horatius at the%ridge, or if you forgot who led the Etruscans against him; and another was M i s s Keams, a tall red-haired woman grown stoop-shouldered from tw frequently crossing her arms, who dected a drawl and required that you learn where the commas s t d in her vocabulary lists. At ten years old it was something of a trial to have put aside the Blue Fahy Book for an endless duty that lay in David Copperfield, followed by Oliver Twist, followed by Hard Timap, all of which I was too immature to care for. We had every reason to be grateful, therefore, whcn, at twelve, a chosen number o f us who could draw were excused from the Dickens m o n and allowed to join the Snecial A r t Class. It was suddenlv h s i b l e to be, if not happy, at lea&

gerald mfile and a demeanor which assnr the worker of wery equation that there was but one s u p nor x, and Doherty was its name. i s s Nor did she remotely resemble M Mooney, the rigorous and ratha odd Geography teacher, who bad been to Africa once and had m e hack with a Jungle Jim helmet, which she used to clap on the I d of her latest favorite and send him through an underbrush of cbalkdust after an imaginary lion; she loved the mddy-skinned Irish lads best, and made a hell for anyone who dared contradict her. (Also, she was fond of games o fd e believe, and was something of a wit: Why doesnt the hunter, who likes to shoot elephants. go after the monkeys too? Various guesses. Be cause, Miss Mwney brightly reveals against the anticipatory laughter, how czn he shoot faces just like his own?) M i s s Em OBrien was free of all these offensive hits; her colleagues, consequently, did not universally claim her with that sly camaraderie, expressed in a kind of secret gesture-language not meant for our comprehension,which we pupils often discerned ammg our teachers-Miss Donovan, the physical education teacher, for example, just barely raising a shoulder as a friendly sign to the venerable hut giggling M i s s Cnmmings. The signs and gestures and whkpered laughter went on about us whenever we came into the presence of more than one teacher: it was an overworld of their own they had, far above our understanding but not above our Demention of it: M i s s Donovan, Mb C L i n g s , MI. Do-

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not unhappy. In the long Reading periods, morning and afternoon when all the rest of the school was yawning vver Graded Teats of one sort or another, and Special Readw a s immured in Rlerrk House; the Art Class became a bedlam of mural painters or an elysium for idlers. lliss Em OBrien suffered winningly through Pither phase, her smile Hoatiug like :in ineffectual sun over 3 sea uf tiirbrilent paint. I liked Art Class far itself, of course, and occupied myself with lavish portrayals of Gulliver and the Lilliputians; but I liked it also because of the prestige of having been exempted from Re.irling. It V.YIS an unaccustomed taste of privilege. A foretaste. as it turned out, for soon after my admission into the Art Class, I hnd still another impressive change of fortune. I was called up for the Color Guard. I could hardly believe in my good luck, It seemed as though after long repression and anriety everything blissful was happening a t once, Teachers n.ho hefore had not been aware that I breathed, began now to beam at me and to mutter their astonished congratrrlations. I was equally dimihfonnded. hlernbership in the Color Guard was an honor based on seholnrship, and it seemed incredible that I had qudified. I always had the lowest grades in Arithmetic; hlr. Dnhertys sneers and my own petrifaction in the face of a problem convinced me of the hopelessness of my Case. I could never remember which countries exported hauxite or what was the good of pig iron. I had the wrong generals winning the wrong battles. I was

Ecergreen Reciew
incompetent at cooking and sewing. I player1 hookey in order to miss the \Insic Appreciation test, for I knew I mould fail it ( I could recognize only two pieces, the Overture to William Tell, and that only by its connection with the Lone Ranger, The Swan). Miss and Saint~Saiins Donovan. with her knees looking fleshy below her maroon gym bloomers and above them her face red, the eyes watery and at the same time piercing-Miss Donovans derisive gaze quickly summed me up for a nearsighted weakling who flinched at turning a somersault, and lo! suddenly it was so, and I went slxaLvling on the dirty mat again and again, half-paralyzed with fear of failore and shame. And in spite of these multitudinous deficiencies, they had taken me into the Color Guard! The Color Guard uniform was almost the same as our daily one: white shirts and red knitted ties for the boys, and white middies and red silk ties for the girls, hut instead of the navy blue trousers and pleated skirts that we wore every day, the Color Guard boys had white trousers with a red stripe running down each side, and we girls wore white skirts and socks. The strongest boy carried the flag, propped in a special holster buckled aronnd his waist, an accoutrement which the others coveted; and the rest of us followed in il double line after the colors, the boys preceding the girls, while the F i f e and Drum COTS played, mutedly, Stars a n d Stripes Foreocr. Thus arranged, the Color Guard would march down the middle aisle of the auditorium,

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who hadnt made it. The chief task, indeed the very first performance, of a newly-formed Color Guard was an appearance at the most important ceremony of all -the graduation of the outgoing eighth year, just a grade ahead of us. Preparation and drill began months in advance, for the new recruits must he taught first the technique of a lively pace, and second, the complex winding pattern of the march, the cues for starting nut, halting, marking time, rounding a difficult corner-and all of this must lie rehearspd together with the Fife and Drum, a teacher at the piano who would give the opening chord, and the graduating class itself, which followed in a procession of its own. The director and coordinator of this vast enterprise was \liss Eff OBrien. Shewas also the teacher of .4merican History. Before coming under her tutelage we had presumably absorbed all the hoary events before 1776, at which date history really began. TVc had learned from an amorphous \liss Loonam (unto whose name the obvious punning epithet 1x1s speedily attached) about Egypt and the Jeivs (one gave the xorlcl monotheism. the other Cleopatras Xeedle), and about the Dark Ages, which we pictured as n long, moonless, and nnmztdphorical night. Otlirnvise, wc knew ahout the hoy watching the ships frnm the Grnna pier, and w e knew ahout the admirable prig of the c h r r n tree; xve had, in addition, a \ague notion of the sinfulness of sonrething called the League of Nations, and w e were of course re-

,,

the heralds of every Friday assembly period, keeping step briskly but self-consciously; executing a complicntcd military turn at the foot of the aisle; separating into t5r.o lines; marking time on the stairs on either side of the stage; then mounting it proudly :und stariding at attention, guardians of flag and country, while thc whnlr school, watching enviously, spoke the Pledge. To the Color Guard, that moment of its recitation on the platform w a s anything but secular; poised and dedicated, the d~izeudazzling marchers stood ennrihlcd, devotcd t(i the grandeur of their Ale. Then came the Anthem, and t h m , to reinforce the mood, a hymn: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, call? in the monring our song shall rise to Thee. Nrrt, ~rliile the Color Gu:trcl retired discreetly to their seats of honor in the front row, a lecture, fashioned to inspire or admonish; a song led by Miss Fry, the h i d l i k e soprano tencher of Music and Word Study; a class playlet in which the characters were always named Clean Hands or Toothbrush, the dramatic action of which cnlminated in a Dance of the M o lars; occasionallv n speaker sent down from the Fire Department to warn about shutting up oily rags in closets, or n minstrel from the Police Department, to strum out cnldelyrhymed safety songs on a guitarCross only at the comer, it will I i e l p yo11 live longer. And finally the recessional, with the Color Guard gloriously in the lead, caming u p the aisle like n flock of brides, tossing self-confident haughtv - . smiles of acknowIedgcment. a Iagesse of envy, a t their poor dumb classmates

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lieved that we had been saved from joining it just in the nick of time. Finally, and underlying the whole collectinn, there was the premise and conclusinn of our unshakeable patriotism: the United States had never lost a war; ergo, the United States was the best country in the world. Miss Eff OBrien did nothing to palliate these early jingoistic notions. The upper-grade textbook treated what we had learned of old with greater thoroughness, but the final impression was the same. On the one hand there was the Melting Pot, and on the other hand it WAS perfectly plain that the Chinese couldn't have citizenship-they were Orientals, after all. I cannot say that we noticed these contradictions. Beneath the portrait of George Washington with its strange comer cloud, we would sooner have, blasphemed outright than have doubted the infallibility of American History. Luckily, hliss Eff OBrien was not much interested in debatable social or political questions. hlilitary tactics was, not to resist a Dun. her forte: she was an aggressive campaign plotter, and had the soul of an rindiscovered eeneral. She mappcd the movements of armies and navies inch by inch, and put the force of fond concentration into battles and dates. She would occasionally become angry over the impressment of sailors during the War of 1812 (a thing to be expected of the birrbarous British, whom we had long despised), but her real enthusiasm was for the Battle of New Orleans, in which she drilled us minutely. She gave us, in fact,
I
I

Ecergreen Recietc
a history unencumbered by philosophy; Clio, for her, wore the aspect of hlars. This is not to imply that Xliss Eff OBrien's classes were more unpleasant than most. Her generalship was masked by a civilian demeanor. She would sit familiarly on one of the front desks, her white freckled arms benignly resting one o:i the other, her eyes bordered by innumerably tiny fnlds of smiling skin, extracting from 11s maneuvers arid dates of maneuvers, and who was second in cnmmand under Major So-and-So. Shifting on the desk top, conscinus of her rank, her ankles crnssed, she looked slender and attractive; her gray hair was becomingly bobbed; her frequent unlipsticked smile was even senatorial. Bnt this, indeed, was her civilian behavior-the facade of an officer metamorpliosed into a prilitician. Faced with the smallest irregularity, she would turn general again, expect fleet action on the heels of a whim, condemn indecision, heap scorn on bunglers, flash her emblems, demand adulation, and issue endless orders. She believed in her dignitv-And she was unnredict. . . able in her defense of it. Once, passine . , through - t w o swinging doors in an empty corridor, I happened to glance behind m e and saw, at a great f f OBrien distance away, Miss E rapidly approaching. I hesitated: ought I to hold the door for her? Thinking she was so far off that she had not observed me delaying, and falling suddenly into a panic of shyness over having to walk part of the way with her, I let the door swing shut and walked on. I had, of course, miscalculated. She had

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was to win her b y the excellence of my performance. The creed of the Color Guard, we were told, was to obey orders, hence my ambition was to obey orders better than anyone else. But there were initial obstacles. I had marched before, under X l i s s Donovans eye in the gymnasium, and as usual anticipating no success, I had not been very good a t it, S o r did lliss Eff OBrien expect that I would be good at it; a t the first rehearsal, calling out the names of the new members, she had been startled at my presence. Are you here? She looked helplessly at Joyce, the alternate, a favorite of hers, who must certainly (said her glance) have had a better average than 1. (Could the easy pleasures of Composition, Reading, Word Study, Grammar neutralize the grim hard duty of Arithmetic and the Battle of New Orleans? Was it a mistakc?) From the very beginning my eligibility \vas suspect, and it hecame even more so as, obsessed with perfection, I concentrated on a part to the detriment of the wholestepped fonvard too eagerly at the opening chord, lost count, trotted too quickly or glided too slowly. Under the m3100n velvet draperies of the empty auditorium, we were marched back and forth, up and dowi, :rround and around, week after week. Like mechanical soldiers, we practiced relentlessly, lining up dorniuo-fashion, turning smartly, studying the angle of the palm in ii sahite. Take it again, Miss Eff ORriun would call out wearily, and the chord would sound again, equally w e a v , and the brisk drill would bcgin once more.

seen me. In a few moments she was upon me, grasping my astonished collar and muttering in a voice funous but controlled: You purposely shut that door in my face. You purposely insulted me. Who do you think you are, you little thing?and put down a D-merit in the section-book, that odd register of miscalculations. hliss Eff OBrien was patently suited to he in charge of the Color Guard. She demanded symmetr)., precision, promptness, diligence, obedience. She impressed on us the responsihility and the honor of our position. She made us proud, but also cautious. She gave directions slowly and clearly, and therefore refused to repeat them; if you made a mistake you had only your own stupidity to hlxme. She issued a schedule of rehearsals, to be held always a t the same hour on certain days, and warned that no one should dare absent himself, however pressing other obligations appeared. Nothing was more important than that the Color Guard should perform hrilliantly on graduation day. We owed the Color Guard all our loyalty, energy, mind and conscience. After the incident of the door, I was determined never again to cross Miss Eff OBrien; more than that, I was eager to court her favor, to get everything right the first time, and to he a model marcher, perfect in every detail. There was nothing I dreaded more than Miss Eff OBriens scrupulous stifled rage. Since I could not woo her by making flirtatious little jokes, as some of her favorites did, my only course

158
At last we were perfect. I was no longer tlie sore thumb. Repetition arid familiarity had apparently relnxed me, and I could march as well as anyone. I probably could eveti have tunied a samersault 011 demand. (hliss Donovan, nrriving during a rehe.irsal to review the troops, had scarcely blinked at m e . ) I was hlcnded: I cuunted: I belonged. Enrlv one mornine not lone be~, fore gradnatian, I was standing in a trimgle of sunlight in the Art Class, stirring a cop of red paint, when it little girl with an en-andpass came quietly into the room. I t was one of Spccial Arts less sun hreathed noisy dxys; the i ~ a m aliout u s somnolently, and from next door came the drowsy voices of the Spccial Reading session, reciting vocahuliiry lists in highfrequency buzzings like a conflu? of mosquitoes. I w a s in a state of liappy self-confidence, a n attitude nnwad;rys inme and more usual with me, for the debut of the Color Guard, with its attendant excitements, w:is only a few days away, and it had a holiday effect on us ;ill. Pulling my latest painting from its folder-it w a a representatiirn of faityland-I hecinie invare of the little wr,mcI-girl standing transfixed not tw, fret from me. IVliercs the teacher? she asked, looking perplexedly around the UIIruiy classr(~oni.I f i s Em OBrien, as it l~nppcned, w:is teetering on a table-top, llanrnreiiiig in sonit. loose tacks on the upper part of the x:iIl. The little girl I ~ L Lover I to her ;md whispered a few ~vurds. Class, \liss Sullivan wants a faY

Ecergreen Reaiezc:
vor, said Miss Em OBrien, descending nimbly. Miss Sullivan was the cooking teacher. She needs someone to paint the canisters for her so theyll be nice and fresh for tlie new term.-Whrr wants to go? You can take the whole morning. IIon- about von? she finished. smiling at me. The cookine ruom \\as a c t u a h a completely furnished apartment with an oversized kitchen and an excess of large w-indows through which the light flowed generously. It \KLS i i splendid spot for painting. \liss Sollivan greeted me cordially -So youre my wiist!- and set me to w o r k i t ) n chintz apron at one of the coiinters. hly job was to freshen the p d e and peeling lettering on :in n i d l r s s row of tall round metal cont,iincrs. Carrfnlly and neatly I dipped my thick brush into black pxint and began printing FLOUR, SUGAR, S.ALT, BAKING POWDER, one by one, in hold square ch:trauters, VN the sidrs of the cans. A-ow iind then I stopped briefly to survey them with satisfaction, but iilr tlic most part I worked diligently, hardly aware of the big clock on tlir wall. It was half an Iioiil- hrfiirr lunchtime when 1 was finishing the last of the cans, and my \nist was beginning to feel a little cr,imped, \vhen one of my cl:rssm;rtcs. ii yirl iiiimcd Dorothy Kd,, burst 1iie;ithlessly into the Aitclieii. h I i s Sullivan! hIiss Sullivan! Is Siculr here? Then, glimpsing me Iichind the \\-rt-glrnming canisters, she g.isped, Finally Ive found you! \ \ h a t are yon dning? Xliss OBriens h e m Ionking for you all morning

CYKTHIA OZICK

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I 1 1 ~ to 1 ~ talk to \liss OBrien. Dont you d;ne disturb her. Yoti c m see slies busy. Slie hns enough t o du \~itlir,ut listening to your
Irining. Rut she just sent for me- 1-oure it little late. dont you tliink? Slie took hold of my shoulder. Its no me. Youre through. I st;wril :it her. sensing some terrible complication, but still not comleliending. Tearing out of her wstr~tiriing g a s p (the first time I IIXI ever disobeyed), I at last c.me face-to-face with Miss E5 ORI-ien. - pupils traveled Innisiirg me \vith slow disgist. She sat silently \vatching mr. and coldly waited f u r me to speak. Yori srnt fur rne-\Iiss OBrien? I stamniered. Ye-es, she said, drawing it out t o g i w it :i full fla\ 01 uf snrcasm. S e w r d lroors ago. \Yell? I K ~ I S in tlie cookioc room. Dorothy eilllle an<l- Tes. I know. she sneered. She told nie. 1-oo \yere pniiitirig cans. Riit I didnt know tt:ere was a Chlor G n ; d rehearsd! She giive me her lowliest smile. Iler f x e \ r , ~ s a mockery of sweetIICSS: her eyes lind disappeared behind their creases. You-sneakylittle-linr. I \1-.1s stiiiiiird. I nnderstnod abr d r i t r l ) . m,thing of \\.lint \ m s happwiny t o me. I tl&d crinfosedly to tliini. of sonic expl:inntion, but I <lid not pvrcvii-e \vhxt tllerr \ w s to r x p l i n . \Vlrnt had I done? I had i.iilec1. but lion.? 1 \\-as in the cooking room, I
\\

-she wants you right away! Surprised, I studied Dorothys wide awed doe-eyes. Thats silly! She knows where I nm. She sent me down here. No, no, not hliss Ern OBrien. Miss Ef UBrien. 1 leaped up in agitation atid a y penled mutely to \Iiss Sd1iv.m I dont know n thing about it, said the cooking teacher. But Dorothy Kach w a s tugging at me dutifidly. Youd bettrr Iiurrv. Shes awful mad. Are UOLI in tnlrlble! \ihcre is she? I asked tremulously. In the auditorium. In the airditoriirm! I went hurtling downstairs h v o at a time, sick with anxiety. The little yard just outside the auditorium was c r r n ~ l e dwith double lines. I recognized some of the faccs. The grad~~itirig class! Some phrases of Tlic Jlarch from Aida came drifting out. The Fife and Ilrum! I squeezed m y way to the doors and peerrd through the glass. The Color Guard w a s m.irching 08 backstagr. It \\;is n e x the end of a re1ie;iss;rl. \liss Cimmings w a s posted on the other side of the door. I started tr, run drnxn the aisle toward the st.ige. where bliss EfF 0BI-it.n !\-as sitting on the edge of tlie platform, swinging her legs a r i d cl;ipping, no\v and then c.illing ont, Hold that flag higherits not straiSlit! Eettrr now! Thtits it good riglit-,ingle turn. Joyce! ;\I1 right! -But \liss Cummiirgs \viis blocking the aisle. \\.liere do you tliink youre going?

1fXl
said again, blankly. Dont be brazen with me! she cried, jumping to her feet and growing pale, I never want to look at you again. Youre no longer needed. Joyce has taken your place. But not, I tensely probed, for graduation day? Werent you listening to me? I said I wont have the likes of you in my Color Guard.Youre out. Permanently. She had turned her back on me and was several yards away, talking to the Fife and Drum captain. The graduating class had already been dismissed. The Corps began to pack up its instruments. The Color Guard had just broken ranks. I was completely alone. At that moment not a single teacher was responsible for me. Miss Eff OBrien had disavowed me. I belonged nowhere. Everything w a s meaningless and irrational. Terrified, I wandered stupidly up and down the emptying auditorium. Some of the Color Guard members passed me by without speaking, looking at me coldly and indifferently, as though I were an idiot or an outcast. What happened to you? Marcia Zaretsky whispered curiously. I said miserably, I just got kicked out of the Color Guard. What else do you expect, when you stay away from the lust rehearsal? I didnt stay away. I didnt know there was going to be a rehearsal. Neither did anyone else. Marcia said reprovingly. What do you mean?

Evergreen Reuiew
Miss OBrien called it the last minute, She came into Special Reading to announce it. But Im in Spwial Art. So am I, Marcia haughtily reminded me. She sent a messenger into Special Art. Soddenly I saw it. At the time of the announcement I had been working away in the cooking room1 No one had thought to direct the messenger down there; perhaps no one realized that I had been sent there. No wonder Miss Eff OBrien was livid with fury-so far as she knew, she had gone to all the trouble of rounding up the memhers of the Color Guard for an unscheduled special rehearsal, and I alone had failed to ium up. But I had simply done what I had been told, gone where I had been sent1 I was innocent. Kindled into heightened excitement. I sought out Miss Eff OBrien once more, intending to explain eberything. She would still be angry at the inconvenience, o f wurse, but she would see that it had all been a mistake-an amident-and, hearing the truth, would she not then readily absolve me? But she would not listen. She tightened her mouth into a stiff impatient wisp of straw, and waved me away. Dont come to me with made-up stories. You had your chance. Please, Miss OBrien, please let me tell you what happened. I said get out. But it wasnt my fault-
Get-outl

My hand flew to my mouth in shock. I was near hysteria. She

CYNTHIA OZICK

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hfiss Eff OBrien dismissed her from the Color Guard, the art teacher explained quietly, and told him the story. He wore a question-mark expression. Let me see that note. He unfolded it, shook his head, and went on laconically in a lowered voice that excluded me, I dont know if itll work . . . you know how she is . . . I think this needs a little authority. And, with large clear strokes of his pencil, he wrote across the back of the note: O.K., followed by his bold initials: h1.L. Yon give that to Miss OBrien, he ordered sternly, folding n p the pnper again, Tell her I sent it. Oh, thank you so much! I galloped breathlessly down the five Eights to the auditorium, where I still hoped to find Miss Eff OBrien. And the place was not yet empty. As I hurried np the side aisle I could see her sitting on her former perch at the edge of the stage, swinging her ankles and talking to the teacher who played the piano chords. She pretended not to notice m e until I was standing just below her. hliss OBrien please, Miss E m OBrien gave me this note, and MI. Laufer signed it, and it explains everything! I held out the precious paper. She took it as though it would dirty her fingertips,viewing me malevolently. A note? Really. And she tore the folded paper into tiny pieces and put the pieces hack into my hand and went on making conversation with the teacher at the piano.

had called me a liar and a shirker, but I was neither. I was innocent1 I ran wildly from the auditorium. Where could I go? What could I do? I was tainted. But I had somehow to vindicate myself. Suddenly I thought of Miss Em OBrien. Miss Em OBrieu! Of course! She knew the truth; she would save me. By the time I stumbled into the Art Room on the top floor, I had lost my breath and my face was smeared with tears. After a moments astonished dismay, Miss Em OBrien caught me up in her arms. Oh, my dear! What has happened? I swallowed again and again, coaxing my voice to return. Little by little she drew the story out, her look full of patient compassion, her soft slender arm all the while caressing me into reasonable calm. When I had finished, she said gravely, Well, well try to fix it. Its all right now. Dont cry any more. Well explain the whole thing. She-she wont let me explain, I sobbed once more. Dont wony about it. If she wont listen to you, she will listen to me. Ill write her a note. Ignoring the drawing class that was in session, she quickly sat down at her desk. When she had filled a page with her strong uneven script, she folded it several times and wrote across the outside: To Miss OBrien. At that moment the door opened and MI. Laufer strode into the room. Hah! h e rasped tersely, glaring at my swollen face. Whats the trouble with her?

162
I felt dry and queer, no longer tearful. I kept my place below her, my face at a level with her waist. Its not fair, Miss OBrien. She barely moved her head. You should have read it first. Youre unjust, Miss OBrien. I do not know where the word came from. Up to that moment I had never had a notion either of justice or injustice. It may h e that we were simply products to he turned out; and in that case, if the machinery was brutal, the products were not supposed to be aware o f it. George Orwell is right, up to a point, when, writing of his own school, he observes that the child neither understands nor questions the society in which it lives, and because of its credulity other people can work on it, infecting it with the sense of inferiority and the dread of offending against mysterious, terrible laws. Up to a point only. And that point is the moment of revelation and explosion, when the child snddenly sees through the cheap mystery and the phoney law, and sees that they are sham. This point of realization is more terrifying than a l l the revious years of superstitious sei-hahed and blind subjection. For the child is all at once aware that he is not a savage or a dog, and that for a long time he has been twisted and deceived, and this awareness is the worst sadness in the world. It is a childs first knowledge of the grief on which the planet turns. When Miss Eff OBrien poured into my palm the tom fragments of

Eoergreen Reoiew
what was meant to have been my vindication and my restoration, I understood at once the hopelessness and the uselessness of my case; but at the same time I understood much more than that. I knew that they could never trick me again with their false holiness and their obscene self-adulation. I had broken through the desolation of their Mystery. At that moment I was released from their sham forever. Everything that followed afterward was, of course, anti-climactic I carefully carried home the pieces of the note and placed them among the leaves of a diary I was keeping. My mother offered to go to school that very afternoon and fight it out for me, but I said I wasnt a baby any more and refused to let her interfere. Besides, everything that could be done had been done. It was enough to know that I was a savage no longer. I do not mean that I was able to take the e isode and its consequences phiLophically. I was, after all, barely thirteen. And the consequences were consistently humiliating. My own graduation was still a term away, and for those horrible six months, during every Friday morning assembly period, I was herded among the inferior pupils, the general rabble, as though I were one of them; and I had to see the Color Guard tramp gloriously by i n an aura of splendor and honor; and 1 had to hear the myriad compliments on their marching, their bright uniforms, all their superior qualities; and I had to witness, always holding my peace, their special privileges. All

CYNTHIA OZICK

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turned ont, I barely thought of it for fifteen years, until just the other day, when I began these reminiscences. I f o r d thc babyish diary and the old frayed fragments, and in half a n hour I had pasted them together, like a jigsaw puzzle, with transpirent tape. A few pieces are missing, but the whole is 1:irgely legihle. On the back there are the words, To Miss OBrien. O.K. M. L., and the rest of it wads, Miss OBrieriPlease! It is not Nicoles fault hliss Sullivan sent to me for ii grmd printer to do some work for her. 1 cant stop to find out among a thousand other things whether the pupil is supposed to proceed elsewhere. If it is anyones fault it is mine and that of o w organization which puts so much work on me! Margaret OBricn That is all. It is not very ,nomentous. I suppose if Miss Ell OBrien had rend it, it would not have made much difference to her, principals authorization or nut. At any rate, I do not think it would hnvc moved her to absolve me. I still live in Trilhams Inlet. To this day, whenever I have to pass the red brick building with the white stripe across the top, I know I am in the shadow uf thr i n r capable past. And something inside me begins to shrivel.

this had been mine-and it mas taken away. The fact that I had fallen upon thc concept of justice did not correspondingly teach me a grown-up scale of values, and r did not understand thc triviality of what I lunged after. Hence my expulsion continned to pierce me bitterly, and nothing could ease the smart of that injustice-the more so because it w a s private, and hnng mutely between hliss E f f OBrierr and myself. Everyone else simply supposed that I had been fairly dismissed as a result of my having shirked a rehearsal. In History class she never looked at me or asked me to recite, but only sat on my desk, pnrticularly chose mine to sit on, looming over me as if to indicate precisely who was in command. And she never spoke to me except when it was ahsolntely necessary, a thiirg which W:IS rare enough, and even then she would be as brief and impersonal as possible. Nor did she ever recognize me if I raised my hand to volu~lteer an answer; it pleased her to pretend that I did not exist. This state of affairs relieved me of an obligation to prepare the daily assignment, since I knew I would not be called on in any case: so from a childs view it h;td its advantages. As for the tom note, I had nlwavs whimsicallv intended to niece it together one day, to see what was written there. But as things

164
iCorrtinrrct1 f r o m p . 107) the mechanical breakdowns of his truck, and the shortcomings of native drivers; both Franck and A . . discuss the novel she has begun to read, and the narrator appears to discern in their ambiguous remarks references to a jealous husband, a n aggressive lover, a n unfaithful wife (who even gives elaborate herself to Negroes)-an story whose scene is laid in Africa and whose possible parallels with the present situation will furnish the narrator occasions for painful conjectures.!

Ecergreen Review
These conversations continue on the veranda, a t the cocktail hour and after dinner. A . , , has arranged the porch chairs so that she remains beside Franck, while her husband, placed ahead and to one side of her, cannot see the two of them without turning his head sharply backward (which he does not dare do until the night is too dark to permit him to see anything). Cries uf animals moving about in the darkness reinforce the tense and violent atmosphere of the tropics, heavy with expectancy verify the relationship. A further examination of common points in the novels of Grccnc and RahheGrillrt would show that thc formers works have exertcd a certoin fascination on the Frcnch writcr. Greenes novels, Robhc-Grille1 said to me once, aftm made me want to rewrite them. Already Brirlilon Rock (1938) swms, in rctrospect, very robhe-c.rillctiPn in its plot and scene, which are close to. Rohbe-Crillets LES Comma. Common elements in the two novels include: a weak, hunted character who arrives in a city and follows a more or less predcstincd pattcrn of movemmts; the atmosphere (also reminiscent of Simenon) of a shady bar and its eccentric hahitks; thc ambiguity of a name and a character; a more or less enigmatic or prophetic vcrbal formula, repeated often; a gang leader with an Italian name; a professional man (lawyer in Creencs novel, doctor in Robhe-Grillets) who is a terrified false witness; uncnplained allusions to the violent death of a personage in the past (Molly, Pauline); advertising signs and porters (idiotic to Grcene, for-

This African novel in Jealousy offers numerous similaritirs to The Heart of the Matter ( 1948) of Graham Greene, whose works seem to h a w furnished RohheGrillet with various fictional rlementr. The following points of resemblance may he mentioncd hetween the inncr novel of I c d n s s y (as well as the work an a wliok) and The Heart of the Mnttcr: Thc Post Ofice calendar and the wifcs photograph on the husbands desk (p. 81; B lizard on the wall ( p . 58); the cockroaches on the wall, and the game of squashing them (pp. 66, 74); Scohies struggle agahst jealousy on swing \Yilson kiss his wife ( p . 80); the nialnria attacks, with ntrnhine and quinine (pp. 81, 911; the dishonesty of an employee ( p p . 137, 169); Scahies unexpected entrance ( p . 241); and douhtless other details. Rohhe-Grillet lrirs not sought to hidc the resemblmre between the inner African novel of ledoasy (despite its description of a tornado, its revolt of the natives, ctc., which have no parallel in Greenes novel) and The Heart of the &loner; but until now no critic has taken the trouble to

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BRUCE MORRISSEITE

167
bucket which produces in the narrator (or rather in the reader) the impression that A . . . and Franck are planning some sort of project. The three are drinking on the veranda mixed drinks which A . . . has brought out. Neither she nor the house-boy-is it because she arranged it thus?--has brought the usual ice for the drinks. A , , , s remarks on the lack of ice ~ a u s e the husband to rise from his chair and go to fetch some. He passes through his study, which also serves as his office, and looks out through the julurrsies or slatted blinds to observe A . . . and Franck. They are motionless but appear to he speaking in a low voice. In the pantry, the house boy is filling the ice bucket preparatory to hringing it to the veranda, and gives only a vague explanation of what his instructions were from A . . . concerning the ice. When he returns to the veranda, the hnsbnnd sees (hut only in the first repetition of this scene in his memory) in Francks packet a sheet of bloe writing paper-a letter from Franck tries to A , , , ?-which conceal. The project becomes more evident when Franck, still complainof human nature, an iclon com-

and hidden energy. Implicit brutality, energy, and sexuality are expressed in a major scene which, although never exactly situated chronologically, occurs according to some indications even before the loan of the African novel to A , , . , At dinner, a centipede appears on the wall opposite A . . , , Franck is the one who gets up to squash it, first on the wall and then against the molding near the floor. The erotic meaning hidden in this action manifests itself in certain reactions and gestures on the part of A . . . that show a distinctly sexnnl implication: accelerated hrenthing, hand clenched on her dinncr knife. , . . (Aside from this scene, A . . . never allows the slightest emotion to show, which further emphasizes the importance of the shock felt at this moment.) The spot left by the centipede on the wall opposite A . . . becomes an index point for the beginning of the sexual nttraction between Franck and A , . . , and the scene of the squashing of the myriapod (subjected later to extended developments) becomes inextricably associated with their possible physical relations. It is the episode of the ice mally interesting to Rohbe-Grillct); and even, in Greencs work, an object which functions not only as a tacit correlative (like the gum eraser or the cube of stmc in Lcs Gommes), but also (perhaps) as an instrument of rnurdcr. (This candy stick called Brightan Rock, which when broken always sliows the same letters, is however explicitly identified hy one of Greenes characters as a symbol

pletely alien to Rohbe-Grillot.) Finally, Brigliton Rock contains a newspaper article concerning a sadistic crime, the rnurdcr of the girl Violet, violated and lcft by the sen-slrarc: this might almost seem the actual newspapcr clipping carried by Matlrias in The Voyeur (and pcrliups also that refwred to by Sartre in his novel, NalIseIZ).

168
ing of frequent breakdowns of his truck, states that he plans to drive down to the coastal city to enquire about the purchase of a new vehicle. A . . . proposes immediately to go along; she needs to make, she explains, a number of purchases. Franck explains that Christiam is prevented from going by her poor health and her child; but in any case they will he back after nightfall, if they leave early. Everything appears normal, but whenever the narrator revisualizes this scene of the project, it appears to him in a more ambiguous light, as his suspicions grow. So A . . . departs with Franck, at six o'clock in the morning, in Franck's blue sedan. There follows the long day which the husband spends alone in the empty house. Here, in parts VI and VII of the novel, the protagonist's paroxysm of jealousy reaches its culmination. Haunted by visions of his wife, the narrator prowls through the rooms of the house. In his study the photograph of A . . . becomes confused with postures of A , . . in her veranda chair, sitting next to Franck. Scenes return mixed, altered, emphasized differently: the letter that A . , . writes in her room, the episode of the ice, the conversation about the African novel, the plans for the trip to the coast, the squashing of the centipede. The unbearable erotic significance nf this last scene appears again in the husband's efforts to remove the trace of thc animal from the wall, by means of an eraser and a razor blade, an operation which blends immediately with an action

Eoergreen Reoiew
of A . . . in her room, when she appeared to he erasing something from a letter. A . , .'s room is suhjected to a systematic search, including the hurean drawers and the drawer of the writing table. The subiect of the picture on the Post Office calendar above the writing table produces in the hushand proto-criminal confusions (to which he reverts again) in which are mingled the motif of a ship tied at the dock ( a theme related to his fear that A . . . will leave him) and images of someone drowned (that curious object floating in the water). Later, in returning to this fantasy, the hushand will see in the picture a man wearing a tropical helmet like Franck's. In spite of the presence of elements ostensibly posterior to the day the narrator spends alone in the house, we can situate during this time, at least from the psychological viewpoint, the scene which constitutes the apotheosis of the crushing of the centipede. Night has fallen and A . . . has still not returned. Sitting on the veranda, the husband listens to the trucks passing in the distance, and watches the oval movements of the insects whirling in their orbits around a hissing gasoline lamp. The turmoil of his thoughts, objectively reinforced by that of the whirling insects, revolves around images of A . , . and Franck: on , t h e veranda, at the dinner table. Actions begin to become mechanized; one feels that the husband is hastening his memory to reach some kind of climax: and once again it is the crushing of the

BRUCE MORRISSETIF

169

cmtipede. But this time, the hus- all she has bought? . . .). The husband sees Franck crush the ani- band, despite his hasty movements, mal against the wall of a hotel is unable to see whether A , . , ha5 room, then return to A . . . who kissed Franck before turning towaits for him in a bed behind a wards the house; the posture of shabby mosquito net, her hand the couple allows such a sopposiclenched on the white sheet. tion. Before setting out for his Rhythmic phrases of an equivocal plantation ( h e seems hurried) nature then carry the nerrators Franck adds to the explanations image into the half-erotic, half- furnished by A . . . a few details murderous vision of a car wreck in concerning the reasons for their which A . . . and Franck are en- absence: car trouble forced them gulfed by crackling flames, in a to spend the night in town at a noise similar to the crackling sound hotel. Franck appears ill a t ease produced by the centipede, or to with A . . . , who seems tn tease that made by the hair brush as him. Fmnck alludes ambiguously A . . . strokes her long black to his being a poor mechanic tresses. This imaginary scene of the ( w a s there a sexual disappointlovers in flagrant@ delicto, followed ment on the part of A . . . ?). by their imaginary death in flames, Henceforth, Fmncks behavior constitutes the psychological apo- changes; he is always in a hurry gee of the novel. to return home; his dinner visits What does the hnsband do later, becnme rarer. that night, in his solitude, after The novel moves towards a these anguishing visions? Does he mood of appeasement, contributed spend the night in A . . . s bed, to by partial repetitions and variaupon which he pictures her in tions of scenes which are pcrhaps erotic posture? Does h e engage in (in the real sequence of actinns) auto-erotic practices? The text, prior to the trip: A . . . s return with verbal ambiguities suggestive fwm a visit to Christiane, driven of unspoken irnplicntions, allows home by Franck; more or less us tn suppose what we will. motionless postures of A . . . in The following miming, A . . . her bedroom and elsewherc, etc. has still not returned. The husband The plot or story is, so to speak, breakfasts on the veranda. A na- over. The husbnnds crisis, with tive from Francks plantation (who its visions of scxuality, its images had come Once before, perhaps of fear and revenge, has passed. sent by Christinne to spy on The rise and fall of the protagoFrancks actions) arrives: his mis- nists recollections begin t o dimintress is upset at Fmncks failure ish in an attenuated rhythm of to return home. At lunch, the nar- contradictory variations, bhirred rator sees in the dining room win- outlines, and confiisinns. The niirdowpane the distorted reflection rators uncertainty now affects of Francks car pulling into the each return to a former scene, and courtyard. A . . . gets out, holding even makes a contradictory hodgein her band a tiny package (is that podge of his conception of the

170
African novel (that hateful inshument of infidelity), which he destroys mentally in a paranoiac passage. But at least, the reader feels, the husband consoles himself with the fact that his wife is still there. The fantasies of her escape and flight have not turned into reality. Perhaps there is even no real danger from Franck. The Qopic night may now engulf the house and the characters.

Ecergreen Reciew

side of real time. Hence the chrooology of the novel has quite new dimensions. Linear time is distorted so that it may pass into this new continuum, only to emerge, altered, developed, or even diminished, at unforeseen moments, in a process in which each element continues to remain alive, to evolve, to modify the whole. An examination of these procedures will show how Rohbe-Grillet gives artistic coherence to scenes which seem to he floating in a loose, chaotic fashion in new zones of literature. It may When does the narrator see or be stated at the outset that the ion envision these scenes? It is impos- principles of order and associa t sible, and contrary to the intentions which prevail can derive only from of the author of Jealousy, to es- an implicit psychology, expressed tablish a time table. Following the in objective correlatives.2 strictest logic, one would be forced to think (since there are, almost 2 A declaration by Robbe-Grillet from the beginning of the novel, in the Nouoelles Lindroires of January 22, 1959 prompts me to frequent allusions and intercalaadd a further observation mncerntions concerned with later ing what might be termed the atevents) that the whole narrative tempt to reconstruct the chrontakes place in the memory of the ology of Jealousy made in this narrator after the end of the study. The novelist states that To plot, when the husband, already in try to reconstitute . . . the ossession of all the elements of chronolam of lealousy is impos[is experience, tries to see things sible, impossible because I inin such a way as to decide the tended it thus. Now I certainly truth or untruth of his wifes unhave no desire to 6nd in Rohbefaithfulness, But this conception Gritlets work something which is not there, and I think I have suffifails to explain the essential feelciently emphasized the a-temporal ing of immediacy which prevails quality of the sequences of scenes in most of the scenes. Ohviously in the navel. But it is none the what is involved is not an exact less true that the author of Jealchronology (even mental), but the ous~ has followed, in writing his restructuration of inner or psychowork (and in his own words) logical time. The narrator lives a rigorously premeditated plan, and re-lives in a time system that and that in this plan there is a goes in hvo directions. Elements general chmnological movement very similar to the one that I preof memory and of real time (or sent here. There are also in the of the present) are fused within novel (and I point them out) him in a time system that is out-

...

BRUCE 1\IOIIIIISSElTE

In cre:iting the ps~chr~lr~gical tensions whirh hind tngrthrr t h e elements of t h r novel. the nothnr constructs corresponding chronological tmsions. These arr not only thc repetitiuns a n d v.triations of the prinripal SCPIICS ( t h e incident of the ice. t h r centiptde. r t c . ) hut also : I number of sm:illrr vari;itimx in external time v h i c h form s , p ports or correlatives f o r t h e psvchologicnl vnri:itions. or rvrn CIXtrnsts to them. T h ~ s reiterations . of almost identical scenes are rniriglcd with olirervntions on the n i m her of bannrrn phiits th:it h x e been cut in a certiiin trapwoid:il plot (if grnund sitriated rqqmsite the house. Thr fint time this tl-.ipemid nppe:irs, "crver:iI plants have already I ~ r ncut there"; t h r srcond refrrence cnnciirs; and all seems to progress nol-m;illy ( a though intervening scenes h i v e varied I-:idically in their time sechrondolricnl irnposscs or dc:& ends: for u n m p l r , th? malor sccne o f thr killing of thc crntipetle (tr.in\fonncil into an erotic p a r o ~ y w 1 )scmns to occur in tlic n.irmtois vision uhilc h i s wifv is abscnt, a n d yct this s w i w alrc.irly ~ o n t a i n sd m w n t s o f thr ~ . ~ p l m ~ t tion uf her nl,scncr f t r n i s l i r ~ lh y A . . . upon lirr rcturn i the IiotrI, thc mosquito netting. rtc \. In this scnsc, it i< quit<. tnw th;it one cnnnnt construct n 1inc.u c l ~ r ~ m ~ l ocy for the novrl (in rnntrart w i t h certain work5 of Hiirley or Graham Grrrne, for e w m p l e , d i m thwe are only rearranpemrnts of time without furionrl. On the other h a n d , it c w m s to me impossible to i d r r s t n n d Irwlorrsy complrtely, or to explain t h r stnicture of the novel, without bearing

172
the bridge over the stream that flows through the valley, in sight of the house, constitute equivocal and contradictory time markers, Against the background formed by the more or less linear progression of these manoeuvers, occur scenes from different stages of time; and yet the last appearance of the workmen shows them again on the bridge ready to begin their task. To reinforce the psychochronological tension thus produced, a fixed theme (with respect to the bridge) appears here and there: a native is crouched upon it, watchin;: the water as if searching for something (in the same posture as the man on the calendar in A . . .s room). This vaguely disturbing theme of a possible drowning doubtless represents a projection of an unexpressed desire of the narrator. The indices or markers in this system of time variations form also, in their interlocking designs, a mobile chronological network. Examples are the way in which the author uses references to the place A . . . has reached in her reading of the African novel, to the presence or absence of the spot left by the centipede on the wall, etc. Only such temporal markers permit in many cases a distinction in the order of adjacent scenes: Franck taking his hasty leave after the return from the trip with A . . . sets down a glass in which there is left no trace of ice; hut a few lines further we read that At the hottom of the glass that he sets down is the last unmelted fragment of a small piece of ice, rounded on one side, . . The latter sentence re-

Evergreen Review
turns the scene violently to a former incident, although in the same paragraph a different index, the arrangement of the logs for the bridge, seems to progress rapidly towards the future with respect to the immediately preceding scene. Terms such as then, now, .since, . still, at that moment, and especially the term hut, strewn among the parachhronisms of the narrative in an absolutely nonlinear manner, give tn the supposedly normal rhythms of the sentences countermovements of a very complex periodicitv. If one adds to this the effect of the imaginary scenes (retrospective or fntnre), one emphasizes again the qnasiimpossibility of a complete clarification of the thoughts, perceptions, actions and emotions of the narrator, which are often metnmorphosed into a state of psychic visions. In an attempt to explain the apparent incoherence of strncture in Icalous~/several critics have pointed out n parallel between the drscription in the novel of a native chant and the commsition of thr narrative itself. The reader will recall the passage describing this song of the second chauffenr:s . , . it is difficult to determine if the song is interrupted for some fortuitous reason-in relation, for instance. to thc monrinl work the singer is performing at the same time-or whether the
tune has come to its natural con-

clusion.
a This and all subsequent quotations are from Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet (trans. Richard Howard), Grove Press, N.Y., 1959.

BRUCE MORRISSETTE

173
or to attempt to surpass other novelists (such as Huxley, Joyce, Faulkner, etc.) in conmcting chronological confusion, would be a serious mistake. Most of the corrections that must be made in what serious critics have written about Robbe-Grillets work have to do with two basic errors. One is the mistaken idea that the author seeks to create (according to the formula attrihuted to the native song in lealous~y) disjointed literary structures without causality. The other is that Robbe-Crillet wishes to &humanize the novel. W e have just seen the danger presented by confusing the deliberate use of an appeoronce of acausality in the creation of literary effects (here the depiction of the mental state of a jealous husband), and true acausality, even admitting that the latter can really exist. A similar critique may be made of the attrihntion to Robhe-Grillet of a novelistic theory of dehumauization. Robbe-Clillet has himself often categorically denied the t w widespread idea that he wishes to depersonalize the novel. Apart from any question of psychologv, the large role of the visual in his art (which some critics cite to argue his basic coldness) is envisaged by the author as a means of placing in the center of a narrative a hrrman eye which, far from excluding man from the universe, in reality gives him the principl place, that of the observer (see Cinimo et Roman, issue 38-38 of t h e Reuue des Lettres Modmes, 1958, p. 130). Still stronger is the

Similarly, when it begins again, it is just BS sudden, as abrupt, starting on notes which hardly seem to constitute a beginning, or a reprise. At other places, however, something seenu about to end; everything indicates this: a gradual cadence, mnqdllity regained, the feeling that nothing remains to be said; but after the note which should be the last comes another one, without the least break in mntinuity . . . then another. and others following, and the hearer supposes himself transported into the heart of the poem . . . when at that point everything stops without warning. [pp. 8887.1 Such a parallel, however, runs the risk of falsifying the unity of the novel, and constitutes in reality a mistaken conception of the hue role of the chant or song. This fluid song is only ambiguous because we do not know its rules. Likewise, the sequence of scenes in the narrators mind is only superficially equivocal; even if the narrator himself appears not to understand the necessity which joins together the scenes which he envisions, he obeys none the less, in conjuring them up. inexplicit but well-defined psychological rules. One might even say that on the surface, things happen a s if there prevailed in the narrative an incoherence similar to that presumed to prevail in the native song, But to conclude from this that the novel presents a disjointed, random sequence of scenes, or a series of unmotivated actions, or a willfully embroiled chronology designed only to confuse the reader

Ecergreen Reciew
rejection of the accusation of dehumanization in the article Old Values and the Aleto Aocel, in which Robbe-Grillet (without naming the novel) speaks of the technique of Jealousy: How can they [the critics] , . ,
accuse a novel of t u r n i n g against

A Zen Novel
The story of a Zen master, his brother, a woman, a dog, snails, and the in. vincible questions . . . steeped i n a haunting, ghostlike atmosphere reminiscent of Rashomon and Ugersu.

or away from man when it fallows from page t page each of his steps, describing only what he does, what he sees, or what he imagines? [Esergreen Reuirrw, No. 9, p. 100.1

fly D A V I D STACTOS

The confusion which allows this misunderstanding concerning Robbe-Grillets alleged dehumanization to persist rests primarily on an erroneous conception of his ideas on the nentralify of objects in the universe, and also on the attraction felt by some modern thinkers towards the very idea of acausality itself. These misconceptions are shown clearly in critical disciw sions of the possible role of symboLr in Robbe-Grillet. Now the idea of symbol-an idea so contaminated in our time that in appropriating to itself too many meanings it has lost all meaningis, indeed, a kind of bdte noire for Robbe-Grillet. What has troubled the critics is that the author, having denounced all symbolism, has used (in their opinion) a highly de\,eloped personal symbolism (figures of eight in The Voyeur, the centipede in Jealousy, etc.). The contradiction disappears if we carefully examine the authors literary processes, in the light of his theoretical statements. First, after rejecting completely any inherent meaning of objects (as well as all ideas involving the mystical sym-

BHUCE MOIIIIISSETTE

1Z

fliience of the so-called .imcl-ican behaviorist novel on the arrtipsychological writings of Szirtre a n d C:imiis is recognized. Tlrcre is little point in retracinr s w h influences, or in pointini out the . the cyc o f . , . ,,inn comrr develupment of mired forms, in to r a t nn things with n 1i;inI imistcncc: he srrs thrm, Init re- which objectivity and interior monologiies are comhincd Ivith friscs to makc thcm part of himself, rdosrs to m t r r into any miiltiple viavpoints and clironoconniving or donbtfril rvliition- lvgical rc;irmngernmts. IVith tlie ship wit11 tlwm . . . He may infliicnce of K;ifka added, certain . . . lake t l l C i l l a SI,,>,IOri jr modem n n v t . 1 ~p r r c n t :nn ndnltcrItis tinssion, for thc linc of sight ated mdlnnge wliich cxcrts n strong that lie dircvts at the world. . . . attraction on renders and critics [Eticrgrwn Zim:ictc, So. 9, pp, who have developed a tastr for a 100-101; itiilics m i x . ] mare or less irrational n m d . placed It is therefore in an olijective COT- under the sign of a psrnrlometarelation hetwrm rmotions and ob- physics of completr acauwlity. Acjects, ns seen by Rnhhe-Crillrts rording to the dcvotees of ;w.msnlch:iracters, or in the use of ohjccts itv (who would like pcrhnps to as snpportts for frrlings, that onc :ippropri:ite an author likr Robhemust srrk the secrrt of the re- Crillrt. whosr work might apprar fnsal of ps~chologyattrihutecl to to fit their thmries). thr :rllc& the anthor, which is in rrnlity only me:iningfrilncss of tlie wrdd is Iiut a refusal of psycholo~icnlnt,ol!yyi.y. n fayade which contrmpor:lry To crentr, not ;tnnlyzp, the psycliril- thought has fragmrnterl into pirccs ogy of his rlmrnctrrs: snch is the whose only rc1:itionsliips are mrre essential ga:d of Rchhc-CXIlets s~.l-icitics, uirmotivntcd nrart. The irony is that the author of mngcments, or simple umti<uitics. such n novel :IS Icnlorrsr,. c:tpnhle Thr classic simplicity of l h v i d of producing in the r r : ~ l r r tiripre- Iliimes :inti-c:iits:ility (which \vas cedentetl direct effrcts of h i m a n at once: ahrolotcly Irrgirnl and comemotion, shonlrl hr acciisetl of cnld- plctely unbelirv:il,le~ d i s a p p r s in ness, of excessive attention to <le- a n ~ w inidern complrxitv. \Iany scriptive dPtai1, mainly hecmm hc echnps o f these contempor:;ry icleas has refosrd to prarticr the rowcn- may lie foiind i n crrtain &.frnders tional style of psyclidogicnl analy- of Rohlx-Grillct. Yet the rrlationsis rxpected i n the current n o v d . ships hctwrcn objects and rhnracLiterary anti-psychology is not tcrs. in this aiithor. belong ns little an exclrisively present-day de\,cl- to tlie reiilm of meaninglrss jiintaopment, and the reaction against position :is tlicy do to that of conthe tradition of Stendhd, H:ilzac cnrdlant symhalism ( o r rven tu the and Proust (or their Anglo-Saxon so-c.illcd unintcrpl-ct:ihl~ symholcounterparts) i s far from having ism of nn Aurrbach). K o h h ~ - G r i l run its course. In France, the in- lets objects, althoiigli cleansed of

bolism of hidden correspondences) , Kohbe-Grillet reconstitutes an emotiond or psychological w e of the ohjcct, which he describes quite clearlv:

..

176
all mystical relationship to the human soul, and although placed in a neutral universe, become, in his own terms, the supports of his characters passions. Objective corrclativcs, one may say, tahicli the fictional characters must hare in order to live: an existential necessity. Optico-nudio-serrsorio-rerbnl structures which surronnd the characters and which receive, as they penetrate into the visual field or the psychic interiority of a character (though remaining descriptively objectal), the psychic d i s charge engendered by the life (or the situation) of the character. Rohbe-Crillets art is then neither an art of incoherence nor an art of dehumanization. His objects are neither without human meaning nor arranged in a series of synchronous juxtapositions in a literary universe without causuliv.
* a *

Ecevgreeii Reciew
character as he enters or exits. This system arose frum a nced nf continuity in dramatic action, and representrd n classical predilection far coherence as chal-acteristic uf the srventeenth century 11s the t x t e for disjointc~l acansality (;it Ic;ist for some) is of the t\vcntietli. fsychologists \viIl snme day prrlinps explain (they have so manv tliiiigs yet to explain!) the psychic Imscs of artistic unity, for it t;ikes all forms, including t h a t of so-cnlled unmotivated arrangements. In lealousti, there is first of L i l l a general (and olwioiis) liaison liet\veen scenes throiigh the nailiitors cielz. Our n\r:ileness of this is almost instmt.inern~s. :ind hc,lps relatively little in understanding the structure of the novel. \\hat must be sought are the implicit motives or reasons for thcsc shifts of the husbands view. The reader hecomes ~ i w x e of the 1:itcnt psychological force hrhincl these shifts when the visual field is abroptly changed. The best example is the often repeated turning nsidc of the gltince pruvokcd in the Iiiisl~nnd raises her cycs towards him, an action which inv:iriahly cnuses a sridden turning of the viewpoint: The black crirls of hvr hxir shift with a s u ~ p l c mowiwnt :and hmsh her shouldcrs as slte turns her head.
The heavy hand-rail of tlic

Under careful study, all the scenes of Jealousy are found to obey, in their sequence, ver). precise rules of liaison or linking. In the dramatic art of the French seventeenth century, critics like the abbk DAuhignac discovered an elaborate system of liaison de sdnes, followed more or less consciously by Corneille. Rncine and other classical plnywrights: scenes linked through the CietL- of one character (who, for example, when leaving the stage sees another arriving, or vice versa), through the common presence of an actor in successive scenes, through noises overheard by characters entering or leaving the scene, even through the intentions of one or another

balustrade has almost no paint left on top. The gray of tlic w o r d shows through . . . etc. [p. 2.1 Such a shift is soon felt to be habitual by the reader, who thus shares directly the husbands inability to look A . . . in the eyes,

Y Y

- ..

BRUCE hlOlIIIISSETTE

17:

when, watching her in her room, lie now, moreover, and besides sees her start tu glance nut towards almnst a l ~ r a y s produce temporal the ver:ind;i, the garden, or tlie displacements, hut also phrases hridgr, nr notices that she has such as ~ n n thc left, ncnrby, in mixed n p to I w k out tlirougli the that direction, and otlirr spatial slits i n the \enetian blinds nf a rcferrnccs s i d i as .it tlie smic windnw. distance, \nit ii) 3 pcrpendicihr But tliis till-ning x i d e of tlre direction s r d tlir i e , ~ l w out nf i i gliince, cmisrd I,? a movrrnriit of given cisrrnl m,te to plonpc him A . . . s liead, soinctimes opens up i n t o a differrnt tivic. Thc-se ternis in the contimiity of tlie text a large :urd plil-nscs :ire the w r l i a l eqtiivahole in time, otrrcl:iterl c l i r o ~ : ~lerits of the inner distiirlr:uicrs prologically tn the exwt time of vnkrd i n tlic l u ~ s l ~ mlix d psychoA . . , s action, :md i n which logical movrmrnts and cliangvs. It events OCCIII with tlie rapidity of a is interesting for tlir stid? of the drenm, of a mr~ni~iry. i n of imagi- techniilrir of the novt.1 thxt almost riaticin itself. In the elample all the tr.insitionr I>etwer,n SCPIICT quuted, A . . . Iras just entered Iier occur a t tlie beginning nf n pw,iroom. She his tiirnrd trnrards the graph. The ~-,iie csceptinns p s s door to close it, tlirn tmwrds the almost utinoticerl except nri the narrator. Immcdiiitely tlie latter most inintiti, I-cadirig. and r r p w looks clse\vhrre, and, for scver:d s r n t mil\. very brief :Jtr,ri>ations pages of narrative, s o ~ v e y s the gew hetwren tightly lirtked elmients. \\lint arc the principles thzt p w era1 orientatinn nf t l w horise in its surroundings. (The incideiital hrnc- ern tlicse movements in time, tliese tion of this ~ixssagens expnsitiun cyclic returns h i t serin nvwn is obvions ; i d nee& no comment.) into the present ( e w n whrn they But when he again looks tow;irds anticipate tlle futrtre), tlrese apA . . . he sees his wife still with pnrrntly fortuitous liaisons of vimv her back against the bedroom d m r and shifts i n the field of vision? (thus at a mrimciit tliiit corild unly Space changes become indistil,. be a second or two latrr than tlie guishalile from time clianqcs: both original instant, already old text- must 1,e expl:iind togrthcr as a ually, when he glaiiced away), and unified prncms. Yet time rlnmin,ites, the continuity of the former ninve- and it is the constant (and vioment resumes when A , . . takes lent) nscil1;itiun in normal time several steps forwnrd into the roum that most puzzles readrrs of Jealorrsg. To understand Iron- different towards Iier bureau. It is often between scenes nppar- events and different times are ently linked by the view or sight of linked in the rternal present of the the narrator that we find interven- narrator, we most penetmtr into ing verbal terms (of which several his character. All tlie tempmil dishave already been mentioned) placements occur as n function of which almost imnerceotabh mask his nersonalitv. L l i , in a more fundanon-linenr transitions in time or menial way even than the immespace. Not only do the terms diate shifts in his glance, or in his

Eaergreen Reoiew

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CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN

By GEORGE MOORE Cap. 20. $1.25

ph>-sicnl movements on the veranda, in the corridor of the house, behind the blinds in his study, in his wifes room, etc. Yet it is less a matter of uncovering n solution to the narrators personality that will explain the novel. than to undergo ones self the literary experience of the text in snch a way as to share this personnlity directly, to understand (oon-verbally) and accept this mans visions and actions as if they were (for the duration of the work) our own. It is likdy that human diversity will ahvays prevent certain readers from SIICcumhing to the functioning of a novel like Jeoloiisy. Corrupted by their reading of analytical novels, some readers will always insist that the novelist explain to them (in the explicit terms made fashionable by the psychologv of the day) his characters thoughts and actions; these readers will no doubt refuse to experience the jealous husbands emotion. They will always demand verhnl clarifications and commentaries. For them, Jealousy will he a novel that functions weakly, or not at all. One proof of this may be found in the absurdity of the criticisms that have been formulated against the narrator-husband of Jealoirsy. Critics have categorically denied his verisimilitude. Many h a w pmtested against the minuteness of his description of the banana trees and his connting of them (is it not psychologically plausible, hou-ever, that this hyperattentive man should apply to his plantation the same exaggerated attention and scrutiny that he practices in other re-

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\\;hen A . . . rrtrrns f r o m ;lie trill with Fmnck, slie "enquires wh:it eveilts may I u v e occiirl-ed :at the p1:iiitation; thc nar,;itr,rs w p l y is given in the f o r m of iridircct A s course: "Besides, thrre is iiotltit,y new. Then the hiish~tnil h i m s c l t asks one or mme quustirrns:
Shr her\clf, q iw \tio n id
h i
,I<

spects?). The narrator has hrcn called a monster rather than a human charnctcr. Hobhe-Crillet has been rehiiked for not letting tiis protagonist act, for 1-estrnining l t i x l from ~ ~ ~ ~ t i C i l ~ ~ ii ~ i t ihis i i g o nn story. It has h e i ~ i claimed that the narrator does not e r r u appear i n the noiel, that h r never speaks, and that, moreover, if he did speak his \ r o d s would resemble closely the chaotic verhi:igc of the protean monster that Smnitel Beckrtt depicts in The l:rinn,nohle. But i t is most inexact to state that this jealniis n:irl-ator never reveals himsclf. The whole novrl is his self-revelatian One inn? even argue that the hiishand sprxks, but without citing his own words (is this not the impwssion one frequently has of his own words, when one recalls a conversation?), He speaks several times, and there is every reason to suppose that h i s speech is perfectly conventional, without the slightest r e s e m l h x e to Beckctts verhal chaos. Here is the narrator speaking to his wife, at the dinner table:
To be still more certain, it is enough to ask hrr if she doesnt think the cook has I I I R ~ C the soop too salty.
Oh nn, she answers, yon hsve t n eat salt 50 as not to
sweat. [p.

to

news, limit? l w r r , m , w k ~t o fmir or fir? p i w v of idonn;~.

tion . . . . [p. 63.1

12.1

During the iiicident of the ice bucket, the narrator directs a question to the house-boy; we read:
T o a v n g w question as to when he received this ordcr, he answers: Now, which furnishrs no satisfactory indication. [P. 31.1

Certainly thr Inishand i s reticent, not only w i t h respcct t o h i s own w i r d s , hut nlso :is fRr :IS his . inaction cmiccrninq his i c i i l o u s srispicioiis is c o n c e r k ~ . litit f a r flrim Ixing a mrmstcl- l d d (111 a Irash, he is only in dl prdxihility obeying a fund~inir~itnl timidity based no dotilit on n psychic inpoteiic? io his srxu:rl : i t t i t t i c k ton.ards A . . . , nccompnnied by frar that h i s wifc will Irave h i m Timid. it? :and impotence, frnr of aggrcssiveness like that of Frnnrk (who would perhaps bc cnpalile of ovrrcoming R certain cddnms in A which i n itself might p x t l y explain the h u s h n n d i difficulti<.s), overmeticulous attentiiin directrd at the world, eonstant fcnr of ahandonnient by A . . . (expressrd i n v x i nus fantasies of f u g u e ) : the hiisband appears, thtis described, as an almost classic type from mnnuals of psycho-scxd disturbances, a human being of almost too familiar verisimilitude. Using then an operating principle (fonod in a sort of psychoanalysis of the narrator) to follow the liaison of scenes in Jeolousy, we can take up again the prohlem of the novels structure. Although

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the sense of sight dominates in (the author has often commented on the priority of the visual in the novelistic universe he favors), manv liaisons may be identified as effected by means of soiinds, which engender relationships, correlations and metamorphoscs. Examples are the noise of the gasoline lamp during A . , . 's absence. the noises of trucks on the highway behind the house (expectation, fear of Fmnck, etc.), and the important complex of sounds including the crackling of the comb or brush in A , . . 's long hair which is found again in the noise made hy the buccal nppend:igrs of the centipede and the crackling of the flames engulfing Fmnck's car imagined by the m r rntor at the climnx of his crisis. A re\.ealing exaniplr nf transitions effected by means of a sound is the following: The narrator has returned to the moment-hefore A , . . 's departure for the coast with Franck-when his wife is still engaged in reading the African novel (whereas the preceding scene was one that followed her return from the trip). The passage develops thus: . , , she looks for the place where her reading was intermpted by Franck'n arrival, somewhere in the &rt part of the story. But having found the page again, she lays the open hook face down on her knees and remains where she is without doing anything, leaning back in the leather chair. From the other side of the house comes the sound of a heavy truck heading down the highway toward the bottom of

Ecergreen Reciew
the valley, the plain, and the port-where the white ship is moored alongside the picr. The veranda is m r p t y , the

Jealousy

house too. . . . It is not the so1ind of the tnick that can hc hmvd. lint that of a sedan cominz dnwn the dirt road from the highway, toward the hocrse. In the "pen lcft leaf of the first dining-room window, in the middle of the central pane of gl.iss, the reflected irnnjic of thc blue car has just stoppvd in thc middle of thc cotirty;trd. A . . , and Frnrrck gvt n u t of it togetlipr . . . , [pp. 138-13%1

At the beginning nf the plssaze. A . . . 's posture r d e c t s a certain combination of independrnce and impatience tineed with hocnr!/iame that is chnracteristic of many of the scenes before [and perhaps even of after) the planning of the trip with Franck. Is A , . . dreaming of escape? The sniind of a truck accenhiates this fear of A . . . 's flight, \vhich the narrator sees in terms of a possihle flight towards the port (where the truck is headed), then on the ship nnchored there [an allusion to the picture on the calendar in her room). From this idra of flight the husband passes to the time of the actual absence of his wife, during the trip (the whole house is empty). Then the dominating noise that binds the scenes together leads to the scene of the return in Franck's sedan, a scene to w,hich the narrator constantly reverts in an effort to search out elements that might change or confirm his suspicions. This fluid progression in time

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hirns her head t o w i d the \vindow; the husband shifts his glance to follow the movements nf the workmen on the log liridge (that mohile time marker). Ire looks aptin at A . . . as she w i t r s . Shr riser. m o ~ e s toward the wiiidom, again causing the narrator to look :in-n? toward the distance, past the bridge this time at the tr:ipezoidd pl:inting sector whose niirnher of cut trees. as mentioned earlier, varies i n siich a way as to set free from linrar chronoloev the time of anv siiecific moment.'Shortcning h i s glance, the husband notes that the niitive workers are looking towards the house: lie too " d a r ~ " look hack tow:rrd A . . . 's window, and sees her holding up before her the IettPr that she has heen writing. At this point there OCCIIIS i n the text the first anti-cIir~inologic:II transition of part V thxt might nppmr xrlitrary or disconcerting: srdldrnly Fraiick is sitting in his chair on the ver:ind.i, and A . . . has giinc to get the drinks. Before us spin, is the q'isode of the missing ice, atid the mrr;ttar's sclt-imposed ermrirl to bring some. But this time, the sccne takes place in a rapid r4stinr6, exrrpt for the appearance in Frwicki pricket (on the narrator's return) of a letter written on the tcll-tale pnle blue paper. It is this new detail that caoses the progression into the psychological prescnt a scene which has already been "lived." Obviously the hiisband now finds an explanation, by reviving a scene in his memory, for a stage in the relatirms between A . . . and Franck, and discovers in this new version clearer clues to A . . . ' s be-

could scarcely be more human, if not logical. Ciintrary to the opinion of certain critics, Kohhe-Grillet is not attempting in any way, in such passages as this, to confuse or mix up time; one might even argue that he is attempting to clarify time, in the sense that he seeks to extract from its continuum all possible emotional relationships. To return inwardly to the smallest details uf n vital experience, to replace them in ;t11 possible contexts, to scrutinize them from dl viewpoints, to make them come alive again in various ways, to enlarge imaginatively & reduce them to schrmitic outlines and dry r6sumi.s: all these procedures in the narrator's mind are but functions nf h i s situation as a victim of jealonsy. Everything in this so often misunderstood liirok is entirely plansible. The art with which Robhe-Crib let has linked the scenes of JealotisI/ reaches its height of subtle development in part \', which is a section of reprises and reinforcement of themes prepnratory to the great s absence and the scenes of A . . . ' husband's climax of jealousy. Part V begins with the native song of the second driver (who may himself be suspected of a sexual association with A . . .) which, as pointed out. constitutes a kind of r h m & or epitome of the struchlre of the novel and which schematizes the forms uf future returns and anticipations. There fallows a scene which finds A . . , in her room, writing a letter (the beginning, as it were, of the whole story); she seems pensive, hesitating over the few lines she has written. She

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trayal. The husband asks himself indirect questions, which constitute a type of thinking about this scene which originally (in part 11) unfolded without such mental action: why had the boy not brought the ice (Could she then have told him not to bring it? It would have been the first time, otherwise, that she had failed to make herself understood to him. . . .). The entire reprise of the scene forms the answer that the husband constructs to the question that he asks upon seeing (still in his memory only) A . . in the act of writing a letter: when could she have transmitted this letter to Franck? From the depths of this scene which takes place in the narrators memory, A . . . looks again toward him. Quickly he turns his eyes toward the log bridge; now, the arrangement of the workers has changed. (All the narrators visions in this part are accompanied externally by maneuvers at the bridge.) Again it is the workers looking toward the house which draws the husbands glance in that direction, but now it is to witness the scene of Francks abrupt departure after his return from the trip with A . . . Setting down a glass without ice (that associative element), he leaves, muttering an excuse for being such a poor, mechanic (the erotic meaning of the word will be developed later by the narrator). But, immediately, we read that in the bottom of the glass Franck has just set down there remains a small iece of ice of a certain form. We ave returned once more to the other scene, to the episode of the ice,

Euergreen Reoiew
from which dates (in the hushands mind) the understanding between A . . . and Franck. A psychological force then begins to distort the husbands vision, to twist and dislocate his reconstruction of scenes between A , . . and Franck. He repasses these episodes on the inner screen of his mind, whose images constitute the text that we read. Suddenlv Franck and A , , , , in their veranda chairs, have exchanged positions; other elements, such as the logs to be used in the new bridge, begin to change position. Transformations occur. By association perhaps with mechanic, former actions rehirn mechanized: the house-boy walks mechanically; Francks gestures (now he is seated at the table) become exaggerated, with rhythmic distortions. All these rapid reprises lead us inexorably toward a new version of the killing of the centipede. The boys steps become more and more jerky, he leaves the dining-room moving his arms and legs in unison, like some crude mechanism. Although the scene of the crushing of the centipede now contains (as it does each time) new elements, it is still the letter that dominates the narrators recall. Franck attempts (wim a mechanical es ture) to push it back into his s k i pocket; it protrudes stubbornly; it is now definitively (after other foldings) folded into eighths. It even becomes covered with a fine, close writing. The husbands torment produces a veritable stretto of chronological transitions. From Francks pocket, seen at night in the dining-room

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Thus it is apparent that, in general, it is always the tacit psychological tensions of the narrator which form the basic principle of the transitions between the scenes of the novel. At the level of w i t ing technique, we can distinguish transitions attributable to simple association (for example, A . . . s dress brings to the narrators mind an earlier conversation on this subject), to very advanced and complex relationships: liaisons that are more or less reversible in time, ostensibly based on sight, sounds. or movements of the narrator, often accompanied by ambiguous adverbial phrases, etc. To these one could add associations of phrases (the take a part, hreak a heart ambiguities; everything has to start somewhere, a poor mechanic, etc.) , formal resemblances of objects or patterns (the herringhone design of the corridor floor and the ripples on the river surface, etc.), and objects or places hound up with certain scenes (the dining-room window which constantly brings hack the scene of A , , . s return in Francks car, etc. ) . Often, the technical execution of these liaisons involves a paragraph which is shared by two adjacent scenes. For example, at one point Franck and A . . . are speaking of their plans for the trip. Then they discuss the African novel, speculating variously as to its possible ddnouernent. The sentence They sip their drinks (a most irritating manner of drinking, one feels, to a husband who sees therein an excessive or conniving slowness) is

at the time of the crushing of the insect, the narrators glance follows the shirt sleeve, moves to the crock situated behind Franck, falls upon the extinguished lamps, and thus emer es into broad daylight, for now t e scene is a luncheon, and Franck is talking about his car. The car itself is brought into the window of the dining-room by the conversation; hut when the narrator looks at it, Franck is at the wheel, and A . . . is getting out of the vehicle. Now two scenes of return are mixed, associated with Francks sedan: the return from the trip with Franck, when A . . . gets out holding a small package, and the return from a visit to see Christiane (or could it be to see Franck?) ,when A . . . alights alone from the car. There follows a whirling seuence of images and recalls of t e young wife. A . . . listening to the native song, looking at her own image (is she bored, im atient?) in the mirror, combing l e r hair, plunging into her long tresses her tapering fingers (the erotic associations with A . . . S narrow fingers occur frequently, especially in a visionary passage depicting A . . . in an ambiguous posture on her bed), A . . . writing the letterthe letter which, from one end to the other of part V, forms the thread of Ariadne of all the hushands recalls, until the final disappearance of A . . . into the zone of her bedroom wherein she can no longer he seen from the outside (another image of the obsession with the possible escape of his wife which lies near the center of the husbands jealous complex).

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repeated in refrain-like fashion. The passage then continues: They sip their drinks. In the three glasses, the ice cubes have now altogether disappeared. Franck inspects the gold liquid remaining in the bottom of his glass. He turns it to one side, then the other, amusing himself by detaching the little bubbles clinging to the sides. Still, he says, it started out well. He turns toward A . . . for her support: We left on schedule and drove along without any trouble. It wasnt even ten oclock when we reached town. [pp. 54-55,]

Evergreen Reoiew
formed. The ambiguity of the text is spread throu h two or three mixed paragrapk. Here are some of the stages: The slender traces of hits of legs or antennae come off right away, with the first strokes of the eraser. The larger part of the body . becomes increasingly vague toward the tip of the curve, soon disappears mmpletely. But the head and first joints require a more extensive rubbing. . . The hard eraser passing back and forth over the same p i n t does not have much effect now. A complementary operation seems in order: to scratch the surface very lightly, with the comer of a razor blade. . . . A new rubbing with the eraser now finishes off the work quite easily. The stain has disappeared altogether. There now remains only a vaguely outlined paler area, without any apparent depression of the surface, which might pass for an insignificant defect in the finish, at worst. The paper is much thinner nevertheless; it has become more translucid, uneven, a little downy. The same razor blade, bent between two fingers to raise the center of its cutting edge, also serves to shave off the fld the eraser has made. The back o f a fingernail finally smoothes down the last roughness. In broad daylight, a closer ins m i o n of the pale blue sheet reveals that two short pen strokes have resisted everyihing, doubtless made too heavily. Ipp. 88-

..

The fiat of these two paragraphs could belong as well to the scene of the projected trip (or to that of the conversation concerning the African novel) as to the scene, quite posterior, of the return after the trip with Franck. Through this paragraph the narrator passes directlv from one Doint of time to the other. Still more strikine is the metamorphosis of time aEd place which occurs when the husband sets out to erase from the wall, during A S absence, the spot left by the centipede. First using an eraser, then a razor blade, then the eraser again, the narrator manages to remove all traces of the fragments of legs and antennae remaining from the Scutigera. In the midst of this action, the situation of the erasure changes completely, and it is upon the blue letter paper which the workhusband had observed A ing over formerly, doubtless performing some sort of erasure, that the new erasing operation is per-

...

...

89.1

And the passage mntinues in t h i s fluid fashion: the eraser causes a transition to the narrators desk

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the bridge, the state of the trapezoidal sector of banana trees, the position of the shadow of the veranda column on the flagstone floor. . . . The narrator is pimessed by the need to Cxamine everything many times, to him. change, and modify each important scene. \\e observed above. in following the metamorphoses of the letter written by A . . . and rhe scenes linked to it ( i n part V), how an object associated with the husbands jealousy can develop or evolve through a scries of reprises. One could make a similar stndy of other elements: the African novel. the Post Office calendar, etc. But the centipede is by far the dominant theme. First. as a spot, the mark left on the \vnll by the crushed insect fits into the complicatcd design of other spots in the novel: Rorschach spnts, so to speak. in which the hushand seems to discover, or into which he projects. supports for his feelings. There is the oil stain in the courtyard (left by a car. perhaps Francks), the dark red stain below A . . . Is bedmom window (could it be blood?), the paint spots on the baluster (which A , , , wishes to have repainted), the stain on the table cloth ( a t Fmncks place), and even the mobile spot caused by the retinal image of A . . . (whom the narrator has observed too long in the brilliant light of the gasoline lamp), which is seen everywhere against the house and the black sky. The spot is always a stain that needs to b e removed or cleansed. since it represents for the husband the hateful stain of infidelity (hence

where the photograph of A . . . leads to a further vision of the young woman combing her hair, then to the scene wherein she performs, at her bedroom table, movements that the narrator intcrprets as the mending of a stocking, polishing of her nails, drawing with a pencil, or-more prohalily-rasing from a letter snme badly chosen ward. The husband appears to find in her motions an erotic meaning, and we read of convnlsions. ending in a last spasm, much lower. Everything takes on for the narrator a significance traceable either to emticism o r to jealonsy. lealortsy prohalily contains more repetitions than any other work in the history of the novel. HobheGrillet has organized these repetitions of scenes and elements of scenes, ho\\-ever, so skillfully that they never lose force, but always gain. For the scenes evolve, are transmuted, are developed (or foreshortened) constantly, fullowing the inner rhythms of the narrators emotions. Without these repetitions, the novel could scarcely exist, since it i s largely in planned repetition (with variants) that the work finds its tempo and its form. Some of these repetitions are of apparently innocent or trivial scenes: A . . . sitting in the veranda chair with her novel (hut is she not already dreaming of future infidelity?); A . . . brushing her hair (hut what an erotic fetish her hair represents!); A . . . walking about in her room (but what a sacred place this room gradually becomes!), etc. Imperceptibly varied repetitions in the background: the arrangement of the new logs for

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the scenes of erasure analyzed earlier, the absorption of the oil stain in a defect of the diningroom window, e t c ) . Just as the narrator is incapable of suppressing his thoughts of A , . .s betrayal, he is unable to get rid, definitively, of the other spots. Above all, he never succeeds in escaping from the spot left by the centipede, or in ceasing to place the scene of the quashing of this insect at the center of his complex, where it persists as the very image of the possible sexual relations between his wife and Franck. The sequence of scenes related to the centipede follows a progressive order which illustrates convincingly the principle of psychological chronology in the development of an episode which has no fixed locus in true time. The spot, at its first appearance is:

Ecergreen Recieu:
ginning of the transfer, the metamorphosis of the spot into n correlative of the hushands distnrhance. Beneath the ohiectnl precision of the style, words fall of psychic niinnces take on meaning: doubt, origin, vaguer portions, the question mark that indicates the general shape of the spot. But all these are as yet only subtle preparatory touches. Only when the spot is estahlished and described do we reach the first version of the scene of the crushing of the centipede. The first time, this action takes place during the scene at dinner table when Franck and A . . . propose (also for the first time) to make a trip to the coast together. Nothing proves, of course, that the hvo scenes are achinlly contemporaneous in real time; one would suppose, rather, that the squashing of the insect occurs before the planning of the trip. In any case. the mention of the projected trip leads instantly to the first narration of the killing of the centipede: a rather calm, objective version, but which contains the elrments of future development. We note especially, in A . . . s behavior, certain erotic signs: her half-open mouth trembling. her quickened breathing, her tapering fingers clenching the handle of her knife, her glance fixed upon the question mark outlined on the wall. . . . Yet the centipede is described as one of average size, and nothing. or almost nothing, in the conduct of Franck (who, after looking intently a t A . . . , rises to go and squash the animal) permits the supposition that he is discharging

. , . a blackish spot [that] marks the place where a centipede was squashed last week, at the beginning of the month, perhaps the month before, or later. [p.
14.1

From the outset the time of the spot is fluid, floating. An almost unnoticed mention follows shortly: the light paint of the dining-room wall still hears the mark of the crushed centipede (only the word still betrays the narrators concern). Next, the spot is oriented with respect to A . . . s sent at the table, In the following paragraph, the first detailed description of the spot appears, but the time has already shifted, for it i s now daylight, and the table is not set. With this description we sense the be-

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The scene returns nest to the mechnnirerl rccnlls nlrexly re. ferred to: a brief r h m 6 of o n e paragraph (as far RS thr rmshing of the insect goes), followcd 1))- n development of the irnase of A . . . s hand, rlenclied this time on the white cloth. which is fiirr o w d by deep fdds. leodin: to Fmnvks place, where another stain stretches toward Frmrks hand, which m o w s ton.:~rd his shirt-pockct, where it tries to p ~ 1 1 down inside the Irttrr \r.hich 01,scsses the nnrr.itrx in this scctirm of the n:mntive (part V ) .

in this way some sexual n g ~ r c s siaeness, iinlcss it is the fact thnt he, nod not the h d m d (does the latter not snffer from an inferiority complex typical of the jenlous man?) plays the male rAle of the killer of the drentlfnl insect which frightens (is that all?) the young wife. T h r link hr,twecn the centipede and the possililc relationship hetween Frnnck and A . . . is tishterred dnring the first \wsion of the scene of A . . . s return. Explaining snnie of tlie events that occirred in town,

Since A . . . S rrmnrks at tlic lieginning of this citation arc innrle ns she Innchcs lone with 1rt.r hnshand, it is evident IIO\V violent the distorting force is th:it plringr the narrator into the past wlicn his wife mentions thr hotel and its
0

This time, \vlwn Fmnck crushes the creature with his napkin, A . . . S hand clenches the white tnhle cloth, and n (preparatory) phrase returns to sit dawn appears in the text.

Ten icronds latvr, it is notliirix m o n ~ thm a rcddich pulp in whirh arc rninclrd the dchrir of unrrcojiniral,le syctian*. nut on t h t , hnrr wall. on the contrary, the imnpc of tlie

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squashed Scutigera is perfectly d e a r . . . . [pp. 8687.1 It is after this removal of Franck from the action of the scene that the husband undertakes the erasure of the spot mentioned earlier. His effort leads only to a persistent vision of A . . . in the act of w i t ing the suspected letter. The relation between the stain on the table cloth in front of Franck and the spot left by the centipede returns mixed with verbal elements of doubt (perhaps, almost, not easy to fix with certainty, etc.). A link between the centipede and the land crab served at the dinner eaten by the husband alone. during A . . . k absence with Franck, is established, extending to the sounds emitted by the buccal appendages of the two animals, the crackling sound that will later be identified with the noise produced by the comb or brush passinl! through A . . . s long hair. . , . The evolution of the incident of the centipede reaches its apogee in the great scene which constitutes the center of part VII (as well as the center of the novel itself). Alone in the house, waiting for A . . . to return, the jealous protagonist goes through all the stages of a classical case of psychiatry, including hallucination, obsession, and the transfer upon reality of a feverish imagination. The discharge or projection of his illrepressed jealousy is accomplished through an external hallucinatory vision which contains as well as expresses his inferiority complex, his fear of aggressiveness, and his pathological certainty that his wife is deceiving him with a lover who, unlike himself, knows how to act

Etjergreen Retiiew
with the male brutality no doubt secretly coveted by the narrator. After several phrases of indirect discourse in which the hrishnnd says that A . . . ought to have been hack long ago, after p r o d ing through the empty house. waiting on the veranda by the light of the gasoline lamp (surrounded by the whirling insects that form a visible support for the turmoil of his feelings), after staring with morbid preoccupation at the cnlendar (projecting onto the man in the picture his hatred of Fmnck. ils well as his desire to do him harm), the narrator enters the dining-room. There, sutldenly again, is the centipede. But no longer the one of average size, scarcely longer than ones finger, that figured in the first version of the scene. On the contrary, now the centipede is

. . . enomiaus: one of the largest to k found in this climate. With its long antennae and its h w e legs spread on each side of its h d y , it COYCTS the area of . i n ordinary dinner plate. [p. 111.1
Again the scene unfolds empty, without human agency. Franck does not appear, yet this impersonal crushing of the insect is expressed in a style so intense that it seems ready to burst, On the fluor, the creature continues to emit the crackling sound that the husband finally relates explicity to the sound of the comb in A , . . s hair, the comb held in the tapering fingers whose movements bring the narrator back to the swaying movement of the antennae of the ccntipede placed once more on the wall, as if refusing to be annihi-

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t h e husband i n IculousIy) timid, inhibitcd, withdrnwn (even perhaps suffering from psychic impotency). he will be satisfied-in spite of the intensity of Iris hatred -\vith a n interior action, a p:miw vision whore true meaiiing or go;d h e may nnt entirely comprehend. It is in this ciinnwtion esp that the critics of Icalortsr, who have rcpl-oachrd Rothc-Grillet for not allwving his p r o t a p n i s t to participutp i n his o\vn s t o w Iiiive totally missed thc siSnificance of the tt'rt. Lc,t 11s see first Iio\v, in trims vwbnllv amligiwus ( \ ~ h i c l i also have tirclr psychologicd f,mrtion, since they rt,prtwnt nnc more effort to :nvid tlir triith that he fears), the hitsh:in(l pictures to himwlf F'r:uwk in physical posscssinn of his wifc:
In h i s h,istc t<n r w i h his j q d . Franck increases Isis s p w d The iOlts fwcc,mc OR v i d v n t . S w e r tltelrss Ire coiitiuws to clrive f;lstcr. [p. 113.1

lated \vithont the male interventiun of Franck. whom the narrator has tried to ohliterate. Here the culminating anguish of the hnsband re:iches its highest pitch iir a "c:it:ithymic" vision. The crrishing of the centipede takes on its fullest force as part of the scene which the Iiosband envisions of Franck and A . . . in flagranre delicfo: Franck, witlimit sa yi ng a word, stands up, W : ~ S his n:rpkin into it h a l l as Ire cnutionsly zippmncl1cs,

and sqtlas1it.s

tllC

rrvn-

twc against t h c wall. Thm, with his foot, hi: s q ~ d ~ v it sag~iinon tlw hrrlmr>nL filx,r. Then hr votncs Ixxk toward thv hcd a n d i n p:wing hmgs
t l w rotr-?l
011

i1r "*<,In/ ruck ,*cur

f h V tros/l/,otc/.

TI,? h a r r d with tll? t:tpcrirrg litircrs has clcnclird into R fist on thc w h i l ? sliwt. 'Ihc fivr

widcsprrxl fingers h a w closrd with such f o r m that they 1,;ir.c. dr;iwn thr cloth with t l w n : the 1;itter shows five cowergwit
(.r(ii,ws.

. . .

Dllt t h v

"I~~W,~'il,~.

ncttiue f a l l s hack dl a r w n d thr I m / , interposing thc ~q'aqucvcil of its i n n m x r n h l c ~ n c s l i v s. . . . [pp. 112-113; italics mine.]

If this vision srrins to rnceed t h e limits of objrctivc correlxtives or exterior cmotion;il supports, it is doubtless because it resenibles closely that psychopathic hysteria which transforms remembered reality into R nightmare of suspicion and rrpressed anxiety, and then projects this nightmare upon the world. From the stage of fear of reality, the jealous individual must pnss t o a stage of aggressiveness. If h e is fundamentally (as is the case with

Thrrr n l s t m r t w,rcls, rontniiiing no imagr. followhg irnmrdintelv npon thr drscl-iptim of tlic h o t d brd. apply rlil-cctli to the Invcrs. But the pllrast~s have nlre.idy hegun their mrtnmorphosis towinl the irnuge of the (lprtriiction of Fmnck and A . . . in a visionary holocniist into which the hnsl,nnd plunges t h e n :
In thr darkness, he has not s c m the holr rriiining halfway a c r u ~ ~ the rond. The c : makes ~ n leap, skids. , , . On this had road the drivrr cannot straighten nut in time. The blue sedan is going to crash into a rawhide tree whose rigid foliage scarcely

190
shivers under the impact, despite its violence. The Car immediately bursts into flames. The whole hrurh is illuminated by the crackling, spreading fire. It is the sound the centipede makes, motionless again On the wall, in the center of the panel. Listening to it more carefully, the sound is more like a breath than a crackling: the brush is now moving down the lwsencd hair. [p. 113.1 After this summit in the development of interior action in the husband, there follow images with a diminishing rhythm. The narrator searches the personal in A . . . s bureau and writing table, in one of the rare actions risked by this timid man obsessed with dread of the possible escape of his wife, to be fenred especially if he should make some overt reproach or take some direct action toward her. It is a fruitless search, since h e finds no proof of A , . . S unfaithfulness. But no matter: for this husband, it is enough that h e should fear infidelity to provide the only basis necessary for jealousy such as his. The text contains a last reference to the spot left by the centipede. Much later, when a mood of appeasement has begun to come over the husband, he recalls it a final time: in a memory of A . . . sitting at the table, with her gaze fixed upon the brownish remains of the crushed centipede, staining the wall opposite her. The spot now rejoins the system of index points like the shadow of the column, the number of banana trees

Evergreen Reuiew
that have been cut, the arrangement of the logs for the bridge. The extraordinary psychological expansion of the episode of the killing of the insect, accomplished by new and powerful technical means, and executed in hitherto unexplored fictional dimensions, has reached its end. Does Jealousy represent a stage of development in the modern novel, a model, a dead-end, or a masterpiece? Any conjecture is possible. \Vhat is important is that Jealousy should lead somewhere, either for its author, in his frrture novels, or for other novelists of today or tomorrow.. What unforeSeen sequels, novelistic metamorphoses, will follow the interlocked s ~ c t u r e sof Jealousy? But this is what a mastelpiece is: an end that is also a beginning,

If yo~1-E interested in writing fiction or articles f o r leading niayazines or book publislrers, Daniel S. Mead, the prominent literary agent, has IJrepared a catalogue o f markets icliich i s a mvst item. Its a complete list of nzagarine and hook picblishem for aspiring authors, with addresses and teleplione numbers. Tells y o u mhere t o send yoicr manasevipt. For Yonr f r e e copy of this valuable reference aid icrite to
DANIEL I . M A D , Dept. E l 915 Broodwoy, N. Y. 10, N. Y.

N e w and imbortant titles

STORIES
by Eliroberh Bowen
Eighteen distinguished short stories from f r y G r i m e d rlir Sirpr. Look A f A l l T b m e Rorer, and Early Srorier. Preface by Miss Bowen. Y-19 Sl.25

SEVEN MEN AND TWO OTHERS

by M a x Berbohni
A superb collection of sophisticated

satires by a master of pollbhed and subtle prose. r-80 S1.10

GIUSEPPE VERDl
HIS LIFE AND WORKS

THEROADTOXANADU
A STUDY IN T H E W A Y S OF THE IMAGINATLON

by Francis Toye
Both a biography and a detailed study of the Verdi operas. Introduction by Herbert Weinstock. r ~ 8 2 51.45

bx John Liiingsron LOWPS

On the literary imagination i n general and the origin5 of Coleridge's poetry in particular. "A masterpiece."
--MARY

KINGS AND DESPERATE MEN

LIFE I N E IG H T E E N T H -C E N T UR Y EN CL A ND

COLUM.

K-81 61.65

THE TRANSPOSED HEADS

A L E G E N D O F INDIA

by Louis Kronenberger
A s x i a l chrOnicle-"piRu~~qUe,rich,

and varied."-JOSEPH WOODK a u r c ~ .

K-83 Sl.25

THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

b y Henry Bomford Porkes A brilliant interpretation of the hiatory and ~i vi l i zat i on of the American
people.
K-84 61.25

by Thomas Man" A novel that is "at once the quintessence and the redrcrio ad absurdurn of all love triangles:' -LIONEL TRILLING. r-86 Sl.10

GOD'S COUNTRY AND MINE

by Jacques Borzun
A declaration of love for the United States. spiced with a few harsh words. r-87 81.25

POEMS
by Wolloce Stevens
Representative work by one of the foremost American pmts of this century. Selected, and with an Introduction, by Samuel French Morse. K . 8 5 'sI.25

WILLIAM BLAKE
THE POLlTlCS OF VISION

by Mark Schorer
A fascinating ioterpretation of Blake aimed at the intelligent reader as w e l l as the specialist. Illurrrarrrl. r-89 51.45 Fur u d n r r i p l i i c , ~ , r r i i l u r lixring d l Vinroge' r i r l e ~ uriie , io

OPERA AS DRAMA
by Joseph Kernian
Composers-Monteverdi, Mozart. Verdi, Warner, Deburry. and Berg, among them-considered as dramatiE1S. K-88 SI.25

VINTAGE BOOKS
501 .Mudiron A W W P .
V e i l , Y w h 22

CONTRl BUTORS
Los Aiigeles in this issue matches his essay on El Paso, which appeared in Ecergrecn Rctiieic 6. His first publication, the story .\lardi Gras, appearcd in Ecergreerr Review .i. ARTHUR WALEY is the distinguishcd scholar of Far Eastern literature, painting, and philosophy. His translation of the ancient Chinese Book of Soiigs will be published b y Grovc Press in February. MARTIN WILLIAMS is co-editor of The lo=; Retiiew.
JOHN RECHYr essay on

Censors Are Wrong

Those who would impose censorship on this country frequently make the claim that the reading of smutty or violent literature t u r n 7 juveniles into delinquents. How much truth is there to this? A committee of Brown University psychologists has examined this bit of social folklore and come rip with a devastating answer. Their report was first published in the Brown Daily Herald and has now been reprinted in the Censorship Bulletin of the American Book Publishers council. People who have made major, scientific studies of delinquency attribute the occurrence of delinquent behavior to five things: 1. Culture conflicts; 2. Defective home environment; 3. Educational deficiencies; 4. Unwholesome use of leisure time (here they mention gambling, drinking, drug addiction and sex misbehavior), and 5 . Psychological defects. Reading materials were not among the factors listed, not even under unwholesome use of leisure lime. There is some evidence that delinquent behavior is actually lessened by bad reading, the Brown psychologists report. Among those who have expressed such a view in the case of adults is Dr. Benjtimin Knrpman, who has concluded that mntrav to popular misconception, people who read salacious literature are less likely to become sexual offenders than those who do not. f u r the reason that such reading often neutralizes aberrant sexual interests that they may have. The Brown psychologists say in conclusion that there is no reliable evidence that rending or other fantasy activities lead to anti-social behavior. There is evidence that such reading or fantasy activity is not an important contributor to delinquent behavior. Shall we then, they ask, allow our freedoms to be interfered with because of the possibility that it may be an influence in some
cases?

This study should interest every American who wants to preserve our traditional and historic liberties.
1 Reprinted from The Minneapolis Star, September 18, 1958.

192

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