tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37071732024-03-14T00:04:45.354-07:00BOOKS IN HEATBooks as a passionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger496125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-19715203337502443972024-02-20T02:38:00.000-08:002024-02-21T02:05:41.944-08:00N. Scott Momaday 1934-2024<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzfeB4-7hfsPj0YerAxL_WFQdvW67CTM4DpZ75PNXexFUNjfjlNU0SXAErbCkJIUifOBx90obkf2TznbgtEr4FNnS8u2G0VKIrRFqL8UTWU-4jrHDXnhNCWPLWstGYGAtCkWqjy3kE6UT5V9dYgmqTbMJWJCfn6FBCKIjGRSdtlZSeRo-ohEJIXA/s3264/newmom01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1831" data-original-width="3264" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzfeB4-7hfsPj0YerAxL_WFQdvW67CTM4DpZ75PNXexFUNjfjlNU0SXAErbCkJIUifOBx90obkf2TznbgtEr4FNnS8u2G0VKIrRFqL8UTWU-4jrHDXnhNCWPLWstGYGAtCkWqjy3kE6UT5V9dYgmqTbMJWJCfn6FBCKIjGRSdtlZSeRo-ohEJIXA/w640-h360/newmom01.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> N. Scott Momaday, poet, novelist, playwright, artist, essayist, scholar and teacher, died in January. He is best known for his first novel, <i>House Made of Dawn</i>, which won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His father was Kiowa, as a child he was given a Kiowa name and identified as Kiowa, although he lived among and studied other American Indian peoples.<p></p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBuHiAKiGKx1cvHE8pQlg3fTzPrDPNblGLDC2c2T9h3fWefYnZV4VHlfpYacqOoH9kcrwGs_9Bc2JhsJMbj1YVstR-uo_JhwXAvm2kntkjlliY6zOuWz0jIzcpyf4QHrHGQEuz96HM7al8Se1rVXWCN3mEIMJk0S3GfCVAuFGHdYLQhsBmKP28xA/s1479/momaday03.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1479" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBuHiAKiGKx1cvHE8pQlg3fTzPrDPNblGLDC2c2T9h3fWefYnZV4VHlfpYacqOoH9kcrwGs_9Bc2JhsJMbj1YVstR-uo_JhwXAvm2kntkjlliY6zOuWz0jIzcpyf4QHrHGQEuz96HM7al8Se1rVXWCN3mEIMJk0S3GfCVAuFGHdYLQhsBmKP28xA/s320/momaday03.jpg" width="260" /></a></i></div><i>House Made of Dawn</i> concerns a mixed blood Indian returning from the multiple traumas of World War II to the pueblo, trying to find his place in the modern and traditional worlds. In telling this journey, Momaday uses both his knowledge of the written literary tradition and the traditional ways and stories of an oral culture. <div><br /></div><div>With this novel, Momaday revealed and defined a central dilemma of contemporary Native people: how to make a life in the often contradictory "two worlds" of modernity and their traditions. This would become the model and inspiration for a slightly younger generation of Native writers who burst on the scene in the late 1970s through the early 1990s. Each in their own way would also employ this dynamic of modern literary approaches and traditional storytelling and beliefs, in part to explore and honor traditional Native cultures and its point of view, particularly towards the natural world. <div><br /></div><div> Leslie Marmon Silko is the most obvious heir: her debut novel <i>Ceremony</i> also follows an Indian soldier, this time a Vietnam vet, coping with the difficulties of returning home and finding himself. Others were direct and indirect beneficiaries of Momaday's example and success, including novelists Louise Erdrich, Linda Hogan, James Welch and Michael Dorris, as well as poets and storytellers Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz, Paula Gunn Allen, and many others.<p>These explorations are multiple: using literary form and traditional content, expanding literary forms to include traditional forms--all sorts of combinations beyond categories to create new stories that honor and expand the old. The past is never left out, it is (as Faulkner articulated) always present. The Native tradition is particularly important for its living attitudes towards the natural world and its relationships to human beings and culture. Those attitudes and beliefs can be adapted and absorbed in our contemporary world--in fact, they must be, if the past and the present and the eternal itself are to have a future.</p><p>Momaday was a champion of the Native oral tradition, and he taught the subject for many years at various universities. But he was also steeped in written literature, particularly American fiction and poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries. His detailed descriptions of the landscape use literature (including modern) in expressing and interpreting what the indigenous senses observe. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioI1OdmAovnlxr2surzMbXl80uA7VOlKR8DvaD60zk4GbsL7Qrp6vMdJsJ4z4n1Dd96GnG2igEZOEfq4fWCVE9DAqVmNGrwQZwomudEhpa7uFeIA33LmsSrcz7ms4h3M46_lNjnWowJZc54gPswWr9uz2ZzRiwlgv8zwss_CLlToTpYhvc01twPQ/s2560/momaday04.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1706" data-original-width="2560" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioI1OdmAovnlxr2surzMbXl80uA7VOlKR8DvaD60zk4GbsL7Qrp6vMdJsJ4z4n1Dd96GnG2igEZOEfq4fWCVE9DAqVmNGrwQZwomudEhpa7uFeIA33LmsSrcz7ms4h3M46_lNjnWowJZc54gPswWr9uz2ZzRiwlgv8zwss_CLlToTpYhvc01twPQ/s320/momaday04.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Momaday believed in the spoken word today as well, and he read several times at the Humboldt State University near me. I've seen the tape of one such reading and attended another one. He had a bearing of great dignity, a precise pronunciation and an uninflected voice of great depth and power.<p></p><p> The reading I attended was in one of the larger venues on campus, with Momaday at a lectern on a stage. He had hardly begun when the power suddenly went out. He paused, calmed the crowd and continued anyway, so that deep, deliberate voice came out of the semi-darkness with no need for amplification, and with dramatic effect. </p><p>Afterwards he signed my copies of <i>The Names, (A Memoir)</i> and <i>The Man Made of Words, </i>a collection of essays, stories and poems. The essays touched upon the work of Jorge Luis Borges and Emily Dickinson (he studied her poems for a year, in manuscript), Teilhard de Chardin and Lewis Thomas, Georgia O'Keefe and Jay Silverheels, as well as his grandmother's stories. He included observations from his travels in Russia and Germany as well as the American West. </p><p>I think my favorite of his books that I've read is his second novel, <i>The Ancient Child</i>. It uses his lifelong fascination with the legends of Billy the Kid to explore planes of myth of the past and the contemporary world. It is at once a traditional novel with contemporary and semi-historical characters, a kind of personal anthology and an exploration of storytelling itself. It has humor, too. Momaday identified with the bear, saying he had bear power and occasionally turned into a bear. But there was some Coyote in him, too.</p></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-92222248087928195312024-01-16T02:11:00.000-08:002024-01-17T04:20:06.381-08:00Return of the Hardy Boys<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-gXhhFgmhmrsdrpAFjj8BRiBrIuXBBgLbIUory-XPyPfOxNBNuYWDaJmsr49yI89xCcgZsn3Imft6c-Zv0K3yyQ3MiHW74Y_TZIKqV0i7XfHQR0Ru8Vsc8yXK2tfLCa7WJsH-zVrMIhAbfnr5OGnEyg4plpRmWcE9n-JlUUyMyX3gKpuXzCHR8Q/s1100/DSC08758.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="1100" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-gXhhFgmhmrsdrpAFjj8BRiBrIuXBBgLbIUory-XPyPfOxNBNuYWDaJmsr49yI89xCcgZsn3Imft6c-Zv0K3yyQ3MiHW74Y_TZIKqV0i7XfHQR0Ru8Vsc8yXK2tfLCa7WJsH-zVrMIhAbfnr5OGnEyg4plpRmWcE9n-JlUUyMyX3gKpuXzCHR8Q/w640-h284/DSC08758.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Since I first <a href="http://booksinheat.blogspot.com/2017/09/library-days-hardy-boys.html">wrote about the original Hardy Boy</a>s mysteries
six years ago (in the <a href="http://booksinheat.blogspot.com/search/label/history%20of%20my%20reading">History of My Reading</a> series), there’s been some
news. <p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Hardy Boys books began in 1927 with three titles, then
three more in 1928 before the series settled down to issuing one title a
year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last year (2023) the copyrights
on these original versions of the first three novels expired.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That means they are in the public domain,
and anyone can publish them, no permissions (or author payments) required.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also means that anyone can alter them or
just publish them badly, with mistakes, changes and eliminations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they are well published online<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=franklin+w+dixon&submit_search=Go%21"> at Project Gutenberg</a>. They are: <i>The Tower Treasure, The House on the Cliff</i> and <i>The
Secret of the Old Mill</i>.</p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The three titles published the next year, in 1928,
presumably entered or will enter the public domain some time in 2024. They are:
<i>The Missing Chums, Hunting for Hidden Gold</i> and <i>The Shore Road Mystery.</i> They are
likely to appear online at some point this year. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> These are the original Hardy Boys novels, as written by
Leslie McFarlane and edited by Edward Stratemeyer. McFarlane wrote 1 through
16, and 22 through 24, while other authors wrote the rest of the original 58,
all under the name of Franklin W. Dixon. </p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIHMIDiGvs-9r5SCAXwcRD-pml1pWFHFmLMCQMou9KzRnywgnmJ5CK94dfdUPLq4ThBD4Qr8JfOEbGGv3V9FNVBH-RCbjoa0vYR7nk-dXA8aIe5QbwRCY6RiZtwV2fz5MWl8odSqnNmjhfL7oEKHPKCwievBrAzpnuJS64afXKlaGyY20B7hEHFw/s392/lot-of-6-hardy-boys-hardcover-books-0af533b6aaa43967b3a07317f3a35956.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="276" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIHMIDiGvs-9r5SCAXwcRD-pml1pWFHFmLMCQMou9KzRnywgnmJ5CK94dfdUPLq4ThBD4Qr8JfOEbGGv3V9FNVBH-RCbjoa0vYR7nk-dXA8aIe5QbwRCY6RiZtwV2fz5MWl8odSqnNmjhfL7oEKHPKCwievBrAzpnuJS64afXKlaGyY20B7hEHFw/s320/lot-of-6-hardy-boys-hardcover-books-0af533b6aaa43967b3a07317f3a35956.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the revisions series</td></tr></tbody></table>To further complicate matters, these originals were revised
and rewritten by other authors in the late 1950s through the 1970s, supposedly
to take out offensive stereotypes and update references and language, but often
the stories were changed, as well as the writing style. Many were shortened. Then the series continued with new stories,
in various formats, right up to today.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Unfortunately the distinction between the originals and
revisions is seldom made. For example, the online site <a href="http://thecreativearchive.weebly.com/mystery-stories1.html">The Creative Archive</a>
purports to publish the first 58 Hardy Boys novels online, but these are the
1950s-60s revisions, not the originals. </p><p class="MsoNormal">At the end of this post, I make some comparisons of the
originals with the more widely available revisions. Four of these appeared in
my post six years ago (in slightly different form), but I’ve added comparisons
of two more: #3 <i>The Secret of the Old Mill</i> and #8 <i>The Mystery of Cabin Island</i>,
which the unofficial Hardy Boys page calls “probably the most popular story
among fans.” </p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> On balance, I continue to greatly prefer the McFarlane
originals. I recently chanced upon an
article written by Gene Weingarten in 1998 entitled “The Ghost of the Hardy
Boys” (included in his collection, <i>The Fiddler in the Subway</i>) that helped clarify my thinking.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Weingarten, a magazine feature writer and purported
humorist, trashes McFarlane’s writing in these books before praising him as a
literary artist trapped by financial circumstances into painfully turning out
trash, namely the Hardy Boys books. This has become a familiar point of view on
McFarlane, perhaps the prevalent one. I think it’s at best overly simplistic
and on balance, deceptive and wrong.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr8o1IrCF9miJ-yFgUOcsYbMxU2N6cItC8JrePmn9QMT7qqw5V7FK9NiOqSSIZReuwA-r0JpQVE-0YEPgwCp_MYThnl-sFEVGCyDQTRgKKMKr1o_7MNnGqtI8nA8t85uHGmMEsymrK5faRNxQDj7NLCEJWzJu-wquj1rOGtX_7TmzyfqzI2C9oRA/s340/mcfarlane-edited1.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="254" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr8o1IrCF9miJ-yFgUOcsYbMxU2N6cItC8JrePmn9QMT7qqw5V7FK9NiOqSSIZReuwA-r0JpQVE-0YEPgwCp_MYThnl-sFEVGCyDQTRgKKMKr1o_7MNnGqtI8nA8t85uHGmMEsymrK5faRNxQDj7NLCEJWzJu-wquj1rOGtX_7TmzyfqzI2C9oRA/s320/mcfarlane-edited1.jpg" width="239" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a young McFarlane</td></tr></tbody></table>It is true that McFarlane (just 25 when his first Hardy Boys books were published) was paid scandalously little to
quickly write these novels, based on detailed outlines by Edward Stratemeyer,
who invented the Hardy Boys, as well as Nancy Drew and Tom Swift. The author
named on the cover, Franklin W. Dixon, did not exist. There would be many authors as the series went on. <p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">But are the resulting novels possibly “the worst books ever
written,” as Weingarten insists? Not hardly. For one thing, Weingarten hadn’t read the
later revisions, which are arguably worse. But even in
themselves, the McFarlane versions do not fully merit his critique, especially in style. He says
it is “overwrought.” Apart from
questions of taste (and Weingarten is very certain his taste is correct), there
is the fact that these books were written for young readers, roughly ages 9
(the age when I started reading them) to 12.
Weingarten provides an example of this overwrought writing: “Frank was electrified with
astonishment.” It’s not a phrase appropriate
for adult literary fiction perhaps, but it’s vivid language for young
readers—many of whom are quite capable of becoming electrified with
astonishment.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> (It’s certainly more creative language that Weingarten uses
to introduce this article: “I started working on it with a chip on my
shoulder. I ended it with a lump in my
throat.” Now that’s bad writing--"overwrought" doesn't cover it.)</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Weingarten mocks the conversations conducted while the boys
are riding their motorcycles, as if anyone could converse over that noise. While
stretching credulity a bit, these are 1920s motorcycles ridden by teenage boys after all, and not the
behemoths of today. In<i> The Tower
Treasure</i>, a specific contrast is drawn between the “putt-putt” of their
motorcycles, and the roar of an automobile.
Certainly there is awkwardness and repetition in the writing, but that more or less
goes with the genre, and can be part of its charm.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="font-family: inherit;">The
elaborate language, not uncommon when these books were written, has a painless educational value for young readers in expanding their vocabularies. As for the overuse of adverbs, it’s worth
noting that Stratemeyer had the final
edit, and at least one of his other book series is well known for
characteristic proliferation of adverbs—so much so that they inspired a
specific type of joke: the “<a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/tom-swifty-word-play-1692472">Tom Swifties.</a>”
He may well have inserted some adverbs into the Hardy Boys books
himself. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi67jRynGfz0sxnYFLWjK5hxMFmgH19vDZOFt7f3PpaIiadq3S2WtAHtqaYA4IfrQMp_kNAwgqGSlLVfrsm40lZ7GjYbsuIh1aCff5mTtppHulsWoQsz8msxHq373a3G9PretHPk09_AYpAM0OYRl6cESbO8yliNDKSjx7L08bb-3svCJOYL4h0jQ/s340/il_340x270.904694346_c0w9.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="340" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi67jRynGfz0sxnYFLWjK5hxMFmgH19vDZOFt7f3PpaIiadq3S2WtAHtqaYA4IfrQMp_kNAwgqGSlLVfrsm40lZ7GjYbsuIh1aCff5mTtppHulsWoQsz8msxHq373a3G9PretHPk09_AYpAM0OYRl6cESbO8yliNDKSjx7L08bb-3svCJOYL4h0jQ/s320/il_340x270.904694346_c0w9.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Even so, the book are decently written, ascending to some fine writing. At the beginning of <i>The House on the Cliff</i>,
set in summer, McFarlane refers to the “torrid warmth” of the city. The cliché is “torrid heat,” but his choice
is more poetic, the double-r sound in “torrid” matching the “rmth” sound in
“warmth.” <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i> The Mystery of Cabin
Island</i> opens with a page describing the winter landscape in clear physical
language and measured sentences that remind me of Hemingway. Nor was I surprised by Weingarten’s
revelation that McFarlane was a devotee of Dickens—I got that from his
books—especially the characters and set pieces that tended to be edited out of
the revisions.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> It is this language, as well as the period details, that
charm many readers today. Although
Weingarten quotes McFarlane’s granddaughter saying he hated these books (and
his children are quoted elsewhere saying similar things), McFarlane is also
directly quoted referring to his Hardys with some pride, saying that instead of
the slapdash style of other boys books, “I opted for quality.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> By and large, the
revisions I've read did not. In addition
to changing plots and characters, with some bewildering story choices and
careless writing, there were changes particular to reflect the J. Edgar Hoover
1950s obsessions with subversion, expressed in altered plots and an end to the
skepticism of authority figures in the originals, especially local police. Says the<a href="https://hardyboys.us/"> Hardy BoysUnofficial Homepage:</a> “The quality of the revised stories is generally so far
below that of the originals<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 9.5pt;"> </span>that it can only be considered an act
of literary vandalism.”</p><p class="MsoNormal">There's no question that some of the writing and vocabulary as well as the action in the originals reflect an earlier time. But that was true when I first read them as a boy in the mid-1950s, and I was charmed anyway. The fact that there weren't roadsters and touring cars anymore, or chums, even added to the appeal: the charm of the exotic. Reading them as an adult, I see them not as exotic but true to their time, in the modesty of the stories, their pace and organic quality, as well as evidences of a bygone era. And so I remain charmed. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Here are my comparisons:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b> <span style="font-size: medium;">The Tower Treasure (#1)</span></b></p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uTXAW4vlnt4/WbTlGv9ndqI/AAAAAAAAYp0/FChPV-fY2YAJyC0dMAQYRM6p9kprPUjAgCLcBGAs/s1600/hb001a.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="251" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uTXAW4vlnt4/WbTlGv9ndqI/AAAAAAAAYp0/FChPV-fY2YAJyC0dMAQYRM6p9kprPUjAgCLcBGAs/s320/hb001a.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>
The original version of this first novel in the series begins with exposition, while the revised starts with an action scene. This appears to be one item of the brief for the revisions--hook the reader with action. This time it works; in others I read the action is absurd by the standards set in the original series--of realism, especially of the Hardy Boys as normal or at least believable boys.<br />
<br />
Another item in the brief was to shorten the books to the same length of 180 pages. So what took two chapters and 17 pages in the original is reduced to one chapter and 8 pages in the revised.<br />
<br />
Some arcane language in the original is a bit disruptive, though funny, cf. "I'm going to ask these chaps if they saw him pass." But the revision goes further than updating words and eliding the story--it unaccountably adds incidents and characters, to no better effect than the originals. Plus it doesn't actually eliminate all ethnic stereotypes--just the ones people were more sensitive to in 1959.<br />
<br />
It isn't long before the losses become obvious. The original has a comic set piece involving a group of farmers; the human comedy is entirely lost in the revision, as is the pretty realistic dialogue in the scene. Similarly a scene involving the small town police chief and his detective is derisively funny. That such scenes reminded me of Dickens is reinforced a few pages later by a reference to a character habitually carrying Dickens' novels (naming three.) The original also throws in a sly Shakespeare reference, a phrase from <i>Hamlet</i>.<br />
<br />
But the loss of a certain literary quality is more telling in a line Fenton Hardy says to his sons on page 76 of the original, when he tells them they can help "by keeping your eyes and ears open, and by using your wits. That's all there is to detective work."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tzYq-VlnLlE/WbTlQnsLFzI/AAAAAAAAYp4/z4vL2_EOgmMgesp8oURLbXrDEJte8IdzgCLcBGAs/s1600/914d9xLbgrL.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1046" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tzYq-VlnLlE/WbTlQnsLFzI/AAAAAAAAYp4/z4vL2_EOgmMgesp8oURLbXrDEJte8IdzgCLcBGAs/s320/914d9xLbgrL.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>
Later when the boys solve the mystery that has puzzled everyone (including their father), they conclude that "The main thing is that we've proved to dad that we know how to keep our eyes and ears open." (209) The symmetry of these lines more than anything else starts off this series of books. They are entirely absent from the revision.
<br />
<br />
The revision has the good sense to keep the subplot of the father of one of the Hardy Boys' school friends who is unjustly accused of a crime (a similar situation will be repeated in a subsequent book), even keeping most of the dialogue. But for every arcane line the revision eliminates ("Brace up, old chap") it seems to lose one of delicate feeling or meaning: "Frank and Joe, their hearts too full for utterance, withdrew softly from the room." (68)<br />
<br />
This being the first novel, it has the first instances of official police incompetence, and Fenton Hardy's disdain for the local police. In the revision this is gone, though the comic futility of the chief and his detective Snuff is replaced by a comic and less convincing Snuff, now an aspiring private detective lost in self-importance, ambition and incompetence.<br />
<br />
The climactic scene in the revision suddenly adds a character to increase threat and action (the 1950s Disney teleplay has its own version of this character though he appears early, and interestingly represents a seemingly friendly but ultimately untrustworthy and violent adult) but it adds little to the scene. The ending of the original is longer and more satisfying.<div><br /><div><span style="font-size: medium;"> #2 <b>The House on the Cliff </b></span><br />
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The original story begins with the Hardy Boys and their pals (or "chums") escaping summer heat with a motorcycle ride,which leads them to a remote abandoned house, reputed to be haunted. They do hear eerie sounds inside (which later turn out to have been staged to scare them away.) As they are leaving, Frank and Joe Hardy discover tools were stolen from their motorcycles. They later witness an attempted murder on a boat and rescue the victim, but he soon disappears. This begins another strand of the mystery.<br />
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The revised version begins with Fenton Hardy letting the boys in on a case in progress. This is another odd trend in the revisions: the boys are less independent.<br />
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The original story involves Fenton Hardy kidnapped by drug smugglers, with the boys putting together the pieces of the puzzle involving the "haunted" house on the cliff and hidden tunnels. They rescue their father, though they are almost immediately captured. There's a lot of action, including fist fights but they are believable. Some believe this is the best written novel in the series.
The revision has some sloppy writing and makes inexplicable changes in scenes but basically follows the same story.
<br /><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">#3 The Secret of the Old Mill</span></b></div><div><span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_kJpnXRJtpTM8EVQjncbx9q3FUmsz9QN5pGK1-RVblGRnOzKFyHBx_Q5XGjrvvvWlG-GyooA5xF17Oetw08tIf32SGdqt3xfNe-Q-yJnXoFL-vucqLaSC9HsJJQ74LK45jvLbj6iopudFILLM3vKPbdN6GVt11nlF4WiabEnwB1CT_ipRUfgr4g/s500/hardy%20mill%20original.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="328" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_kJpnXRJtpTM8EVQjncbx9q3FUmsz9QN5pGK1-RVblGRnOzKFyHBx_Q5XGjrvvvWlG-GyooA5xF17Oetw08tIf32SGdqt3xfNe-Q-yJnXoFL-vucqLaSC9HsJJQ74LK45jvLbj6iopudFILLM3vKPbdN6GVt11nlF4WiabEnwB1CT_ipRUfgr4g/s320/hardy%20mill%20original.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>This is one of the three originals that entered the public domain in 2023. I read it<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/70236/pg70236-images.html"> online</a> at Project Gutenberg. It begins quickly with an incident that defines the mystery: while waiting at the train station for their father to arrive, the Hardy Boys are approached by an affable stranger with a convincing story why he needs to quickly change his five dollar bill, which they do, only to find that it's counterfeit. When their father, detective Fenton Hardy arrives it turns out he is working on a counterfeit case. The boys are embarrassed by being "stung," but eager to help solve the mystery,.</span></div><div><span><br /></span></div><div><span> A gently comic piece follows in which the boys are kidded by their high school friends for falling for the swindle--these glimpses of their regular lives are something the originals do well. The Hardys are grounded in family, community and school-- though today's students might be surprised that their studies include Latin grammar and reading Virgil in the original. Still, the emphasis of the story is on action and solving the mystery.</span></div><div><span><br /></span></div><div><span> After the Hardy's learn of another victim, there is another set piece of a high-spirited outing where the Hardys and their friends learned that an old mill has been revived by new tenants, though they aren't taking grain from local farms to grind. Instead they've kept people away because they say they are working on a new breakfast cereal formula they must keep secret. While there, the Hardys also rescue a boy from drowning, and he becomes important later in the story. In due course they discover that the old mill is the center of the counterfeit operation that covers several states, and where the phony bills are made. There's also action on the water, as the Hardy Boys get their new speedboat, the Sleuth.</span></div><div><span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmb6lhw3rhE27TNBzQeFACf_-P_tdPxgxm_qH9RK80Ydmh7nQ3oIKqZKzE6SKKpdBvAmuzx2rUX9C4krBQWGjv_ul-2frBNusA3tKxR7D62xU-Esu2dtuRVrZKdnqkOh4TKA_WqeNaOT17JoIrTIs7iOOnj4fIEZTnowqBz_AYWeXCvYrlYKntsA/s390/hb003c.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="250" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmb6lhw3rhE27TNBzQeFACf_-P_tdPxgxm_qH9RK80Ydmh7nQ3oIKqZKzE6SKKpdBvAmuzx2rUX9C4krBQWGjv_ul-2frBNusA3tKxR7D62xU-Esu2dtuRVrZKdnqkOh4TKA_WqeNaOT17JoIrTIs7iOOnj4fIEZTnowqBz_AYWeXCvYrlYKntsA/s320/hb003c.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>In the revised version, it is their high school friend Chet who is victimized with a counterfeit $20 bill, discarding the opportunity to show the boys' generosity as well as their youthful naivete, as well as losing their personal motive to crack the mystery. The revised version turns the old mill into the site of an electronics firm, doing something undefined that has to do with guided missiles. Eventually Fenton Hardy is investigating sabotage at the electronics firm, where the counterfeit ring is a sideline by some of the employees who use the old mill itself as an entrance to a secret room where they print the fake money. It's needlessly complicated and less credible, but it's also typical of the revisions in that it tries to make the stakes more dramatic and important, using a Cold War theme. Small town life and small time crimes aren't good enough anymore, though it does reflect that, for example, there are probably fewer farmers around mid-20th century Bayport.</span></div><div><span><br /></span></div><div>The revision includes some scenes from the original, though in different places in the story, often where they seem less organic. The scene when the boys first see their boat is so much better in the original. The new themes in the story and the shuffled and missing scenes suggest why the Unofficial Hardy Boys site calls this version "Drastically Altered" from the original. Yet it isn't the worst of the revisions I've read. At least it is carefully plotted (with the bad guys helpfully explaining everything just before they are caught.) </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>#6 The Shore Road Mystery</b></span><br />
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The HBUHP calls the revision "completely different" but it basically reassembles elements of the original plot in a less coherent way.<br />
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The original is more vivid in its scene-setting, and is pretty good at the effect on the town as a series of car thefts continue without a clue. There a nice school scene that's a kind of interlude. Scenes of the Boys in the caves where the thieves have hidden the cars are exciting, even if their handling of "revolvers" comes out of nowhere.
The revision again starts with a big action scene--the Hardys have more technology now, like police radios on their motorcycles--but the plot seems more contrived.
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In both stories, it's a school friend who is unjustly arrested for the thefts, but the revision adds a buried treasure mystery for some reason. Also the thieves aren't just stealing cars but smuggling in "foreign" arms for "subversives" in the US. Hello, 1950s!<br />
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In the original, the Hardy Boys solve the mystery, and catch the bad guys in the act. But in the revision, they gets their butts saved by Dad, who incidentally has "an iron fist." What's up with that? as the Hardys wouldn't say. Also the revision suggests that the Boys' hometown of Bayport is in New England, which is contradicted by several of the originals. They imply and finally say that Bayport is south of New York City.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;"> #8 The Mystery of Cabin Island</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>In summer (as we’ve seen in previous stories) the Hardy Boys and their chums run motorboats in Barmet Bay as
well as ride motorcycles, go on picnics and engage in other warm weather activities. What do they do in the winter? In this original the answer is: ice-boats. </div><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjas2VGFuNV1tOPx-GWiYQg2Yy_vFqflqUrf-v5esDUX-syCBMeO3km4G7IjrQ0QlThYXRiX5B8B6P1BfY-Sn7az4AMxo3b9EqXkDiBR2iAbDSFJVTSUgES84U4j9y6IZ08_coJ8EXACgUjDzT40oXG-laE8k9QqHVYDEmwSweORPAbpGlQwidStA/s450/iceboat-saturday-evening-post-cover-february-4-1928_u-l-q1jf4z00.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="338" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjas2VGFuNV1tOPx-GWiYQg2Yy_vFqflqUrf-v5esDUX-syCBMeO3km4G7IjrQ0QlThYXRiX5B8B6P1BfY-Sn7az4AMxo3b9EqXkDiBR2iAbDSFJVTSUgES84U4j9y6IZ08_coJ8EXACgUjDzT40oXG-laE8k9QqHVYDEmwSweORPAbpGlQwidStA/s320/iceboat-saturday-evening-post-cover-february-4-1928_u-l-q1jf4z00.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Ice boats in this case are homemade skiffs on skis
propelled by wind in sails to skate across the frozen area of the bay. They can go very fast (the record for
contemporary professional ice boats is well over 100 mph.) These craft were in
fact becoming popular in North America in the 1920s. A Saturday Evening Post Americana cover in early 1928 shows boys
in their homemade ice boat, which may well have inspired this aspect of this
1929 story. (Most ice boats ran on
lakes and rivers, so an ocean bay south of New York might be a stretch.)<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Introduced by some of the best descriptive writing I’ve read
in the series so far, the Hardys and friends take their ice boat to search for a place to go
winter camping, and so they explore the small and solitary Cabin Island, but a
strange man angrily orders them away.
They know the island and its cabin are owned by wealthy Mr. Jefferson,
and so are surprised to find a note from him upon their return home, asking
them to visit. When they do they see
the angry man leaving. From Mr.
Jefferson they learn the angry man is named Hanleigh, and is badgering him to
sell him the island, but he won’t. The elderly Mr. Jefferson is all smiles—he
thanks them for finding his stolen car (in #6 <i>The Shore Road Mystery</i>), rewards them, and agrees to allow them the use of his cabin on the
island for their winter outing. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu6cXUB5Ix8B1Jfintq3Mm52Uz_pqqrsyR9W5MauOm6sY4CKuDVBUYC1k68Y-cOtatqPsQbZqJb8GLRTZxU0AFA07LhvSEsI7c7lDrmHf2SKWi8l9rkAw6D0H3x_qK1J0J2z5g2GAdIuC2VIw-meYcWzP2JTWdIqNvQahz5E3f5lNsCbY_0IJ4zg/s390/hb008a.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="250" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu6cXUB5Ix8B1Jfintq3Mm52Uz_pqqrsyR9W5MauOm6sY4CKuDVBUYC1k68Y-cOtatqPsQbZqJb8GLRTZxU0AFA07LhvSEsI7c7lDrmHf2SKWi8l9rkAw6D0H3x_qK1J0J2z5g2GAdIuC2VIw-meYcWzP2JTWdIqNvQahz5E3f5lNsCbY_0IJ4zg/s320/hb008a.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>The trip is to begin before Christmas so there is a lovely
family scene in which the Hardys celebrate the holiday early so the boys will
have both the traditional feast and presents, and their outing. Back on the island they watch Hanleigh in
the cabin, measuring the fireplace. He
threatens them again but they have the key and he is the trespasser, so he
leaves. But they have the start of their mystery: why was he measuring the
fireplace? Why is his so fierce about
the island?<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Eventually the boys learn of Mr. Jefferson’s missing
collection of priceless stamps, and find a notebook kept by the man suspected
of stealing the stamps (it’s the only instance I’ve run across of an actual
date: 1917, which the Boys observe was 11 years before.) The notebook contains
a coded message, and the mystery goes on from there, with a dramatic climax.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In the revision, Mr. Jefferson’s reward (communicated to
them offstage) is permission to camp on Cabin Island, and the promise of a new
mystery. When they meet him at his
house he asks them to search for his missing grandson, who disappeared around
the time that his collection of commemorative medals was stolen. (Why the
switch from stamps remains a mystery.)
As usual, the incidents crowd together while scenes of ordinary life are
dropped or shortened, like the Christmas scene. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCAAqm_L1ouPQUnkhyphenhyphencZvN4tL5ThsiiPzxqoZN6R1NgUqXT8dcP4dcltnmDz4Vob7zUnt-U6saUO2B-To0XdjMiSeDkNpWg4UA6RW1FwLRP1HJsrgpEenH0xqg4ongrTuoOcdoEP9oycfiViQiFU99xiaZuQ7w5BRR-MN33RQHtDdY2CSC5HU8Dg/s390/hb008c.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="250" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCAAqm_L1ouPQUnkhyphenhyphencZvN4tL5ThsiiPzxqoZN6R1NgUqXT8dcP4dcltnmDz4Vob7zUnt-U6saUO2B-To0XdjMiSeDkNpWg4UA6RW1FwLRP1HJsrgpEenH0xqg4ongrTuoOcdoEP9oycfiViQiFU99xiaZuQ7w5BRR-MN33RQHtDdY2CSC5HU8Dg/w128-h200/hb008c.jpg" width="128" /></a></div>Adults (Fenton Hardy and Mr. Jefferson) are also present in the
action more often. Both versions involve two minor villains—in the original
they are young men, but in the revision they are high school dropouts who hang
around the school and make trouble.
“Juvenile delinquency” was a catchword of the 1950s. The Hardy Boys page classifies the revision as "Altered."<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A side note: my copy of the original and of the revision
both have the same cover image, and both have a "picture cover," rather than a jacket. My original is evidently part of the reprint series issued in 1962 (and my book apparently was a Christmas gift in 1963, though not to me) and it appears to be the same typeface as the original editions. It also has the same brown flyleaf
illustrations as the original brown hardbacks that I remember so well from the public library. </p></div></div><div><br /></div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">#10 What Happened At Midnight</span> </b><br />
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This is my favorite of the originals I've read as an adult, but I don't think that's entirely why I'm contemptuous of the revision, which HBUHP calls "drastically altered."<br />
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The original is well-paced and balanced, as each increment of the mystery is pursued with activity, such as the Boys trip to New York City. But most of all, it has a real sense of high school boys doing the investigating, their normal life integrated with the mystery.<br />
<br />
It's also a great 1930s story, starting with the opening scene at Bayport's newest innovation, the Automat. Joe is kidnapped, Frank and his chums find him, but that's just the beginning. The brothers impulsively follow a suspect on the train to New York, lose their money to a pickpocket, sleep on park benches safely, prepare to hitchhike back to Bayport and earn a meal by washing dishes at a diner. (The diner owner is right out of a movie by Frank Capra or Preston Sturges.) They get a key clue overhearing a hotel switchboard operator, and learn of the existence of the collect call!<br />
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As obsolete and therefore nostalgic as all this seems now, none of it was so arcane in the 1950s when I might have first read this book. The telephone system was basically the same, and I remember going to an automat restaurant in Manhattan in the 1960s.<br />
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But the revision dumps pretty much all of it anyway. (Though I thought for sure the revision would drop a key scene of the boys in a biplane that loses power- they have parachutes and go out on a wing to bail out. But the revision makes the plane an antique reconstruction, and the scene happens in a different part of the story.)
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Bayport, by the way, in this novel is explicitly said to be located about 200 miles south of New York City, which suggests New Jersey.<br />
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The mystery is solved through a combination of legwork, deduction, serendipity and coincidence. (Which fulfills Fenton Hardy's definition of a detective as someone who basically pays attention.) Some may object to the coincidences, such as the clues supplied by the clueless Aunt Gertrude. But it sure makes for a good story that keeps moving forward.
<br />
<br />
A coincidence puts the Boys in touch with a couple of FBI agents, and so the big finish is more believable with the adult agents doing the shooting and fighting during the capture, though Frank manages to chase and wrestle down the ringleader of the diamond thieves gang. (The Boys relationship with the local police is also better than in previous originals.)<br />
<br />
Other elements of the story are kept, but there are inexplicable changes. This time the gang is stealing diamonds and "electronics." (What kind of electronics? Why are they valuable? It doesn't say.) Again another needless and basically useless if not confusing plot element is added, a secret invention.<br />
<br />
The revision begins with a completely outlandish fight between the brothers and adult thieves. In general, the revision is haphazard and careless--literally in the sense that it seems to be written by someone who doesn't care. For dialogue that sounds somewhat formal, it substitutes dialogue that sounds entirely wooden. As for updating arcane expressions etc., the revision actually has one of the boys say "Gadzooks!"--a word from the 17th century that barely made it into the 19th.<br />
<br />
Finally, let me point out something else that's apparently obsolete. Especially in the originals, I did not find a typo or a grammatical error. These boys books, written quickly and expected to be read by teenagers or younger, and then to disappear, are immaculately edited, copyedited and proofread. So 20th century, right?
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-67428254415891639382024-01-02T02:01:00.000-08:002024-01-02T02:01:06.559-08:00R.I.P. 2023 Review<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk1V4sQNS_fOEA4o5f4l_UOFoJECJt6VX91FFjru2Z0Dhk6L4r9svU_UgIAyN3BxCB2b_M_C_d2zvp3rzlWoJApLHUonktJrZia901kqnBERYOMsv9wBMXPpxlPkn_9dH2pQ0j02hIM_yUA-ZuEcabG1Tke31IHveNuCReLfZ9VqOhD3sZMdbn1g/s2521/amim03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2198" data-original-width="2521" height="558" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk1V4sQNS_fOEA4o5f4l_UOFoJECJt6VX91FFjru2Z0Dhk6L4r9svU_UgIAyN3BxCB2b_M_C_d2zvp3rzlWoJApLHUonktJrZia901kqnBERYOMsv9wBMXPpxlPkn_9dH2pQ0j02hIM_yUA-ZuEcabG1Tke31IHveNuCReLfZ9VqOhD3sZMdbn1g/w640-h558/amim03.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />When I was spending a fair amount of time in Manhattan in
the 1980s, <b>Martin Amis</b> was a name I heard a lot. My friend Michael Shain, then a reporter for the New York Post,
designated a different Amis novel for each of his friends. (Mine was <i>The
Information</i>, which I still have not read.)
I followed the Amis career without ever really becoming engaged with his
novels. But in interviews he would
often say something that hit me directly, as when he mentioned being ambushed
by memories that were accompanied by searing regret, just walking down the
street and thinking of something else.
This was an experience I often had, but which I’d never heard anyone
else confess.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> When Amis died last May I noticed how he was almost
universally praised as a literary eminence.
(He was Sir Martin by then.) So
I went back to his more famous novels <i>(Money, London Fields</i>), neither of which
I could finish once again, and I read entirely his last novel (<i>Inside Story</i>)
and his collection of essays and reviews, <i>The War Against Cliché</i>. In both I responded to gems of insight and
stylish writing, but on first reading I couldn’t experience <i>Inside Story</i> as a
whole novel, for all its shining parts.
So I remain a frustrated reader of a writer with whom I nevertheless felt
an odd bond, as much for many differences as for similarities and
sympathies. The tension of that seems productive and affectionate. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Another novelist much talked about in the 1980s was <b>Milan
Kundera</b>, principally for one book: <i>The Unbearable Lightness of Being,</i> now a
classic of the era. I read it with
fascination, and found his previous novel, <i>The Book of Laughter and Forgetting</i>,
published in English through the auspices of Philip Roth and his series of works by Eastern European authors. More recently I read Kundera's <i>Slowness</i>, and wrote about it<a href="http://bluevoice.blogspot.com/search/label/Kundera"> here</a>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> With the
paradox of its title,<i> The Unbearable Lightness of Being</i> seemed to become fashionable
mostly because of the sex, though Italo Calvino pointed out that its virtues
were the liveliness and intelligence of the writing. I doubt I understood or endorsed a lot of it, but I liked its rhythms and it did feel
like something I hadn’t encountered before in fiction. I better understood the meditations on the speed of life today and the paradoxes of memory in <i>Slowness</i>. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b>Cormac McCarthy</b> was a controversial and respected novelist
over several decades. Though his fifth novel in 1985,<i> Blood Meridian</i>, became
recognized over time, his first commercial success was <i>All the Pretty Horses</i> in
1992. Probably his biggest and most
enduring literary, cultural and popular success was the haunting
post-apocalyptic tale, <i>The Road</i><b>.</b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEincf6jXoNCJXEUldqSqPyEJH9kjqTSqca8MpiLCiSghLG0Uo1a9HJSKMhivToMt84WHrVzkCWS5FBGO8_ocuK8UOX_dY2Nt4KgvgSngVTl1nlKtwyEyL-0R1tjvt3vquZ0aONP0iSzxWQxDse8HVxAfMjdUKpZpwtwFywUy461ndqYWoufuMZo9A/s2697/mar02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1764" data-original-width="2697" height="418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEincf6jXoNCJXEUldqSqPyEJH9kjqTSqca8MpiLCiSghLG0Uo1a9HJSKMhivToMt84WHrVzkCWS5FBGO8_ocuK8UOX_dY2Nt4KgvgSngVTl1nlKtwyEyL-0R1tjvt3vquZ0aONP0iSzxWQxDse8HVxAfMjdUKpZpwtwFywUy461ndqYWoufuMZo9A/w640-h418/mar02.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">some of the books by Garcia Marquez translated by Edith Grossman</td></tr></tbody></table><br /> Harold Bloom called <b>Edith Grossman</b> “the Glenn Gould of
translators,” because she too was a precise virtuoso. Her translations of Latin American authors, together with those
of Gregory Rabassa, helped fuel the boom for these novelists in the 1970s and
80s. In particular she translated seven
books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who once said that he preferred reading her
English translations (and Rabassa’s) to his Spanish originals.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK_d0deHIRhvaEMS25-u8lmKhmzA-nQ4meCrvatuBm5fxc8F74WnZEod-5lUZ3D0EeFJGGKwPvio5swc1crertHD-JSyWw3vOXJK7x4uz_2iFIs7mmiFgGllKbTnk02mkmpMP3sjVPVXuYkTALDKh4_2YjudJmBpjMKVqi8rxkVTg9isWdSEB1Sg/s3264/misa02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK_d0deHIRhvaEMS25-u8lmKhmzA-nQ4meCrvatuBm5fxc8F74WnZEod-5lUZ3D0EeFJGGKwPvio5swc1crertHD-JSyWw3vOXJK7x4uz_2iFIs7mmiFgGllKbTnk02mkmpMP3sjVPVXuYkTALDKh4_2YjudJmBpjMKVqi8rxkVTg9isWdSEB1Sg/w640-h480/misa02.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><b>Russell Banks</b> was a prolific American novelist and story
writer who detailed working class lives but also wrote about Jamaica and Haiti
and <i>The Magic Kingdom</i>. He was
especially beloved by fellow literary writers.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b>Robert Brustein </b>was a titan of modern theatre in America,
founding both the Yale Repertory Company and the American Repertory Company at
Harvard. He backed his work as a producer, director, actor and playwright with
essays and books from <i>The Theatre of Revolt</i> (1964) and<i> Who Needs Theatre?</i>
(1987) to <i>Winter Passages </i>(2014.) He
engaged in many controversies, such as his debates with playwright August
Wilson.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> British Jungian psychologist <b>Anthony Stevens</b> wrote several
books on Jung and his theories, particularly on archetypes and dreams. I remember reading with pleasure <b>Ronald
Steel</b>’s sterling biography of journalist Walter Lippmann, and<b> D.M. Thomas</b>’
novel <i>The White Hotel</i>. I recall
enjoying <b>Francois Gilot</b>’s reminiscences of her uneasy life with Picasso when I
read them in the 1970s, and <b>Jonathan Raban</b>’s <i>Old Glory: An American Voyage</i> in
the 1980s.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> As the last veterans of World War II fade away, so do the
authors who examined aspects and outcomes of that war. Japanese author <b>Kenzaburo Oe</b> wrote about the
legacy of the atomic bomb in Japan, while <b>Selichi Moriura</b> exposed Japanese
wartime atrocities. <b>Marga Minco</b> wrote about the ramifications of the Holocaust
and the war in postwar Europe. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Also among the writers who passed on in 2023 were poets
Louise Gluck, Charles Simic, Naomi Replansky, Robert Pack, Benjamin Zephaniah,
David Ferry, Saskia Hamilton, Park Je-chun, Amy Utematsu, Trienke Laurie,
Antonio Gala, Asad Gulzoda, R.H.W. Dillard, Robin Mathews, Maria Laina and
Wendy Barker; playwrights Tina Howe, Megan Terry, Robert Patrick, John Mairai
and Ama Ata Aidoo; eminent screenwriter Bo Goldman; novelist/playwright Fay
Weldon, story writer Edith Pearlman, novelists AS Byatt, Herbert Gold, Ted
Morgan, Eve Bunting, Meir Shalev, Martin Walser, David Benedictis, and Amy
Schwartz.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In genre fiction: Carol Higgins Clark (mystery), K.C. Constantine (master of the police procedural--more about him later), John
Dunning (detective fiction and books on old time radio), John Jakes (historical), Julie Garwood (romance); Michael Bishop, Michael A. Banks and Richard Bowes (science fiction.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Artist and writer Linda Salzman Sagan, sociologist and communitarian
visionary Amitai Etzioni, historians Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie, Eugenio Riccomini
and Marceli Kosman; feminist scholars Dale Spender and Jean F. Yellin,
psychologist Alice K. Ladas, philosophers Harry Frankfurt and Ian Hacking;
crime writers Anne Perry and Mary Willis Walker; satirist Dan Greenberg.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Writers William Howarth, Gail Tremblay, Phillipe Sollers,
Luca di Fulvia, Doris Gregory, Michael Denneny, Zaleka Mandela, Echo Brown,
Minnie Bruce Pratt, Ramzi Salame, Darchhawna and Ronald Blythe.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Journalists Betty Rollin, Kevin Phillips, Victor Navasky,
Michael Parkington, Paul Bradeur, Warren Hoge, James Reston, Jr., Bernard Kalb,
Hugh Aynesworth, Eva Hauseserova, Howard Weaver, Edwin Wilson, Michel Ciment,
Jack Anderson, Colin Spencer, Bill Shipp, Mandy Jenkins, Ian Black.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Apologies for misspellings and misappropriations. May they and all the writers who died last year rest in peace—their work lives
on. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-15985264417108127722023-12-02T00:58:00.000-08:002023-12-08T01:57:17.013-08:00Ignoble Nobels? Is That Why They Ignore Margaret Atwood?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAuC6ntW1qi8Rr-nN1uOBmzHNBzDbyCFLIeAyRiLkAKJA4Q_LrtrDZIPmRaRkod57O5Yod0PbddzZM-RA0wc_FPmRwmtJNRUrwSlfmdVBI-XQRgGknxJQHuOqcfusEwrRw9utrS14gC-7ApYA2ErlDU9N04ITYM9cXJ3IZq9BaBlWWv3dtrMiRZw/s1225/atwood.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1225" data-original-width="980" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAuC6ntW1qi8Rr-nN1uOBmzHNBzDbyCFLIeAyRiLkAKJA4Q_LrtrDZIPmRaRkod57O5Yod0PbddzZM-RA0wc_FPmRwmtJNRUrwSlfmdVBI-XQRgGknxJQHuOqcfusEwrRw9utrS14gC-7ApYA2ErlDU9N04ITYM9cXJ3IZq9BaBlWWv3dtrMiRZw/w320-h400/atwood.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> It's been over for awhile but it still bothers me. 2023 was the latest year in which Margaret Atwood did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature.<p></p><p>At least the Pulitzer Prize committee finally recognized Barbara Kingsolver. There's been no better US novelist, none more consistent and capacious in the breadth, depth and style of her work. But also this year the Nobel committee has once again ignored not only my now-perennial favorite--and the world's-- in once again passing over Margaret Atwood.</p><p>Atwood was widely believed to be the favorite back in 2017--so much so that the actual winner, Kazuo Ishiguro, publicly <a href="https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/culture/news/a39149/kazuo-ishiguro-apologises-margaret-atwood-nobel-prize-literature/">apologized</a> for winning it instead of her. But there was always next year. And next year. And next year... And now Margaret Atwood is 84.</p><p>I don't claim to have read all the fine writers of the world, and I must defer judgment on a lot of prizes, like the Booker. But the Nobel has a specific, specified mission. In the words of founder Alfred Nobel, it is for the writer "who, in the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."</p><p>That person, year after year for the past decade (I've been touting her since at least 2011), has been Margaret Atwood. She is unique in the world for sustaining quality literary work over many years, while her work consistently engages the contemporary world. She is now a global presence, for the shared present and future dilemmas she writes about (and the increasingly relevance of <i>The Handmaid's Tale)</i>, but also as a literary figure and an active voice. Her contributions are immeasurable. </p><p>Of course the Nobel committee in Sweden has ignored their founder's goals for years. They tend to award for a body of work rather than something from the previous year, which is defensible. But they also tend to choose writers who are perhaps known mostly within a single nation (usually a small one), if, frankly, at all. Their influence on the world is minimal, at least until they win and their work gets new editions.</p><p>Body of work? Margaret Atwood has published 18 novels, nine story collections, 18 volumes of poetry, 11 books of nonfiction, eight children's books and two graphic novels--and these are only works brought out by major publishers and presumably translated widely. She writes and speaks on ecology and economics as well as literature.</p><p>But there's no point in making the case. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows she is the perfect Nobel Laureate, and has been for years. </p><p>So why hasn't she been one? It can't be only because she sometimes writes speculative or science fiction--they gave the award to Doris Lessing many years ago. Atwood herself hasn't commented on it in interviews I've read or watched on Youtube, usually praising whoever just won. But I got the feeling that she doesn't expect to ever win it, because of some problem with the Nobel committee. Maybe there's animosity, personal or otherwise, from a member or members of the committee.. Maybe they feel she's gotten too many other awards. Who knows? (Actually, I think she does.)</p><p>The Nobel committee in any case has a well known track record of not getting around to honoring major literary figures in their lifetimes, and therefore never honoring them at all. So why should I care? I probably shouldn't. But to me it calls into question not only the Nobel committee's judgment but their integrity. I know all these prizes are political to some extent, and this is not the worst injustice in the world. But seeing some justice done is a rare but good feeling. She deserves this.</p><p>So I don't care who wins the Nobel anymore. Not until the name that's announced is Margaret Atwood. </p><p>P.S. Margaret Atwood's latest fiction is a story collection, <i>Old Babes in the Woods</i>. Barbara Kingsolver's Pulitzer-winning novel is <i>Demon Copperhead</i>. Both are fine gifts for discerning and appreciative readers.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-46481434511799356402023-10-21T21:40:00.000-07:002024-01-02T03:11:45.439-08:00History of My Reading: Cambridge Baptism 1970-1<p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKbO_EIBRK9C8GpWWS7-3b3zU1Ad0HmASixlFe8ZBjHO2YklemLy2lVL_eoPm1-sRZZXBLzktLHfwOFK-I6JchNwdUtkq401zCK_1TUfeP29lpYyvrCEFo5pcGAnutc7GVaLqqVv6XNCLOhyNr63HPmR3OnJVn6n3Mqw3qBSgiw6kkgINneQ/s2317/colst03.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1802" data-original-width="2317" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKbO_EIBRK9C8GpWWS7-3b3zU1Ad0HmASixlFe8ZBjHO2YklemLy2lVL_eoPm1-sRZZXBLzktLHfwOFK-I6JchNwdUtkq401zCK_1TUfeP29lpYyvrCEFo5pcGAnutc7GVaLqqVv6XNCLOhyNr63HPmR3OnJVn6n3Mqw3qBSgiw6kkgINneQ/w400-h311/colst03.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carol and me with kittens from Stuff's litter at our Cambridge apt.</td></tr></tbody></table>I returned with Carol and company to Cambridge after my
Cummington community experience in August 1970. By this time Carol and her Knox College friends had moved into a
summer sublet—probably more of a housesitting gig—on a quiet leafy side street
at 13 Ellery St., apt.4. It was about
half a block from the central artery of Massachusetts Avenue, known
colloquially as Mass Ave: a roughly 16 mile road that begins in Boston and
defines the heart of Cambridge before heading onward past Somerville to Concord
and the fabled Lexington Green, and beyond. <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM9OhFyBfLggxwl9dFmHGY6vMuTymsNqfmo22a9lD2eZWTCzvrOr3uO6qUPzXvly4wm8Wh8P9aGRMU8cHIJkFbiDOEOXM1ReFsWc9POCANvsUCT7ggTqXFVhA5rTJgS6YIJyQiMhLcQuxjh9HipFRyUoxocllxG3mJFR2iPJTvlsvj2q1PnQ/s869/11-13-ellery-st-cambridge-ma-building-photo.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="869" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM9OhFyBfLggxwl9dFmHGY6vMuTymsNqfmo22a9lD2eZWTCzvrOr3uO6qUPzXvly4wm8Wh8P9aGRMU8cHIJkFbiDOEOXM1ReFsWc9POCANvsUCT7ggTqXFVhA5rTJgS6YIJyQiMhLcQuxjh9HipFRyUoxocllxG3mJFR2iPJTvlsvj2q1PnQ/s320/11-13-ellery-st-cambridge-ma-building-photo.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">13 Ellery St.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />It wasn’t until I’d gone to college in the Midwest that I
heard people give city directions in terms of north/south, east/west (cf. “Go
north three blocks and turn west.”) In western Pennsylvania as in most of the
northeast, cities were ordered by the borders of serpentine rivers and
eccentric coastlines, as well as hills and ridges and valleys. So while Cambridge is vaguely north of
Boston, it is connected by Mass Ave in a way that defies the compass. Orientation reverts to directions like left
and right.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> So emerging from the tree-shadowed Ellery Street to busy,
noisy Mass Ave puts Central Square (Cambridge) and Boston to your left, and
Harvard Square a few long blocks to your right. While I was living there the
rest of that summer, the first commercial building to the right on Mass Ave
housed several businesses, including the F-Stop camera store, Cheap Thrills
records, a music and musical instrument store, and the Orson Welles Cinema. At the time I first saw it, the Welles was a
single screen, so-called “repertory cinema” showing foreign and offbeat
American movies. (It had a film school as well, though that was not immediately
obvious to me.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUKbRuU7sWlCkrrHE-OsU6ZDRK_1wy96y5tXr5mgsEXXnwZjTuWj9bxetgTZwWtBwma6wFkU8DhzQHtQEjLajbtSC2F8hGdbRMfd5Yy4yK4DyVTLCT5wdIx6KITbjCEFn_kbSa3f5NQAK-9cLUDtXojfCgKM5ATpknBpbcyUoKka4egRVGVA/s3790/WKAJACS2BMI6TBSTYTFMY36OJI.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3790" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUKbRuU7sWlCkrrHE-OsU6ZDRK_1wy96y5tXr5mgsEXXnwZjTuWj9bxetgTZwWtBwma6wFkU8DhzQHtQEjLajbtSC2F8hGdbRMfd5Yy4yK4DyVTLCT5wdIx6KITbjCEFn_kbSa3f5NQAK-9cLUDtXojfCgKM5ATpknBpbcyUoKka4egRVGVA/s320/WKAJACS2BMI6TBSTYTFMY36OJI.jpg" width="253" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Orson Welles at the Orson Welles</td></tr></tbody></table>The Orson Welles intrigued me. I’d been increasingly
interested in film and filmmaking. I had one film course at Iowa, and in my
months at Buffalo I got to know film professor (and McLuhan pal) Gerald
O’Grady. I attended a number of his
film classes, especially when they were showing movies.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"> Carol had gotten interested in film, too, especially after
she read <i>The Film Director as Superstar</i> by Joseph Gelmis, a collection
of interviews (Kubrick, Bertolucci, Lindsay Anderson, Richard Lester, John
Cassavettes and a very young Francis Ford Coppola, among others), a book I’d
left with her when I was at Cummington.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> We emerged from one of our first movies there when I saw a
familiar face in the lobby. It was
Steve Goldberg, formerly of Knox College, who turned out to be the theatre
manager. He remembered me, and in the
course of our conversation, suggested I try writing for the local weekly paper
called the Phoenix. I laughed before I
nodded an acknowledgement. I didn’t see where I would fit in. I knew nothing
about Boston or Cambridge, and though I’d seen the Phoenix a few times, I still
didn’t have a handle on it. It was more
seriously journalistic than an underground newspaper, but it wasn’t like a
daily either. A few years later in his defining New Yorker piece, Calvin
Trillin would describe the growing number of such journals as “sea-level”
newspapers. Today, their descendants are usually lumped together as
“alternative.” </p><p class="MsoNormal">(As if meeting a former Knox student there wasn’t
coincidence enough, I soon after walked into the music store next door to see
behind the counter someone I’d known at Greensburg (PA) Central Catholic High
School. Paul Lenart had been a year ahead of me, and had gone off to Columbia
University on a football scholarship, which made him a subject of my envy since
that was my aspirational and unaffordable first choice school. But he’d been injured early on, lost his
scholarship and was now a guitarist in a regionally popular band that sometimes
played at Jack’s bar near Central Square, famous then for featuring Bonnie
Raitt before she went national. Eventually
he sold me my next guitar.)</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhjXywER0blPEBT_-atJfth1gezwq76kM0lky8mfg5b-cUq8vyBlhOgs7sh0YWy285zVc0uYowJyvfpA7XP15wGf1SMdDFLnQtHk-F1lgsrMfqOtVv1NPstIaeD4aC0KWq-bzC-OuPqo3KPDRWLD7elNfEHOgOJcuIAnsUif_j_Yb33uww2Q/s1200/goldard02.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="819" data-original-width="1200" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhjXywER0blPEBT_-atJfth1gezwq76kM0lky8mfg5b-cUq8vyBlhOgs7sh0YWy285zVc0uYowJyvfpA7XP15wGf1SMdDFLnQtHk-F1lgsrMfqOtVv1NPstIaeD4aC0KWq-bzC-OuPqo3KPDRWLD7elNfEHOgOJcuIAnsUif_j_Yb33uww2Q/s320/goldard02.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pierrot Le Fou</td></tr></tbody></table>I soon had my first immersive film experience, when the
Welles programmed a Jean-Luc Godard festival, a bill of Godard double-features
that changed every couple of days. I
got a discount ticket book and saw many of them, almost all for the first time
(among them “Band of Outsiders,” “Alphaville,” “Contempt,” “Masculin Feminin,”
and my favorite, “Pierrot le Fou” with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina),
eventually watching from the back row while drinking coffee and smoking
Gauloise cigarettes. Mass Ave and the
Welles would turn out to be mainstays of my time in Cambridge and Boston.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRXfTsjc8jXb12F_EwZr9qWAtu3cfhZHtbBrFMB206FqeDWFPiPjFSFPwBsbW8jQHM1cHrhyofIy6xKeDdxxsr-NzGZ4FJA1IQV-_9eaF57r4cYl5YGfodUu1yt0Qtq7SA7lXSwEIvmnNhxL1FyZDvfVxu6Igbve2Qgg4KdmGxqcfp47-32Q/s348/348s.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="348" data-original-width="348" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRXfTsjc8jXb12F_EwZr9qWAtu3cfhZHtbBrFMB206FqeDWFPiPjFSFPwBsbW8jQHM1cHrhyofIy6xKeDdxxsr-NzGZ4FJA1IQV-_9eaF57r4cYl5YGfodUu1yt0Qtq7SA7lXSwEIvmnNhxL1FyZDvfVxu6Igbve2Qgg4KdmGxqcfp47-32Q/s320/348s.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> Past the Orson Welles, two particular wonders of Harvard
Square awaited. First, the
bookstores. There was one before the
square, but more past the high brick walls of Harvard Yard that began the
Square proper. Harvard Bookstore was right there on Mass Ave, shortly to be
joined by its book annex, with hurt books and remainders. Around the corner was the Grolier Bookshop,
reputed to be a gathering place for poets, though I never experienced
this. It was one of the contacts that
Robert Creeley wrote down for me.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The huge Harvard Coop had a big book section. There were
more bookstores on Brattle Street behind it, including one of my favorites,
Reading International. Across from
there and below street level on Mt. Auburn St. was Passim, a bookstore during
the day, and a music venue at night—it had formerly been Club 47, where Joan
Baez first sang in concert, among many other luminaries of the folk revival
1960s.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMk5jC7VP1kkekDADSEt4Lqg264A8EBuemtQnl_119vxAE3U1EXbb0azawsFa2RmFNGvr8l6NmgNIzkYvsBApYJdaUgZO7SvQFNoaaONlVItJOBvjMQEA8IiHW7YUUbYUThuhh2LDeLbAv0d0AoQvB93sB3IvKNQ8mR0SHr3QjLmmbqZvElQ/s640/08b907ae355b9131674a9abb48b19880.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMk5jC7VP1kkekDADSEt4Lqg264A8EBuemtQnl_119vxAE3U1EXbb0azawsFa2RmFNGvr8l6NmgNIzkYvsBApYJdaUgZO7SvQFNoaaONlVItJOBvjMQEA8IiHW7YUUbYUThuhh2LDeLbAv0d0AoQvB93sB3IvKNQ8mR0SHr3QjLmmbqZvElQ/s320/08b907ae355b9131674a9abb48b19880.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> But bookstores weren’t the only sources of books. There were two Ecology Action storefronts
and a couple of other such organizations that collected and gave away surplus
books, and since it was Cambridge, the quality was high. I scored a mother lode of books at one such
place on a memorable afternoon, and walked out embarrassed at my haul, but
ecstatic.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I was soon reading Henry Miller for the first time, and his
rhapsodizing descriptions of Paris bookstores suggested that this might be my
Paris. That feeling was reinforced by the cafes, some with outdoor seating, an
anomaly in America at the time. There were not varieties of coffees available
on every corner in the 70s, but in and around Harvard Square there were coffees
closer to their foreign origins, such as the Turkish coffee in a dark café
buried in a complex of shops. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4DS3wJ9Hn93SX9NlNOmsDKPRd_6mcdzJSPgVQOwP9rAG-qiPwu2EWq9Yh5fNxeFL9olkOB8zRNRnhPfRH9or7YZ8T40Mk-hRVyDM-QA_xk6T575gfp9SdSPydSgUQ4IINVDZ58oNImHB9TqGGQHDdDNR7thlT6qrYm87Ty79HjQguBYmegA/s2438/cambr03.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1783" data-original-width="2438" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4DS3wJ9Hn93SX9NlNOmsDKPRd_6mcdzJSPgVQOwP9rAG-qiPwu2EWq9Yh5fNxeFL9olkOB8zRNRnhPfRH9or7YZ8T40Mk-hRVyDM-QA_xk6T575gfp9SdSPydSgUQ4IINVDZ58oNImHB9TqGGQHDdDNR7thlT6qrYm87Ty79HjQguBYmegA/s320/cambr03.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Harvard Sq 1970. BK photo.</td></tr></tbody></table>Soon I had a favorite place: the unpretentious Patisserie
below street level on the section of Brattle Street that wound around to the
left as you faced the Harvard Coop. Its
menu was modest but everything tasted great.
I loved especially their almond croissants. Its French coffee had a
taste still unique in my experience. It
tasted blue, the equivalent of Gauloise smoke.
I was a frequent enough customer that the owner (who was Greek) knew me
by sight, and remarked on how long it might have been since I was there last.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The riches of the cafes included the newspapers left by
patrons and strewn around, not only the Boston Globe and the counterculture and
political papers but the New York Times and Washington Post. There were magazines of all kinds from
everywhere at several of the bookstores, with walls of them at the Out of Town
News just outside the Harvard Square subway entrance.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2DKz59uF-d9uKijNhlgdtLKMb4Le7GD6IkAhLlyWu2yMdmgkH_WFFQPvgVfyAwdnieDu2x5zEHbgOdvqdc_SyXfEr_GK4eBy1CZ0u9Itiwyi8uXgf-TN3L1zNnv2YSl5Mtske1decDH-oLRlIZnK2y1KmxehlZh_5GjBBEalQpyRgHYZLvA/s847/Pewter-Pot-Menu.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="618" data-original-width="847" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2DKz59uF-d9uKijNhlgdtLKMb4Le7GD6IkAhLlyWu2yMdmgkH_WFFQPvgVfyAwdnieDu2x5zEHbgOdvqdc_SyXfEr_GK4eBy1CZ0u9Itiwyi8uXgf-TN3L1zNnv2YSl5Mtske1decDH-oLRlIZnK2y1KmxehlZh_5GjBBEalQpyRgHYZLvA/s320/Pewter-Pot-Menu.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> The cafes completed the mental ambience of the bookstores,
and I felt as comfortable as I got, reading and writing in them. That extended
to less exotic but still strange venues, like the ice cream place with the
delicate 1890s wrought iron tables and chairs, and the Pewter Pot, which served
a variety of muffins (very big in Boston) and 15 cent coffee in Pewter
mugs. I was reading and writing there
once when I glanced up and saw a man passing quickly by the window, looking my
way with a wistful half smile. I was sure it was the writer and actor Buck
Henry. And it might have been, for this was Harvard Square, where I routinely
saw Nobel Prize winners bicycling by.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> The apartment on Ellery Street was large and well kept,
though mostly empty. It was on the top
floor, with easy access to the flat roof, where a lot of sunbathing had gone on
all summer, and continued while I was there.
But with fall, the sublet was up, Carol’s friends returned to school,
and we had to look for another place. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5SFzRYvJ7XQCYM-Wr-j4He6RBOjEESspkGOvu4E1ZGs4Z_H5jaFXCuePZEfv5mcafaVC7DViTjlYz9qbV9IPXBN20RLnRwn0CieOUu7Um7epD8N_oGy2OquH9dkYDnfNRfmsZ5ms_acXCB2zGTF62vm5Xop_akDVW6LAlbOL2nIss8HCvmw/s316/325%20columbia.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="316" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5SFzRYvJ7XQCYM-Wr-j4He6RBOjEESspkGOvu4E1ZGs4Z_H5jaFXCuePZEfv5mcafaVC7DViTjlYz9qbV9IPXBN20RLnRwn0CieOUu7Um7epD8N_oGy2OquH9dkYDnfNRfmsZ5ms_acXCB2zGTF62vm5Xop_akDVW6LAlbOL2nIss8HCvmw/s1600/325%20columbia.jpg" width="316" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Repainted and gentrified, 325 Columbia St.<br />now. First floor apt. was ours.</td></tr></tbody></table>We clearly couldn’t afford anything so spacious in such a
prime area, but we did find a large room at the front of a duplex in East
Cambridge, at 325 Columbia Street. (According to a notebook, I found it by
answering an ad in the Phoenix titled ISMAEL COME HOME.) The street turned out to be a kind of local
truck route, so the rumbling was fairly constant, but I eventually got used to
it.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> We painted our room teal blue, with lighter blue around the
sort-of bay windows. We painted the
living room in shades of sea green and violet. The previous tenants had left a
lot of psychedelic posters, which I cut up and affixed to a wall in the narrow
hallway as collages. (Through unforwarded mail and some detective work, I
learned that this apartment had been the gathering place for poets and others
in the antiwar movement, and that poet Denise Levertov had often been there.
She confirmed this in an exchange of letters. We had met my senior year at
Knox.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxVjMUS7gDaqN_qc6KPs2_DENdkf7yMMadn7TuAygkQU6D6JqX8w6pIoAZYsDn2G1snZYsMdEBSDr7ghbaGGG5GxHMZ32DJDc76peTbVdmlPpATKX_MnWSdfVSA_Hql5A7UCD3qUFLSFmwXcvFJwUNP3K4uK3Wq7b0s9EkOyydS5mJKCw_iA/s2562/cambbks02.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2361" data-original-width="2562" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxVjMUS7gDaqN_qc6KPs2_DENdkf7yMMadn7TuAygkQU6D6JqX8w6pIoAZYsDn2G1snZYsMdEBSDr7ghbaGGG5GxHMZ32DJDc76peTbVdmlPpATKX_MnWSdfVSA_Hql5A7UCD3qUFLSFmwXcvFJwUNP3K4uK3Wq7b0s9EkOyydS5mJKCw_iA/s320/cambbks02.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>My Cambridge reading started there with authors unauthorized
in my college lit classes. Both Carol
and I read Jack Kerouac, beginning with <i>The Dharma Bums</i> (in which a
character based on Gary Snyder has a large role) and <i>Big Sur,</i> even
before <i>On the Road</i>.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </i>I moved on to Henry Miller, whose style I found enthralling
despite the sometimes questionable content: the novels <i>Tropic of Cancer</i>
(my sun sign) and <i>Tropic of Capricorn</i> (Carol’s), his narrative
nonfiction (<i>The Air Conditioned Nightmare</i>, <i>The Colossus of Maroussi</i>)
and essays <i>(The Books in My Life </i>and<i> The Wisdom of the Heart, </i>in
which he described his Zen-like approach to writing<i>.</i>)There was soon
something of a Henry Miller boom in the 70s, and at the Orson Welles I saw an
autobiographical film on him, and another on his compatriot Anais Nin (I also
acquired and read some of her volumes of diary entries which were then
popular.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I tried reading William Burroughs, whose theories of
writing—especially his cut-up method—fascinated me, but I didn’t match up with
his resulting fiction. There were
others, but I most recall Kerouac’s ecstatic discoveries as reflecting the
flavor of those first few months for us on Columbia Street.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I was still attracted to poetry with a surrealistic flavor.
I read Robert Bly’s translations of Pablo Neruda, more of Bill Knott (who I’d
encountered in New Haven) and a new poet, James Tate, who I heard read and met
in Cambridge. (He had exasperated tales of trying to help Knott just get
through life and empty the garbage.) I’d admired Jon Anderson’s first book of
poems, <i>Looking for Jonathan</i>, in 1968, and now the harder edged <i>Death
and Friends</i> in 1970. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg89P7XE5surs1rKj0qlv7qzoDAKzBrGjvvBs78NVnKEVk12SKaTyvD_EO6VxJ-YMVxXsB4Mi_L4HLbWNg9WHezlGSW3U5hgCyN7hiAm556QUMm7ytj4pXcfiNPiI3Zj0NEmWzuuDUvq_e7Szo4SfbLbl8N5kcWsbcj14N-1ZybS6mYJ9ba3Q/s816/01AGS6D8.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="816" data-original-width="609" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg89P7XE5surs1rKj0qlv7qzoDAKzBrGjvvBs78NVnKEVk12SKaTyvD_EO6VxJ-YMVxXsB4Mi_L4HLbWNg9WHezlGSW3U5hgCyN7hiAm556QUMm7ytj4pXcfiNPiI3Zj0NEmWzuuDUvq_e7Szo4SfbLbl8N5kcWsbcj14N-1ZybS6mYJ9ba3Q/s320/01AGS6D8.jpg" width="239" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gino Severini self-portrait</td></tr></tbody></table>In the next months my reading expanded in different
directions. For example, I began
seeking out books on the modern artists of the early twentieth century, from
the Dadaists to those artists who clustered in Paris—Surrealists, Cubists, Futurists
and more. It was then I discovered the
Italian Futurist Gino Severini—the only one of that group who lived in Paris and knew
everyone from Picasso to Erik Satie. With the same last name as my mother, I
learned he might have been a blood relative of my grandfather, but even if only
a relative in imagination, he became a guide over the years. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> At the same time I also discovered Dorothea Tanning, the
only American and only woman enrolled in the Paris Surrealists. She was a native of Galesburg, Illinois,
and (as I later found) a Knox College student who preceded me (by several
decades) as an editor of the college literary magazine. My fascination with this place and period,
which had begun with the expatriate writers like Joyce, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, brought
me around through the painters to other writers, particularly the French poets Guillaume Apollinaire
(another friend of Gino) and Paul Eluard. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfO4VECu8elOsgtaduN-4LrpjZUoEjkzeN1ZCNYf91CODMHSJs8hBY8ad27saFgXnW48tRqLoD7VSITXOGpLbRFx_QMFGtIEHWLA6vlniXn8MrCVwauW2zPtbTd2uTaaRRo2ZuPtD7OTSsGHfdbGl4axlH0IL13a_PdZioqoWeEduZwsp6Jg/s550/rene-magritte-lithograph-le-retour-for-sale-550x442.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="550" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfO4VECu8elOsgtaduN-4LrpjZUoEjkzeN1ZCNYf91CODMHSJs8hBY8ad27saFgXnW48tRqLoD7VSITXOGpLbRFx_QMFGtIEHWLA6vlniXn8MrCVwauW2zPtbTd2uTaaRRo2ZuPtD7OTSsGHfdbGl4axlH0IL13a_PdZioqoWeEduZwsp6Jg/s320/rene-magritte-lithograph-le-retour-for-sale-550x442.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Thanks to the extensive collection of cheap art prints at
the Harvard Coop department store (the large ones were a dollar), we had our own modern gallery
(though the Vermeer in the living room—a print I still have—was the exception):
a Magritte and Picassos in our room, a Max Ernst
in the kitchen and a Paul Klee in the bathroom, which otherwise featured a
large ceramic bathtub with a Moby Dick shower curtain but no shower, and an
ancient pull-chain flush toilet.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I continued reading about ecology, including Paul Shepard’s
second anthology, <i>Environ/Mental.</i>
I don’t remember what precipitated it, but I began reading Buckminster
Fuller obsessively. The autobiographical
sections in <i>Ideas and Integrities</i> grabbed me—his despair at his lack of
worldly success and acceptance of his ideas that drove him to the edge of Lake
Michigan, contemplating suicide. That
resonated. But even navigating his
strange vocabulary I saw him as literally a sailor (he’d served in the Navy)
who knew what he was talking about with his concept of Spaceship Earth—that all
we needed to live was aboard, but we were limited mostly to what was on the
ship. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyTGdqSV-6TtLQiKeVrVuz1cBIjHMbAmW1XLvMBrDTg2H_0wj3tRgqw6_StEwv68ybn6f1L3nTgEaUbE5J5Cx90oBtEtmNPuvOLlFmpYX8e1qg9ilglIj_2UMCBesI6IC9YLGtCwU17JmKnfFnj5uO-7rOVeRZkBpUDpJuWfft1qkkVkyV2Q/s552/fuller.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="552" data-original-width="360" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyTGdqSV-6TtLQiKeVrVuz1cBIjHMbAmW1XLvMBrDTg2H_0wj3tRgqw6_StEwv68ybn6f1L3nTgEaUbE5J5Cx90oBtEtmNPuvOLlFmpYX8e1qg9ilglIj_2UMCBesI6IC9YLGtCwU17JmKnfFnj5uO-7rOVeRZkBpUDpJuWfft1qkkVkyV2Q/s320/fuller.jpg" width="209" /></a></div> Fuller’s concept of an “anticipatory design science” made a
lot of sense, even if I couldn’t follow all his proposals. A few years later I
attended one of his improvised lectures at M.I.T., and saw him up close as I
joined a cluster around him afterwards to hear more.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> I got hold of a new anthology for students called <i>Worlds
in the Making</i>, which related ecology to the future. I was already looking at the future as a
subject, and even collected these strange paperbacks that came out every year
in the early 70s, with professional psychics (a lot of them from Florida) who
predicted events of the coming year.
There were always several predictions that Fidel Castro would be
assassinated. Years later, when the CIA
plots to kill Castro were exposed (including one involving an exploding cigar),
it seemed that these were less seers than spooks, or at least they knew some.
Fidel probably outlived them all.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Carol and I were also reading ostensibly more serious books
in the psychedelic/countercultural vein, including on astrology, and we got our
charts done (I’ve lost mine but I still have Carol’s.) I was nervously
consulting the I Ching, which never quite assuaged my frustrations at my lack
of worldly progress, probably not the best attitude.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnZsFUzv-ZmaqXFSDBostoN_Bw8xuqrnsyEc3jsLi4g8Vev6-M8k6LmKH6WeVjmYG1kaXDg5WsOE98wUsLS48O5vCXCQNa-uP5wmpJVUBk5_E9qEiJxBPZMvuP1tzuLLxDE85b6sRjDXB7IG3cF4C8zd_33m3tNOMnvktal5M_H_DxJn2ciA/s600/plastic02.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnZsFUzv-ZmaqXFSDBostoN_Bw8xuqrnsyEc3jsLi4g8Vev6-M8k6LmKH6WeVjmYG1kaXDg5WsOE98wUsLS48O5vCXCQNa-uP5wmpJVUBk5_E9qEiJxBPZMvuP1tzuLLxDE85b6sRjDXB7IG3cF4C8zd_33m3tNOMnvktal5M_H_DxJn2ciA/w200-h200/plastic02.jpg" width="200" /></a></div> And we were surrounded by lots and lots of music. For awhile
we didn’t have any at home, but Carol made a trip back to Chicago and shipped
more of her belongings to Columbia Street, including the component stereo she’d
had at Knox. By the end of 1970, the Beatles breakup led to an efflorescence of
new albums: McCartney’s solo album (which we had from the previous spring),
Lennon and Ono’s separate Plastic Ono Band albums, Ringo’s “Sentimental
Journey” and “Beaucoups of Blues,” and George Harrison’s triple album, “All
Things Must Pass.” The flood continued in 1971 with “Ram” (McCartney),
“Imagine” (Lennon) and the multi-disk live album from Harrison’s all-star
concert for Bangla Desh, the first such charity event. <p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt2FPMA6F6CdWRehCBOIzNfcOFqh8nO8Q2Vpe5PZP2RnA8zFF0k4qBRiZ7S3Poghmwe1H9Y0zjSNCpB53NPlIr3rxyn3QcZ6Nq3yJYZD2t-oEr1Xe7DNYyrE59Ice-H97Zn1rx_b6E-zTvPMXH0obAFK3s4MUEGR454VeP2bc43oOziuLiSQ/s960/jt01.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt2FPMA6F6CdWRehCBOIzNfcOFqh8nO8Q2Vpe5PZP2RnA8zFF0k4qBRiZ7S3Poghmwe1H9Y0zjSNCpB53NPlIr3rxyn3QcZ6Nq3yJYZD2t-oEr1Xe7DNYyrE59Ice-H97Zn1rx_b6E-zTvPMXH0obAFK3s4MUEGR454VeP2bc43oOziuLiSQ/w200-h200/jt01.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">J.T. & Carole King</td></tr></tbody></table>James Taylor was a kind of favorite son in Boston, and the
“Sweet Baby James” album that made him a star was played everywhere. “After the Goldrush” also came out in 1970,
and began my Neil Young obsession.
Carol and I had to be selective in the concerts we attended, but we did
see Neil Young play in Boston, and caught a concert in the now legendary James
Taylor and Carole King tour. The
strangest concert I remember we attended was when Poco opened for the Moody
Blues. We went to hear Poco, assuming the Boston crowd was there for the
psychedelic Moody Blues. But Poco blew
that audience away, and nobody much was in the mood for the Moody heaviness
afterwards.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> There were also free concerts, including a few in the
Cambridge Common, just beyond Harvard Square.
Carol and I heard the distant music one Sunday in Harvard Square and
walked over there. We passed a smiling
young woman coming the other way and asked her who was playing. “It’s a beautiful day,” she said. We agreed, it was a beautiful, sunny
day. But who was playing? She laughed. “It’s A Beautiful Day.”
Yes, there was such a group—I remember staring stoned at their album
cover a few years before in Galesburg. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZwdEfy83fBjNxxnJYVBDX8aq4vvv9Te8tllB3EpJpkmFV189yRJttMr4c-FC5aSHL-Fle4CUQjKA68TelD_BSwHA33RGdjS3_vQ2Rm7_aw49waaZTfXSn_w9gIc6LngNtQ4shbRryIL47llCcm2_cocY4vsWfM8a2mf48BSguIWhLlHk63A/s500/beautiful%20day.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZwdEfy83fBjNxxnJYVBDX8aq4vvv9Te8tllB3EpJpkmFV189yRJttMr4c-FC5aSHL-Fle4CUQjKA68TelD_BSwHA33RGdjS3_vQ2Rm7_aw49waaZTfXSn_w9gIc6LngNtQ4shbRryIL47llCcm2_cocY4vsWfM8a2mf48BSguIWhLlHk63A/w200-h200/beautiful%20day.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>The ex-Beatles releases, the back-and-forth accusation songs
of Lennon and McCartney, and John and Yoko’s events and interviews were widely
discussed in the pages of Rolling Stone and other music papers as well as the
Boston area weeklies, and among people we met.
Lennon’s first album and Neil Young’s “Goldrush” in particular grabbed
me and didn’t let go for years. But
Carol and I also listened alot to John Phillips’ (of the Mamas and Papas) solo
album, even though the music media dismissed it. I don’t think I ever quite
convinced her of the brilliance of the Bee Gees though, even if I played their
“Odessa” double album too often. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIMsBcYqke0X7s2-7E3vTzeN3E16qT3rY2M_DH5eSRMFPabwqMlb8JfAhpcRdByHTDTCWh4l-E--HBWalt1gWGHRGlb6xS1sdDi8mvr7a-XbRwMJLuJjpg-W4yYWDbX8oHPpFqkwJ5Gpl3M9o8ELIwd71nud0BUUbR-dPi26QFqKyi_XnqfA/s225/philips.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="224" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIMsBcYqke0X7s2-7E3vTzeN3E16qT3rY2M_DH5eSRMFPabwqMlb8JfAhpcRdByHTDTCWh4l-E--HBWalt1gWGHRGlb6xS1sdDi8mvr7a-XbRwMJLuJjpg-W4yYWDbX8oHPpFqkwJ5Gpl3M9o8ELIwd71nud0BUUbR-dPi26QFqKyi_XnqfA/w199-h200/philips.jpg" width="199" /></a></div>In a new relationship and a home of our own, and with the
stimulations of my Cambridge baptism, I was bursting with creative
expressions. I wrote in every form from
verse to polemic. I was writing songs
at a furious clip, enlisting Carol to add bits of gentle percussion to tapes I
made of them, at first just to not forget what I’d written.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Inspired by Dadaist
Kurt Schwitters, I resumed constructing collages, as did Carol. I briefly continued my Cummington
experimentations with painting. And I
devised and physically made a board game—the Cambridge Conspiracy Game. It was arranged like a Monopoly board but
with Cambridge sites. Its purpose however was as a kind of anti-Monopoly. The
object was not competition. The only
way to win was for players to cooperate.
Everybody won, or everybody lost.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQmaIwa9k5Zel85COmJyVhyrUKvgbaVhGTIsg6z3Ql67xPtxZ1r6GPZFcPJmkcXMYM0XJr8__82hyphenhyphenc-jbBS52oSEzCn5MKJj-FtxW6mt4cuApEY-L4UYbO7-J0z-OffgDyd_1-o4C1oH8Q99rrgT_mc4LpVjLH1xvKmfbJhaABDiXdG11FNUJb_g/s2697/doorway02.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2144" data-original-width="2697" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQmaIwa9k5Zel85COmJyVhyrUKvgbaVhGTIsg6z3Ql67xPtxZ1r6GPZFcPJmkcXMYM0XJr8__82hyphenhyphenc-jbBS52oSEzCn5MKJj-FtxW6mt4cuApEY-L4UYbO7-J0z-OffgDyd_1-o4C1oH8Q99rrgT_mc4LpVjLH1xvKmfbJhaABDiXdG11FNUJb_g/w400-h318/doorway02.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>In the beginning we led a kind of John and Yoko existence--both of us taking photos, making artworks, collaborating on music. We explored Cambridge and Boston, but we also spent a lot of time in our blue room, and in our neighborhood. Columbia Street extended down from Mass Ave on the Boston
side edge of Central Square a considerable distance before it got to us. Our
building was a bit run down, and so was the immediate neighborhood. It was not
fashionable or even recognizably Cambridge. It evidently had been Irish and (a
bit further on) Italian, but was now mostly Portuguese. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> We shopped for major
groceries at the Purity Supreme supermarket in Central Square, but we also
explored the shops in Inman Square: a walk down Columbia St. for a long block
in the opposite direction from Mass Ave, and then the streets to the left that
eventually led to the Harvard Square area.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> My impression was
that Inman Square had once been the Italian area, and there was a very good but
decently priced Italian restaurant there, that we could afford occasionally.
There was also an authentic German bakery, and a large deli restaurant called
S&S, that is apparently still there.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjx5iY4dvY3NxTMgU-PfGt6CPeGMURSCts_9DFLmYqVszqxe1w1UxDFNN7JpbjLbG8nI5-1nzsdbY0WvTZGKWusmX9QK4USZRZ-T1t50yIcB_UDdlzLDzcG6T_KNu0UmlcauNMnpiviPGnJRafc4Ki6qcD1ECCBrdi4qap6jQr5Lyam0GcpA/s795/inman-square-cambridge-massachusetts-in-the-1970s-by-flickr-user-shtebe%20(1).jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="795" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjx5iY4dvY3NxTMgU-PfGt6CPeGMURSCts_9DFLmYqVszqxe1w1UxDFNN7JpbjLbG8nI5-1nzsdbY0WvTZGKWusmX9QK4USZRZ-T1t50yIcB_UDdlzLDzcG6T_KNu0UmlcauNMnpiviPGnJRafc4Ki6qcD1ECCBrdi4qap6jQr5Lyam0GcpA/s320/inman-square-cambridge-massachusetts-in-the-1970s-by-flickr-user-shtebe%20(1).jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inman Sq. early 1970s</td></tr></tbody></table> There was an old fashioned 5&10 next to a small grocery
that sold $1 bottles of French Bordeaux wine (vin ordinaire in Paris), not far
from a blues club. Legal Seafoods was the Cambridge choice for fresh seafood.
We took our clothes to the Laundromat in Inman Square, where each washer and
dryer had an individual name inscribed on it.
If we wanted to leave while our clothes were still in process, the
Italian who owned it would watch over them, and we might come back to see them
folded and waiting for us.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> This end of Cambridge was noisy and sooty, as urban a place
as I’d ever lived. But we also belonged to a co-op that every week delivered
organic vegetables from nearby farms (in the revolution talk of the day, it was
called the Food Conspiracy.) We also
were asked to work in the fields periodically, which I remember doing
once. For awhile Carol and I tried the
brown rice diet recommended by John and Yoko, so we wouldn’t be “sampaku”
(supposedly you were if there was white all around your eyeballs, and it wasn’t
a good sign.) We gave that up pretty
quickly, and I wrote a song about it. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I extended my ecology commitments to the household, perhaps
a little too much (a succession of housemates weren’t thrilled.) But I was
motivated to do kitchen cleanup and some of the cooking. Carol made amazing Irish stew I still
remember.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJSYrgBc3q839gHWXzMl66YCtmOasWqLWiwUpPSWNuWVahedhBbLJPzU-KNEAZbanoifPQGnuk4RFumaVaZaCQxoTagpmZUpVGFoGyLyVS28FNTZgyWVsPd1hlMhiWrI-PBu0UEvieZrsh1odqzblJLVq4Z4Uduvw99TTgqNcRcI2hI50rPg/s477/stuff1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="403" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJSYrgBc3q839gHWXzMl66YCtmOasWqLWiwUpPSWNuWVahedhBbLJPzU-KNEAZbanoifPQGnuk4RFumaVaZaCQxoTagpmZUpVGFoGyLyVS28FNTZgyWVsPd1hlMhiWrI-PBu0UEvieZrsh1odqzblJLVq4Z4Uduvw99TTgqNcRcI2hI50rPg/s320/stuff1.jpg" width="270" /></a></div> Early on we added a tricolor kitten to the household, a
female we named Stuff, on the theory that cats respond to sibilants when
called. Soon Carol adopted a young stray, a black male we called Muk (I think
as a reference to milk, which he loved.)
However, we failed to monitor their maturation, and soon we had a
pregnant Stuff.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> One day I awoke to
find that Carol and our housemate Andrea had panicked when they thought Stuff
wasn’t delivering properly, and had rushed her to the vet who said she was
fine, but that adventure caused Stuff’s labor to stop. We had to take her back to induce birth, and
by then I was the only one with the nerve to be present for the actual
births. Stuff had six kittens of
various hues and combinations, including a silver gray male. We decided to keep him, and named him
Gray. Those three cats—Stuff, Muk and
Gray-- would be under my care for the next twenty years.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> All this may sound idyllic but of course it wasn’t quite. We both had demons to work through, and after the initial
overriding bliss, we had each other to get used to. Neither of us had anything but vague direction, and so along with
the freedom of exploration, we had anxieties.
Plus the complications of family pressures, housemates, and a few
neighborhood and apartment problems, etc. But complications is all they were.
We had what Carol would later describe as a good little life. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-1aPmPsM-Ymm-fAjehXauwxHINyMeO4Mgd_5KyHSXtrUwxofKsThTBNsLxjrwYOzBaGXuLJxSMgg4IogZPuyArpXMYm2HC68IvqpoHNlqsBxt1Y7mBlzkD-of3UqgBPVp7H1JV6FCQNnF0gRQ4wms95938DHeh4u9Taa6H6R1H15wHKzKhg/s230/Brighams-ice-cream-historical.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="230" data-original-width="210" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-1aPmPsM-Ymm-fAjehXauwxHINyMeO4Mgd_5KyHSXtrUwxofKsThTBNsLxjrwYOzBaGXuLJxSMgg4IogZPuyArpXMYm2HC68IvqpoHNlqsBxt1Y7mBlzkD-of3UqgBPVp7H1JV6FCQNnF0gRQ4wms95938DHeh4u9Taa6H6R1H15wHKzKhg/s1600/Brighams-ice-cream-historical.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>Carol started out working as a waitress at the counter of
the Brigham’s ice cream shop in Central Square, which was also a kind of
luncheonette, with coffee, sandwiches, etc. She wore a light brown uniform and
dispensed “frappes” (Bostonese for milk shakes) and ice cream cones with
“Jimmies” (sprinkles) on top. She soon figured out how to sneak me almost free
meals. She thought the manager didn’t
notice, but it turned out he did, and didn’t care. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The main Cambridge post office building was nearby, and it
may have been an employee having lunch at Brigham’s that alerted Carol to job
openings at that post office. She took the Civil Service exam and was quickly
hired, perhaps as a temporary for the Christmas season rush, but she was kept
on afterwards. To my surprise she liked
it there, especially her co-workers, and she visibly began to open up again to
the outside world.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I “took in” typing, edited and rewrote graduate school
papers, and had temp jobs, such as working in college bookstores during
textbook rush or doing inventory, and painting the vast interior of a former
Harvard eating club preparing to become a restaurant, Grendel’s Den on Winthrop St. and across Brattle from my
Patisserie, near Harvard Square. It’s still there. (Though I thought I did good work on those walls and ceilings, I
was fired for insubordination, for sticking up for a colleague being bullied.
He probably thought I was a dope for doing so.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9mGRAsacm2ZLlZSkcTys2CGqIgoOCqkLRkdga96XMsWP2RTvXnN2MmsCGqBIiGqVt3sxiJHBFT8d6Qwd90CK1iVNG45SrZxTMaJQrW87_IOj8NY1qMMHgRTo2aMUY3Nzt2dmjCcvCGf8bDh1KXN2nioZJOJazlcC3dHlJlJAKn1i1J6BYWA/s667/tumblr_mk34dfzmbf1r724qpo1_500.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9mGRAsacm2ZLlZSkcTys2CGqIgoOCqkLRkdga96XMsWP2RTvXnN2MmsCGqBIiGqVt3sxiJHBFT8d6Qwd90CK1iVNG45SrZxTMaJQrW87_IOj8NY1qMMHgRTo2aMUY3Nzt2dmjCcvCGf8bDh1KXN2nioZJOJazlcC3dHlJlJAKn1i1J6BYWA/s320/tumblr_mk34dfzmbf1r724qpo1_500.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">hawker later in 70s (not me)</td></tr></tbody></table>I eventually added a
weekly gig as a “hawker,” selling one or both of the counterculture papers on a
street corner (in my case, at Prospect and Mass Ave at Central Square in Cambridge.) By
then—probably early 1971—the Cambridge-based Phoenix had been joined by Boston
After Dark, which had started out as a tabloid of mostly entertainment
listings and stories, but by then had expanded to a full weekly newspaper, with news and
arts coverage.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Unlike most alternative weeklies since, these papers weren’t
given away, but sold. Both had gained initial circulation with free classified
ads, personals mostly. The next
attraction was coverage of the kinds of arts and entertainment that appealed to
young readers, including the hordes of college students at the many colleges
and universities in the Boston area.
The writers were also young, and spoke the same language, unlike the
stodgy dailies. That applied to the
cultural and political coverage and point of view of news stories. There was a huge potential readership that
had nowhere else to go locally.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> For some reason lost to history, I gravitated towards
selling Boston After Dark. I took the T
(Boston area’s subway/light rail system, which Carol likened to amusement park
rides) to the Boston printing plant, picked up and paid for the number of
papers I was gambling I could sell, and transited back to my Cambridge corner.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> There were a lot of hawkers. Every corner in and near Harvard Square was taken, and often
enough, one or two of the corners near me in Central Square were also claimed. There were
occasional turf wars, but generally hawkers respected the claims of
regulars. Where I was, the clientele
came mainly from surrounding office buildings, usually at lunchtimes. My best customers were young women from
those offices, who bought their copy from me with their friends watching from
the floors above. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Since I didn’t always sell them all, I had lots of
opportunities to read what was in them.
I read the Phoenix as well. Meanwhile, I fantasized my own publication,
complete with articles I’d like to see in it. Eventually the light bulb went
off, and I realized I might pitch these existing publications with those
ideas. That took a surprisingly long
time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAUgyar3ET1BDuno6HaNMYIu7o3YwhOVMCcCp3mmkqKSmi7WFdqS_fAhF5lBdT-puELpXy3TqzrwSzgOTFeu5PXUxL9C4dam5hVz8hL1pRTwAfADlaHNodhONe0oUzW8d_2e5L_qzrwtoDL2F_zwsFxKX7a6HIiZ-6mSWtzhkO7Z2GBvAVTw/s600/eastlake.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="600" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAUgyar3ET1BDuno6HaNMYIu7o3YwhOVMCcCp3mmkqKSmi7WFdqS_fAhF5lBdT-puELpXy3TqzrwSzgOTFeu5PXUxL9C4dam5hVz8hL1pRTwAfADlaHNodhONe0oUzW8d_2e5L_qzrwtoDL2F_zwsFxKX7a6HIiZ-6mSWtzhkO7Z2GBvAVTw/s320/eastlake.png" width="320" /></a></div> I was always sending things out, poems and stories but
increasingly also reviews and articles.
I had my first acceptance in Rolling Stone, with an unsolicited review
of the book, <i>A Child’s Garden of Verses for the Revolution</i>, by my
erstwhile teacher and correspondent, William Eastlake. I did a piece on Henry
Miller accepted by a west coast publication called Organ. The editor liked it, and agreed to assign a
piece on Buckminster Fuller. I think
the magazine folded before it could be published, but I did get paid. <p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’ve found the notebook from this time which contains my
first draft of a long poem called “Ears.”
I remember it as inspired by a Kenneth Koch poem on the theme of eyes
that I heard him read, but I can’t locate that poem and don’t remember where
the reading was. A version of “Ears” as well as several other poems and a prose
piece of impressions of Cambridge, appeared in a one-off publication called <i>Words
Cambridge </i>in spring 1971. The
people who appeared in it put the publication together, assembling and binding
it in the offices of the Orson Welles cinema.
Another version of “Ears” would appear at the end of the year in a more
professionally produced though also short-lived literary magazine, Cotelydon. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkEejCeEDmDun5aG7SMhLEq_23I1M9yV4Spg33V6YuGQ8rzhF6poaygk9ZN35hBGj-Gt0mSo2WaMKaXilHnPjMfY8Wt5QOyXJRiHgB2s1utj-_ta25ivvJKfhienmdv4-7ZRLSvedWW__xKR15oH2AlRxNXbfggKbERVyztzMumAr0tmdQaA/s2138/carolknox01.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1492" data-original-width="2138" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkEejCeEDmDun5aG7SMhLEq_23I1M9yV4Spg33V6YuGQ8rzhF6poaygk9ZN35hBGj-Gt0mSo2WaMKaXilHnPjMfY8Wt5QOyXJRiHgB2s1utj-_ta25ivvJKfhienmdv4-7ZRLSvedWW__xKR15oH2AlRxNXbfggKbERVyztzMumAr0tmdQaA/s320/carolknox01.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carol 1968 at Knox. Bill Thompson photo.</td></tr></tbody></table><b>B</b>oth Carol and I had various physical complaints that sent
us for tests at the Cambridge hospital and especially to Massachusetts General,
which because it was a teaching hospital, was more open to doing tests for
people who couldn’t otherwise pay for them, as long as students could observe
or participate. My tests proved
inconclusive. The best advice I got was
“drink more water.”<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> So I was not unduly concerned when Carol went for tests at
Mass General, after my repeated urging. Her health had always been somewhat
shaky, but there had been two recent incidents in which she’d been overcome by
fatigue. We’d attended a screening at
the Orson Welles and met the filmmaker Stan Vanderbeek, who was about to show
one of his films beamed by multiple projectors onto the inner dome of a
building—the Moviedrome at Stony Point in New York state. The audience would be lying on the floor
looking up. The film would last for
several hours—a truly immersive experience.
We signed up for the bus to go, but when the day approached Carol
suddenly felt extremely tired, so we cancelled.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Another wave of fatigue prevented us from meeting up with
some Knox friends. We were literally
out our front door when she said she had to go back. The prospect of a long bus ride to the Moviedrome had been
daunting, but this outing was not going to be so strenuous. It seemed more serious. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I was back in our room when she returned from her visit to
Mass General. I asked her what the
doctor said. She brought up something
else that had us both laughing. Then I
asked her again what the doctor said.
She suddenly burst into tears. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> After initial tests she had been sent to a doctor in the
hospital who diagnosed her with what was then called Hodgkin’s Disease (now
Hodgkins lymphoma.) Through her tears,
and fear that she would die, she provided what turned out to be an accurate account
of what the doctor said (I’ve unfortunately forgotten his name.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8_Q2qe8Y2itjxbqnbjw8C31xmg5ZbdtuVJ9ZFvcXXaVoxHt4QoAVHvWp_1tbEt3uHLLIbFQ0idspuFT5LODuOMOMMxi3hIuiBQ1_SfdBexaciDA0nVHzHF4nwgndJR-ZXO4D-b4nEnxnyaOH_HCruhzv4ucSpIIItls9Sk1GJ_w9N2Q-9zg/s259/download.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8_Q2qe8Y2itjxbqnbjw8C31xmg5ZbdtuVJ9ZFvcXXaVoxHt4QoAVHvWp_1tbEt3uHLLIbFQ0idspuFT5LODuOMOMMxi3hIuiBQ1_SfdBexaciDA0nVHzHF4nwgndJR-ZXO4D-b4nEnxnyaOH_HCruhzv4ucSpIIItls9Sk1GJ_w9N2Q-9zg/s1600/download.jpg" width="259" /></a></div>The diagnosis was
serious, he said, but the good news was a new treatment that had excellent
results, available at only two hospitals in the U.S.: Stanford and
Massachusetts General. It involved
removing the spleen, followed by two rounds of treatments, some combination of
radiation and chemotherapy. Because they'd caught it at an early stage, after that she should be fine. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> She repeated the words but did not seem to believe them
until I repeated them back to her. Part of her despair resulted from a stop at a library or bookstore on the way home where she read that the disease was usually fatal.
But soon she accepted the assurances she brought back from her doctor. Later I
did what research I could, which confirmed what she’d been told.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In the early 1970s, it seemed most cancers were mysterious
and fatal. Not many years before that, the word “cancer” was not even uttered
in polite company (comedian Billy Crystal had a routine that reflected
this.) I was becoming a little familiar
with the radiation and chemotherapy treatments because my mother had recently
undergone some, and would undergo more, after Carol completed hers. But I
wasn’t around for most of my mother’s, and my parents were generally secretive
about such things, so I was somewhere between discreet (not wanting to
embarrass my mother) and frightened. It was very different with Carol.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3ejqFNFcFAnJI9HaNMZAkTyRGEqAXggAK-Tj5ts-Ez7ewevwq0o0IzUkTSUK3YyXHCZbM7UTDVq2L37WZGamGRHbYvqAKN0vsrWTfA8zlnPcSfEYrGi4-lbmuAzUcctU4Tn0aAq1Z8FL7fSGy9lkqqgqRgBeLZv6sK7TqAW-RTblQ0KCb_jBR5g/s1613/cambwinter01.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1029" data-original-width="1613" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3ejqFNFcFAnJI9HaNMZAkTyRGEqAXggAK-Tj5ts-Ez7ewevwq0o0IzUkTSUK3YyXHCZbM7UTDVq2L37WZGamGRHbYvqAKN0vsrWTfA8zlnPcSfEYrGi4-lbmuAzUcctU4Tn0aAq1Z8FL7fSGy9lkqqgqRgBeLZv6sK7TqAW-RTblQ0KCb_jBR5g/s320/cambwinter01.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Outside our Columbia St. apt. we each took<br />a photo of the other</td></tr></tbody></table> I was there with her completely, every moment, every step. I
was at the hospital for her spleen removal operation, and her initial
treatments. Sometimes, instead of remaining in the waiting room, I would spend
the estimated time outside on Boston Common before returning. Carol waited her turn in an area reserved
for patients, where she befriended a few regulars also waiting for their
treatments, and heard their stories.
Some had much less hopeful prospects.
Later, when she felt stronger and self-reliance was important to her,
she bolstered her confidence by going to the treatments on her own. She found
her courage, partly in making it ordinary.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> At home, I took care
of her as best I could. We talked about
everything involved, what she thought and how she felt, and I tended, however
watchfully, to follow her lead. She
needed to comprehend and cope with what was happening to her. A part of her body was cut out, and the rest
of it subjected to the damage (including to her beautiful hair) caused by
radiation and chemicals, as well as the eventual healing. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> I could also offer a
different perspective. “You felt your
body broken,” begins a poem I wrote to her, “but I saw it whole/with such/ joy
at its aliveness/its softness and beauty/that the tubes hanging out/were proof
only/that your loveliness/was present/transcendent…” </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> She wanted above all to be <i>not sick</i>, so we tried to
keep things as normal as possible. She had taken up knitting, as did her
friends at the hospital, to pass the time before and after treatments. She knitted at home as well, including a six
foot long, blue and green scarf for me—not often very practical (except for
Doctor Who conventions) but beautiful.
I still display it. When effects of the treatments accumulated, we
watched a lot of TV on our small black and white set, and she began painting,
as well as making rude sculptures out of play dough. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT0gTOKhnUYkXyMso4yAwFyr3S1E1LCRtwccfi195jM2yePDm8qNLd5RbNpszkXr2nNp2DDUVuKHOZG7Spc_VJAyACM5N0gpJCEWTvVCKcxJ8nAQ1N4rgvzulemm7xleZJ-ESwx-fIhcKFk3giNUX5rr800ja2r-DBSw90BJ5uNfJsNxY-8w/s1637/carolptown01.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1637" data-original-width="1503" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT0gTOKhnUYkXyMso4yAwFyr3S1E1LCRtwccfi195jM2yePDm8qNLd5RbNpszkXr2nNp2DDUVuKHOZG7Spc_VJAyACM5N0gpJCEWTvVCKcxJ8nAQ1N4rgvzulemm7xleZJ-ESwx-fIhcKFk3giNUX5rr800ja2r-DBSw90BJ5uNfJsNxY-8w/s320/carolptown01.jpg" width="294" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carol on one of our visits to Cape Cod. BK photo<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>The cats helped, particularly the kittens while we had them
(we placed them in other homes when they were old enough. Stuff had a second litter of four, all black.) I recall sitting in our armchair reading,
while several of the kittens chased each other, up one of my arms and down the
other.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Looking back through our earlier correspondence, a pattern
of precedent emerged from the previous year—particularly Carol’s series of
inexplicable fevers and fatigue. She
had been hospitalized in Galesburg months before I arrived, and one of the
reasons she didn’t want to go back was her fear that she would die there.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Over the years I’ve wondered what fate led us to Boston,
where this disease could be treated.
Though the treatments themselves had serious medical consequences for
her years later (they are no longer done in the same way), and both the disease and the treatments may have led to her
final illness, she nevertheless had another fifty years of what might even be
characterized as a fabulous life.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Jeremy Gladstone
visited us in Cambridge, on his way back to Europe (he didn't finish his dinner with us because he was "shrinking his stomach" in preparation for being on the road.) He and Carol had a previous relationship (they’d lived together
in the same house in Galesburg and the same rooms as I had the year before) and
they remained friends. They
corresponded when he was in Lausanne, in French-speaking Switzerland. He assured her that she could teach English
there, and urged her to at least make a long visit. Carol was intrigued, and having the goal of a European trip helped her through her treatments. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsNxZ7g8r3wA0QZTPgZIBQraD1X4CikgVjMDcgVAdKppdIZfBgynZUwHvcrrUdFxJd0FYmopHkWIuH1cSKd1AuEkEHTWQSaBJNGDVcTodtz7naF-y6hACeYayCOAYCnBZbv7s3hVI6CoOuQJaQhILQDp_VkPjGgpEp8xJo8QUezXrJ6wkRdg/s500/tumblr_mk342otmfQ1r724qpo1_500.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="500" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsNxZ7g8r3wA0QZTPgZIBQraD1X4CikgVjMDcgVAdKppdIZfBgynZUwHvcrrUdFxJd0FYmopHkWIuH1cSKd1AuEkEHTWQSaBJNGDVcTodtz7naF-y6hACeYayCOAYCnBZbv7s3hVI6CoOuQJaQhILQDp_VkPjGgpEp8xJo8QUezXrJ6wkRdg/s320/tumblr_mk342otmfQ1r724qpo1_500.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>In the fall of 1971 I finally sent an article to Boston
After Dark, with a letter inquiring about writing book reviews. The associate
arts editor Jake Kugel wrote back, said he liked the article but couldn’t use
it, and suggested I come in to the office to see what books they had that they
wanted reviewed. I did, and came away
with at least one. But before my first
review was due, it was announced that the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda would
receive the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature.
I dashed off an article about him and sent it to Kugel. It was published in early November.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> By the end of the year I’d published two book reviews
(including one of Sylvia Plath’s novel <i>The Bell Jar</i>) and an article on
Norman Mailer in Boston After Dark.
Meanwhile, I was in touch with Dave Marsh, editor of the Detroit-based
magazine Creem (actually, their address was Walled Lake, Michigan.) Though the now-legendary Creem was mostly a rock music magazine, it
published more. I may have published a review of <i>The Greening of America</i> there, but the first I recall of a flurry of
pieces for Creem—a review of the movie “Omega Man” starring Charleston
Heston—appeared in December. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Suddenly the apparently random aspects of my life seemed to
be coalescing in these opportunities—the aimless observations of counterculture
in Boulder and Berkeley, the seemingly wasted hours watching movies, listening
to the latest music and discussing it all in perilous detail, and the instinctive
reading and cultural curiosity, as well as the years of unread writing, of
absorbing and searching for forms and expression.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Now I was suddenly getting published regularly and meeting
new people, especially at Boston After Dark.
But Carol still felt intimidated by what she perceived of that world,
which was becoming my world. And then
she felt well enough, and it came time for the dream of Europe to become real.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I went with her to
Logan airport and saw her off for her first trip to England, Greece and France (sending me a pile of postcards) before settling in Switzerland. She worked part time while taking French courses every morning, and she learned to drive. Eventually, true to Jeremy's prediction, she was hired as an English teacher in Lausanne. She came back for visits and
follow-ups at Mass General a couple of times.
At the end of one of these visits of several weeks (including a trip to
see her parents in Chicago), I put her on the train to New York, where she
would get a direct flight to Switzerland. But before the train left I
impulsively bought myself a ticket to New York (it was all of $10 then) and
joined her, intending to return on the next train back. On the way she decided to stay longer, so we
spent a few days in New York (hosted by Michael Shain) and Cambridge and again in New York, before she
flew back to Europe.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I have many blue airmail letters from those first years she
was in Switzerland. Early on, there was
some thought of my joining her there or in England, but as my involvement in
Boston increased and her attraction and commitment to Europe solidified, those thoughts faded.
Years passed, and eventually she wrote that she was getting married to
someone she met there. I could only wish her well. I didn’t hear from her for many years shortly after that. It was clear
that she blossomed in Europe, just as we both suspected she would not be
fulfilled if she stayed. Our roads and
our lives diverged. But we always had Cambridge. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-48796288442461849682023-09-11T00:43:00.003-07:002023-10-27T01:56:38.092-07:00History of My Reading: Cummington Summer 1970<p><i></i></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwYHbHL5hg43cCJRA2uh_eB_L34XvlmLhAmQ0c_9TPg_Ic7i4omMvqOaypta5iZjBa4XvwFqSaJlnmGDGSmvvzUdvOOKEXkPlw6OL1cAlRRc_Wo-Mfv2mCCF5X4uAGYGADpVn9yLsaoTlX9kk09hYAHMJz6cfxOS5v0umtQhiYEBoVXAUkHg/s2387/bk02.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1794" data-original-width="2387" height="482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwYHbHL5hg43cCJRA2uh_eB_L34XvlmLhAmQ0c_9TPg_Ic7i4omMvqOaypta5iZjBa4XvwFqSaJlnmGDGSmvvzUdvOOKEXkPlw6OL1cAlRRc_Wo-Mfv2mCCF5X4uAGYGADpVn9yLsaoTlX9kk09hYAHMJz6cfxOS5v0umtQhiYEBoVXAUkHg/w640-h482/bk02.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">BK at Cummington 1970. Photo by James Baker Hall</td></tr></tbody></table><i><br /> "What you remember saves you. To remember/Is not to rehearse, but to hear what never/Has fallen silent..." </i>W.S. Merwin<p></p><p><i>“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming/We’re finally on our
own/This summer I hear the drumming/Four dead in Ohio…” </i>Neil Young:“Ohio” May 1970</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b><span style="font-size: medium;">I</span></b>n June 1970, weeks after the protest occupation, I left
Galesburg, Illinois and Knox College. They had been one center of my life since
1964. Except for a brief visit in the 1980s, I never returned.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> While in Galesburg I was staying with Carol Hartman, who
was finishing her third year as a student.
She and three friends were planning to spend the summer in Boston. Since I had been accepted for the eight week
summer session at the Cummington Community of the Arts in western
Massachusetts, I decided to join them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwJrUI7AyDAL0e7X2aTL_PtQQzC2m2lEjD-3UkmuesqkR3Qpq_j7rLf50ox9IedxB2C2oAdeADawL24TXGElA2jHOcCa0jWpknJzf4btnH3L27VJQxOUS-dIP836WMsYIqV_t-rmLfLT8aivcG-NACYzBqAzuF02AZqGjZRnsTTQwdUuYtUA/s451/janie%20&%20carol2.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="385" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwJrUI7AyDAL0e7X2aTL_PtQQzC2m2lEjD-3UkmuesqkR3Qpq_j7rLf50ox9IedxB2C2oAdeADawL24TXGElA2jHOcCa0jWpknJzf4btnH3L27VJQxOUS-dIP836WMsYIqV_t-rmLfLT8aivcG-NACYzBqAzuF02AZqGjZRnsTTQwdUuYtUA/s320/janie%20&%20carol2.jpg" width="273" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jane Langer and Carol at Knox</td></tr></tbody></table> By then of course it was more than that. Carol and I had been friends since her first
year at Knox, when I was a senior. A mutual attraction was evident from the
start. But I was more of an older
confidant then. Carol and her close
friends—among them Jane Langer, Judy Bowker, Jan Byrne, and Steve Phillips—more
or less adopted me. For awhile, Judy was
“the Little Kid” and I was “the Big Kid.”
I won’t say it was foremost in my mind, but I did remember how important
my relationships with older students were in my first and second years.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Our attraction led
to a romance that flowered in that spring of 1970 when we were both free of
other such active relationships. The
summer together—before and after Cummington-- was to be the next step. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Carol passed away in August 2020.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Partly in deference to those who were an active part of her life
in recent years, and partly because I’m not sure I’ve come to terms with this,
I haven’t shared memories before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
were decades when our contacts lapsed. She got back in touch with me by 2000,
and I have a Christmas card from 2001. At some point a couple of my emails went
unanswered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After that I had news of
her mostly through the Knox alumni magazine. In a recent year I emailed her
birthday greetings out of the blue—it might even have been in January 2020.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaS1DRcU44lWfJMbxO1glEWOaHIoO2xf0rlbImJ2ezmPuW2Ei5rs4XUcHBtPBGumakIwN-IUOd9okzP0ULDAXUKhNW8pU87ZxiytZ2QVXaw9DqJBhyphenhyphenx6cjTnXM5ARqV98-MHYHu7cgMAkoQNEj1bGTRlheI1Lsk2jtI_hS6ZWT03vdoT-iRF3odg/s2315/stop03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2175" data-original-width="2315" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaS1DRcU44lWfJMbxO1glEWOaHIoO2xf0rlbImJ2ezmPuW2Ei5rs4XUcHBtPBGumakIwN-IUOd9okzP0ULDAXUKhNW8pU87ZxiytZ2QVXaw9DqJBhyphenhyphenx6cjTnXM5ARqV98-MHYHu7cgMAkoQNEj1bGTRlheI1Lsk2jtI_hS6ZWT03vdoT-iRF3odg/s320/stop03.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carol and me, Galesburg 1968, photo by<br />Bill Thompson. Perhaps part of a student<br />film Bill made with us as costars.</td></tr></tbody></table>To do more than
describe the Carol I knew in the 1970s would be presumptuous. So I can’t even
attempt a full portrait or tribute. But with the discretion appropriate to
circumstances—including the purpose of these posts—I can allude to what I know
from that time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> We stopped in Chicago first. While Carol visited her parents, I stayed with Knox alum Howard
Partner at his apartment in the city. It was in a then-funky neighborhood at
Dickens and Fremont. My first night
there I listened to the second Poco album, unable to sleep. (So I recorded in a
notebook, which otherwise has the usual and frustrating lack of details about
that time, but is filled instead with notes on writing projects, memories and
bits of verse. Though I did record impressions of a free concert in Lincoln
Park, and a noisy voyage on the L to meet Carol at the Carson Pirie Scott
department store, where I was still getting hostile stares for my long hair.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDFo7vawKjFXdWX4nwvmRvL46A_dfzxkAfmXqiV_kZxZZ5zWBBlvchXRbKMpoX8iuWZZL6tWzEZcHmbeoLQmnpQ05E33FEsba-eYHWwYORYp9kbvi9i49FV37o1Zzrn3aMCo3CfRuvh4lxLnbUq8a103k1xpQznDhRkugKfgSIjMV0jHblpQ/s499/joy%20bk.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="337" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDFo7vawKjFXdWX4nwvmRvL46A_dfzxkAfmXqiV_kZxZZ5zWBBlvchXRbKMpoX8iuWZZL6tWzEZcHmbeoLQmnpQ05E33FEsba-eYHWwYORYp9kbvi9i49FV37o1Zzrn3aMCo3CfRuvh4lxLnbUq8a103k1xpQznDhRkugKfgSIjMV0jHblpQ/s320/joy%20bk.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>At Howard’s I picked a book off his shelf I’d meant to read:
<i>Joy: Expanding Human Awareness</i> by William C. Schultz. Turns out, he said later, that it was my
book that he’d borrowed. So I got it
back, and I have it still. Most of it was derived from the Human Potentials
Movement, encounter groups and so on.
But one thing jumped out at me then (or so I noted): the relationship
between the body (and its ills or health) and the mind or emotions. Pretty
standard now, it was largely disregarded in the conventional medicine of 1970.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Schultz’s book begins with a description of his infant son,
his innocent absorption in his surroundings, his joy in discovery, learning and
experience. It wasn’t just that his son was often joyful: “Ethan <i>is</i> joy,” he
writes. But typically this does not
last. “Where does the joy go?” Reading
this now, I realize that a version of this question—what happens to this kind
of innocence, why is it destroyed, and how can some of it be recovered—was the
active subtext of my twenties.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Meanwhile Carol was having some conflicts with her parents,
particularly concerning her reluctance to return to Knox for another year. But they also were skeptical about me,
though we never met. They (meaning her
mother mostly) referred to me as “the Polish poet.” Carol said (fondly) that her parents had strange nicknames for her, including "Miss Pasadena" and "Zookie."</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgLypwOKyEg9LKoycuat_IsvgqRjyCvlOylFCjDuviG_778Yknue49RTfbQIPsfkp5Cg2lX9ue9oliYUv93aocgS4-qkhi16bLkwR1AUsVgDX1iZNCh4PR0BP3rNKtFl5xIiZfy6eqENpgPqY4CsUrKZrcIRlMZ7-c9dzezL0NGdOjw9wlLw/s2206/carol%20and%20mother.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="2206" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgLypwOKyEg9LKoycuat_IsvgqRjyCvlOylFCjDuviG_778Yknue49RTfbQIPsfkp5Cg2lX9ue9oliYUv93aocgS4-qkhi16bLkwR1AUsVgDX1iZNCh4PR0BP3rNKtFl5xIiZfy6eqENpgPqY4CsUrKZrcIRlMZ7-c9dzezL0NGdOjw9wlLw/s320/carol%20and%20mother.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carol and her mother</td></tr></tbody></table> After exploring other options, Carol and I simply used
half-fare cards (mine borrowed) to fly to Boston, with what we could carry. Carol’s older brother Raymond was attending M.I.T. (or Harvard, or both.) She
and her friends were to stay at his Fairwood Circle apartment in Cambridge,
before a summer sublet was available that probably Raymond arranged. After a few days there on the floor, I was
off to western Massachusetts and the Cummington Community of the Arts. <p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">M</span></b>y actual memories of Cummington are like snapshots, loosely
related. I also haven’t found
manuscripts or notebooks that I can attribute specifically to my time there,
which turned out to be only about four weeks.
But I do have a few relevant documents. And I have many letters
(remember them?) that Carol wrote to me as well as letters I wrote to her,
beginning in 1968 and including while we were separated that summer. Some of the contents provide details and a few prods—or even
corrections—to memories of Cummington. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK1eqROJX1f8O2_EDoN31F3zDkLtf8tY79uv_AYMx3ux4JCVu3DswAQP7jRbBfbLhCJSH4efp0cgZSfRutN6GRkQwZ_7Es4z_uXfYS70rFWfMPitE3wPMFSDsSXpeYIbS0McZiq-SaLtPBPZE0OM2lD-RabZW80h_sqQOzMBGSdLryqniSMA/s475/hall%20bk.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="302" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK1eqROJX1f8O2_EDoN31F3zDkLtf8tY79uv_AYMx3ux4JCVu3DswAQP7jRbBfbLhCJSH4efp0cgZSfRutN6GRkQwZ_7Es4z_uXfYS70rFWfMPitE3wPMFSDsSXpeYIbS0McZiq-SaLtPBPZE0OM2lD-RabZW80h_sqQOzMBGSdLryqniSMA/s320/hall%20bk.jpg" width="203" /></a></div>I also have a supplement to memory that’s unique in my experience: a
published novel written about the Cummington Community and partially about that
summer<i>. Music From a Broken Piano </i>by
James Baker Hall was published in 1982 by the Fiction Collective—the outfit
founded by the previously mentioned novelist Ronald Sukenick, among
others. I remember James Baker Hall
being there in Cummington that summer of 1970—though I was introduced to him as
a photographer, not a writer.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Some of the
characters, a few events and relationships, and even some words spoken, I
recall from that summer. But the novel is actually set in the summer of 1969,
when this arts community was formed (called “Farmington” in the novel.) Some, perhaps many people were there for
both summers. The novel seems highly
fictionalized, and is somewhat cleverly confusing in that he gives the names of
a couple of actual people to characters not based on them but (it seemed to me)
on someone else I recognized. Some of
the novel’s events may have in some sense happened in 1969. That summer did feature (according to a subsequent
newsletter), for example, the presentation of “3 Pieces for Broken Piano.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Of course I first paged through this novel to see if there
was a character based on me. When I was
pretty sure there wasn’t, I lost interest for awhile. Though reading it
recently I recognize an imaginative story of those times, it’s useful in this context
mostly for ambiance, description of the places, which seem accurate to my
recollections. The ambiance included frequent seemingly important discussions and rapid interpersonal events and impressions, most of which I've forgotten, but even if I remembered them, Baker Hall's novel would convince me to ignore most of them. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <a href="https://carnegiecenterlex.org/kentucky-writers-hall-of-fame/kentucky-writers-hall-of-fame-inductees-2014/james-baker-hall/">James Baker Hall</a> was indeed known for his photographs as
well as his writing, principally poetry, and was much honored as a poet and
teacher in his native Kentucky, where he was the state's Poet Laureate. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-eoVf_PU4M154YESy-q6o_9UWEnG1h38YQZJWXIJlxfFeCoritBNhbu_yXd7vIQ7dZ9iBe9H-CE4fYoqhaIAK3GKjZaKRi_JBQh0heA9ctUhtzEMRI7kxn7wXL41sMGWGkZloTXaL_yKIBBSDvPr4DTZr0-d1EKI6YNO45vyacKA37tCo7g/s270/music%20box.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="186" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-eoVf_PU4M154YESy-q6o_9UWEnG1h38YQZJWXIJlxfFeCoritBNhbu_yXd7vIQ7dZ9iBe9H-CE4fYoqhaIAK3GKjZaKRi_JBQh0heA9ctUhtzEMRI7kxn7wXL41sMGWGkZloTXaL_yKIBBSDvPr4DTZr0-d1EKI6YNO45vyacKA37tCo7g/s1600/music%20box.jpg" width="186" /></a></div>The Cummington
Community of the Arts was located on some 150 acres of woods and fields,
between Northampton and Pittsfield in western Massachusetts. It was centered on what had been a working
farm, though not in cultivation for decades, perhaps generations. Beginning in the 1922 when
it was called The Music Box (which apparently was a summer theatre), Cummington
had hosted a succession of arts schools and summer workshops. A number of famous people had participated
at one time or another, including poets Marianne Moore and Archibald MacLeish,
artists Willem de Kooning and Helen Frankenthaler, and photographer Diane
Arbus.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Century Gothic"; font-size: 10pt;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span>The Cummington area was best known for another sprawling
fallow farm, the former residence of the poet and journalist William Cullen
Bryant. Though I don’t think I knew it
at the time, we also weren’t very far from the farm where Herman Melville lived
when he was writing <i>Moby Dick,</i> and occasionally dining and telling tall
tales at the neighboring farm of the Nathaniel Hawthornes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Partly because of all this, and the presence of teachers and
students from prestigious New England universities, I was perhaps dimly if not
consciously aware that I was swimming in different waters, closer to
traditional centers of power, past and future.
It wasn’t western Pennsylvania or the Midwest anymore. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG1DK_5W9M43pw_GPXjuExpJTPWHuy4HCiBE4EBXTHszVDNHnxMu9rn6dg6VwIFFDC0kSbbHlIYW02H9e7ykPqy8VAXnS2BSr1KX_tIGAm8D8PEabMmFMSGZ2_jG6drzAzuP7M-91EHYxgolXmOaQM02o2D7BRsjeMs_sKUF_MM7G5NsySOw/s2432/cumph01.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2432" data-original-width="1981" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG1DK_5W9M43pw_GPXjuExpJTPWHuy4HCiBE4EBXTHszVDNHnxMu9rn6dg6VwIFFDC0kSbbHlIYW02H9e7ykPqy8VAXnS2BSr1KX_tIGAm8D8PEabMmFMSGZ2_jG6drzAzuP7M-91EHYxgolXmOaQM02o2D7BRsjeMs_sKUF_MM7G5NsySOw/s320/cumph01.jpg" width="261" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">cover of brochure with photo from 1969</td></tr></tbody></table>This Cummington spread had been reconstituted as a
self-organizing Community of the Arts just the year before—that is, the summer
of 1969 that Baker Hall had novelized.
Evidently one of the poetry readings I attended at Yale when I was in
Stony Creek the previous winter had included a few Cummington attendees showing
a film and making a pitch for the community.
I wrote to the address they gave and applied for this summer. I was invited to attend, pretty much cost-free. The invitation followed me to Buffalo.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> So on Sunday, June 20 I arrived for the session that was to
end August 15. Part way up a hill was the center of the Cummington spread: a
large building with kitchen and dining hall, a large barn that served as a
dormitory and another barn-like structure with art studios and darkroom. One of Cummington’s selling points was that
it could accommodate several families, and they were housed mostly in cabins
further up the hill. There were also buildings down the hill that I don’t think
I ever visited, but as it turned out, that’s where the cool people wound up.
There were some 45 people there at Cummington in 1970, somewhat straining its capacity.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> As a solo, a newbie and a freebie, I was housed in the big
barn. Baker Hall described it well: I
was to live in “more of a stall than a room, with four walls and a door but no
ceiling.” There was no privacy based on
sound. I had a bed and a table for a desk.
The nearest bathroom and source of hot water was in the main building next to
the barn. My first letter back to Carol
mentioned the cold (later it would be the heat), the weak light (I requested
and got a decent reading lamp), and the incessant sound of an oboe player
relentlessly practicing his scales. As I was soon to discover, close to half of the “community” were classical musicians and music students, many from
Yale. It was as if a busload of them
got lost on their way to Tanglewood. </p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ej26xVxap5aRP13oDxqTB_FgRSjwREQ46CE-yLiR1CrL17cj2MMZshdmAyWVWJ6xGZV6896cEEMVyS21CvpWkxa3sV_BG8o7AuAHhgUBG_-i-ESJk3Kpt4g8ge--_EXK6U-QAInbLljFwanDPWb1NMTdP0mrl97TCE7TEGeTFrFVgWoviw/s2915/cumh01.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1931" data-original-width="2915" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ej26xVxap5aRP13oDxqTB_FgRSjwREQ46CE-yLiR1CrL17cj2MMZshdmAyWVWJ6xGZV6896cEEMVyS21CvpWkxa3sV_BG8o7AuAHhgUBG_-i-ESJk3Kpt4g8ge--_EXK6U-QAInbLljFwanDPWb1NMTdP0mrl97TCE7TEGeTFrFVgWoviw/s320/cumh01.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the C. structures (not THE barn); maybe<br />what was Rhea's studio in 1970</td></tr></tbody></table>Though I was impressed by the country silence and the skyful
of stars, the first group meal didn’t suggest that this was going to be a
community experience for me (or so I wrote to Carol.) What I was
hoping for I suppose was something like the Black Mountain College experience
of the 1930s through the 1950s, that Robert Creeley was part of and talked
about—cutting-edge artists and students in various arts (and in Black
Mountain’s case, sciences) in an environment of experimentation and
cross-fertilization. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Apart from high expectations, my hopes were doomed (as I
think I knew then) by another imperative: the overriding political issues of
the moment. We were less than two
months past Cambodia and Kent State. The Vietnam War was still expanding. It was supposed to be the summer we’d hear
the drumming. But all I was hearing was
the oboe, and the vast silence of the country. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtyIrsvHC0SHJigJAshrZw-lMYcSMyhIfbdRwgbID3-XwxlIpZHm41Do6U6MQIotPdnSUfif0dQQc-6YauuJwXj5P_-KtpoEUu9IqMfva8XKn-wUz_D9CuHIkB841uf6AcziIYU5cYrLxpFbNVivRfz0oBvbH8rksZc8sYWiRRG0sSwea9Xw/s1000/harvard%201970.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="665" data-original-width="1000" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtyIrsvHC0SHJigJAshrZw-lMYcSMyhIfbdRwgbID3-XwxlIpZHm41Do6U6MQIotPdnSUfif0dQQc-6YauuJwXj5P_-KtpoEUu9IqMfva8XKn-wUz_D9CuHIkB841uf6AcziIYU5cYrLxpFbNVivRfz0oBvbH8rksZc8sYWiRRG0sSwea9Xw/w200-h133/harvard%201970.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Harvard spring 1970</td></tr></tbody></table> Not that there was much drumming elsewhere. We arrived in Cambridge in time to witness
and participate in an antiwar march through Harvard Square, but it clearly was
nothing like what we heard had happened there that spring. It turned out to be the last such demonstration
I ever saw there. For one thing, the
students had taken their drums and gone home. That had happened
everywhere. And though political
ferment was not over, it had turned sullen on the war, and fractured into
separate and sometimes hostile movements. Women’s lib, for instance, and Black Power. But I was still
experiencing those emotions from the spring, including the anger I had
suppressed so as not to endanger others during the Knox occupation. That didn’t make me a happy camper.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Plus my own diffidence in an unfamiliar situation with
people I didn’t quite get. The only
time Cummington is mentioned in a surviving notebook is to quote some unnamed
person after I’d evidently held forth on something or other. “Gee, I didn’t know you could talk like that,”
this person said. “I didn’t know you
talked at all.” </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVMCUqFYr5Sek_D5QX6wQMhhDHuLS4YQqTWcK_zS8_mlKHZyKxDmlCCiiUuv7ekMYP9xUtQ5L1e3eBagQIaEs1qvVjd039e76HVeUVN2ffbck736OGg5iswvkfGIkvypPsK3paiNkWerG7nejRlNNuoT4wNGHy1vVOcgVnS3L36dax0ftqVw/s1440/1969.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="964" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVMCUqFYr5Sek_D5QX6wQMhhDHuLS4YQqTWcK_zS8_mlKHZyKxDmlCCiiUuv7ekMYP9xUtQ5L1e3eBagQIaEs1qvVjd039e76HVeUVN2ffbck736OGg5iswvkfGIkvypPsK3paiNkWerG7nejRlNNuoT4wNGHy1vVOcgVnS3L36dax0ftqVw/s320/1969.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>Though I probably read fiction and poetry as well as
journalism and so on, the most characteristic reading I did at Cummington—and
the only thing I specifically recall—was the Black Panther Party
newspaper. I was constructing a play
out of fragments, quotes from its articles as well as other elements, a series
of voices. I never finished it, but the
reading helped me see things from another perspective, as I began to more
deeply understand what was and is called institutional and structural
racism. Some of this amplified the
personal point of view I first found in James Baldwin’s essays, as far back as
high school. This time I did get caught
in the rhetoric (revolutionary and otherwise) of the Panthers political
engagement and analysis, though not the imagery of violence. Mostly I learned a
little more of what it was like to be Black in America.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The Black Panthers were known in the media for their
aggressive rhetoric in favor of violent revolution, which owed some of its
intellectual basis to Marxism. But as
their newspaper chronicled, they pioneered social services directed to the
Black community. The best known of
these was the free breakfast program, in which the Panthers organization fed more
children in the Oakland area particularly, than did the state of
California. The federal public school
free breakfast program didn’t exist then, and may well have been inspired by
the success of their efforts. But all
levels of government in those years felt free to harass, arrest and at least in
the case of Fred Hampton, murder people because they were Black Panthers.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> This was within the more general context of the times. The Vietnam War period of the 1960s and
1970s was an intense dance of the apocalyptic and utopian. As poet W.S. Merwin
described it: <i> “Wild aspiration and
vertiginous despair existed not alternately but at once, and at times we may
have clung to visionary hopes not so much because they were really credible as
because we felt it would be not only mean-spirited but fatal to abandon
them. We knew a kind of willful
desperation.” </i>And I would add, a kind of willed innocence.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1XlhDqjw73Q0Z1d-XgOqDLFG-ycvAIe-8PUBvhBk2rm9hS67_dNQhn7X0VQSyz6AqTnsCK123wXGenWvPCpk2SOOTwnbn89jxcOKi8mMTAy7Jg5tKfFrJuNe72amWYoPAsfHr-nbUL-hL5Ws2ikdVYN_xN9PjpLJGZGwkmOPYOyuofb9hnQ/s830/190318_merwin-v-1_JamesBakerHall_banner.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="830" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1XlhDqjw73Q0Z1d-XgOqDLFG-ycvAIe-8PUBvhBk2rm9hS67_dNQhn7X0VQSyz6AqTnsCK123wXGenWvPCpk2SOOTwnbn89jxcOKi8mMTAy7Jg5tKfFrJuNe72amWYoPAsfHr-nbUL-hL5Ws2ikdVYN_xN9PjpLJGZGwkmOPYOyuofb9hnQ/s320/190318_merwin-v-1_JamesBakerHall_banner.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">W.S. Merwin. Photo by James Baker Hall</td></tr></tbody></table> It may be hard to remember and difficult to explain in
today’s context, just how different this period was, and how it nevertheless
still echoes. <i>“We know that age to be utterly beyond our reach now,
irretrievably past, a period whose distance we already feel as though it had
stretched into centuries,”</i> Merwin continues (in the preface to his 1992 collection
<i>The Second Four Books of Poems</i>), <i>“and yet it appears to us to be not only recent
but present, still with us not as a memory but as a part of our unfinished
days, a ground or backdrop before which we live. It could be said that we are haunted by it, which would suggest that
that time was not done with in us, that what we saw and felt then is still part
of our incompleteness and our choices.”</i><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Cummington was not untouched by countercultural concerns,
and some of it founding members probably wanted to integrate them into its
communal experience. But I didn’t sense
much awareness around me there of the political ideas and ferment going on
then. The place seemed to be divided
among oblivious academics, spaced-out hippie artists and frightened music
students. I felt isolated. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS4yZqh3pqHRB6uqN1Abfs0vOHACitAYvGDABPPiDgAsJqTlHfQEfK0ODhFvZAyE4xAuXDK093_ZfxHL1WUXkG5-XRLExOvs9ZbpYpCTmIZWCbOpfaKeDSWNFcbA9ySke6-v8S-WGux9sS8b_Ga91alCm9wjUBG7QAi9uYBktNum-vjpQKAJcPfQ/s2172/cumport02.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2172" data-original-width="1565" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS4yZqh3pqHRB6uqN1Abfs0vOHACitAYvGDABPPiDgAsJqTlHfQEfK0ODhFvZAyE4xAuXDK093_ZfxHL1WUXkG5-XRLExOvs9ZbpYpCTmIZWCbOpfaKeDSWNFcbA9ySke6-v8S-WGux9sS8b_Ga91alCm9wjUBG7QAi9uYBktNum-vjpQKAJcPfQ/w289-h400/cumport02.jpg" width="289" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhea Ormond photo. The book is<br />"A Quick Graph," collection of<br />Robert Creeley's commentary</td></tr></tbody></table>Later in the summer I came to some empathetic understanding
of at least the frightened music students.
On a trip to town or somewhere with a few Cummington people, I found
myself at a coffee shop table across from a quiet young woman I hadn’t really talked
with before. She was a music student at
Yale. Our somewhat stilted conversation seemed to be loosening up until I said
something about the war. She became quiet as I babbled on, until her eyes
filled with tears. “I just want to study music,” she finally said. So I saw that her life, too, was being
deformed by the war. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> By then my isolation had already been dramatized. Since I was getting
a largely free ride at Cummington based on my work, I felt obligated to share
it, so I gave a poetry reading after a couple of weeks. However, some discussion the previous day
infuriated me so much that I stayed up all night writing a long discursive and
often angry poem which ended with the words, “Cummington, you are up against
yourselves.” It was the last thing I
read, and I sat down to a complete and lasting silence. Oddly, I hadn’t expected that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> However, I was to
have one more public performance with a different outcome, before I left
halfway through the scheduled eight weeks.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I had other moments of alienation, as when many were talking
about (and participating in) an “environmental art” project, which essentially
was digging a big ditch. To me it was the opposite of “environmental” in the
sense of ecological, since it was basically an act of needless (and to me, worse than pointless)
destruction of the environment—and as such, a demonstration of human ego that
was a principal cause of our depleted planet.
I don’t think anyone else got my point.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> On the other hand
there was one event I recall that gave me a Black Mountain College community
vibe. Someone organized a performance of Erik Satie’s “Vexations,” which is
comprised of a short musical passage to be played 840 times. A complete
performance could take from 18 to 36 hours. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHlQ0fzjP8OeocN2cnOpmBpdnnrDYEmV60EJ5_66O_6uYbe04jedu1hvM0qZNx2Cp9QlHETz114Rwak2sb9-58JOdyiEh9tSyviQo6kICUTuDODtjJJSxJHb9Pdd_HpIDJ1cb8v9U1tesoys40PftlLpAsaQl9d25yUm22dsISC58LjzfuDw/s1024/30vexations-2-jumbo.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHlQ0fzjP8OeocN2cnOpmBpdnnrDYEmV60EJ5_66O_6uYbe04jedu1hvM0qZNx2Cp9QlHETz114Rwak2sb9-58JOdyiEh9tSyviQo6kICUTuDODtjJJSxJHb9Pdd_HpIDJ1cb8v9U1tesoys40PftlLpAsaQl9d25yUm22dsISC58LjzfuDw/s320/30vexations-2-jumbo.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New York premiere of Vexations: John Cage<br />(standing) with one of the pianists, John Cale<br />(later of the Velvet Underground.) Seated is<br />the only audience member to witness the <br />entire 18 hour performance.</td></tr></tbody></table>Though the eccentric
and influential composer in late nineteenth/ early twentieth century Paris is
now known for several haunting piano works, this Satie piece was not published
or performed in his lifetime. In fact
it was not commercially published in the U.S. until 1969. John Cage (who incidentally had participated
in Black Mountain College) discovered the manuscript, and later organized the
first concert, in New York City in 1963, in which a dozen pianists played the
repeated motif continuously for just over 18 hours. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The same basic format was followed at Cummington, which may
well have been the second performance anywhere of this piece (most of the
documented performances seem actually to have been in the last decade or so.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The grand piano was
moved in front of the fireplace in the main building, with candles around
it. Seats were provided, and audience
members came and went over the hours. There were enough pianists to perform it
in relays, though probably they had more than one shift. I went to listen three times—at the
beginning, at some point late at night, and for the finish. I stayed long enough each time to feel the
hypnotic effect, which fatigue and a few tokes tended to enhance. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I was not entirely solitary or even misanthropic at
Cummington. I participated in community
discussions and some events, did my turns in the kitchen, played volleyball and spent sociable
hours usually inflected with wine and dope.
On one of the first days I was part of a group that piled into a car to
see the Beatles movie <i>Let It Be</i> at a Northampton theatre, much to the
consternation of <a href="https://patch.com/connecticut/westhartford/chris-horton-legacy-exhibit-coming-hartford-art-school-s-silpe-gallery">Chris Horton</a>, an artist and the person in charge of the
community, who wanted everyone to focus on Cummington. But people came and went all summer anyway. (As for the movie, it played as the dour
prequel to the recent breakup of the Beatles, but on the evidence of the recent
<i>Get Back</i> cuts of the same 1969 footage, seems more like a reflection of
the original director’s offended ego.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I also observed (as apparently did James Baker Hall) some of
the sexual and interpersonal dynamics of an idealistic group of high achievers
isolated together. I’d already heard of
a summer in which four young male philosophers and their wives lived together
in one house to “do” philosophy together, and all four marriages collapsed
before fall. At least one marriage
openly lapsed at Cummington: a blond wife, the most glamorously attractive
woman there, took up with the most strikingly attractive young man. There were also racial dynamics too complex
to get into (though Baker Hall gives it a try, with limited success in my
view.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VoZxGGnXttVAJJS4bfeKjUDqD3VZychPxVCRUZ4JWsszXMoUJD9MmFL0wnE_COfRayvsqeAbj4bnknKfvzPSK1GxaxzL88WdePFx3_5SwH5u9eqKGMiWCvX34VfQyKHiovYiZd3JrvW-0P2UrdpER9U1kP3KhC7mp02Hta7cPOvOBes0gQ/s499/heather01.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="335" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VoZxGGnXttVAJJS4bfeKjUDqD3VZychPxVCRUZ4JWsszXMoUJD9MmFL0wnE_COfRayvsqeAbj4bnknKfvzPSK1GxaxzL88WdePFx3_5SwH5u9eqKGMiWCvX34VfQyKHiovYiZd3JrvW-0P2UrdpER9U1kP3KhC7mp02Hta7cPOvOBes0gQ/w215-h320/heather01.jpg" width="215" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Heather McHugh in 1981</td></tr></tbody></table>One of the first people I met at Cummington was a young poet
named Heather McHugh, 22 at the time, who was assigned a room (or stall) near
mine on the barn’s second floor. She
visited my room, read some of my poems and declared that I might become as
famous as she would be. Then she
reclined on my bed. I was frozen at my
desk for a little too long, so by the time I could move she had already
left. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In memory, that was about the last I saw of her, though
letters to Carol indicate we were casually friendly throughout. Carol even met
her a couple of times. Heather did quickly disappear from the barn, however, becoming
associated with the residents of a cabin elsewhere—visual artists or
ceramicists and filmmakers, I think.
Anyway, they were what I thought of as the Cool Kids of the
community. She moved down there. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> And <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/heather-mchugh">Heather McHugh</a> indeed became famous, at least in poetry
and academic circles, with prize-winning poetry collections, much-praised
translations and literary essays, as well as teaching. She’s a literary eminence now.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I had other casually friendly relationships with people
whose names I unfortunately no longer remember, including the slightly older
man, also a writer, with whom I got roaring drunk one night. When he tried to
drive us in his big old Buick up the rutted hill to his family cabin, it slid backwards into a ditch and we were suddenly pitched at an angle looking up at the stars,
laughing hysterically. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7-ArUSJs1xSysf5FKc9u5Pa1NF3tug6A_WzDjbM6VCDrz1zX-22GXRd7JcArfVScpKZzp9a8JvZRj-Ho1fCbkTaNUjSGS33RfLY3WBdN3HHi-rIsRgHZhyC8iArJYwM3gztkjyJhU-cppuHQyl6oN_mhewq2lxdfEnPsPGvvF2k1QFiujgw/s2128/or02.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2128" data-original-width="1663" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7-ArUSJs1xSysf5FKc9u5Pa1NF3tug6A_WzDjbM6VCDrz1zX-22GXRd7JcArfVScpKZzp9a8JvZRj-Ho1fCbkTaNUjSGS33RfLY3WBdN3HHi-rIsRgHZhyC8iArJYwM3gztkjyJhU-cppuHQyl6oN_mhewq2lxdfEnPsPGvvF2k1QFiujgw/s320/or02.jpg" width="250" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhea Ormond at C. 1970. BK photo</td></tr></tbody></table>I made one friend, an artist and photographer named Rhea
Ormond. She lived in the smaller
barnlike building some yards from the big barn, with an enormous studio and a
darkroom. Rhea was enthusiastic,
open-hearted, astute and generous. She
got me to collaborate on an oil painting with her, and she also showed me how
to develop photos. I believe she had
been at Cummington the summer before, and returned at least one more year. We exchanged infrequent letters for several
years, and met at least once more.<a href="http://www.bragwnc.com/rhea.o.html"> Rhea</a> eventually settled in rural North
Carolina and specializes in murals and large canvases, while also teaching at a
community college. She’s a valued
artist and respected member of her community.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> After awhile I met a guitarist, Alan Jaffe, who lived on the
ground floor of the barn. The “stalls”
that Baker Hall described pertained mostly to the second floor, which was on
the level of a hayloft. At least some
of the first floor stalls had ceilings and full-length walls, so they were
fully enclosed rooms. Alan lived in one
of these. I’m not sure how we met. Perhaps I heard him playing jazz on his
electric guitar, or maybe Rhea introduced us. In any case, we wound up
collaborating on a set of my songs, working them out in relaxed sessions in his
large room over a couple of weeks.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <a href="https://downtownmusic.net/alan-jaffe/marty-ehrlichs-dark-woods-five-12-08-2005">Alan Jaffe</a> was a Yale music student then, and has since
become a notable jazz guitarist in New York.
I think he especially enjoyed playing the rock riffs and country licks
he probably didn’t usually get to do otherwise. He had both taste and touch as a guitarist, so these hours were
easily among the best I experienced at Cummington. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Meanwhile, Carol and I were exchanging frequent letters and
occasional phone calls. Soon she arrived for a few days visit. I found an
unused room at the bottom of the barn—not really fit for ordinary habitation,
but private, so we slept there. At
first Carol was wary, perhaps intimidated by the people at Cummington, and
didn’t want to participate in much. But she warmed up to several, like Rhea,
one at a time. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Her visit definitely changed how people viewed me. They
could now tell themselves my moodiness was a natural response to being
separated from such a beautiful girlfriend. Women whose interest in me had gone
nowhere now understood, and at least pretended to approve of, my faithfulness. When Carol left—hitching a ride with
several community members driving to Boston, including Heather—I knew that I
wasn’t going to spend the whole summer apart from her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though I was in some ways settling into Cummington life,
taking afternoon baths in the main building, heating up water in the empty
kitchen late at night for my instant espresso, I decided to go back to
Cambridge early. About halfway through
the summer there was a kind of open house event, with community members giving
recitals, showing their artwork and so on. Alan and I were going to perform my
songs. That seemed like the best time
to leave. I worked out the plan with Carol, who somehow got the use of a
vehicle large enough to bring her friends (including a driver) and haul me and
my stuff back with them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> My memory is that Alan and I were set to perform late in the
afternoon, pretty much at the end of the schedule. Most of the strangers who
I’d seen wandering around all day were already gone, so our audience was a good
chunk of the Cummington community, plus Carol and her friends.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I’ve managed to unearth the lyrics to the songs we did, and I have a tape. Songwriting for me
was (and sometimes still is) a process of working with sounds, including the
sounds of words, how they fit the rhythm, with rhymes at the end of the
lines. Interpreting them might come
later, if at all. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLk9elQJsV4oQzqHUHjnpc7QQcoPy2hfOynO3l2Pw1-r6EdNpoCD6fa7g0hj4JiREvccVQJXiulR9edmQawq01j9ga9BR6AeH1-RrIjwW7zbHAI-Py3l2wLQi3qYHfYT20efObt9UUh_zGUJZ_WS501PrHGoceudj-qQ8v2MYI6VM7rRDDcg/s461/allan%20jaffe01.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="461" data-original-width="365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLk9elQJsV4oQzqHUHjnpc7QQcoPy2hfOynO3l2Pw1-r6EdNpoCD6fa7g0hj4JiREvccVQJXiulR9edmQawq01j9ga9BR6AeH1-RrIjwW7zbHAI-Py3l2wLQi3qYHfYT20efObt9UUh_zGUJZ_WS501PrHGoceudj-qQ8v2MYI6VM7rRDDcg/s320/allan%20jaffe01.jpg" width="253" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Alan Jaffe</td></tr></tbody></table>Alan and I had worked out seven or eight songs, though I
doubt we did them all that afternoon.
Alan played electric guitar, I played acoustic guitar, with a mike or
pickup, and I sang. We’d prepared two
hard rockers, both which qualified as a possibly new genre of apocalyptic rock:
“SST” (surreal imagery of ecological devastation) and “Baby, Are You Looking
for Me Now?” which formed the same sort of lurid imagery into a relationship
song. I’m sure we did this one live, as
it is the better song, very propulsive, with lines <i>like “Snarls of bible
ministers’ broken lives/death cry of the power mower wives…”</i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> We did a mid-tempo rocker called “It’s Right,” with a kind
of John Fogerty Creedence Clearwater vocal line, though with a bit of structure
copped from “Get Back.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This was becoming the “personal is political” era, though
these interpretations come after the fact of composition. "It's Right" starts with verses about personal relationships (<i>"When I'm away love, your eyes are in my mind")</i>, then moves to a wider source of
meaning: <i>“When love is winning/crying in the streets/ Everyone you meet is
your tomorrow.”</i> <i>“To cast the numbers/against the darkened sky/all we
know is why and we can be there.” </i>Then it moves to action, if only marching
in the street<i>: “When light is moving/across the face of time/the moment’s
changing rhyme becomes/the sound of happy feet and I know it’s right…” </i>A bit of self-mockery there with "happy feet"--a little Lennonesque.</p><p class="MsoNormal">We probably did my 50s-style rock and roll tribute to the
Chuck Berry era, called “Berrybush,” which I must have written while I was a Knox
student. We had a jazzy, neo-Dylan/Lennon rant, which never got a
title better than “Dostoevsky and the Purple Voice,” but I doubt if we did this
one live, as I couldn’t possibly remember all the words. We must have done “His Blue Image,” a slower
song with Alan’s choice licks as background to chilling imagery about President
Nixon (“the king of ice/with his melted smile and his dagger dice”) and the
war. I notice now that I managed to
shoehorn images from Blake (“the horses of instruction”) and James Joyce (“the
cabman’s battered face”) in the same verse. The blue image is Nixon on
so-called black and white TV.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_yA6GSUoiOL3i2MgNwa-0E04Fi5KOlkz_Em99FtgW9p3auLZDYg1tUxFT1a1XjQjMOOPtH9Bgl174IGBkh8HHBtXn_LhtBhbk_pEbgRU_BrZ_7hzWvkQhErb7HhE10tf-hvk-kR3_kRTTho-Q-2zN_zRczo4BUN5fseA6KyGICazUnm4SeA/s2317/tune01.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2119" data-original-width="2317" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_yA6GSUoiOL3i2MgNwa-0E04Fi5KOlkz_Em99FtgW9p3auLZDYg1tUxFT1a1XjQjMOOPtH9Bgl174IGBkh8HHBtXn_LhtBhbk_pEbgRU_BrZ_7hzWvkQhErb7HhE10tf-hvk-kR3_kRTTho-Q-2zN_zRczo4BUN5fseA6KyGICazUnm4SeA/s320/tune01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> We’d worked out two straight-ahead country songs, of the
type common on the radio in those days, with simple structures that turned on
the reversal of a phrase or image, like “Act Naturally” (which the Beatles
copped from Buck Owens.)<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Of these, I’d
written “Leaves That Are Green in the Winter” as a novelty number for my
hometown group, the Crosscurrents. “No Down Payment,” came more recently, at
Iowa. It’s got a line that resonates
with my memories of those months ostensibly at the Writers Workshop, in my
narrow Iowa City room. Several times
the singer lists his possessions, which include: <i>“and a bottle of red wine/a
book of empty pages/and an awful lot of time,” </i>before the chorus<i>: “But
fair is fair/and trade is trade/no complaining about the deal when the
bargain’s made/my terms were loneliness for the freedom of a dove/and I’ve made
no down payment on your love.”</i><i> </i>We probably performed this one.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> All of these songs were more or less heartfelt; none more
than “We’re All Together Again,” which used the jaunty old ditty (“We’re all
together again/we’re here, we’re here) that you can find sung by Berle Ives on
the site devoted to Scout camp songs.
My version was slower, with the brilliant, mournful country-inflected
backing Alan devised. With the
traditional chorus, it added verses that suggested an inventory of gently
disappointed lives at a school reunion. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> My cache of letters from friends contains many stories about
the sad outcomes of clashes with the “real world” of jobs, the meaningless
work, crazed or sterile work environments, the awful bosses, the mindless
humiliation and boredom, and the accompanying crazed world-- the sense of
imprisonment in a lunatic asylum. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These accounts began
with summer jobs while we were still in college, but the stories—on and off
such pages—became weightier after schooldays were over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This song reflects these sentiments.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Though the lyrics were completed some time before, letters
from Carol this summer also included such stories, as she and her friends dealt
with the job market. Carol applied for
an opening as a telephone operator, but was told she was too intelligent. Her friend Julienne planned to apply the
next day, but now knew to play dumb. Carol knew she could have almost any entry
level job she wanted, but she kept backing off, as they all seemed so bleak. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Later in the summer, the Little Kid visited, and said she
had to suppress her true answer to yet another erroneously arrogant boss asking
why he should hire her: “Because I’m smarter than you.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> My song included a verse loosely based on two people I had
known, including a Knox student in the past: <i>“Marcia dropped from college,
and went into the city/Wrote ads for a bookstore, dressing very pretty/but the
air in the city made Marcia blink and cry/She rented an apartment and stayed
there till she died. But we’re all together again, we’re here, we’re here.
We’re all together again, we’re here.”</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> What I felt dying were dreams, hopes, integrity, innocence,
changing who we were, and could be. This is not the last word on the eventual careers and achievements
over a lifetime of people I knew, but these experiences and sentiments were
prominent at that early stage, and at that historical time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> As for Cummington audience reaction, apparently such
sentiments were easier to swallow combined with a melody, a tasty guitar and
bouncy lines familiar from youth, however ironically used. The song went over well, as did the entire
performance. When it was over, a number
of community members with big smiles congratulated me, and also stayed to say
goodbye. I even got a big embrace from
the beautiful blond having the affair who hadn’t said three words to me all
summer. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Then I grabbed my gear from the barn, and with Carol and her
friends, left Cummington in the rear view mirror. In three or four hours we were in Cambridge, where over the next
years, life would change, more than once. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-64787276802613307982023-08-09T23:11:00.002-07:002023-08-09T23:26:33.169-07:00History of My Reading: The Students Are Revolting May 1970<p> <b><i>The Context: May 1970</i></b> </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdMMjK39D8B_fMt7T8S2jOjMNnSsZAhq0ZKa44CJ5WnMnv6Cf3o2kNHuZOmdlwARD7OhFoT3W2JpHt5I4sesoKVpYBTaFCZcDg0NnssqJ5-7S2itNdeSvnl1lb0GJQ6Pe4mqkB8I0Pm-jhzDsRh7b59hu4fh9UcBbiEKsjB8cY6PWh5FY7EA/s1600/1920px-NixononCambodia.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1040" data-original-width="1600" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdMMjK39D8B_fMt7T8S2jOjMNnSsZAhq0ZKa44CJ5WnMnv6Cf3o2kNHuZOmdlwARD7OhFoT3W2JpHt5I4sesoKVpYBTaFCZcDg0NnssqJ5-7S2itNdeSvnl1lb0GJQ6Pe4mqkB8I0Pm-jhzDsRh7b59hu4fh9UcBbiEKsjB8cY6PWh5FY7EA/w400-h260/1920px-NixononCambodia.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>I was still in Buffalo, New York, when all three major
television networks carried an address by President Richard Nixon at the White
House. It was Thursday evening, April
30, 1970. With the aid of a map, he
announced that American forces were attacking “sanctuaries” and command centers
for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers in the neighboring--and neutral--
nation of Cambodia.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <span style="background-color: white;">The U.S. was withdrawing
troops and negotiating, Nixon said, but the North Vietnamese were increasing
their attacks. Action was necessary to protect American troops, and to avoid
American "humiliation" and "defeat." "If, when the
chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America,
acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy
will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">Reading this speech more than fifty years later,
it might seem eminently reasonable--except that by that time, few believed
anything that the administration said about Vietnam, and with ample
justification. Most of the assertions in the speech have proven to be lies.
That phrase--<i>pitiful, helpless giant</i>--would become an epitaph of the
era.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoCkOBQLvaAHT5nMD0uSUbiex8t2V7LzcNI2lEW7ThlHuNMReiwY1uxt-x3wf4mtqfX4eHTwklLxRvdTW6zkgO7ASjS3nbro_Tnd9zwPSg56wa-8sBiSBJ4H4SaqyD2AHj8BPIsU0Mhr7rT_Acy0DWHDWYYTZ0_Y2D-CHIIRtKIseXtjcYMw/s622/may-five-1970.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="622" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoCkOBQLvaAHT5nMD0uSUbiex8t2V7LzcNI2lEW7ThlHuNMReiwY1uxt-x3wf4mtqfX4eHTwklLxRvdTW6zkgO7ASjS3nbro_Tnd9zwPSg56wa-8sBiSBJ4H4SaqyD2AHj8BPIsU0Mhr7rT_Acy0DWHDWYYTZ0_Y2D-CHIIRtKIseXtjcYMw/s320/may-five-1970.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Instead, what jumped out of
the TV screen was another escalation, this time an invasion of another country
without either its formal request or a declaration of war. It was also a
time of hyperbole, but it isn't much of an overstatement that, almost at the
moment the speech ended, America exploded. In particular, its college and
university campuses. Hundreds of them erupted in protest and in varying
degrees of violence.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;"> At Kent State in Ohio,
that violence on campus brought the war home when on May 4 National Guard
troops fired on unarmed students and killed four. This instantly led to even
greater and more widespread campus consternation. Within days, the normal
functioning of higher education had pretty much stopped.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">Eventually this disruption hit the isolated
campus of Knox College in Illinois, with a certain surprise--when Time Magazine
covered it, the article concluded that if it could happen in Galesburg, it
could happen anywhere. And much to my own surprise, I found myself at the
center of it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">I had been visiting Knox alum
Steven Meyers, a graduate student at SUNY Buffalo, as described in the post
before this one in this series.</span> <span style="background-color: white;">Steve
drove us to Galesburg in his MG.</span> <span style="background-color: white;">We
were escaping the endless Buffalo winter as much as anything else, but I was
unprepared for the fullness of the Galesburg spring. The campus
was intensely green after a rain, and the air was soft and warm.</span> <span style="background-color: white;">The month of May was the brief glory of the Galesburg year as I
remember it—an enchanted moment between the frigid winters and torrid
summers.</span> <span style="background-color: white;">Only the different stimulus of
October came close.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">But in this early May, such delicate and peaceful beauty was distorted by anger and bewilderment.</span> <span style="background-color: white;">The war in Vietnam had been expanding for
five long years of our young lives, and protests growing along with it. The war
at home had become especially bitter since 1968. It included a kind of generational war as
well as a counterculture. Almost from
the moment I arrived, I was surrounded by Knox students debating and demanding
action.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqxcMb8htaSRuJX2ckrsBwrqO25TV3MPypKFHdhLISxCmQDiVaGfj4UOBe85okDviTGBnnfsQS-dusZXEVhP8Wbs6AcHnBGAgJgf86xzldMlwWlITrifLhWPmmi735FxQy2i4bpWIiNEJEUYNtqbVvY3q6qKmxF1tW1E-sQBUDcsXj4b8Fuw/s499/51TfRq+SmyL._SX303_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="305" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqxcMb8htaSRuJX2ckrsBwrqO25TV3MPypKFHdhLISxCmQDiVaGfj4UOBe85okDviTGBnnfsQS-dusZXEVhP8Wbs6AcHnBGAgJgf86xzldMlwWlITrifLhWPmmi735FxQy2i4bpWIiNEJEUYNtqbVvY3q6qKmxF1tW1E-sQBUDcsXj4b8Fuw/s320/51TfRq+SmyL._SX303_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="196" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white;"> I had been active at Knox on both campus issues and such national issues as Civil
Rights and Vietnam, and I'd been a student recently enough that I knew current students, and was generally known on campus.</span><div><br /></div><div> My acquaintance with student activism began in high school, in electoral politics, school issues and one major moment of protest: I participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1962, the only person in my school--the only person I knew--to do so. Books and other reading were often my lifelines in these activities. I marched in Washington as much for James Baldwin as Martin Luther King, Jr.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was also in<span style="background-color: white;"> in high
school that I read about some of the late 1950s and early 60s student protests in a paperback
I found on a hometown Greensburg supermarket rack, called </span><i>Student</i><span style="background-color: white;"> by
David Horowitz. He described the demonstrations in San Francisco against the House
Un American Activities Committee (during which police turned fire hoses on
demonstrators), as well as the first Berkely protests that culminated in the
Free Speech Movement of 1964-65, my first year at Knox.</span> <span style="background-color: white;">That was a formative book for me, though ironically
the author later repudiated it and became a right wing extremist.</span> <p></p><p class="MsoNormal">In college my activism involved a lot of reading, talk and listening, and the phenomenon of student activism in the late 60s--particularly the worldwide actions of 1968--led to books of reportage and analysis.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">The historical moment of May
1970 was the product of many currents, pulled into the same whirlpool by the
issues and situation of the Vietnam war.</span>
<span style="background-color: white;">These currents can be represented by the phenomenon and the individuals
involved in what was first called the Chicago 8.</span> <span style="background-color: white;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEq9ie3EdVRcmGNymjXKa-yOWS__lOFo3A9JiiAla0eom8Zjsg4Anf3TJ81r44TapJmv2I18riLoB9D7cysDUSwjIQdZ2RN1DRf389TMrhiVHqT3FKxBj8xLq-pSDWzXu4C_5WT2aiQB31_ttHEAiIF2J-nuTxp-hNIF-z0PXjfC8uzOD8mQ/s1600/chi01.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="832" data-original-width="1600" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEq9ie3EdVRcmGNymjXKa-yOWS__lOFo3A9JiiAla0eom8Zjsg4Anf3TJ81r44TapJmv2I18riLoB9D7cysDUSwjIQdZ2RN1DRf389TMrhiVHqT3FKxBj8xLq-pSDWzXu4C_5WT2aiQB31_ttHEAiIF2J-nuTxp-hNIF-z0PXjfC8uzOD8mQ/s320/chi01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white;">Charged with conspiracy
associated with the demonstrations outside the Democratic National Convention
in Chicago in 1968, their trial—a media circus surrounding a courtroom
carnival—lasted from the fall of 1969 until February 1970.</span> <span style="background-color: white;">It was covered on every evening news
broadcast, and helped sell a lot of the defendants’ books. It would generate
numerous other books, at least two plays and eventually a 2020 film by Aaron
Sorkin (which I haven’t seen, since the actors don’t look or sound like the
originals I vividly remember, a problem possibly only for ancients like
me.)</span> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Tom Hayden was the most
prominent of the Chicago 8 who started in the student movement. While in
college he was a cofounder of Students for a Democratic Society and the
principal author of the Port Huron Statement in 1962, that applied the ideals
of "participatory democracy" to all aspects of American society.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">More broadly, the student movement symbolized
political activism applied to internal college and university issues as well as
issues that went beyond the campus. Hayden began in the Civil Rights
movement in the early 60s, and became an antiwar activist during Vietnam.
He always brought American-born ideals to these issues, as when he
adopted the words of Sitting Bull for the title of his 1972 book on
Vietnam, <i>The Love of Possession Is a Disease With Them.</i></span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimfl95X_xkrdnzZmBaMXNSa4sFoPS3otcc-rRzZXARQG5IWJ-x_KJsvf2hucq7THRM-99LKtzgcT4pB9NIwse3PlaGOr9XZC1q10QEtT5ahLjqHIZp7HOqZS7rytyg7SuQJaM4MZla0fapce4x2VlAdbuOiNOo46joXIXhNcsJ7kqhtaviIw/s380/1477562216081SL_E65EADC8079D7C66490DCFA924A1D528.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="278" data-original-width="380" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimfl95X_xkrdnzZmBaMXNSa4sFoPS3otcc-rRzZXARQG5IWJ-x_KJsvf2hucq7THRM-99LKtzgcT4pB9NIwse3PlaGOr9XZC1q10QEtT5ahLjqHIZp7HOqZS7rytyg7SuQJaM4MZla0fapce4x2VlAdbuOiNOo46joXIXhNcsJ7kqhtaviIw/s320/1477562216081SL_E65EADC8079D7C66490DCFA924A1D528.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Chicago 7, after Bobby Seale was separated.<br />Many had never met before their conspiracy trial.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="background-color: white;">Several of the Chicago 8 were
organizers with roots in earlier traditions, such as unionism. David
Dellinger was the oldest defendant at 54, a pacifist and Civil Rights activist.
But just as SDS had broken into factions, at least one of them advocating
violent resistance, there were also stark divisions in the Civil Rights
movement, especially since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Defendant Bobby Seale was a co-founder of the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense, an organization also proposed with a document setting forth its
ideals (and demands) in the Ten Point Platform. Though the document and
many Black Panther Party activities stressed community service and
self-determination, the imagery and rhetoric were often militant and violent,
emphasizing armed resistance.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmRcHKNZE5HrIoB7N8DizU3OTonBHeXAApDOceSvKoAMws8hTHariVd-OjvzZwFmiXKfe2BBe88Xy_6SlIVSn_QrcTHi4V_2jd-Sepx1pMXGnana4tLBMYEsTJPt2ZVo9NqfGmEF7kY88Epv1nVKAF068hWtI69MOAH2YNh8vZANj4uC3pHQ/s279/hoffman01.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="279" data-original-width="180" height="279" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmRcHKNZE5HrIoB7N8DizU3OTonBHeXAApDOceSvKoAMws8hTHariVd-OjvzZwFmiXKfe2BBe88Xy_6SlIVSn_QrcTHi4V_2jd-Sepx1pMXGnana4tLBMYEsTJPt2ZVo9NqfGmEF7kY88Epv1nVKAF068hWtI69MOAH2YNh8vZANj4uC3pHQ/s1600/hoffman01.jpg" width="180" /></a></span></div>And then there were the Yippies. The 60s political and
student movements joined with the broader cultural revolution, beginning with
shared music, dope and sexual liberation. Chicago defendants Abbie
Hoffman and Jerry Rubin founded the Yippies, the political hippies. They
were flamboyant, deliberately and strategically outrageous. At the time I
didn't know much about the Dadaist art movement in Europe between the world
wars, but when I read about it, the lineage was clear: the Yippies were Dada
with a purpose<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 9.5pt;">. </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 9.5pt;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">So there was conflict and
commonality, but it was the commonality that was most apparent to the older
generations of conventional America, the Silent Majority (as Nixon called
them). The Generation Gap was its strongest in these years, and it became
clear (as in the Anthony Lukas reporting) that jurors were judging these
defendants as much on their appearance and demeanor as their alleged actions.
The common culture (or counterculture) was real enough, but the
differences, especially in tactics, were also real, though that wasn't apparent
to the most threatened outside this culture.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">That hostility had resulted
in casual and official violence against activists. Apart from the violence that
African American men in particular could expect simply in daily life, black
activists were particular targets, and the Black Panthers most of all.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">This was brought home to Knox
College students when Fred Hampton, Illinois chairman of the Black Panthers,
was ruthlessly gunned down in his bed and killed by Chicago police and FBI in
December 1969. Hampton was engaged in organizing the multicultural
Rainbow Coalition that brought together street gangs to work for social change
instead of killing each other. Hampton had evidently visited Knox that
year. When I read of his murder in a Chicago underground newspaper, his
photo showed him wearing a Knox sweatshirt.</span><span style="background: white;"> </span> </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzeb227H25lgW9X3iRcKPxaNi3SI6-kZQdyzqjpu-NEa97VxZSPkDXc6g0YgzQ1EroH5aXtDBEYzXot0TjsPtOy_H905QoY--LOcnto95K46Rqbbt1hKyHnDnkrCFOKh4_esEoA1kDWBZZqpcR2IxmvXiUU4_90mIiMNpZWPPqdkyhYr91UQ/s1600/blk02.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="994" data-original-width="1600" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzeb227H25lgW9X3iRcKPxaNi3SI6-kZQdyzqjpu-NEa97VxZSPkDXc6g0YgzQ1EroH5aXtDBEYzXot0TjsPtOy_H905QoY--LOcnto95K46Rqbbt1hKyHnDnkrCFOKh4_esEoA1kDWBZZqpcR2IxmvXiUU4_90mIiMNpZWPPqdkyhYr91UQ/s320/blk02.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white;">Chicago author Richard Stern visited Hampton's apartment after his
murder (and that of another man in the apartment), and noted the books that
were there. In a brief essay that later became the title piece of his 1973
collection, he wrote:"...it meant that the blood which lumped the mattress
and stained the floorboards was in part the blood of the books as well as their
readers. If it didn't make that fierce nest a shrine, it lifted its
meanness and anonymity."</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Previously immune white youth
were also victims of violence, and not all because of politics. In a
Ramparts collection on the cultural revolution, several articles chronicled
routine violence against "hippies" and members of communes--assaults,
arson, rapes-- unrestricted by age or gender.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic2CTgGCYUgP1_53DKhTQQGTsjIf3-6Evj3klRqANipeDTaI0CObgo4VODaNQapJSqIAoOrqHKZAItAa_biNYZrAed13QAhrFs8wThwzNeO8kjbfrwHUpbpOCMJwlGNuVVQxUG2gQTzUfYS-xZ9XBSb3Fol7HdTSzOPC9B_DZGa2I3yoZYLQ/s1600/ramp01.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1060" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic2CTgGCYUgP1_53DKhTQQGTsjIf3-6Evj3klRqANipeDTaI0CObgo4VODaNQapJSqIAoOrqHKZAItAa_biNYZrAed13QAhrFs8wThwzNeO8kjbfrwHUpbpOCMJwlGNuVVQxUG2gQTzUfYS-xZ9XBSb3Fol7HdTSzOPC9B_DZGa2I3yoZYLQ/s320/ramp01.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>Students experienced beatings and routine
tear-gas during political protests, and the campus was no longer a sanctuary.
In response to this violence and to the endless war, some protesters
engaged in violence against property. Some was planned, some spontaneous,
some extraneous, and some undoubtedly fomented by government agents, agent
provocateurs.<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Violence against student
activists was encouraged by the White House, in v.p. Agnew's rhetoric and
Nixon's praise of the "hardhats" who attacked protesters. Even
in his Cambodia speech, Nixon asserted: "We see mindless attacks on all
the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations in the
last 500 years. Even here in the United States, great universities are being
systematically destroyed." There would be more of this after the
speech, when the protests started.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">The Chicago convention itself was a prime
example of official violence, though the trial of demonstrators attempted to
distract from this. The government's own Walker Commission concluded that
it was the Chicago police that had rioted.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvo5DcX_Md1y92eHiVH-7HofB7o3XSB3kSqQvGf0F4-s5IIkS3xkbjrSa62fNN-92KI_s3wSPm06m82yJplhX2O-vMBt-CUbYV91v19Zqq20wipYfx13_wNTBoaSqRJKiJ2U8f4s-gDbhPBUfMXr63P3t1Jifn5hom3G-m7UOr2AB_IUK4gA/s638/wp-1477803447212.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="638" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvo5DcX_Md1y92eHiVH-7HofB7o3XSB3kSqQvGf0F4-s5IIkS3xkbjrSa62fNN-92KI_s3wSPm06m82yJplhX2O-vMBt-CUbYV91v19Zqq20wipYfx13_wNTBoaSqRJKiJ2U8f4s-gDbhPBUfMXr63P3t1Jifn5hom3G-m7UOr2AB_IUK4gA/s320/wp-1477803447212.jpg" width="241" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white;">The resulting trial in
Chicago was mostly theatre of the absurd, thanks not only to Abbie Hoffman and
Jerry Rubin but the transparently biased Judge Julius Hoffman.</span> <span style="background-color: white;">But the darkness at the heart of it became
clear immediately when the judge refused Bobby Seale's request for his own
lawyer, or to represent himself. When he continued to protest, the judge
had him bound and gagged in chair in the courtroom. That image--seen only
in the sketches permitted during court proceedings--became indelible.
Bobby Seale was soon separated from this trial, and so the defendants
became known through the history since as the Chicago 7.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">The verdicts came down in February 1970.
The trial was so manifestly unjust that the anger and alienation it
engendered were still in the air in May. (Though some defendants were found
guilty on riot charges and on contempt of court, eventually all the charges
were thrown out because of the judge’s obvious and active bias.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNaO3ap-V7j5Jf_XZToYcdvP1hEHOIrhwKEOup4LFTUH4TBv4kK-MZnu0cv2OzVIc8EMMUKi4mV-bFSzvL32F3On3Yb_xeorOB1S0jAR9ZOd3RbztSbbDyL9vyrwJEsjtjbkkz4BBp869V8Mr8A_zT7RLe8ZXUvGPPr46bNUqMduhyaJy7Aw/s572/buffaloj.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="572" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNaO3ap-V7j5Jf_XZToYcdvP1hEHOIrhwKEOup4LFTUH4TBv4kK-MZnu0cv2OzVIc8EMMUKi4mV-bFSzvL32F3On3Yb_xeorOB1S0jAR9ZOd3RbztSbbDyL9vyrwJEsjtjbkkz4BBp869V8Mr8A_zT7RLe8ZXUvGPPr46bNUqMduhyaJy7Aw/s320/buffaloj.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="background-color: white;">That winter in Buffalo also
saw a lot of ferment, including barricades in the street, though most of the
issues were with the university.</span> <span style="background-color: white;">After
spring break in mid March, the intensity was dying down, only to flare up
suddenly in response to Nixon announcing the Cambodian invasion. Fighting in
the streets between crowds and police resumed at a higher pitch over that
weekend.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">There were significant protests the next day--on
Friday May 1--at Princeton, University of Maryland and other campuses and in
cities like Seattle, as well as smaller protests at places like Kent State in
Ohio.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Also on Friday, President Nixon spoke to
Pentagon employees in a statement that made the front pages by Saturday, saying
"You see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses...I mean, storming
around about this issue, I mean you name it get rid of the war, there'll be
another one."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">On Sunday, a meeting of
representatives of 11 universities met at Columbia U. and issued a call for a
nationwide student strike the next week, declaring that “classroom education
becomes a hollow, meaningless exercise,” in the face of this escalation of war.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Over the weekend, a protest
march through Kent resulted in some broken windows, while on campus a small
group set fire to the old wood frame house devoted to ROTC. It burned to the
ground. The Governor of Ohio, whose own rhetoric had become even more heated
than Nixon's, sent the National Guard to occupy the Kent State campus. National
Guard were also called to the campuses of Ohio State, the University of
Maryland and probably elsewhere.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">The National Guard presence at Kent State
stirred the campus. On Sunday, a 19 year old student named Allison Krause
placed a flower in the gun barrel of a National Guard soldier, who may well
have been 19 as well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">There was no strike at Kent
State on Monday, so at noon, some students were going to classes, others to
lunch. A crowd had gathered at the Commons--some to protest the Guard's
presence, some for a previously scheduled protest that had been called off.
The Guard ordered them to disperse but many did not. According to
witnesses, the two sides were so far apart that the rocks students threw landed
in the same open area as the tear gas the Guard lobbed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Y_OX9LkFXnVL0_FF2rtRCMsSHwxYv_R9PANzkL5zXfQz0IFJp0RKJVFojdQCoWQQsjX2P62fDIikHWjZOKn678b9jMPljS_NqhBTH2w-zuODI9wwSzdy-4iriG3BeXf0vSr5Fy3vslX15GYyUYMhzBr2xKK7R4ljQOYAGrswOiFpsbHyvw/s1140/1140-kent-state-shooting-john-filo-image.imgcache.revc2210ee575a8f6ff4ce6c4d1dc24a376.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="655" data-original-width="1140" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Y_OX9LkFXnVL0_FF2rtRCMsSHwxYv_R9PANzkL5zXfQz0IFJp0RKJVFojdQCoWQQsjX2P62fDIikHWjZOKn678b9jMPljS_NqhBTH2w-zuODI9wwSzdy-4iriG3BeXf0vSr5Fy3vslX15GYyUYMhzBr2xKK7R4ljQOYAGrswOiFpsbHyvw/s320/1140-kent-state-shooting-john-filo-image.imgcache.revc2210ee575a8f6ff4ce6c4d1dc24a376.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The Guard marched up the
hill, backing down the students in front of them. The students behind
them were still far away. But a number of the Guard turned and fired into
the crowd. Whether they were ordered to do so is still at issue, but they
may well have been. They killed four students, including Allison Krause. They
inflicted wounds on 11, with one student paralyzed for life.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">On Tuesday, an Extra edition
of the Spectrum headlined the call for a national strike, with an early report
on the Kent State killings. By Wednesday it was a front page story, with
that iconic photo, under the banner headline: </span><i>"They shoot
students, don't they?"</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">Maybe it was some homing instinct at a time of
crisis, but at that point Steve and I got into his MG and headed for Galesburg.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><b><span style="background: white; font-size: 18pt;">W</span></b><span style="background: white;">e had an uneasy moment being stared at during a stop
on the Ohio turnpike. A newspaper I picked up along the way carried a
story quoting Nixon as saying that he hoped the fatal shootings at Kent State
would convince universities to stand against "the resort to
violence." Vice President Spiro T. Agnew said that they proved he
was right to attack violent demonstrators.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE3hPCBRsUWzQgDQ6SDdI23rN8z1nRmN2HfTN_tTlwT7Hw3aYjT-6v66tisA1sbZ-s_nU6klhKoDZbsUGhjkY_kKSEChZTc6WoVpV7AQ_AHqohi35qAfZxyFDI2ML7YuT1DT2MqhinXgYAsTucfqof4_MGO7mDyxBs1oGIn7FA4UCnowRjkA/s1421/81yMqAQYfgL.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1421" data-original-width="833" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE3hPCBRsUWzQgDQ6SDdI23rN8z1nRmN2HfTN_tTlwT7Hw3aYjT-6v66tisA1sbZ-s_nU6klhKoDZbsUGhjkY_kKSEChZTc6WoVpV7AQ_AHqohi35qAfZxyFDI2ML7YuT1DT2MqhinXgYAsTucfqof4_MGO7mDyxBs1oGIn7FA4UCnowRjkA/s320/81yMqAQYfgL.jpg" width="188" /></a></div>Somewhere I also saw a story quoting Kent
townspeople who blamed the students for the shootings, with one woman
complaining that the newspapers were printing the dead students' high school
photos but they didn't look like that when they were shot.<br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Newspapers also reported that on Friday May 8,
200 construction workers attacked protesters in lower Manhattan, in what became
known as the Hard Hat Riot. It lasted two hours, spilled into City Hall
and left 70 injured.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Around this time, 58% of
respondents in a Gallup poll blamed the Kent State students for their own
deaths. Another survey (according to historian Katherine Scott) found
that 76% did not support the Constitutional right to assemble and dissent from
government policies. Whatever their accuracy, these polls reflect the
atmosphere I remember.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span></i></b><b><i><span style="background: white;">The Students Are
Revolting: An Inside Story</span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">We must have arrived at Knox
College before the huge protest demonstration in Washington on Saturday, May 9.
I'm pretty sure I’d already been party to impassioned discussions
students were having.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span> <span style="background-color: white;"> I know we were there when the news began to circulate that a
Knox student demonstrator had been arrested in Washington--John Podesta.
Though this was two years after my senior year spring, I knew some
students who'd been first and second years then, and John was one. We
took up a collection for his bail, with a "Free Podesta" banner, but
by then he was already on his way back to campus.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSdwfgQkgEqo-uvZc5ofg4DT9a8atlsWcYg44KGVaRXlW5PZPbwWTPkXQosKhUGRPV9-XcGcvnlPvEG7H8IV_3neROH0tykUcooBYxGhpgbAyk8xfMrwiQV-mpvRPTKoOWPaniJu_S4uBfVG13C9lL2Fd3BWxfrYM4CoGAv9yHDQg2jr4nYg/s618/image_asset_13732.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="318" data-original-width="618" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSdwfgQkgEqo-uvZc5ofg4DT9a8atlsWcYg44KGVaRXlW5PZPbwWTPkXQosKhUGRPV9-XcGcvnlPvEG7H8IV_3neROH0tykUcooBYxGhpgbAyk8xfMrwiQV-mpvRPTKoOWPaniJu_S4uBfVG13C9lL2Fd3BWxfrYM4CoGAv9yHDQg2jr4nYg/s320/image_asset_13732.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white;">John Podesta went on to other
things, such as White House Chief of Staff to President Clinton, White House
advisor to President Obama and campaign chair for presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton. That--and his continued alumni support for
Knox--probably contribute to his place in the College's official history of the
Knox events of May 1970, as the heroic leader of the protest and takeover of
the dean’s office.</span> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;"> At the time, the
takeover of a dean's office was hardly something that earned a lot of praise
from the college administration. In fact, it was scheduled to earn me jail
time. But in retrospect apparently it has become his heroic deed,
presaging a prominent future. He and I actually joked about this over dinner
at his house in Washington, when he was between Presidents. John
certainly was intimately involved in the events I am about to recall. But
I'll leave descriptions of his role to his own memoirs.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Instead I will patch together
my recollections with a few artifacts that have survived from that time, along
with fragmentary notes I made at various times in the following few years. This is a personal account, informed by surviving documents, but everyone involved (or observing) probably has their own story.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">Some 400 campuses went on strike that week, the
first national student strike in US history. Knox College was not one of
them. Some of its students were upset by this. I found there the
same emotions as on other campuses--anger and sadness, frustration and
disbelief, feelings of being betrayed and misunderstood, scapegoated and even
hated.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Some months later I summarized what I observed.
The activist students "were small in number, somewhat paranoid about
their alienation from the majority of [Knox] students, factionalized and not
all overly fond of each other, yet energized by the solidarity they saw
[elsewhere] and the frustration they felt that their own campus was so
unresponsive."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmE_VNSxUHvAWD89C9lZU6iybWdQVkhafl3EcxtiBG-upCFVKczNyGoSP2Bh0HRNx8A-gY2lzuWJHDGiDY_1OMj9KYib4B_CI0a7R0xlB518-O1_Tpt7VIoUtYVqNRxeNXpHY8lXaPd5KRNcUqqmb1RvB5zda5g-6jRVbSsnUPjZuEu_o-1Q/s1600/pol01.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="959" data-original-width="1600" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmE_VNSxUHvAWD89C9lZU6iybWdQVkhafl3EcxtiBG-upCFVKczNyGoSP2Bh0HRNx8A-gY2lzuWJHDGiDY_1OMj9KYib4B_CI0a7R0xlB518-O1_Tpt7VIoUtYVqNRxeNXpHY8lXaPd5KRNcUqqmb1RvB5zda5g-6jRVbSsnUPjZuEu_o-1Q/s320/pol01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="background-color: white;">I described the situation as
"volatile," and I recall some specifics of that. At one end of
the spectrum were those students who wanted to work within established channels
and the usual means of petitions, letters and demonstrations. At the
other there was a small number of students angry enough to advocate violence,
specifically setting fires and exploding bombs. And many, probably most,
somewhere between them.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">Bombing buildings was certainly happening on and
around some campuses, and there were individuals and organizations that
advocated violence. These particular students at Knox did not strike me
as radical ideologues. Mostly they were angry young males. Some of
them actually did make a bomb which they attempted to detonate. It may have
simply been a stink bomb, I'm not sure, because it didn't work. But it
was enough to be alarming. I was frankly less worried that they would
blow something up than I was that they would blow themselves up. They seemed
more impulsively angry than doctrinaire, or competent at bomb-making.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">I recall several meetings
held in a large, mostly empty room at the off-campus apartment shared by Carol
Hartman and Mary Maddox, where I was staying. Eventually these meetings
coalesced around finding a plan of action that everyone could support. I
saw that it had to be peaceful but forceful, or at least dramatic.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_e7ZwxVY_feNy2Jh0d6TWx-nLtINDxcLGHTMJBpOlPbxpX8MNkV_t45pARcyfsWOEI4pWhUndwAekbOjltGmsAthLDZMUJQv4BnYcEms5E8InAJO1FvBZwANv5L-CtmB9cJB2a-Ev6cGL88YmIIu1kdIftDT3D1FhAFoVZ0fAbRFKfJcWHA/s499/rubin.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="346" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_e7ZwxVY_feNy2Jh0d6TWx-nLtINDxcLGHTMJBpOlPbxpX8MNkV_t45pARcyfsWOEI4pWhUndwAekbOjltGmsAthLDZMUJQv4BnYcEms5E8InAJO1FvBZwANv5L-CtmB9cJB2a-Ev6cGL88YmIIu1kdIftDT3D1FhAFoVZ0fAbRFKfJcWHA/w139-h200/rubin.jpg" width="139" /></a></span></div><span style="background: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Taking over administrative
offices had become a tactic since the Columbia University demonstrations a year
before. I don't remember who proposed this, but I do recall my
contribution at this point, which was to suggest a Yippie-like action.
While I was at Knox that spring I was reading Jerry Rubin's book, </span><i>Do
It! </i><span style="background-color: white;">I'd previously read Abbie Hoffman's books, </span><i>Revolution for
the Hell of It</i><span style="background-color: white;"> and </span><i>Woodstock Nation</i><span style="background-color: white;">.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">I'd been at the big Pentagon
demonstration in 1968 that had been in part a Yippie action, described in
Rubin's book. I didn't subscribe to all their ideas but I did feel a
certain vibe in common. Writer Jack Newfield called Hoffman "a pure
Marxist-Lennonist: Harpo Marx and John Lennon." That worked for me.</span><br />
<span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyvCVa_qiub7MUtj12xlbOJ19A_jKSXinWQAGsmfb4WJLvCdN4c3n62wq-eu_aAfYvofdcyMo14RgaYcd7G4qoGV5gNNgFSwqUDj7qOykA9-1LBosbdcqsvex6zL1cEbjX1JHKFjzAtvxQD3_yMT31TseE7S31AVJCyMbOfE042E2i7zr-eQ/s762/jerry-rubin-lsd-acid-1960s-hippie_1_07d1bb6bd131480ca97330aee50432e0.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="651" data-original-width="762" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyvCVa_qiub7MUtj12xlbOJ19A_jKSXinWQAGsmfb4WJLvCdN4c3n62wq-eu_aAfYvofdcyMo14RgaYcd7G4qoGV5gNNgFSwqUDj7qOykA9-1LBosbdcqsvex6zL1cEbjX1JHKFjzAtvxQD3_yMT31TseE7S31AVJCyMbOfE042E2i7zr-eQ/s320/jerry-rubin-lsd-acid-1960s-hippie_1_07d1bb6bd131480ca97330aee50432e0.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Hoffman and Rubin's humor was natural to them
but also tactical and strategic. They used humor and outrageousness as
political jujitsu, to throw their establishment opponents off balance.
The people who held the power--in government, the military, business and
in colleges--couldn't be defeated or even meaningfully confronted on their own
terms: in terms of power. But in other ways they could be.<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Hoffman and Rubin used humor
in part the way Madison Avenue did, to attract attention and to make their
point through imagery and irony. They used other kinds of theatrics for the
same reason, a kind of forerunner of live "memes." But they
also used humor as a weapon, as psychological leverage. With humor they
could expose hypocrisy, pretension and the truth behind these facades. It
opened the opponent to ridicule they brought on themselves. There was also
something disarming and winning about humor, especially irony. It made violence
against those who employed it perhaps less likely, and certainly less
justifiable.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjww-kP_LacviFegw3zsLxzPnu7RvcJZCNvhWKGEum3Jy1PyTuFmYC2srCq3kiH-UDWJQ5lI8R-_6M62FJrPLJhsKaN_f2VG228nfcxSxLLyXqIQTgWNUxTPUl3UGUb1JINnAJZwhc4BlaRg06WZenBS8tEnxd_6BxhRZm7oY0pEemnESiZPw/s406/9784871879163_p0_v2_s550x406.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="263" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjww-kP_LacviFegw3zsLxzPnu7RvcJZCNvhWKGEum3Jy1PyTuFmYC2srCq3kiH-UDWJQ5lI8R-_6M62FJrPLJhsKaN_f2VG228nfcxSxLLyXqIQTgWNUxTPUl3UGUb1JINnAJZwhc4BlaRg06WZenBS8tEnxd_6BxhRZm7oY0pEemnESiZPw/s320/9784871879163_p0_v2_s550x406.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white;"> By this time, Kurt
Vonnegut's novel </span><i>Slaughterhouse Five</i><span style="background-color: white;"> had made him a ubiquitous
name on campuses in particular. That novel joined Heller's </span><i>Catch-22</i><span style="background-color: white;"> as
cultural--countercultural-- touchstones. Both novels employed what was
sometimes described as black humor, but which novelist Vance Bourjaily insisted
was more accurately called gallows humor. In this context it conveyed
Mark Twain's view (Twain being one of Vonnegut's models in particular),
that "the source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow.” It was a
way to work with the pain to get at some sort of meaning.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <span style="background-color: white;">The Yippie approach also had
the advantage of appealing to almost everyone in that room as a common action,
though I'm sure many had their different reservations. However, many were
Yippies at heart anyway. So we proceeded along that line. Was it the best
approach to take? Maybe not. With a more straightforward approach,
there may have been more support among students, faculty and even
administrators than anyone in that room believed there would be. But I
don't regret the choice. Because in the end there were no bombs.
There was no violence.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="background: white; font-size: 18pt;">T</span></b><span style="background: white;">his being Knox, everyone at the preliminary meetings
knew each other. Black students had organized several years before and a
representative attended at least one of the meetings, but the black students
decided not to officially participate in a common action, and keep control of
their own message.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">At the final meeting the target and the time
were decided, and the small group of students who would enter first. I
believe there was even lighthearted discussion of style--what kind of
outrageous costumes we would wear. But apart from a couple of opening
statements, nothing much was planned. Most of these actions elsewhere
were largely improvised. But this one was continually improvised by
design. It was part of the point.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsE13pkFV6UMJkOHNJLmKqEWEW2VUqcTFq6bhY4KP2j5ESXjDHhx5ETjWTatnBSI5lr4stQQvRKgBKeUvUwmwWAwYFREQ_BmZ8CZguO7UgO3TJenVQ5OFR8dQgXCmpiEQCOcwRQq78s4dQDD6UH8UuNOXyEl4KJlE5WPybWtisJHkzN0ihNg/s339/The_Strawberry_Statement.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="201" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsE13pkFV6UMJkOHNJLmKqEWEW2VUqcTFq6bhY4KP2j5ESXjDHhx5ETjWTatnBSI5lr4stQQvRKgBKeUvUwmwWAwYFREQ_BmZ8CZguO7UgO3TJenVQ5OFR8dQgXCmpiEQCOcwRQq78s4dQDD6UH8UuNOXyEl4KJlE5WPybWtisJHkzN0ihNg/s320/The_Strawberry_Statement.jpg" width="190" /></a></div> <span style="background-color: white;">Just about all I knew of what
to expect came from reports from other campuses, and books such as </span><i>The
Strawberry Statement</i><span style="background-color: white;"> by James Simon Kunen, about the Columbia
takeovers. Again, I saw that Kunen took a light, personal approach.
The cover of his book featured an effusive endorsement from Kurt
Vonnegut. So that book as well as the Yippie books were in the back of my mind.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">At around 4 on Friday afternoon, May 15, a
handful of students entered Dean Sanville's office and handed him the Eviction
Notice, which began:<i> "In the name of Abraham Lincoln, Bobby Seale,
Bobby Dylan and the scholars of Woodstock Nation at Knox College, the current
administration is hereby evicted from Old Main."<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span></i><span style="background-color: white;">It ended by declaring
solidarity with the national and international fight to "free Asia from
imperialist oppression, to free the nation from racism and repression, to free
the planet from self-destruction, to free ourselves." It was
signed: </span><i>The Students Are Revolting. </i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">That's the name I came up with: a
Yippie pun. In subsequent documents, it was shortened to the acronym SAR,
but it took Time Magazine to point out that the true acronym was TSAR, which
was even better because it was funnier and in the same spirit of mirroring
expectations and throwing them back. Happy accidents will happen.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">My notes remind me however that the phrase had a
Knox precedent. I remembered it from a Mortarboard satirical skit--the last one
before they were temporarily banned for being salacious. "The
students are revolting" was a line said, with appropriate emphasis, by the
Dean of Students.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">The students in that first
group reported that the Dean and his secretary seemed unsurprised by the
takeover and left without argument. (They got maybe an extra hour start on
their weekend.) After the first group took possession, reinforcements of around
30 arrived. We locked the doors and opened the first floor window, so
that people could enter and exit as Lincoln did when he "went through Knox
College" and into Old Main. (Though not, scholars suggest, by that
same window.)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">In the office we found the previous night's campus
"activity report" which stated: <i>"God provided us
rain" Everything quiet on the campus.</i> We also found college
president Sharvey Umbeck's memo on how to deal with crisis situations.
Though it included some surprising humility (" Don't focus on finding
a scapegoat...We start by searching our own souls before seeking fault in
others") the basic message was to emphasize the positive and "develop
a program which turns the crisis to the College's advantage."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">We issued a press release: <i>From an
original strike force of 2,000 who nonviolently took over the administration,
the ranks have grown to nearly a million...We are getting all our orders from
Ho Chi Minh. </i>Then everyone was encouraged to issue their own press
releases, which they did, on the best available official stationery. Dean of
Students Ivan Harlan stuck his head in, saw us using the phones, and left to
have the phones cut off.</span><br />
<span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrq-FPMkObqzRvIyi14ebdNqUC-kwiYPG2RU7F6VCJpLRf_Gr0Om6YbZ9hSbv3XZ0ug7aU-iVzC6lpCUi3pFC8PmC_rtbMp15segTFXRVzZ9tkVBSekqVU956w3aXjeiLMLgVKeWR6SuMDwfcthJAE0XNBQdWgdmTYeZbatGnIDTATV2uL6Q/s900/metz-003-student-protest-075.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrq-FPMkObqzRvIyi14ebdNqUC-kwiYPG2RU7F6VCJpLRf_Gr0Om6YbZ9hSbv3XZ0ug7aU-iVzC6lpCUi3pFC8PmC_rtbMp15segTFXRVzZ9tkVBSekqVU956w3aXjeiLMLgVKeWR6SuMDwfcthJAE0XNBQdWgdmTYeZbatGnIDTATV2uL6Q/s320/metz-003-student-protest-075.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I later described the occupation as an open-form
action without imposed structure, an expression that became a challenge. <span style="background: white;">"We're not being violent. We are
having a political party," that first release said. By evening this
was literally true. Somehow a rock band appeared (again, not previously
planned), and set up in the Old Main hallway. Soon there were hundreds of
people outside and inside--talking, arguing, and occasionally dancing.</span><span style="background: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">They were students, faculty,
the occasional administrator, and the college public relations person.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">It was a surreal few hours,
in a good way at first ( a rock band playing under a portrait of Lincoln.)
But some students got uncomfortable as the atmosphere got more boozy,
especially as some participants, notably faculty members, seemed to be treating
it as just another Friday night party. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">There was also a classic
Yippie moment when a faculty member went ballistic when told the soft drinks
were spiked with LSD. The actual Yippies had used the same rumor at the
Chicago convention demonstration. It wasn't true then, and it certainly
wasn't true at Knox, as inspection of the factory sealed bottles might suggest.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHBqmdS1C1uVsJlUh4AJMfDBbbYGtGnVm3-sXKpwUWJmsoXx1txAneHeR_yyyee__O0CQlsofmpkdUE7eOVRmA6Sy9ky-ZyAGPAPd5xLWEfPG6h8inkTzYR_qHWDxN407rNd2gJbt2AbbsxjfYJyebrnjBZcEJDdjKk1MU2mKQQ1eXGm-LUA/s1600/home01.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1459" data-original-width="1600" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHBqmdS1C1uVsJlUh4AJMfDBbbYGtGnVm3-sXKpwUWJmsoXx1txAneHeR_yyyee__O0CQlsofmpkdUE7eOVRmA6Sy9ky-ZyAGPAPd5xLWEfPG6h8inkTzYR_qHWDxN407rNd2gJbt2AbbsxjfYJyebrnjBZcEJDdjKk1MU2mKQQ1eXGm-LUA/s320/home01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Some of the students who originally threatened
bombing were particularly upset by the party atmosphere. By that time news had
spread of more students being shot by police, this time at the predominantly
black college, Jackson State in Mississippi. Two were killed and 12
wounded. So the rest of us responded by pulling the plug on the band and
asking people who wanted to discuss further action to stay, and others to
leave.<br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">When things quieted down there were (my notes
indicate) now about 80 committed to the occupation. This larger group had
a serious and heartfelt discussion that went on most of the night, interrupted
for a time by drunken comments and personal insults from the other room (aimed
at me, for one) by a few members of the faculty and administration. A
meeting of a faculty committee, probably the Student Affairs Committee, was
scheduled for 10:30 in the morning.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">The discussion ranged from the war in Vietnam
and now at home, to earnest talk about community, ideals and possibilities.
This week that forcibly took everyone out of regular time was an
opportunity. A consensus quickly arose (again, I'm referring to more or less
contemporaneous notes) that the students who were now present wanted a strike,
with official mourning for the Kent State and now Jackson State students, and
discussions of relevant issues instead of standard classes. <o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">The difference of opinion was
whether or not to bring such a proposal to the faculty committee. Some
believed they would consider it, others doubted it. Almost everyone
realized simply making the proposal was a concession, a return to the old power
dynamic of asking for something.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">Eventually everyone agreed to work out a
proposal, and that's what happened the rest of the night. Unfortunately I don't
have a copy of it. But I believe it proposed several days of a "free
university" devoted to relevant issues. A group of representatives
was elected, and they took it to the committee in the morning, while everybody
else tried to get some sleep on the floors.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">I remember one moment from that strange night.
I was walking through a group of students sitting and lying on the floor,
when one young woman looked up at me and smiled. I hadn't known her
before, but she looked at me with such faith and trust. I felt a particular
responsibility placed on me by that look, beyond what I'd felt from the start
of this, and I knew at that moment that I would do my best to see that no harm
would come to her or anyone, as the priority. We all knew that the police
might well become involved at some point, for not even Knox College was immune.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwakyrhyKpB-Zdjsa3xD7Tuc6oVRNQpZbyouGitBV3LWtGV_QPDRNqaS8nsApS5hzoSfKJwbDpFRr4g94pQ1b2ugV11n_Qzbm1j0lpY8saQ934E6kSqSZOCdnD_IoAloc14kNVEUSMH9jrFAZCMfE9iV7ttMH0lrpQiXpPjwZ0UulQAX-gI2MmDQ/s1600/stu02.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="827" data-original-width="1600" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwakyrhyKpB-Zdjsa3xD7Tuc6oVRNQpZbyouGitBV3LWtGV_QPDRNqaS8nsApS5hzoSfKJwbDpFRr4g94pQ1b2ugV11n_Qzbm1j0lpY8saQ934E6kSqSZOCdnD_IoAloc14kNVEUSMH9jrFAZCMfE9iV7ttMH0lrpQiXpPjwZ0UulQAX-gI2MmDQ/s320/stu02.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="background: white;">On Saturday morning the faculty committee
refused to discuss anything with occupation representatives while we occupied
the offices, because (they said) that meant the faculty was under duress.
So the representatives roused the sleeping occupier and we all went to
the committee room down the hall. The faculty did not discuss their
proposals but rejected their legitimacy, and harshly criticized the occupiers.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Cooler heads might have expected this, and even
seen it as a part of the process that would end up in some sort of compromise.
But (my notes more than indicate) most of the students were shocked by
its dismissive intensity, involving what would today be called shaming.
The desires and possibilities they had articulated, sometimes tearfully,
in the suspended space of the night, were ignored and disdained.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">A theorist might suggest that the Yippie/Dada
occupation had monkeyed with the structure and mystique of authority, denying
its moral validity, and the faculty now reflexively attempted to restore and
enforce that authority and mystique. Or it simply was an angry reaction
with rational justification, which felt like violence to the exhausted and
vulnerable.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;"></span><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5FwIVeykGgfxg8z2IndEdo8qFwFE0SaqjWP50dSVwiln_rSjgz43SqqveMpQ0MhUZ0XcsocbBR_mSHnW942yeEaVlAOWnChKXObQzUPhPMO0gLJsnvDiaeDzM2mp4cdbCD4BcrvWG_CK4qEX9iFbWjcU-XtfrbRTBU2y33qJ7cg27FluIXQ/s500/podesta%20knox.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="327" data-original-width="500" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5FwIVeykGgfxg8z2IndEdo8qFwFE0SaqjWP50dSVwiln_rSjgz43SqqveMpQ0MhUZ0XcsocbBR_mSHnW942yeEaVlAOWnChKXObQzUPhPMO0gLJsnvDiaeDzM2mp4cdbCD4BcrvWG_CK4qEX9iFbWjcU-XtfrbRTBU2y33qJ7cg27FluIXQ/s320/podesta%20knox.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Knox student John Podesta</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="background: white;">The faculty meeting did have its Yippie moments.
I noted that John Podesta brought a flashlight to the meeting and
pretended to flash messages to confederates outside. He and the other
representatives requested donations for the Old Main One--a student who'd been
arrested for trying to shoplift chains, to chain up the doors.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">In any case the faculty response also seemed
like part of a bad cop/good cop strategy, because when we got back from the
meeting, the Dean of Students entered, made "a few subtle threats" but
offered to negotiate. "I'll be in my office," he said.
"We'll be in ours!" one of the students shouted, to cheers.
The occupying group seemed on the verge of splintering until that moment.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">The deans stuck around and talked with whoever
came into their offices. Perhaps some actual negotiation began at this
point, but it mostly became chaos. The deans' huddle was interrupted by a
student asking for a match, and then leaving. Just as one of the more
traditionally liberal members of the occupying group was explaining to the
deans that one of these days things might get so bad that somebody might throw
a bomb, in slid a long sputtering fuse attached to a loaf of bread. Then 30 of
the occupiers got down on the Old Man hallway floor and crawled towards one of
the offices crying, <i>"Crumbs! Crumbs from the table!
Please!"</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">The occupation continued throughout the day on
Saturday. There seemed to be only two alternatives: to acknowledge
defeat, or await the police. We talked about it. We could ask those
not willing to be busted to leave, but the group believed it had achieved
something by staying together, and they wanted to remain together. But to some,
and especially to me, the whole group staying required trusting that the police
would not be violent, and in this week that did not seem a safe bet.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">And what would be gained? Injury or worse,
radicalization of some, a lot of alienation and turmoil with lasting
repercussions. This scenario had become predictable. Issues had been raised and
a process begun, however disingenuously. It seemed time for a last act of
Yippie jujitsu. I made the proposal, and the group made the final
decision, with what seemed like relief.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">In the darkness of very early Sunday morning we
packed up and left, announcing that we were enacting the solution to the
wearisome question of how do we get out of Vietnam? Our answer was:
declare victory and go home.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">That’s what we did.</span> <span style="background-color: white;">There was no vandalism, no damage to persons
or property.</span> <span style="background-color: white;">I’m pretty sure we cleaned
up before we left.</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">Later I learned, probably from Becky Harlan,
Dean Ivan Harlan's daughter, that a police raid had been in the works, working
with the college. Students who participated would simply be sent home,
but--as an ex-student Outside Agitator-- I would be arrested, as would the
other ex-student present.</span><br />
<span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlXQYVB849uk3VTcMrJQB2d62cC33bBM-IukdQysClrwMNB_xQCQIJiHpZCFaZ_Im2YBgNBbQQhK_ylUMGkH9h4zrq4mw-HLegZXK6PvoVwbYRwrb6Cio4y7JW_8dOi54jvDsd7kJWVRKAAXRrteGr5GjUYa0Pslycm6VXCrNz04K0aofEvQ/s1600/stu01.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1153" data-original-width="1600" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlXQYVB849uk3VTcMrJQB2d62cC33bBM-IukdQysClrwMNB_xQCQIJiHpZCFaZ_Im2YBgNBbQQhK_ylUMGkH9h4zrq4mw-HLegZXK6PvoVwbYRwrb6Cio4y7JW_8dOi54jvDsd7kJWVRKAAXRrteGr5GjUYa0Pslycm6VXCrNz04K0aofEvQ/s320/stu01.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="background: white;">Shortly after the occupation, the college did
call off classes and held an open university for a day or two. I can't
imagine where they got the idea.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">The occupation and my participation in it got me
some odd responses. Some people I knew who I thought would be more
positive, weren't. But one faculty member I expected to be hostile--in
fact the professor who'd flunked me and adamantly refused to let me
graduate--complimented me on taking an interest in my old school, with a smile.
To this day I don't know if he was sincere, or more skilled at blank
sarcasm than I'd ever seen.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">The head of college public relations--who I've
decided not to name here-- may have felt personally betrayed because he'd
employed me writing for the alumni magazine and tried to get me a summer
reporting job while I was a student. In any case he was bitter, angry and
very hostile. <o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">While it was going on, I'd
written a verse parody about the occupation called, naturally enough, "The
Students Are Revolting." The main character was Free Podesta, which
wasn't meant to be John specifically, but was a pun referring both to the
"Free Podesta" signs and to Abbie Hoffman's adopted name of Free, to
designate a kind of Every-Protester.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;"> Later someone slipped
me this p.r. man's own Shakespearian verse parody, quite skillfully written,
with personal digs at a number of students but in which the chief villains are
me ("King Owinski") and somebody called "Jan Siesta."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; font-size: 13.5pt;">A</span><span style="background: white;">ll of this reminds me of something Abbie Hoffman said years later:<i>"We
were reckless, we were headstrong, we were impatient, we were excessive. But
goddammit we were right." </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i><b><span style="background: white; font-size: 18pt;">D</span></b><span style="background: white;">uring the occupation I snuck out a
few times, once to go to the library to check out the story about the occupation
in Time Magazine (with its immortal quote, "If it can happen at Knox
College, it can happen anywhere.") Oddly, there were a couple of
alums I knew who visited Knox that weekend, for reasons of their own. One
was Neil Gaston, one of the first of my classmates I met my first year. I ran
into him in front of Seymour Hall. He was in the Army. He wanted to talk
about books.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4ER-K7-l95Ss7s2NgEb_nixXV04MYl4cWhCsJWvLDvYDhV7nJg-gk70_DxaS_e43Gh7odrlxS7QIcWuHPnE5oAOPjuo4sFdtL_xe5mzQrf0k_6HyXXLcWUtfxAuzD7PgKahA-eptMGoGSV8QRtYaK_icc2PlL4skGh9sxqwkhOsXYkaHl5A/s269/valjean%20donutj.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="269" data-original-width="230" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4ER-K7-l95Ss7s2NgEb_nixXV04MYl4cWhCsJWvLDvYDhV7nJg-gk70_DxaS_e43Gh7odrlxS7QIcWuHPnE5oAOPjuo4sFdtL_xe5mzQrf0k_6HyXXLcWUtfxAuzD7PgKahA-eptMGoGSV8QRtYaK_icc2PlL4skGh9sxqwkhOsXYkaHl5A/s1600/valjean%20donutj.jpg" width="230" /></a></span></div><span style="background: white;">The other was Valjean McLenighan, in her Dress
for Success period. We had a brief conversation before I had to go back.
I only found her because Dean Deborah Wing saw me and said she was on
campus and looking for me. In all my years at Knox I had hardly a good
word to say for Dean Wing, and yet she was calmly civil with me. </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">That was
the last time I saw or heard from Neil. And though Valjean and I spoke on
the phone, wrote letters and emails over the years, that was also the last time
I saw her. </span><span style="background-color: white;">Both Neil and Valjean would
go on to do great work (Neil wrote major environmental laws in Illinois;
Valjean wrote childrens books, did political work, and more) and both were
special people.</span> <span style="background-color: white;">And both died too
young.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Two other relevant memories:
I did participate in the open university, though my contribution was
decidedly undistinguished. In retrospect it reminds me of the actor's
nightmare, in which you find yourself on stage unprepared. I'd begun
something which I'd planned as a multi-media presentation on "the
classroom without walls," on old forms restricting new information, but I didn't have anything coherent in shape in
time. And I was exhausted, so I mumbled and grumbled through the
nightmare.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Jfpj2YSUwc_lTNz_yVTkJWuXuY9cjGJCMEvvuGIK-pnhTH2yOwolZNFtBqmQTCBEhY2SDupNhHHAG4rGs3Mhjj-hn7LsqYd9F69WdAJ7F5eu8k6H669VSB61B9-1Yik5PAasJw5_zBxzEPDI-KBPGadoFfB1mE91KOP8KvhZgh2KJo7yiA/s570/dcavxptfykrg9f9isqo5.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="366" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Jfpj2YSUwc_lTNz_yVTkJWuXuY9cjGJCMEvvuGIK-pnhTH2yOwolZNFtBqmQTCBEhY2SDupNhHHAG4rGs3Mhjj-hn7LsqYd9F69WdAJ7F5eu8k6H669VSB61B9-1Yik5PAasJw5_zBxzEPDI-KBPGadoFfB1mE91KOP8KvhZgh2KJo7yiA/s320/dcavxptfykrg9f9isqo5.png" width="205" /></a></div> All I managed to
prepare, besides pages of preliminary verbiage, were copies of a page from a
McLuhan book. The first sentence makes the point:<i>"The speed of
information movement in the global village means that every human action or
event involves everybody in the village in the consequences of every
event."</i><span style="background-color: white;"> True enough if largely unrecognized in 1970, it has become more profoundly true in the age of the Internet and global heating, even if it is treated merely as a fact of life.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span> <span style="background-color: white;">Before I left campus I successfully made my first and only
movie--a super 8 one-reeler, about 3 and a half minutes long, edited in the
camera. It was about an Allison Krause figure, one of the students killed at Kent State. She also captured
the imagination of many poets and others, probably for the flower in the gun
barrel moment. I had immediately gravitated towards her also because she
was from Pittsburgh, and grew up not far from where I did.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white;"> I planned my scenes and shots but while I actually shot the
film I had a tune in my head--Paul McCartney's first solo album was just out,
and I kept hearing "Maybe I'm Amazed." The first and I think
only time I ran the film, I put the record on, and the film and the song
exactly matched, in length and rhythms. Spooky.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white;"><b><i>Two Postscripts</i></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">Sometime in the 1980s I met
Jerry Rubin. He was a millionaire by then, and was beginning to host
networking parties. My literary agent at the time was helping him out. I
rode in the back seat of a car with him, and attended one of his parties at his
Upper East Side apartment. It was all carpeted in white. And I
noticed that he served only white wine. I also noticed that I never saw him
smile.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Also in the 1980s, when I was back in western
Pennsylvania working on my mall book, I got an unusual phone call. Former Knox Dean Ivan
Harlan and his new wife, the former Lynn Metz, were nearby and invited me to
dinner. They were visiting St. Vincent College in Latrobe, evidently
job-hunting. At one point Ivan told me that his daughter Becky had
explained to him what my role was in organizing the occupation, that it had
helped keep things from becoming violent. And he also told me that he
missed those days. Students now were so boring.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-74090125404373735802023-07-06T23:52:00.000-07:002023-07-06T23:52:12.457-07:00History of My Reading: To Stony Creek and Buffalo 1969-70<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgPenZJClUyuQ91Q-53j051recC2ZogJfP6qxrJDIVIxfNlA8CaQmCnsxsm17WJ7CrfTIofACBIMoWXmDNvFMCIw-wSatGMkauo990swLc3hDVUyBblZQayzHmc1u40lzcpooAHJE9B2yHRq6StPZrzuJa0fQPwYIr8B9VXjqnI1vgve8po9w=s2307" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1571" data-original-width="2307" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgPenZJClUyuQ91Q-53j051recC2ZogJfP6qxrJDIVIxfNlA8CaQmCnsxsm17WJ7CrfTIofACBIMoWXmDNvFMCIw-wSatGMkauo990swLc3hDVUyBblZQayzHmc1u40lzcpooAHJE9B2yHRq6StPZrzuJa0fQPwYIr8B9VXjqnI1vgve8po9w=w400-h272" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stony Creek, Connecticut 1969/70. BK photo.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /> After my months in Berkeley, I flew to Chicago in late
October or early November 1969. I
visited for a few days with Jeremy Gladstone (a friend from Knox College) who
was back from Europe and staying at the family home in Park Forest until he
sorted out his next move. In Europe
Jeremy had acquired a taste for Pernod, one of the anise-based French liqueurs,
a legal form of absinthe. He showed me
how to drink it over ice, with water.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> One evening he
invited a group of former Knox friends, and initiated them as well. I’m pretty sure Howard Partner was among
them. We sat around a table drinking
Pernod. I think it was on this occasion
that I got a better appreciation for how far apart these Chicagoland suburbs
really are. It took longer for everyone
to get there and to get back than the time we spent together.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> My next stop was the family home in Greensburg. This was likely a short visit because I was
soon on my way to rejoin Joni in Connecticut.
I got myself there by first going to Washington for the second
Moratorium demonstration against the Vietnam War on November 15. This turned out to be officially the largest
Washington demonstration of the war. I
may have gone down with my friend Mike or maybe I met him there because he was
stationed nearby. He had been drafted
into the Army the year before. So I
marched against the war in the company of an active duty soldier (or in his
case, chaplain’s assistant.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjO04nifzBPkmHpsQApNiMF-51KEnBCx1chKcT9KLwf_EDC1oAj7xDyQjPLpqx7D16LMc3osDtLhDojFvlexs7zEcDQeQ4-GcgaCBrGdvmY_4aED89LhhE99Kymk0ntbL5bOBMgt-7MmSX-MHIBaR_mKEy-m97i8Y7v4L-Sfn11aUkmsJhsdg=s640" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="429" data-original-width="640" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjO04nifzBPkmHpsQApNiMF-51KEnBCx1chKcT9KLwf_EDC1oAj7xDyQjPLpqx7D16LMc3osDtLhDojFvlexs7zEcDQeQ4-GcgaCBrGdvmY_4aED89LhhE99Kymk0ntbL5bOBMgt-7MmSX-MHIBaR_mKEy-m97i8Y7v4L-Sfn11aUkmsJhsdg=s320" width="320" /></a></div>Many demonstrators from distant places came on rented buses,
and so my plan was to find a bus returning to New Haven and hitch a ride. Not
really a mad strategy in 1969.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any
case, the plan worked. Mike and I found a bus going to New Haven and they had
empty seats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I even got acquainted with
someone on the bus who offered to put me up for the night when I couldn’t reach
Joni upon our arrival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the morning I
met his wife, and he and I traded versions of Dylan’s “Girl From the North
Country” (I knew the Nashville Skyline version in G, he knew the original version
in C.) Then I called Joni again and she came to pick me up.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Joni had found a small place in a village called Stony
Creek, directly on Long Island Sound, about eight miles from New Haven. As I recall, it was three rooms in a
building set back from the main drag, Thimble Island Road. Though oysters and lobster fishing were part
of its identity, the “stony” in Stony Creek likely came from the quarry. Before it closed at the beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century, it supplied pink granite for the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central
Terminal in Manhattan, and the base of the Statue of Liberty.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjzQwo8Z0yP12IjYM09LzdZwYO2r565MrNumNzcmU0S9GYAzZFvQ-N-Oey-rydqWBbeiLhLE6HJNMFlm60fgnzejNBJJKptLpb7TbGZUKkPCAwb-n8C7fMOJU1c30Hb1k9QRQUsDuhTrq1Fn3GD6F2lahlSjWYaiqteLGbKc6KXOWfkJKjAYg=s2644" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1779" data-original-width="2644" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjzQwo8Z0yP12IjYM09LzdZwYO2r565MrNumNzcmU0S9GYAzZFvQ-N-Oey-rydqWBbeiLhLE6HJNMFlm60fgnzejNBJJKptLpb7TbGZUKkPCAwb-n8C7fMOJU1c30Hb1k9QRQUsDuhTrq1Fn3GD6F2lahlSjWYaiqteLGbKc6KXOWfkJKjAYg=w400-h269" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Probably Thimble Island Road. BK photo.</td></tr></tbody></table> With a population of about a thousand, Stony Creek was part
of the town of Branford, Connecticut.
An article I clipped from the New York Times a decade later began with
the quip of an unnamed critic: “Every town has its village idiot, but only
Branford has an idiot village.” This
article made much of Stony Creek’s resistance to change; specifically to
tourism. I don’t know if it’s still
that way, though photos on line don’t give me that impression.<div><br /></div><div> The 1979 Times article suggested that many residents were
employed at Yale, and perhaps that was the case to some extent also in
1969. Across the Sound from Stony Creek
there were houses where groups of Yale Law students lived. One of them was named Bill Clinton. His
girlfriend Hillary was often around.
Joni’s brother-in-law was at Yale Law, and she attended a party over
there sometime before I’d arrived.
Perhaps they met. </div><div><br /></div><div>I don't know if it was a cultural high point but in the late 1930s, Stony Creek had a summer theatre, operated by two women who also interned for the legendary Mercury Theatre in New York, run by John Houseman and Orson Welles, often the star in its productions. This is how Stony Creek hosted a Mercury Theatre show for a week prior to its Broadway debut. Unfortunately the tryout was so dismal that the show never opened--only those who came to Stony Creek, like Katharine Hepburn, ever saw it. She stole one of the actors, Joseph Cotton, for her 1939 Broadway hit, <i>The Philadelphia Story</i>, which revived her career. </div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That New York Times article sings the praises of Stony Creek in summer, but
I saw it only in the dead of winter, intermittently from November through
February (with some time back in Greensburg for Christmas, which extended well
into January to avoid Joni’s parents, visiting her and her sister.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were not my allies.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhraEACahh9jB1vL_Jf9qlL6aBHunf1QsQtLgH9mEm3wErsxW1Qln8mgvoryQQGfIGAFKZ0jEC8Tnj7g8S4eziLDaHpdp0Mf_P_PAqB5h2_R9MRCF2l_C48Fu6a7avF4YozcLyN5foBZVBMw_BvTQMg35SjOYHIfnLReCDDsDyGWSzDBDFDgA=s2507" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1574" data-original-width="2507" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhraEACahh9jB1vL_Jf9qlL6aBHunf1QsQtLgH9mEm3wErsxW1Qln8mgvoryQQGfIGAFKZ0jEC8Tnj7g8S4eziLDaHpdp0Mf_P_PAqB5h2_R9MRCF2l_C48Fu6a7avF4YozcLyN5foBZVBMw_BvTQMg35SjOYHIfnLReCDDsDyGWSzDBDFDgA=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">BK</td></tr></tbody></table> Still, even though it was dim and frigid (or sunny and
slushy) much of the time, I liked our corner of Stony Creek by the Sound. The Sound wasn’t the ocean but it
was something, and it was always there.
I wrote this about it:<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <i>Dredging the gray sky,/the winter wind sears home./</i><i>Against the window/it pours/stinging rain from the
sea./Though it does not leap into the warm kitchen/I go out to meet it/greet
it/say hello/and come back in.</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </i>Something about that dynamic suited me then, and still does.
Besides the Sound, there was very little else in Stony Creek, at least within
walking distance, except farther down Thimble Island Road there was a small
store--and a public library. It was
(and is) the Willoughby Wallace Library, built in 1956 thanks to a bequest by
the eccentric but public-spirited Mr. Wallace, plus an architect’s donated
design, and donated town granite. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRiBg7o2IejXeFKDh93s8H4OAMpe6DiKfdJxtoRUT1NibtGifaPJchLRyfL6qKPAQkv7iR5l8hMaoKaue6oIEWS1TcybQ7Y-gK3jVUwxWVdMvE-DoS3ZobWG5eUx7cBdUKfJDypKASfHE1VjDvAK5saEbVUww1D-SPW1tmEhfF0GbQL-XSRA=s600" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="600" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRiBg7o2IejXeFKDh93s8H4OAMpe6DiKfdJxtoRUT1NibtGifaPJchLRyfL6qKPAQkv7iR5l8hMaoKaue6oIEWS1TcybQ7Y-gK3jVUwxWVdMvE-DoS3ZobWG5eUx7cBdUKfJDypKASfHE1VjDvAK5saEbVUww1D-SPW1tmEhfF0GbQL-XSRA=s320" width="320" /></a></div>So this bright substantial building was pretty new when I
discovered it, amazed it was there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was inside it just after 3 in the afternoon, and found it was a prime hangout
for high school students after school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They sat around sunny tables, munching candy from the store and
debriefing the day: who got in trouble on the bus that morning, who got ripped
last weekend, plus demonstrations of how Martha and Jennifer walk. (As well as
casting suspicious glances at the possible narc with the long hair, taking
notes.) <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Around 4, they were replaced by a noisy bunch of grade
schoolers. “I wonder what menstruation
means?” I watched a third grader look
over a Jimi Hendrix album. Others
laughed over the magazines, or broke into whispery, gossipy groups. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The library became my regular destination—walking past the
abandoned offices of Pacific Sanchero, Permittee, and the house with the
multicolored design painted by a summer tenant, who also inscribed on its wall
“Latch onto a feather.” In relatively
good weather, I could sit on a stone bench outside, if it wasn’t already
occupied by the aforementioned students.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> It was in this library that I discovered an author I would
follow for the rest of his life: Ronald Sukenick. Very likely his latest book
was on display, with a title bound to catch my eye:<i> Death of the Novel and
Other Stories.</i> (The “death of the
novel” was a thing, long before—and much different than-- the death of the author.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgffLX1T8GsmLUSEYZqhTfb0BDQgqmcVyQH-FZyiiQ9t3k7xnt3BRAiCRDnshqGVRZuhTgcXxhcxJZQZwyz6VILENSnaqzUOMegs4_0Gzqn9XCpJB9UGm5jIXEt_jv7pMolsMER4A1nVEyQq_C5lDt1Zt1w34iFkQro0nlAe1KDFFQPpL5LdQ=s500" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="500" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgffLX1T8GsmLUSEYZqhTfb0BDQgqmcVyQH-FZyiiQ9t3k7xnt3BRAiCRDnshqGVRZuhTgcXxhcxJZQZwyz6VILENSnaqzUOMegs4_0Gzqn9XCpJB9UGm5jIXEt_jv7pMolsMER4A1nVEyQq_C5lDt1Zt1w34iFkQro0nlAe1KDFFQPpL5LdQ=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sukenick</td></tr></tbody></table>The stories amazed me—I hadn’t read anything like them
before. Today some might qualify as
“metafiction,” or be called deconstruction.
At the time they felt to be attempts to find new forms commensurate with
the current fractious and fractured reality, as well as further forays in
expanding the possibilities of writing by essentially playing with some of
those possibilities. These stories were
basically comic, and in a sense conventional—the experiments were part of the
story, as for example, when he includes a transcript of a conversation with his
wife with a tape recorder between them.
When the conversation becomes uncomfortable for him, he wants to turn
the tape off. (At least that’s how I
remember it, from a re-reading ten years ago or so.)<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> So I was delighted to find in the library stacks a copy of
his novel, <i>Up</i>, published the previous year. It also played with narrative—the initial character was a writer,
so part of it is about a character he’s writing (Strop Banally), including the
changes he’s making along the way (the character’s hair color, etc.) It also threads other narratives, but again
includes critiques of their discontinuities and excesses as part of the story.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Sukenick seemed only a little older, and I immediately
bonded with our similarities in outlook and literary attempts, ignoring many
differences. Writing conventional
narrative seemed superficial and false to many in those nuclear psychedelic
Vietnam Nixonated days. I didn’t get
all he was doing or trying to do, but I was attracted to the mosaic form and
the irreverent style I’d been drawn to in the Beatles, Vonnegut, Donleavy,
Joseph Heller, etc.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhZ_O6Mjsmxzx8O_Qy0EC1751MFk0F51Pz7rEPfWqDYC1wJ-HkpUERbs5Xmgv2nsCi0p47LstUr05smJKzJgNHNkK9sLvj4BKu4PC0j_8TD5tqaEvy2Nvx7Buip9K5zJe6sl50lcIIwFvcE8ZdBPN0XjrS3XS_5NDYGo5QK-uvcxXSkv0hnbg=s2569" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1449" data-original-width="2569" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhZ_O6Mjsmxzx8O_Qy0EC1751MFk0F51Pz7rEPfWqDYC1wJ-HkpUERbs5Xmgv2nsCi0p47LstUr05smJKzJgNHNkK9sLvj4BKu4PC0j_8TD5tqaEvy2Nvx7Buip9K5zJe6sl50lcIIwFvcE8ZdBPN0XjrS3XS_5NDYGo5QK-uvcxXSkv0hnbg=w400-h225" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My Sukenick collection, minus "Mosaic," hiding somewhere</td></tr></tbody></table> But Sukenick became a hard author to follow—even as a
reader. Those first two books were from
major publishers, but subsequent ones were from small presses, including the
organization he helped to start, the Fiction Collective. At least a few times I found his books on
carts of university bookstores sale books.
I found his 1986 novel <i>Blown Away</i> (Sun and Moon Press) deep in a
pile of discount books on my last visit to the Harvard Coop bookstore. But I managed to get copies of all of his
novels, and one collection of stories.
I still have most of them, including his last, easily the best fiction
I’ve read about 9/11, <i>Last Fall</i>.
I even have his extremely useful book on Wallace Stevens, <i>Musing the
Obscure</i>, from his earlier life as a very perceptive and methodical literary
scholar. He died in 2004.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Sukenick was a named character in <i>Up</i>, and the novel
followed other characters (his boyhood friends mostly) who also were a little older than me. There were retrospective scenes from their
past, though I wasn’t much interested in them at the time. (Now they seem
vivid.) What impressed me was that this was contemporary fiction about contemporary
times and people. Characters smoked
dope and talked about revolution (though usually their complicated reasons for
supporting it and not supporting it simultaneously.) They were out of school (though some were teaching) and trying to
find a place in a society they feared and loathed. That got my attention, as I
was just beginning that journey.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b><span style="font-size: medium;">W</span></b>hen I wasn’t in Stony Creek, I was in New Haven, a 20
minute bus ride away. My efforts to
find a job—desperate, muddled and halfhearted simultaneously-- were focused
there. I checked bulletin boards and the newspapers, including the Yale student
paper. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In one of those papers I saw an ad for volunteers for a Yale
psychology department experiment “in learning” that paid $25 for a few
hours. I called the number and asked
for more information on what this experiment entailed. My first suspicion was that it involved
drugs, and at this point in my life I wasn’t eager to let others experiment on
me. The female voice on the other end assured me there were no drugs but when I
asked other questions she was persistently evasive. That turned my suspicions
into alarm bells. As much as I needed
the money, I didn’t participate.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Years later I realized that this was very probably an early
iteration of the famous (or infamous) Milgram experiments. (This was pretty
much confirmed for me in a book by psychologist Elliot Aronson when he
described what subjects were told the experiments were about—precisely what
that ad said.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgfSm4QDB_e83dR6c66Pfswj9r6h5PZ-SkkdzjiGWvYps_s09euZrTtxxFoiI6LFTDQ4X2dWuqO4koTgE5bazMwWOQAvXKp1QeU9Rnq7qanby86CMn-vp7Vk9eEv6yFwCTFqOHfRViy92UqH-2IoG9YzSJ5zbTWm3sh9FM_sj9WWjqtd_ONMw=s1200" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgfSm4QDB_e83dR6c66Pfswj9r6h5PZ-SkkdzjiGWvYps_s09euZrTtxxFoiI6LFTDQ4X2dWuqO4koTgE5bazMwWOQAvXKp1QeU9Rnq7qanby86CMn-vp7Vk9eEv6yFwCTFqOHfRViy92UqH-2IoG9YzSJ5zbTWm3sh9FM_sj9WWjqtd_ONMw=s320" width="320" /></a></div>The Milgram experiments were one of the most often cited
psychology experiments of modern times.
Participants were instructed to give electric shocks to people in the
next room if they answer questions incorrectly. With each wrong answer the shock is intensified, until the victim
can be heard screaming in pain and begging to be released from the experiment.
The victims weren’t actually getting shocks—they were in on the con. The experiments weren’t about learning; they
were to see how many people will follow instructions and administer the shocks,
even after hearing cries of pain and the begging. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The answer was a shockingly high percentage of them. I first heard it reported as 100%. Later the figure given for those willing to
administer the maximum voltage was 64%.
The experiment is usually said to prove two main points: that people
will do what authority tells them to do, and that people will do so in
situations even if they believe that they wouldn’t, regardless of their
personal ethics.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But here’s the problem.
To make such an inference about people in general, the participants had
to accurately represent the population.
This is the fatal flaw of most such psychological experiments
(participants are mostly students who always need money, and overwhelmingly
white.) In this experiment, those who actually participated had to be willing
to take the unquestioned word of authorities, without knowing what they were
getting into, just to walk in the door. So they were self-selected
pre-disposed. But how many people like me smelled something fishy and just
didn’t participate? On the other hand,
how many participants needed the $25 enough to do what they were told?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Think about it: this was Yale in 1969 and 1970. There were antiwar protests on campus. William Sloane Coffin, an advocate for defying
the draft and therefore the authority of the government, was a campus
hero. Part of the huge generation gap
was the distrust many younger people had for the honesty and veracity of those
in authority in the government, the university
and big business. Scientific
research secretly funded by the military was a big issue on many campuses.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> So if you were against the killing and the maiming in
Vietnam, to the extent of resisting the government’s orders to do so, or even
if you were a stoned peace and love hippie, how likely is it that you were
going to push a button to cause somebody pain?
I’ve seen photos of these experiments—there was no long hair, no
countercultural clothing in any of them. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> (These experiments, now considered unethical, are often cited
along with the equally notorious Stanford
experiments that purported to prove that people given the role of prison
guard invariably act in sadistic ways towards prisoners. This was a much-cited finding in the
corporate world of the 1980s and 1990s, though the experiments have largely
been discredited.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgRjaCHwhdZDAZzZ3nDgj8BNToxKJ6QtFbwTalWWbvNLPt1F0yZUGS-eHXvoWUMOfQK0qxyxOOagE9fvg-TMGGwTU3_zw7SqPHn2JwuoeKrkd_FATPPR029Gjhyak-aqX1Bb_9DxxGJugVkS-oOGgsXxJs4ahUqujoVpOCyy1iJvYuZ2d86zQ=s500" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="329" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgRjaCHwhdZDAZzZ3nDgj8BNToxKJ6QtFbwTalWWbvNLPt1F0yZUGS-eHXvoWUMOfQK0qxyxOOagE9fvg-TMGGwTU3_zw7SqPHn2JwuoeKrkd_FATPPR029Gjhyak-aqX1Bb_9DxxGJugVkS-oOGgsXxJs4ahUqujoVpOCyy1iJvYuZ2d86zQ=s320" width="211" /></a></div>My perspective on the Milgram experiments led to my
skepticism of many psychological experiments, and books about them. I found support in the work of eminent
psychologist Jerome Kagan, particularly in his book <i>Psychology’s Ghosts: The
Crisis in the Profession and the Way Back</i>, in which he gently but
definitely<a href="http://booksinheat.blogspot.com/2012/04/psychologys-ghosts-crisis-in-profession.html"> questioned</a> whether universal conclusions about behavior can be based
on small numbers of culturally identical subjects in a laboratory setting.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In any case, the stark divide in the late 1960s was
something I keenly felt. Even before
the Pentagon Papers or Watergate, there was amply evidence of systematic lying
in high places. All our literature,
movies and music questioned the moral authority if not the intelligence of
those running things. Apart from my
ignorance of how the “adult world” worked, and how I could possibly find my way
into the elements of it I still respected, my general attitude was both baffled
and adversarial. How could I make a
living, and not lose myself? I had too
much yet to learn.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <i>“Out of college, money spent,”</i> went the Beatles’
lyric, <i>“see no future, pay no rent/all the money’s gone, nowhere to go. But oh that magic feeling/ no where to
go...”</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Apart from visits to my Knox friend Mike Shain, who for some
reason now forgotten was living in a New Haven rooming house, with a sign on
his door that said “Home of the Bobby Dylan Conspiracy,” I gravitated towards
Yale. The academic campus was still the only industrial site I knew, and where
I was somewhat comfortable. I went to
readings and knew how to get myself invited to the parties afterwards. I believe that’s where I heard poet Kenneth
Koch read.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjed_Ixjd7wMKuFwsuT2BE4ycg8yFKgyE9UJhAVvtgN3KeysE-XGGnBzmcTJqU2h6KV6Litj3CpaubJGMUMSifDhoLJ_WmmTPVRt7qaG0V6ebjsiTAjzFKvaAZZxXGtEMYJvM6MknEXDaWVQotKCek6-WrcG6f8DSoAzB1-23uzZ2DB4MGlMw=s1265" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1265" data-original-width="877" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjed_Ixjd7wMKuFwsuT2BE4ycg8yFKgyE9UJhAVvtgN3KeysE-XGGnBzmcTJqU2h6KV6Litj3CpaubJGMUMSifDhoLJ_WmmTPVRt7qaG0V6ebjsiTAjzFKvaAZZxXGtEMYJvM6MknEXDaWVQotKCek6-WrcG6f8DSoAzB1-23uzZ2DB4MGlMw=s320" width="222" /></a></div>He read a long poem that may have been called “Eyes.” In any
case, it was my inspiration for a long poem I later wrote called “Ears,” which
was published a couple of times in the mid-70s. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I heard the poet
Bill Knott, who at the time was writing under the name of St. Geraud. I was astounded by his poems—they were the
most unrelenting and mind-blowing surrealist poems I’d encountered. Also very
short. He may have read on the same
bill with Koch or perhaps another poet, because I remember him being at the
after-party and he left without much notice. Later I happened to be in the
living room of this house when the doorbell rang and I answered it. It was Bill Knott, looking shamefaced about
returning. I laughed. I loved it.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I met poet Michael Benedikt and we began a correspondence
when he was back in New York. He was interested
in my writing that I sent him. This was some rare encouragement. I was still sending things out and getting
them back.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Thinking back, it seems obvious that this would have been a
good moment for a mentor to appear in my life. But it didn’t happen then, and
never happened. I later depended
greatly on the faith of several editors, but they were all more or less my
contemporaries. This, like everything
else, was as much my fault as anyone’s, and equally a sign of the times. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I did manage a fair amount of writing at Stony Creek. Apart from verse and short fiction, and the usual endless
notes on the novel I wasn’t writing, I once simply let go and wrote a sustained
prose fiction called “Apostrophe S.”
Influenced by Sukenick but more by Vonnegut in its tone, I wrote it late
at night, in the warm quiet kitchen, while Joni was asleep. I often had the
company of our two kittens, named Abbey and Rhoda, who prowled around the pale
plywood plank I was writing on, and chased my pen across the yellow legal pad.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> What survives of “Apostrophe S” seems to include elements
added later. Perhaps a wise editor
could have helped me develop the good parts (some were quite funny) into
something publishable, but in retrospect, the best part of it is remembering
the experience of writing it. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhFh-Xn4_G2Jcw8L3fP_EB1uwbtYUHYl-KZWLyFftk1V5qFTFDaWRNxBKCXGAt0eiFdm1lGhKAIvZCwn_Cs16dmZj-6PFws-eFfDjyimxWxzuJ0-BgWrV1gcPkaNDfc81av90IBeFRVfbjInbr58kW-_y4DSGoqe_Y9aDYONlMLsJYfpBKUfg=s652" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="652" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhFh-Xn4_G2Jcw8L3fP_EB1uwbtYUHYl-KZWLyFftk1V5qFTFDaWRNxBKCXGAt0eiFdm1lGhKAIvZCwn_Cs16dmZj-6PFws-eFfDjyimxWxzuJ0-BgWrV1gcPkaNDfc81av90IBeFRVfbjInbr58kW-_y4DSGoqe_Y9aDYONlMLsJYfpBKUfg=s320" width="236" /></a></div> But I did write something while at Stony Creek that was more
of an indication of a direction I would later follow. It’s not much remembered, but in late 1969, there was a brief but
intense frenzy over an assertion that Paul McCartney had died in a car crash
some three years before, and been secretly replaced by a lookalike. Then the Beatles had seeded various songs
with clues. This “Paul is dead” theory
led to top 40 stations all over America airing the “evidence” as well as lots
of Beatles songs. It made the news
(Huntley-Brinkley, Time Magazine) and a New Haven moviehouse advertised a
special showing of Yellow Submarine with the line, “Paul is alive and well in
Yellow Submarine!” Sales of Beatles
albums shot up.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But what apparently impressed me most was how seriously the
high school students I saw in Stony Creek were taking it. I realized that this was a contemporary
subject of interest to my generation and younger that I knew something about,
both in terms of the Beatles and what are now known as “conspiracy
theories.” The long piece I wrote about
it, entitled the “The Paul Is Dead Theology,” was the kind of cultural
reportage and analysis that in the not too distant future I would be writing
and publishing. But at that moment,
though Michael Benedikt especially liked it and tried to get it published, it
only joined my manuscript pile of futility.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The article asserted knowledge concerning what high school
students were talking about that I probably didn’t derive just from hanging
around the Stony Creek library. Joni
was teaching high school, and we talked about her students.</p><p class="MsoNormal">We had happy times in Stony Creek. The music I associate with those wintry days includes the Band albums and <i>The Papas and the Mamas</i>, especially the song "Safe in my Garden." But our garden was not so safe. Our
problem was the future, and the nature of our future together. These issues
were the sources of tension, and along with external and internal pressures,
were more than an undercurrent to those months. But as far as I knew we’d come to no conclusion. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgUM0OClXb_PT4X6fcSB6Sb0sm0sDP9me0mmVwqKJfxytLBfl4y_wV2SsoaNJ_aOoz8xhap7DoMWACqKJiTNrdcmHo4qUqU9PQrCbZW8Aqpc9XouZwmb21Qxd7xGPsAkO1gFxNneZU2f9I24gCNGYpb8ihXkr4rl4my5SMUPWGuKw8MiAWLJA=s2119" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1374" data-original-width="2119" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgUM0OClXb_PT4X6fcSB6Sb0sm0sDP9me0mmVwqKJfxytLBfl4y_wV2SsoaNJ_aOoz8xhap7DoMWACqKJiTNrdcmHo4qUqU9PQrCbZW8Aqpc9XouZwmb21Qxd7xGPsAkO1gFxNneZU2f9I24gCNGYpb8ihXkr4rl4my5SMUPWGuKw8MiAWLJA=w400-h259" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stony Creek sunset. BK photo.</td></tr></tbody></table>Apart from manuscripts, I’d sent out various proposals,
applications and inquiries. I applied
for a summer arts workshop at Cummington, in western Massachusetts. I was in touch with Knox friend Steve Meyers
who was in graduate school in Buffalo.
He was enthusiastic about the English department there, and urged me to
come up and check things out. Perhaps I’d come to the reluctant conclusion that
I didn’t know how to do anything that paid a salary except maybe teach, and if
I was going to have to make a living that way, I would need an advanced
degree. Or maybe I was just looking for
some income for a few years, burrowed into books.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> So one cold March morning I slid a duffel bag and my guitar
case into the front trunk of Joni’s yellow VW bug. We drove first to the dump
in a frozen field of thin snow, and I unloaded a bag of garbage. I got back into the car and she drove me to
an interstate ramp, so I could begin hitchhiking up to Buffalo. After a brief farewell, she drove away. It would be the last time I saw her.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Shortly after I got to Steve’s in Buffalo, her letter
arrived inviting me not to come back.
Over the next weeks we talked on the phone a few times and exchanged
letters, but the situation didn’t change.
I was dislocated and bereft on many levels, but I don’t think I really
blamed her. I certainly saw the justice of her point of view. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b><span style="font-size: medium;">I</span></b>f Sukenick’s <i>Up</i> has a theme it would probably be to
“be true to the discontinuity of experience.”
Even then, the 60s seemed an especially discontinuous and contingent
time, so it seemed writing should express it.
But discontinuity is also a theme of youth.
All experience that falls outside the expected, the changes and rapid
twists and turns, especially when moving among “worlds” of what passes for the
traditional or normal and what seems to be new, as well as crossing undefined
geographical, socio-economic (class) and other borders, is experienced as
discontinuous. It’s only later that
it’s possible to sense the patterns, the continuities, even if they never
become entirely clear, or they are multiple.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> There may be accidents or missed opportunities or stupid
moves and so on, the memory of which may keep us up at night, but ultimately
they become elements in the pattern.
For example, had a certain letter arrived a few days earlier when I was
in Berkeley, my life might have taken me in a different direction, perhaps to
western Canada. And so on. Or as we said a lot in those days, so it
goes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In a way that’s what this project is about: partly through
the agency of reading, seeing where things fall into the pattern that time has
made, that can only be seen retrospectively.
In a larger sense, that’s a project of old age. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Events of all kinds contribute to the pattern—things that
happened and did not happen, as well as things read or thought or felt or heard
or seen, or desired, or feared. The influence of others at a particular time,
or the lack of it. The picture will never be complete, because memory and
various kinds of records of the time are almost guaranteed to be incomplete, if
not distorting. But it’s pretty clear
what the pattern is of: it’s how you got to where you end up.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg9qWD_cA-Gde4VDQ69-5BXvHQ7gkiXzUu6OfEnBbq72r-A2GMa98HDSGvfzEld4DssGqrD-fY2SvcKNY7cfw53dCnfaE2UVN-EXO4V_cVSBPtdLhwIP0hIfGlzHaZBEQKtiMXOFctkLyyPQ5tyyn8T5yf-YFNHXJtMu6Nb9C_tScy_8HQeKw=s500" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="399" data-original-width="500" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg9qWD_cA-Gde4VDQ69-5BXvHQ7gkiXzUu6OfEnBbq72r-A2GMa98HDSGvfzEld4DssGqrD-fY2SvcKNY7cfw53dCnfaE2UVN-EXO4V_cVSBPtdLhwIP0hIfGlzHaZBEQKtiMXOFctkLyyPQ5tyyn8T5yf-YFNHXJtMu6Nb9C_tScy_8HQeKw=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Virgil Thomson (r)</td></tr></tbody></table> Sometime in the early 1990s, I had the television on, not entirely absorbed in what I think was a documentary film about
the American composer Virgil Thomson.
There was a brief scene, apparently filler, of Thomson at a party. He
was talking to a young man, who I imagine was troubled about his career or his
life. Thompson was looking at him
intently, and said very carefully and earnestly: <i>“The outcome of everything
is the way it happens, and the way it happens is the story of your life.”</i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> It took me awhile to accept this but that’s the
pattern. That’s the retrospective
continuity: the story of your life. And as I am finding now, it begins to
become visible when the story is pretty much over, and you’re in the coda, or
maybe the last act.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><b><span style="font-size: medium;"> I</span></b>n Buffalo it was still winter. I slept in Steve’s living room, for longer than I intended. Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled
Water album had come out, and I learned the first song on the second side, “The
Only Living Boy in New York.” I played
it so much that a friend of Steve’s thought I’d written it. I also liked “Papa Hobo” from that
record. Together they represented my
moment. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgftFY6qu02r5HZsC_a1m9ZP-K9yHSIJx-jlf0UEcq004LP0L4nhPjaSEQj-gt8bQf938t-JSyfByB3seh79CE26FO4tSJKS0cMjPcDOUKJPr7XIONO96A6lHAC32ZfHtPDNiTS4wNDWJlHxPuOZdt1HyOooTaOvbktalnGBclWlYPEe8GQYw=s1000" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="858" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgftFY6qu02r5HZsC_a1m9ZP-K9yHSIJx-jlf0UEcq004LP0L4nhPjaSEQj-gt8bQf938t-JSyfByB3seh79CE26FO4tSJKS0cMjPcDOUKJPr7XIONO96A6lHAC32ZfHtPDNiTS4wNDWJlHxPuOZdt1HyOooTaOvbktalnGBclWlYPEe8GQYw=s320" width="275" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bobbie and Bob Creeley</td></tr></tbody></table>The only reading I remember was from the bookshelf in that
living room: several books by William Carlos Williams, notably his essays <i>In
The American Grain.</i><div><br /></div><div>I must have also been reading Robert Creeley’s newer poetry, since
he was teaching in Buffalo, and I was seeing a lot of him. I attended at least one of his classes,
spoke with him in his office, and was at an epic party in which, at one end of
the host apartment, Robert Creeley held court, surrounded by others, and at the
other end, his wife Bobbie Creeley was equally the center of attention. When Bob mentioned Bobbie's enthusiasm for palmistry and
I held up my liberally creased hand, he immediately sent me to Bobbie (later
known as writer and artist Bobbie Louise Hawkins), who, as predicted, exulted
in the challenge. <div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I was deliberately spending time at the English department
building, particularly one long row of offices, belonging to (among others)
poet John Logan, fictionist John Barth, and literary critic and gadfly Leslie
Fiedler, as well as Creeley. I learned
enough about them to find the ways they decorated the window in the door to
their offices appropriately expressive.
Logan’s window looked like stained glass, Fiedler’s was psychedelic,
Barth’s was blacked out, and Creeley’s was clear.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I met a lot of people in the department, as well as other of
Steve’s friends, especially at the almost weekly huge communal meals. Steve remembers that we both brought guitars
to a class he was teaching and improvised a song with lyrics by T.S.
Eliot. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But it was also a moment of crisis for SUNY Buffalo,
eventually including street demonstrations.
After awhile police of various kinds were called in, and there was
barricades and tear gas. Steve and I
mostly listened to the reports each evening on the campus radio station. But we also attended meetings, including a
big one of the faculty (that included graduate TAs) in the College of Arts and
Letters. The issues were wide-ranging,
including academic freedom (unjustified suspensions of faculty) and others I’ve
frankly forgotten. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh6m3jH9Hqq4PZ9fUqsyHIOTKXdspx_71t4SCa1kWxsAvov9UIsxNxI1qFI8PS8KEbTFQBThP-uwr-bGVIBF9OC9YppDnAgdiTyoSWFvve18zcgQipDMQwNcGU6AOZZcNBq_mCV7rLCF9jqAxW9_w8FpZzyujBHQlFZWkZFWmFbHM3oG6hbVw=s2641" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2641" data-original-width="1981" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh6m3jH9Hqq4PZ9fUqsyHIOTKXdspx_71t4SCa1kWxsAvov9UIsxNxI1qFI8PS8KEbTFQBThP-uwr-bGVIBF9OC9YppDnAgdiTyoSWFvve18zcgQipDMQwNcGU6AOZZcNBq_mCV7rLCF9jqAxW9_w8FpZzyujBHQlFZWkZFWmFbHM3oG6hbVw=s320" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leslie Fiedler</td></tr></tbody></table> Leslie Fiedler spoke about how serious it was to call for
the resignation of a university president—and why he was calling for it now. A
resolution of no confidence passed overwhelmingly (according to my notebook.)
Then a student came in shouting that police were on their way to a particular
campus building, and so all of us marched arm in arm to that building, where
nothing happened.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> There was another moment I had reason to remember
later. Before the meeting started,
someone behind us cautioned that people chatting with each other needed to be
careful what they said because there were probably FBI undercover agents in the
crowd. What seemed a tad paranoid
though not crazy turned out to be broadly true, when the extent of FBI
infiltration of antiwar and related groups was revealed. Some agents were even provocateurs, pushing
radical groups to violence.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I’d never entertained participating in premeditated
political violence, and I was skeptical of its benefits versus its human and
moral costs. My attitudes towards “revolution” were also complicated. I was
selective in what I felt needed to change, and how to go about obtaining that
change. Some of these attitudes were
not quite conscious, so I learned something from a moment in Buffalo.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjUMgEOaOUZ5NtiypaCCQBwJH7Yt4rxEqwWFFWNr3xazkNow1X7-gcabbGl5JDFbDdFOelAWRVJS5guTb4QGSJ3ad5YjhmRCb77H4q48YZ7-olLpmm9zRu6xIlg9jPmRNiljH9A0msBDRKG09NsuSvxX2vBDwRRbB2BQcWTELV_tsxvt2LghA=s913" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="913" data-original-width="723" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjUMgEOaOUZ5NtiypaCCQBwJH7Yt4rxEqwWFFWNr3xazkNow1X7-gcabbGl5JDFbDdFOelAWRVJS5guTb4QGSJ3ad5YjhmRCb77H4q48YZ7-olLpmm9zRu6xIlg9jPmRNiljH9A0msBDRKG09NsuSvxX2vBDwRRbB2BQcWTELV_tsxvt2LghA=w158-h200" width="158" /></a></div> Richard Ellmann, author of the biography of James Joyce that
had meant so much to me, was teaching at the university (though I never met
him.) But I read somewhere that his
collection of Joyce memorabilia was on display that month at the university
library.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I went to see it, I couldn’t find it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A library official asked if he could help
me, and when I told him, he said that unfortunately the display had to be put
back in storage because of the ongoing strife in the streets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He must have seen my expression of
dismay—I’d never dreamed that angry students would sack the library but at the same
time, it didn’t seem like an outrageous precaution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I suppose that, with my long hair and jeans, I was a bit
ashamed to be a cause of such anxiety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But he saw right away that I was a Joyce enthusiast, and
sympathized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhXX4AQU-H4DbOhrfZS3OGqF7rVLjPk8Ou_xVEMWbbq7AGo7ksW2yRQDWycO7W69BA24SsN07Vs8bL7-NBAS332gkHxPI22mXvaFTrkkuKkHDjoXKP_3OFYCbYAtz79H8b7eVC-TSGfY00taR-ZLikJJ6Vnp6nNQ1xiFvyAcNYEbS_mhnJv5w=s1126" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="845" data-original-width="1126" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhXX4AQU-H4DbOhrfZS3OGqF7rVLjPk8Ou_xVEMWbbq7AGo7ksW2yRQDWycO7W69BA24SsN07Vs8bL7-NBAS332gkHxPI22mXvaFTrkkuKkHDjoXKP_3OFYCbYAtz79H8b7eVC-TSGfY00taR-ZLikJJ6Vnp6nNQ1xiFvyAcNYEbS_mhnJv5w=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">SUNY Buffalo campus</td></tr></tbody></table>At some point in my Buffalo exile, I made a trip over the
Canadian border for a quick visit with Bill Thompson, my former housemate our
senior year at Knox. I met his friends
from the University of Hamilton where he was (or had been) a graduate student. So cold and insistent was the Buffalo winter that it actually was warmer in Canada.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> It was at the University of Hamilton that I had my first
exposure to what was then called Women’s Liberation. I attended an open forum on the subject, run with authority by leaders of a campus Women’s
Liberation organization. It was an
eye-opener, or as we would soon learn to say, a consciousness-raiser. A lot of their points I experienced as valid
immediately, and others it took a short while to admit. I was troubled however by how the women leaders
treated a woman in the audience, who said she didn’t think women had to have a
career to feel liberated or be fulfilled—she felt liberated working in her
garden. They fell on her like a ton of
bricks. Today it seems like a first
iteration of the “woke” moment: it’s liberating side, and it’s tyrannical side.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisuhLfxnu7VSFzzBscXajhJqGeABykDJW4wYLaXAH5rBEbpkWg6Rofn-WHWNjHT9XftOPxf-EEjw7VT5vJo5Zuc9SqwEu4PUrCHIXzWjY8ImwYRrUgGwnGQow7bULaNJLdEbt3slQ_dOtLEBcgZL0y5AMh98luvpxzq664Cbxijzro_8YttA=s671" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="671" data-original-width="395" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisuhLfxnu7VSFzzBscXajhJqGeABykDJW4wYLaXAH5rBEbpkWg6Rofn-WHWNjHT9XftOPxf-EEjw7VT5vJo5Zuc9SqwEu4PUrCHIXzWjY8ImwYRrUgGwnGQow7bULaNJLdEbt3slQ_dOtLEBcgZL0y5AMh98luvpxzq664Cbxijzro_8YttA=s320" width="188" /></a></div>I was still in Buffalo in April (where it was still winter),
for the very first Earth Day. Some 20
million Americans marched or otherwise participated. It was a big deal. (I
wrote more about this <a href="http://dreamingup.blogspot.com/2020/04/earth-day-past-earth-future.html">here</a>.) I heard
Ralph Nader speak, and engaged a garage mechanic in a conversation about how
ecology could generate jobs. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In general Buffalo had calmed down in late April, until
President Nixon announced the U.S. incursion into Cambodia, widening the
Vietnam war. The university, along with colleges across the country, immediately
erupted. On May 4<sup>th</sup>,
National Guard troops shot and killed four Kent State students. The war, it seemed, had come home. There were larger protests at even more
colleges, and a national student strike. For those of us a little older, Kent
State crystallized a feeling we’d had for years: that we were enemies in our
country.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The University of Buffalo was shut down, and Steve and I
spontaneously decided to head back to Knox College in Illinois, perhaps from
some homing instinct in this crisis time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I had miraculously (and largely through the efforts of
Robert Creeley, I’m convinced) been accepted into the SUNY Buffalo graduate
English program for the following fall.
But I no longer saw myself staying there. Whatever I was going to do or
be next, it wasn’t going to be in academia after all. In the immediate sense I’d abused Steve’s hospitality for too
long. So I knew I wasn’t going back to
Buffalo.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I had also been accepted at the Cummington, Massachusetts
summer arts community, all expenses paid.
Before and after that, I was back to “nowhere to go.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> We got in Steve’s MG, and by the time we got to Ohio—and
drank coffee while being stared at by truckers—we realized that outside of
Buffalo, and despite the ongoing crisis, it was spring. </p></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-22793516495012990532023-06-06T03:36:00.003-07:002023-06-06T03:36:28.772-07:00History of My Reading: Booking Berkeley 1969<p> “<i>No Thyself” </i></p><p>sidewalk graffiti, Berkeley 1969</p><p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vAnBLgIuK7A/YLXE3GiGY7I/AAAAAAAAfSg/AfytX7sXbfwVO-UTTXI15vraV9alfCK5QCLcBGAsYHQ/s512/shakes69.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="512" height="264" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vAnBLgIuK7A/YLXE3GiGY7I/AAAAAAAAfSg/AfytX7sXbfwVO-UTTXI15vraV9alfCK5QCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h264/shakes69.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></div><b><br />M</b>any of the countercultural concerns I heard in Berkeley
were the same I’d seen in Boulder that summer (and fall) of 1969: astrology was
big, we often consulted the I Ching.
“Hexagrams to horoscopes, these add the symbolic dimensions to our lives
erased by technocracy,” I wrote in one of my Berkeley notebooks.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> There was also a lot of emphasis on alternative medicine and
health, organic food and so on, as well as the evolving countercultural economics
and politics. But in Berkeley I quickly
experienced the latest echoes of a West Coast approach to psychology.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I kept hearing about something called encounter groups,
which may or may not have been related to the Gestalt Therapy that Fritz Perls
had been practicing, mostly at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, down the coast
from Berkeley. I don’t remember the
exact vocabulary but there were certain phrases that I heard a lot, from the
moment I got there. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_lH8Xa5Y1LQ/YLXFGbnzeJI/AAAAAAAAfSk/mvn2sJQZTjcOMYKEvGHXYi4lF3WHcabcwCLcBGAsYHQ/s472/perls.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="318" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_lH8Xa5Y1LQ/YLXFGbnzeJI/AAAAAAAAfSk/mvn2sJQZTjcOMYKEvGHXYi4lF3WHcabcwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/perls.jpg" /></a></div>Somewhere in the years since then, I picked up a vintage
copy of Perls 1969 book, <i>Gestalt Therapy Verbatim</i>, which is basically a
series of edited transcripts of Perls’ sessions, in which he focused on an
individual (usually telling a dream, or trying to) but with a large group as
audience and occasionally participants.
Reading this recently, I began to see the likely source of a lot I heard
in 1969: the idea of stripping away “your bullshit,” of confronting illusions
and habits of evasion, and being honest with yourself and others...The idea of
identifying a personal mythology, which is both a public face and a private
identity, and which in both instances could be fake and self-delusion... The often repeated exhortation to “get out
of your head” and pay attention to what your senses and your body were telling
you. ("Who am I in your mythology? Mike Hamrin once asked me.)<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But if I was ever introduced to Gestalt as a system, it
escaped me. I recall only fragments,
most conspicuously the one that became a hippie cliche: doing your thing. It apparently came from what Perls called
the Gestalt Prayer: <i>“I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your
expectations” </i>(I heard that sentence a lot) <i>“and you are not in this
world to live up to mine. You are you,
and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.” </i> (The last part of the prayer, a little harsh
for the love generation, I’d never heard before.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Other elements of Gestalt have become absorbed into various
sorts of therapies, such as Perls’ method of interpreting dreams (his idea was
that every character—in fact, every <i>thing</i>-- in the dream is you.) Perls had some concepts and models (he was
clearly influenced by Zen Buddhism) but even if I’d been sophisticated enough
to understand this system, I probably still would have found key concepts
lacking, such as the ones I eventually found through Hillman and Jung. So I noticed this element of Berkeley
counterculture without entirely understanding it. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But the interest in psychology would be a natural outgrowth
of new living arrangements that characterized the counterculture, which
involved individuals intimately in groups.
(Through Jung we get the concept of introvert, which explains a lot of
how I experienced these months, when people intensely relating was stimulating
for awhile but quickly exhausting.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Which might make this a good moment to mention what may be
obvious: that I’m leaving out of this account most of the personal and
interpersonal events and impressions that absorbed so much time, energy,
attention and emotion at the time. I’m
not minimizing them—and I do have memories—but I couldn’t do them justice in
this space, or possibly at all. But of
course, all of that interpersonal and intrapersonal activity was one basic
reason for this interest in new psychologies, especially through the lens of
insights gained from cannabis and psychedelics as well as the evolving
counterculture itself.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> As “science” is finally confirming, cannabis and
psychedelics really do expand your mind, and though this may include a
consciousness of connection <i>(“It’s all one, man!”)</i> it happens inside
your own head. So the first effect is
personal, and psychologies deriving from these experiences were starting to
develop in these years (and Berkeley remains a place where they continue.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Today the buzzwords of “positive psychology” include
self-fulfillment, flourishing, achieving potential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are influenced by what happened in the 1960s, since before
then, the buzzwords were about fitting in, fulfilling your role, adjusting to
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These of course persisted, and
became the basis for the sneering title given to the 1970s—the Me Decade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While excesses of self-indulgence and
selfishness were part of that decade (though with a cynically different spin,
these became major themes in the Reagan 80s) and some crazy stuff spun out from
what had been the human potentials movement, the attention to physical, mental,
and societal health, spiritual growth and an exploration of potentials were
unjustly vilified and ridiculed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But by the time I got to Berkeley, and communes and other
new living forms were features of the counterculture, the concentration only on
the inside of one’s head was turning out to not be enough. Relations to
others—and therefore to one’s social self, which implied a different order of
psychological understanding—became necessarily active concerns. Hence the
encounter groups and Gestalt therapy.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l2Swfc854Qo/YLXPCJ7X4pI/AAAAAAAAfVI/iTGsEQ0ACKAPkVJBmL8gJ9VVMCQpaHE5gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1449/abbeyroad01.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1449" data-original-width="1443" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l2Swfc854Qo/YLXPCJ7X4pI/AAAAAAAAfVI/iTGsEQ0ACKAPkVJBmL8gJ9VVMCQpaHE5gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/abbeyroad01.jpg" /></a></div><br /> Still, what we are likely to forget is that the drugs, the
music (especially the music) and even the psychologies and spiritual trips were
responding to a suppressed need for joy, for experiences of ecstasy.</span><span style="text-align: left;"> </span><span style="text-align: left;">So much of the cultural forms were meant to
create an absence of hassles—“hassled” was a big word, a big problem—which was
a precondition for freedom.</span><span style="text-align: left;"> </span><span style="text-align: left;">And freedom
in turn was a precondition to joy and ecstasy.</span><span style="text-align: left;">
</span><span style="text-align: left;">And this was part of the social arrangements as well—people who could
share ecstasy. These were persistently felt needs of the time, along with an
insistence that it was all possible. Today it mostly may seem
inconceivable.</span><span style="text-align: left;"> </span><span style="text-align: left;">Yet the desire for
ecstasy is perennial.</span></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Psychedelics entered my Berkeley experience only once I can
recall. In a hapless attempt to earn
some “bread,” members of our household acquired and attempted to deal a small
quantity of what was purported to be LSD.
But most of what wasn’t given away was stolen. We saved enough for one trip apiece. I had mine in the living
room with the Beatles <i>Abbey Road</i> album.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Others in the house
(I learned later) had a heavier trip, getting deep into psychological
complexities and relationships. So
while my experience was more pleasant—maybe even a little ecstatic-- it was
also solitary, and beyond the music, not memorable. (But <i>Abbey Road</i> is the music I associate with my
Berkeley time, and another album in the house I listened to a lot, Judy Collins
<i>Who Knows Where The Time Goes.</i>)<i> </i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Of course, cannabis (as we call it now; grass was a more
preferred term then) was more ubiquitous. I remember walking down a street in
Berkeley with someone else, entirely engaged in a conversation, and about to
pass two young men walking up the hill, also conversing. One of them was holding a Berkeley joint,
wrapped in yellow paper. As we passed
he simply handed me the joint and we all kept going. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><b> C</b>ombining the psychology of the counterculture with its
spiritual quests was Stephen Gaskin’s Monday Night Class. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-unl26141_sw/YLXFsL2jp2I/AAAAAAAAfSw/UfoAGwIz3vwtRMPUAO-ttJ6NRT6vxkD7ACLcBGAsYHQ/s576/monclass.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="384" data-original-width="576" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-unl26141_sw/YLXFsL2jp2I/AAAAAAAAfSw/UfoAGwIz3vwtRMPUAO-ttJ6NRT6vxkD7ACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h266/monclass.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Any number of us in
the household climbed into David’s bus on several Mondays to ride over to the
Richmond district of San Francisco.
There on the Great Highway edging the ocean was the former Ocean Beach
Pavilion Ballroom, re-named the Family Dog, which was beginning to host now
legendary rock concerts that very summer of 1969, promoted by the manager of
Janis Joplin’s band, Big Brother and the Holding Company. But on Monday night, this huge space
belonged to a single slim bespeckled man, a former Marine and creative writing
teacher called Stephen Gaskin.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Upwards of a thousand heads crowded their bodies into
available spaces on the floor, as Gaskin held forth on a raised stage. He was riffing on a vast area of what would
be classified as Western and Eastern metaphysics, esoteric philosophies,
religion, psychology, what we’d now call neuroscience, physics, biophysics, the
history of the species, as well as areas then called the occult, mystical,
paranormal, and so on. This started as
an actual class at San Francisco State called Unified Field Theory, and grew
from there. The entry point to it all was the psychedelic experience, the
stoned consciousness; the insights not from on high, but from being high. Many of his riffs became a book titled <i>Monday
Night Class,</i> and it is still in print in a revised and annotated edition.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_4wLtZW5I4k/YLXF88c7tDI/AAAAAAAAfS4/wZyNFqBWtn49e6hxNKYJt8W0n4_hsH1yACLcBGAsYHQ/s1000/monclassbook.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="748" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_4wLtZW5I4k/YLXF88c7tDI/AAAAAAAAfS4/wZyNFqBWtn49e6hxNKYJt8W0n4_hsH1yACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/monclassbook.jpg" /></a></div> From my notebooks it’s clear that we in our household talked
about things he said, and I extrapolated and commented in my notes, though the
actual content is less clear. The ideas
were stimulating. Energy is focus. Truth is experienced. Consciousness is paying attention. Pay attention!<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Considering that most of his audience was high, there was a
good chance that those who were paying attention to him were <i>really</i>
paying attention. Words on a page can’t
convey the weight of those words spoken in that moment.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> “Get high, stay high,” he said. When you are high you know the truth, and no one can lie to
you." These statements, seemingly about drug highs, may have been metaphors for higher consciousness and a
particular energy state, but was that how they were heard?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> So I was also wary, suspicious of his certainty. He never
qualified his statements—everything was just that: a statement. My Catholic immersion made me sensitive to
the sound of dogma, and to any sort of guru attitude or energy. But his sort of rolling synthesis was what a
lot of people in the counterculture talked and thought about. If they weren’t as erudite as Stephen, they
also came at it from their own experiences, expertise and education. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the psychedelic or stoned experience was not only
sensation, but perhaps the flying open of doors to a new consciousness,
including cosmic consciousness (<i>It’s all one!) </i> These feelings and
insights suggested connections to indigenous and ancient approaches, ignored
and even forbidden in the modern western world, even in the 60s.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> While Stephen spoke in metaphors of electricity and quantum
physics as well as auras, such stoned insights and ideas found resonance in
non-modern and non-western traditions.
So it was the 60s that jumpstarted the already seeded Bay Area interest
in Buddhism and other Eastern systems.
Now pretty much part of the mainstream, they were foreign then. (Fritz
Perls interpreted the Buddhist “nothingness” as meaning process, a Gestalt
insight that might be revisited in terms of the now more familiar meditation
practices.)</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OOM-Q6ZaAtI/YLXGq0XBd6I/AAAAAAAAfTI/BkDHN8ZqaNQ2W0iM-CLdzqgmbZ1u2n0lQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/ulc%2Bcredentials.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OOM-Q6ZaAtI/YLXGq0XBd6I/AAAAAAAAfTI/BkDHN8ZqaNQ2W0iM-CLdzqgmbZ1u2n0lQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h300/ulc%2Bcredentials.jpg" width="400" /></a></div> So it seemed a natural outgrowth of the Monday Night Class
when Stephen announced an upcoming three- evening event he dubbed the First
Annual San Francisco Holy Man Jam.
Guest “holy men” included Ram Das, Timothy Leary and Alan Watts. We attended one evening, when Alan Watts
spoke. Watts had been the charismatic
voice for Eastern insights for decades in the Bay Area. His radio talks are still replayed. I seem to recall that Mike Hamrin praised in
particular Watts’ <i>The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are</i>, a
modern interpretation of insights from the Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. (Who you really are might be described as a
persona of the eternal.)<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> What I recall about this evening is the festive atmosphere,
and the giddy experience of being ordained a minister in the Universal Life
Church, sanctified by a pious inhalation on the longest bong I’d ever seen,
maybe six feet. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><b></b></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-224U3isEMcg/YLXQhBwE-QI/AAAAAAAAfVQ/RTI2ENS0Bjk82WFNOP66tPsoUaQFxS8pgCLcBGAsYHQ/s623/jonim.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="623" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-224U3isEMcg/YLXQhBwE-QI/AAAAAAAAfVQ/RTI2ENS0Bjk82WFNOP66tPsoUaQFxS8pgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/jonim.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez</td></tr></tbody></table><b>I</b> missed a lot during my Berkeley time, which extended into
the autumn. I never got down to Big Sur
or Yosemite. Although I attended a few
free Saturday concerts in the park in Berkeley, I couldn’t afford live
music. I didn’t even know about the
mini-festival of musicians in Esalen that summer, just weeks after Woodstock
(but there’s a fine documentary of it on YouTube called “Celebration at Big Sur,” with which has breathtaking footage of a very young but musically mature Joni
Mitchell. For one thing, she sings her
composition of “Woodstock” for the first time.) <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> As far as that goes, I missed Woodstock itself that August,
and only read about in Life Magazine in a bookstore on Telegraph Ave at least a
week afterwards, shocked that it took place in the old East while I was finally
on the happening West Coast. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Zen Buddhism was a more fashionable element of the
counterculture in the Bay Area than elsewhere, but I missed the substantial change
in emphasis, from concepts to practice, that was underway, principally
emanating from the San Francisco Zen Center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Speaking of practice, however, I did attend a free, open acting class
at San Francisco’s ACT, given by Del Close.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now revered as a master of improvisational comedy, he was with the San
Francisco improv group The Committee, between gigs running Chicago’s Second
City. Simply sitting in a large auditorium, I learned more about acting in that
hour than in college or anywhere afterwards, although it took me awhile to
realize this.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n2MMoJM919Q/YLXHBgJaESI/AAAAAAAAfTQ/BIU8GjxMKNcgjMGdU8EbnOIUpyqtYjvDQCLcBGAsYHQ/s960/berkhills68.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="640" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n2MMoJM919Q/YLXHBgJaESI/AAAAAAAAfTQ/BIU8GjxMKNcgjMGdU8EbnOIUpyqtYjvDQCLcBGAsYHQ/w266-h400/berkhills68.jpg" width="266" /></a></div><br />Instead I immersed myself in my Berkeley neighborhoods. Berkeley extends from the residential hills
steeply and then gradually down to the flat downtown area, with the UC campus
and the Telegraph Ave artery cutting across between them. The hills were known to us as the land of
the rich, and we only went up there a few times in the bus to scout out the
furniture, appliances and other ritzy stuff left out on the street for garbage
collection. The downtown was mostly the
residual province of the middle class straights.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Since our Shattuck Street digs were close to downtown, I did
visit a few places there, mostly an Italian restaurant called Giovanni’s,
though mostly for coffee and maybe a small salad. I first went there because I’d met someone in Colorado who had
waitressed there. I mentioned her to a
cashier, who remembered her, and that got us acquainted. So I also went there
for the company.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But I spent most of my wandering time along Telegraph and on
the UC campus. Between hippiedom and
academia—yes, that was me. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The places where these worlds—and many others—came together
were the bookstores, and at that moment, Telegraph Ave had a lot of them. I’d never experienced that before: going
from one bookstore to another to another, in a day or over days, available to
me every day. I was in a daze. At times I felt overwhelmed and anxious—so
many books, so little time! And no
money to buy them anyway! I worried
that I didn’t belong there, that they would find me out and ask me to
leave. Sometimes I was calm enough to
accept that I was in Wonderland. And eventually it began to be a little normal to be there.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xIDaHrmy6wg/YLXHUShrboI/AAAAAAAAfTY/n7vdSH05CCU0vciXSenFZibiLUTCuIG3gCLcBGAsYHQ/s576/moe%2527s.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="367" data-original-width="576" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xIDaHrmy6wg/YLXHUShrboI/AAAAAAAAfTY/n7vdSH05CCU0vciXSenFZibiLUTCuIG3gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/moe%2527s.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> Apart from a number of small and specialty bookshops on
Telegraph and adjacent side streets, there were at least four very big
bookstores on the first few blocks of Telegraph from the Berkeley campus. There was the university bookstore itself,
then Cody’s Books, and two big used bookstores: Moe’s and Shakespeare and
Company. I don’t remember how big the
Shamhala bookstore was inside, but it had a conspicuous storefront
window. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Cody’s Books was the most prominent in many ways, and the
one that remains in my memory. But
though I found photos online that showed several of these stores, I haven’t
come across one of Cody’s as it was in 1969.
The closest are photos of both exterior and interior in 1974 or so,
which look glitzier than I remember. What I seem to recall is the huge glass
doors that retracted so that the bookstore was open to the air and the street. When I walked by I could literally see into
the bookstore, and that proved irresistible just about every time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Cody’s sold new books, lots of paperbacks (its initial claim
to fame) but also lots of literary titles in hardback and periodicals. One of my last experiences in Cody’s was
picking up the new issue of the Carleton Miscellany, with my review of
Vonnegut’s <i>Slaughterhouse Five.</i>
I also got my check for it—my first paid piece of writing—while I was in
Berkeley.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Cody’s became part of Berkeley culture and politics as
well. During 60s demonstrations that
often included clashes with police (always referred to in 1969 Berkeley as
“pigs”), it became a medical aid station for wounded antiwarriors. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Judging from notebooks, I not only browsed but read in the
bookstores, but I must have purchased a few used paperbacks somewhere. For my other activity on Telegraph Av was
coffee and reading (and writing—I’m surprised to find two pretty good poems in
my notebook, and parts of a third.) And occasionally, eating. Our meals on
Shattuck were almost exclusively oatmeal in the morning and brown rice with
whatever vegetables came to hand in the evening. I supplemented this diet with
tuna salad sandwiches at a university cafeteria, though they would be more accurately
described as a thin smear of tuna paste on sliced bread, with some carrot
sticks on the side. But it was cheap.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VoVGh3lxTgM/YLXHm6siDnI/AAAAAAAAfTg/0f1R9--btsgKk_BMMiwe4dx_ykX-xTn0wCLcBGAsYHQ/s500/justine.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="332" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VoVGh3lxTgM/YLXHm6siDnI/AAAAAAAAfTg/0f1R9--btsgKk_BMMiwe4dx_ykX-xTn0wCLcBGAsYHQ/w133-h200/justine.jpg" width="133" /></a></div> I also frequented a small Mexican restaurant on a corner of
Telegraph. They placed a basket of
chips on the table and gave you a glass of water, no matter what you
ordered. What I usually ordered was
coffee. But I got the chips, and
sympathetic waitresses might refill both cup and basket as I sat absorbed in my
reading. The taste of those chips and
that coffee still adhere to at least the first two volumes of Lawrence
Durrell’s Alexandrine Quartet. (On my last visit to Berkeley in 2003, that
restaurant was still there, pretty much unchanged—though just about the only
thing that was.)<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In Justine, Durrell’s prose was mesmerizing even when I’d
lost track of what was going on or why.
I then found a volume of Durrell’s correspondence with Henry Miller,
probably in Cody’s, and read some of it there.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Kixs-UOk2Vg/YLXH4v5uofI/AAAAAAAAfTo/NAQls3kNB_81dPi5nA4hHKvjmNKQGv_FACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/patchen.jpeg" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="275" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Kixs-UOk2Vg/YLXH4v5uofI/AAAAAAAAfTo/NAQls3kNB_81dPi5nA4hHKvjmNKQGv_FACLcBGAsYHQ/w138-h200/patchen.jpeg" width="138" /></a> <br />I quote in a Berkeley notebook from Kenneth Patchen’s <i>Journal
of Albion Moonlight</i>, an apocalyptic antiwar novel that was all but
suppressed in 1941 for the next 20 years but became a legendary work of the San
Francisco Renaissance and Beat era of the 50s and 60s. Patchen was revered as well within the
counterculture (Jim Morrison was a fan.)
I have a used copy now, but I don’t know when I acquired it. Maybe in Berkeley. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RtxvZNZldgk/YLXIQhpoGoI/AAAAAAAAfTw/1QNcRuEN9Q8DhT9iBHiN-KdzEM6XRA1GwCLcBGAsYHQ/s500/joyce%2Bbudgen.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="326" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RtxvZNZldgk/YLXIQhpoGoI/AAAAAAAAfTw/1QNcRuEN9Q8DhT9iBHiN-KdzEM6XRA1GwCLcBGAsYHQ/w131-h200/joyce%2Bbudgen.jpg" width="131" /></a> My notebooks also mention Frank Budgen’s book on <i>James
Joyce and the Making of Ulysses</i>.
Budgen was an artist who knew Joyce in Zurich. I recognize the paperback cover of the time, so I must have read
that one and possibly owned it, though it is not now among my Joyce collection.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> However, my continuing Joyce obsession did lead to a
compulsive purchase. High on a shelf in
Cody’s Books I spotted the second two volumes of Joyce’s letters, edited by
Richard Ellmann. Though the price for
these hardbacks was a bargain, they were still too much for me. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> They were high enough on the shelf to require a ladder, so I
felt diffident about asking to look at them more than once. But every time I
went in or even passed by, I glanced up to see if they were still there. Finally, when I knew I was leaving Berkeley,
I broke down and used some of my travel money to buy them. I still have them, though I can’t say I’ve
spent a lot of time reading the letters. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uTPQB7jxf5s/YLXIoQowP2I/AAAAAAAAfT4/U-Uz6ljryskuNWV2JK1BeChX_mHD-NslQCLcBGAsYHQ/s695/joycelet.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="695" data-original-width="273" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uTPQB7jxf5s/YLXIoQowP2I/AAAAAAAAfT4/U-Uz6ljryskuNWV2JK1BeChX_mHD-NslQCLcBGAsYHQ/w79-h200/joycelet.jpg" width="79" /></a></div>Those bookstores had a quantity and variety of books,
including arcane collections of the past—from obscure literary and specialized
scholarly works to an era’s worth of pulp science fiction—that would have fed a
lifetime of voracious curiosity. But
they didn’t last for my lifetime.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cody’s was still there in 2003, both on Telegraph and
downtown Berkeley, where I happened on a reading by Maxine Hong Kingston,
shortly after <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/WAR-AND-PEACE-Maxine-Hong-Kingston-combines-2590598.php">my review</a> of her <i>Fifth Book of Peace</i> appeared in the San
Francisco Chronicle Book Review. (I met her afterwards and she was pleased that
my review “got it.”) But the Telegraph
Ave. Cody’s closed for good just three years later in 2006—it had been at that
location since 1965-- and the downtown store closed two years after that,
victims of high rents.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-isW8VZmC0gQ/YLXI9q1JesI/AAAAAAAAfUA/73ogSKO-c2YcOR1D9bTTSm40pMqdWG15ACLcBGAsYHQ/s740/shakes%2Bco.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="740" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-isW8VZmC0gQ/YLXI9q1JesI/AAAAAAAAfUA/73ogSKO-c2YcOR1D9bTTSm40pMqdWG15ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/shakes%2Bco.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> Shakespeare & Company closed in 2015, after 51
years. The Shambhala bookstore opened
in 1968, offering spiritual books with an emphasis on Buddhism. In 1969, Shambhala published its first book,
and has since become the foremost publisher of non-Western books on spirituality
in America. The publishing side soon
moved to Boulder and Boston, while the Berkeley bookstore lasted until 2003.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Many other smaller
bookstores of that era are also gone.
Of the big four, only Moe’s remains, and the university bookstore, which
if it follows the national pattern, would be mostly sweatshirts and other
branded merchandise, with barely a whiff of a non-textbook, or even a book
shelf. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-370BYfqYDFI/YLXJTPDNTTI/AAAAAAAAfUI/uoM8TVAm4dIufwUhukqaexClgG09LRfhwCLcBGAsYHQ/s700/philip-whalen-gary-snyder-and-lew-welch%2B%25281%2529.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="564" data-original-width="700" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-370BYfqYDFI/YLXJTPDNTTI/AAAAAAAAfUI/uoM8TVAm4dIufwUhukqaexClgG09LRfhwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/philip-whalen-gary-snyder-and-lew-welch%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gary Snyder (l), Lew Welch (r) with fellow<br />poet and Reed College pal Philip Whalen (c)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /> <b>N</b>ear the end of my stay in Berkeley, I attended a poetry
reading for Ecology Action and the Ecology Center that turned out to be a bit
historic. It featured some of the
better known poets of the time in the Bay Area, a group that likely never read
together again. I wrote about it at the
time.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The event was held in the Pauley Ballroom on the UC Berkeley
campus. I arrived early enough to get a
seat in the orderly rows of folding chairs.
Eventually the master of ceremonies, one of the ecologists, came to the
microphone. “I know this might be
difficult, but if somehow some room can be made at the back of the ballroom,
more people could get in.” </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Instantly a cacophony of scraping chairs as everyone moved
them towards the front, obliterating the rows and clumping closer
together. The ecologist m.c. watched,
and when it was quiet again he said, “What just happened was very much like the
action of wind, or water. I think we’re
ready to begin.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The poets who read included veterans of the Beat era: Gary
Snyder, Michael McClure, Lew Welch and David Meltzer. Welch and Snyder were former classmates and roommates at Reed
College, and maintained a close friendship.
The more recent counterculture star was Richard Brautigan. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Gary Snyder was the crowd favorite (I noted). During some
poems there was applause after every line.
Brautigan read his short non-sequiter poems, marching or preening around
the stage during the laughter and applause between them. McClure was more quietly but respectfully
received. David Meltzer spoke of the
sensations of a city boy moving to a cabin in Marin County.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I’d heard Snyder read at Knox College some three years
before, which seemed like a lifetime, and maybe in a way it was. But I recall—and I wrote at the time—that I
was otherwise most impressed by Lew Welch. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QNyWWwOID74/YLXJziaOEII/AAAAAAAAfUQ/ENKTrLJFKEwGZQtdlhbYQ8digDjeGcXswCLcBGAsYHQ/s487/Lew_Welch_750j.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="487" data-original-width="405" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QNyWWwOID74/YLXJziaOEII/AAAAAAAAfUQ/ENKTrLJFKEwGZQtdlhbYQ8digDjeGcXswCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Lew_Welch_750j.jpg" /></a></div>“A tall, theatrically handsome but obviously gentle man, he
read poems about a child’s view of the world,” I wrote. But the moment that
most impressed me and stayed with me was Welch reading his epic poem, “The Song
Mt. Tamalpais Sings.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mt. Tam is the
sacred mountain outside of San Francisco.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It became a rite among poets and hippies to “circumambulate” it—that is,
walk around it as a ritual. Mike Hamrin and I had done it earlier in my
stay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Besides being a paean to the Bay Area, where (he said) all
American revolutionary movements began, Welch’s poem sums up the movement of
Europeans across North America, pushing beyond one frontier after another. Essentially it’s the story of humanity,
always looking for a better place, and despoiling it before they move on, knowing
there’s more. But in California, they
reached the limit. Welch’s haunting
refrain was: <i>“This is the last place.
There is nowhere else to go.” </i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In the context of an ecology reading, he was talking about
Earth itself. I never forgot that line,
or that moment.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Less than two years later, Welch disappeared into the Sierras with a gun, leaving behind an old suicide note. He was never found. At a publication event for a posthumous
volume of Welch’s poems in 2012, Snyder said Welch could not overcome his alcoholism. David Meltzer called Welch his “demented
mentor.” When I spoke on the phone to
Michael McClure in 2004, I mentioned this Berkeley reading and he remembered it
as a special occasion.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>F</b>inally, there was a repeated experience of my Berkeley stay
that for me characterizes that time and place, or at least the brighter side of
it. It was the Saturday Night Midnight
Movies. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z_mqy3rhi2g/YLXKFppJPCI/AAAAAAAAfUY/_WfHlNelDr4d1LcthPvfWK6hCcLT3axQACLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/sat%2Bmatinee%2B50s.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="787" data-original-width="1024" height="308" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z_mqy3rhi2g/YLXKFppJPCI/AAAAAAAAfUY/_WfHlNelDr4d1LcthPvfWK6hCcLT3axQACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h308/sat%2Bmatinee%2B50s.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>First, though, you have to know something about the
tradition of the Saturday afternoon matinees at the movies. Back when most films were seen in the movie
palaces of cities and towns, there were Saturday matinees for children,
beginning in the 1930s and continuing probably until the hegemony of mall
cinemas and multiplexes. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The standard movie program for adults as late as the 1950s
and possibly later called for: a cartoon, the newsreel, a short (usually a
comedy, like Chaplin or Laurel & Hardy), the latest episode of a serial
(always ending with a cliffhanger), previews of “Coming Attractions,” a “B”
movie feature, and then the main feature, just released that week. The Saturday matinee started out with the
same basic mix, but the features were selected for kids. The main feature was often new or fairly
new, but might be an old favorite. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> By the time my early Baby Boom generation was old enough in
the 1950s, the Saturday matinee was even more elaborate. It might start at noon
or even before, with a dozen or two or three dozen cartoons. At least one of the movies might be an older
science fiction, horror or adventure film.
The entire program might keep us in the theater until 5 p.m. The point being that everyone in Berkeley in
1969 could have attended Saturday matinees as children.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I don’t remember which theater held the Midnight
Movies. I have a vague feeling it
wasn’t the Repertory on Telegraph, where during my stay I saw <i>Yellow
Submarine </i>and Lindsay Anderson’s <i>...If</i> again, but downtown. In any case, the Midnight Movies in Berkeley
were essentially a Saturday matinee program for heads. There was no disguising the assumption that
everyone in the audience would be high, or would be getting high during the
shows. Being high in some ways returns the sensory acuity, intense belief and
openness that the years erode. So this
was the Saturday matinee on dope, and we were children again. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> There were differences. The audience behaved badly (in a fun, good-natured way), which no
theater manager would have tolerated for long on Saturday afternoons. (I can remember only a few instances of
general rowdy behavior in my youth, mostly when the movie was boring. I especially recall a showing of one of the
Lone Ranger feature films (there were two, with basically the same plot.) As we walked in, we were all given a plastic
silver bullet as a movie promotion. But
the movie wasn’t very engaging, and I remember being in the balcony at one
point, watching the silver bullets crisscrossing in front of the screen as kids
below threw them across the auditorium.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> At the Berkeley
shows, bad behavior usually amounted to throwing popcorn at each other,
crawling over seats and being loud in response to what was on the screen. It was hilarious. But as it was Berkeley there was also political critique. Whenever a policeman appeared on the screen,
there were boos and shouts of “pig!”
When the Laurel & Hardy or other comedy short was silent, the entire
crowd read the subtitles out loud together, and if the line was addressed to a
police officer, usually some version of a Keystone Kop, the word “pig” was
spontaneously added. Crowds in Berkeley,
I wrote at the time, weren’t like those in other places: people there seemed
comfortable in the identity of a crowd.
That was certainly true at the movies. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8gAKDJD7jqY/YLXKrUZe3JI/AAAAAAAAfUo/2Zn2We9ezEQgMKJWr2SrbIeert1RbRyagCLcBGAsYHQ/s530/when-worlds-collide-arrival1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="530" height="151" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8gAKDJD7jqY/YLXKrUZe3JI/AAAAAAAAfUo/2Zn2We9ezEQgMKJWr2SrbIeert1RbRyagCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h151/when-worlds-collide-arrival1.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>There was a newsreel, but it was from some week in the 50s
or 40s. There were cartoons, a serial, a short, and a feature. Some were culled from the archives of our
childhood: I specifically remember seeing George Pal’s 1951 apocalyptic science
fiction movie, <i>When Worlds Collide.</i>
It was the first time I’d seen it since one of those childhood matinees,
so I was revisiting it in that late 60s apocalyptic context. But after the world literally ends and a
single space ship of survivors lands on a new world that I had experienced as
wondrous, I saw this time that this new Eden was an obvious painted flat
backdrop. Which was another kind of a message. <p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KGnf5taoXW4/YLXK6Lkgf0I/AAAAAAAAfUs/uZdfUQ8i_rQr7jtBZRSYt3gC_eBsp2nqgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/lulby%2Bbdway.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1115" data-original-width="2048" height="217" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KGnf5taoXW4/YLXK6Lkgf0I/AAAAAAAAfUs/uZdfUQ8i_rQr7jtBZRSYt3gC_eBsp2nqgCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h217/lulby%2Bbdway.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>The other movie I recall from a midnight show was the Busby
(no relation to the city) Berkeley musical <i>Gold Diggers of 1935. </i> It was the first B.B. movie I’d ever seen,
and it was on the big screen, augmented for me by being high, so I was mesmerized. But the wide-openness of that state has had
its drawbacks in my life, and this was one of those memorable times.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I was totally
immersed in the long and immensely elaborate song and dance sequence for
“Lullaby of Broadway,” and totally unprepared—and undefended—for the climax, in
which at the height of the frenzy the female singer is suddenly pushed
accidentally off a balcony and falls to her death. So much for musical comedy.
This may or may not have been a dream sequence, but I was shocked and sobered. A downer, man. And as some things do in that
state, it seemed portentous and symbolic beyond the bounds of an old movie.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NUhNLB3OtWg/YLXLG2NssOI/AAAAAAAAfU0/8h4pRKUBAeUu5TUt9uZGE8f33QOPXavPgCLcBGAsYHQ/s512/sproul01.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="342" data-original-width="512" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NUhNLB3OtWg/YLXLG2NssOI/AAAAAAAAfU0/8h4pRKUBAeUu5TUt9uZGE8f33QOPXavPgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/sproul01.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></div><b><br /> A</b>ll during my months in Berkeley, I was writing and
receiving letters. Apart from friends
and family members, a lot of them were to and from Joni, who had started
teaching in Connecticut. In a way also I was being called home. Eventually I
decided to head back East. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Of my original housemates on Shattuck, Phil had already
left. The others were embroiled but
restless. Mike Hamrin’s girlfriend
referred to my “solemn and tacit presence,” a characterization I’ve never
forgotten, for it was both a revelation and inarguable.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> At times it was a
close thing, but my life didn’t catch in Berkeley. My head was not always
there, and not always in the present. Maybe I was too much the spectator. “All Berkeley really needs,” I wrote in a
notebook, “is a proscenium arch.” Though with the gate to the UC campus, maybe
it had one. And it was on the UC campus
one sunny afternoon that a stray dog came straight over to me, licked my hand,
lay down at my feet, and went to sleep.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-71601500736451282562023-05-07T03:29:00.000-07:002023-05-07T03:29:26.076-07:00History of My Reading: Intro to Berkeley 1969<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nJ0sgdaCJh0/YJt5OrKN9fI/AAAAAAAAfPw/_9yf26kW1WcrTlfZcKkxhDXOqeza1uLcQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/UC-Berkeley-gates.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="1024" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nJ0sgdaCJh0/YJt5OrKN9fI/AAAAAAAAfPw/_9yf26kW1WcrTlfZcKkxhDXOqeza1uLcQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/UC-Berkeley-gates.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />I was dropped off in Berkeley in late summer 1969 on College Avenue at a house
shared by a Knox College grad I will call JB. (Even at this remove, it’s hard
to know how people feel about themselves in the 1960s.) I had friends from Knox in the Bay Area, but
JB was more a friend of Joni’s, and she had arranged that we would stay there
(or “crash” there as we’d say) upon our arrival. But it was only me. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> JB shared the house with a young man, maybe a bit older, who
was either a medical student or intern or both, and a very attractive young
woman who worked in a Berkeley clothing shop.
I was given a space behind the couch in the living room for my sleeping
bag, and a fairly definite limit on my stay. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I believe it was on the very day of my arrival that two
other former or maybe current Knox students showed up, fraternity brothers
perhaps, to take JB on a drive up to Napa wine country. She couldn’t go but they accepted me, and I found myself in the
back seat of an open sports car, cruising up the highway, awash in the
California sun. We stopped at a wine
tasting or two, they bought a few bottles and on the way back stopped at a
roadside stand for fruit, bread and cheese, making it a kind of Mediterranean
adventure. Within a few hours, I was
back in Berkeley. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I met up with a few Knox friends in Berkeley, including Mike
Hamrin and Mary Jacobson, but had no prospects for another place to stay when
my welcome period expired. I tried a
night outside in my sleeping bag, but turned out to be a hopeless hobo, because
by morning I had a definite head cold.
I got my spot back behind the couch until I recovered. It was probably then that I read the first
book in Berkeley I remember, which had little to do with Berkeley but more with
the happenstance of being on the road, and the guest in someone else’s
house. In fact, I can’t guarantee it
happened there, but by process of elimination, it probably did.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CcIhAWOhqDY/YJt5fDNe1iI/AAAAAAAAfP4/0LZJ8Y7ryVoQ4mE6zjOHplAemzPqGpi7QCLcBGAsYHQ/s489/tiger%2Btiger.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CcIhAWOhqDY/YJt5fDNe1iI/AAAAAAAAfP4/0LZJ8Y7ryVoQ4mE6zjOHplAemzPqGpi7QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/tiger%2Btiger.jpg" /></a></div> In any case I remember the book very clearly, and the
happenstance. I saw a paperback book in
the living room, perhaps on a mantle piece, with an intriguing title and
cover. It was <i>Tiger! Tiger!</i> by
Alfred Bester, a science fiction author whose name or work I didn’t know. What I found was a British edition, complete
with the UK price (4/6.) This novel was published later in the US with the
title <i>The Stars My Destination</i>. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I read it through, intrigued by the science fiction ideas,
propelled by the plot. Apart from some
of Kurt Vonnegut, I hadn’t read actual science fiction in a long time. I didn’t do much more than open even the
best-sellers and hippie favorites like <i>Dune</i> and <i>Stranger in A Strange
Land.</i> But this book got me
interested again. I was especially taken with the concept of “jaunting,” which
was a latent ability to transport oneself by the power of thought that it
turned out everybody has.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Alfred Bester has since become a revered name in sci-fi,
especially for this novel and the one that preceded it, <i>The Demolished Man</i>. He is now considered an inspiration for both
the New Wave and cyberpunk science fiction writers. He himself had a love-hate
relationship with science fiction, and spent most of his career in other
forms. Bester wrote for comic books,
especially Superman (something of a family business as his mother had played
Lois Lane on radio), as well as radio, television and magazines, especially the
travel magazine Holiday, where he was an editor. I’ve more recently acquired a
selection of his sci-fi stories and essays, with a few articles and profiles,
notably of authors Robert Heinlein and Issac Asimov, titled <i>Redemolished</i>. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Re-read today, <i>The Stars My Destination</i> seems a
different book. I was probably
impressed by the villain being the autocratic head of a huge corporation, but
that’s become more frequent in fiction as in life. Though basically a riff on <i>The
Count of Monte Christo</i>, the extreme pulp fiction characters and the
throwback attitudes towards both women and men tend to detract, but the forward
momentum of the story remains.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> I probably read it through my stuffed head, until one
evening the medical student/doctor prescribed a heavy dosage of beer, and took
me to a bar. He was right. I was better
the next day. Meanwhile, Mike Hamrin
had moved into a house at Shattuck and Ashby in Berkeley with several others,
and invited me to join them. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9taKJDmsxLQ/YJt-FHatilI/AAAAAAAAfRI/nCN9d5YAGCIAsbxs2KhBxHJ0mTunlMiFACLcBGAsYHQ/s388/a3011%2Bshattuck.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="388" height="151" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9taKJDmsxLQ/YJt-FHatilI/AAAAAAAAfRI/nCN9d5YAGCIAsbxs2KhBxHJ0mTunlMiFACLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h151/a3011%2Bshattuck.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>The house at 3011 Shattuck as I remember it was a white wood frame building
with a back porch entrance at the end of a set of wooden stairs. It was a
plainer version of many older houses in the Bay Area, where wood had been
plentiful and more practical in terms of earthquakes. This likely was the second floor (the house there now is
a large two level), with the first floor occupied separately, and it may even have been a duplex, but all I recall
is the rooms and the people living where I did.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Inside the back door
to the right was the kitchen, and to the left a small living room. They were separated for most of their
lengths by a wall. Off the kitchen
towards the porch was a small unfurnished room, which may have been a pantry or
even a servant’s quarters in the house’s heyday. Past the kitchen was a hallway and several rooms and
bathroom. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Four people were living there when I arrived. David and Priscilla were a couple. Mike had a girlfriend who visited but had
her own place. The fourth was a young
man I’ll call Phil because he was from Philadelphia. He may well have been the
named tenant.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> It was a varied group.
Phil was Jewish, I had a Catholic background and the others a
Protestant, if any. David was a
California Indian. Today I’d guess
Yurok, though his hometown was not that far north, so maybe not. I don’t recall if Priscilla was from New
England, but there was something mythic about her alliance with David. Despite these differences, which we rarely
if ever discussed, we were united by age, general attitude, the times and the
place. And of course we all smoked dope
(to varying degrees) and were therefore “heads,” as opposed to “straights,”
which in those days referred to anyone who wasn’t a head.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> David has acquired a small yellow school bus, and
reconfigured the inside to accommodate gear and the possibility of living in
it. We made a number of road trips in
that bus, mostly along the coast.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> On one trip we were pulled over by a Highway Patrol. We were told it was illegal for the bus to
look like a school bus, and we were therefore instructed to paint it. Which we happily did, in a somewhat
haphazard psychedelic style.</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PkHZ2IOPseQ/YJt63LqfMPI/AAAAAAAAfQI/rAtKecjL8BUaMZ_KWQn2H4d154Q6G5J1wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2007/SJM-Z-DRAKESBEACH-0501.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1246" data-original-width="2007" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PkHZ2IOPseQ/YJt63LqfMPI/AAAAAAAAfQI/rAtKecjL8BUaMZ_KWQn2H4d154Q6G5J1wCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/SJM-Z-DRAKESBEACH-0501.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> We might be
accompanied on these trips by others who stayed at the house for awhile. These might be day trips or longer, when we
slept in the bus. On one such trip we wound up late at night at Drake’s Beach
in the Point Reyes Seashore in Marin County, and had a ghostly visitor’s center
all to ourselves. It was a kind of
chalet, with restrooms and huge vending machines that glowed in the night. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> These longer outings might include hiking and taking an
ocean dip, impressing upon me how frigid the waters are in this part of
California even on a warm day. And as a
result of one such adventure, I was surprised and very impressed by another
California feature: poison oak. I’d had
poison ivy several times “back East” and had some immunity, but not to the
unknown poison oak. I got a bad case. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> We consulted a hippie elder who advised rubbing wet baking
soda over my entire body. So I spent
several days isolated in that little room off the kitchen, lying on my sleeping
bag, naked and covered with clumps of wet and slowly drying baking soda. (Nudity was fairly common in this house. Priscilla often stirred the morning oatmeal
still naked. Seeing naked bodies doing normal things became ordinary with
surprising speed.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gUcb30khUbI/YJt7Mmh6GcI/AAAAAAAAfQQ/23Qf6DtaUw0U_i5vfBEnXmKNOvLsr-40gCLcBGAsYHQ/s310/hem%2Bstories.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="310" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gUcb30khUbI/YJt7Mmh6GcI/AAAAAAAAfQQ/23Qf6DtaUw0U_i5vfBEnXmKNOvLsr-40gCLcBGAsYHQ/w129-h200/hem%2Bstories.jpg" width="129" /></a></div> The persistent itching as well as the flaking baking soda
made my hours of reading in that room particularly memorable. I got small bottles of the cheapest
California white wine (which was still pretty decent) and whatever comfort junk
food the little wine store near us sold.
There were books in the house, only some of which had a known
origin. One was a volume of Hemingway
short stories, probably the Scribner collection. I read it to the end, accompanied by white wine and Oreos. This is a definite Berkeley memory. (I finally hobbled off to the Free Clinic
and got some topical medicine, and either it worked right away or my affliction
had just about run its course, or most likely both.)<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I made some other trips more or less on my own. I went into
San Francisco (usually hitch-hiking), including a few times to meet up with Ric
Newman from Knox. The first time, I saw
him in the San Francisco production of <i>Hair</i>. When we met in the lobby afterwards he was enthusiastic about the
prospects for <i>What’s Happening, Baby Jesus?,</i> the play I wrote and
directed our senior year, in which he played the lead role. He thought <i>Hair</i> had made it a hot
property. I was unconvinced.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f8B1yF7pNj0/YJt7kcDviUI/AAAAAAAAfQY/X1BmZSvXVz0K1I4zRH7FA8h13LMdOgXXQCLcBGAsYHQ/s815/watts%2Bbeat%2Bzen.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="815" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f8B1yF7pNj0/YJt7kcDviUI/AAAAAAAAfQY/X1BmZSvXVz0K1I4zRH7FA8h13LMdOgXXQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/watts%2Bbeat%2Bzen.jpg" /></a></div> I’d been in San Francisco just once before this trip, so I
saw some of the sights this time, like Fisherman’s Wharf, and made my
pilgrimage to North Beach and the City Lights Bookstore, known throughout the
world as the center of the beat literature revolution. I bought a kind of pamphlet book by Alan
Watts, just 25 pages, titled <i>Beat Zen Square Zen and Zen</i>. I was interested in Watts and Zen but since
it was published by City Lights Books I mostly bought it as a kind of
souvenir. It was all I could afford.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> One day on the UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza I ran into someone
I’d known slightly at Knox. He was a
few classes behind me, and was scouting California campuses, perhaps to
transfer or for grad school. Eventually I accompanied him on a hitchhiking tour
of several other coastal colleges,
including UC Santa Cruz, and ending up at San Jose State, where we were the
overnight guests of English professor Richard Alexander, who’d left Knox to
teach there. He fed us the most substantial meal I’d had in awhile.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But I spent considerable time over the next few months in
Berkeley itself, particularly on the UC Berkeley campus and along the now
fabled Telegraph Avenue.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F-lFIw3CHB0/YJt7161p3uI/AAAAAAAAfQg/G-d_YzmELXAODv8MT6MCl34PtC3QRPgRQCLcBGAsYHQ/s934/pp%2Bmay%2B1969.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="934" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F-lFIw3CHB0/YJt7161p3uI/AAAAAAAAfQg/G-d_YzmELXAODv8MT6MCl34PtC3QRPgRQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/pp%2Bmay%2B1969.jpg" /></a></div><br /> I had arrived in
Berkeley in late summer 1969 at an uncharacteristic moment: it was quiet. Both the university and the city had been in
near constant turmoil since even before the Free Speech Movement in the
mid-1960s. That turmoil had reached a
new height just a few months before I got there, with the events that
culminated in death and military occupation enforcing a kind of police state.
It was the battle of People’s Park.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The University had acquired through eminent domain a large
property near the campus and within the residential and business community near
Telegraph Avenue. In 1967 they bulldozed
the buildings on the site but left it empty.
It became an eyesore, a repository for abandoned cars. Nothing much happened until early April 1969
when a group of local merchants and residents met to figure out what to do
about it. Then everything happened, very fast.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> At this meeting, a student activist presented a plan to make
the space a public park, and the attendees approved. An article appeared in the Berkeley Barb, a local/ underground
newspaper, and a hundred people, including a landscape architect, showed up to
begin building People’s Park.
Eventually a thousand people participated, either working on it or
contributing plants and money.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The university then suddenly announced it had immediate
plans for the site: a university sports field.
The chancellor met with park activists, and promised not to do anything
to the site without notifying them. A
week later he ceded a quarter of the property to the park builders, and
repeated the pledge. A week after that, that pledge was broken. He announced the beginning of construction.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IugVes3o9s8/YJt8KnhRifI/AAAAAAAAfQo/NEcq6Ge-FvwHVpYD8oIiwVoYOeUGSs4FgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Berkeley-May-15-1969.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1093" data-original-width="1600" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IugVes3o9s8/YJt8KnhRifI/AAAAAAAAfQo/NEcq6Ge-FvwHVpYD8oIiwVoYOeUGSs4FgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Berkeley-May-15-1969.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>On May 15, Governor Ronald Reagan sent the Highway Patrol
and university police to tear out the plantings for the park and erect a
fence. Demonstrations began
immediately, spilling from the university’s Sproul Plaza—made famous by the
Free Speech Movement—to the adjacent Telegraph Ave. The crowd of several hundred headed to the site. The police used
tear gas and called in reinforcements as the angry demonstrators became a
formidable 6,000. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Members of some sheriff’s departments carried shotguns, and
in pursuing vaguely violent protestors, fired in their direction. Instead they hit innocent bystanders,
killing a man watching from a bookstore roof on Telegraph Ave, and permanently
blinding another. Hundreds of protesters
and some law enforcement were injured, some seriously. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> That night Governor Reagan sent in nearly 3,000 National
Guard troops, who acted as an army of occupation for the next two weeks,
liberally using tear gas to prevent anyone from planting anything, and breaking
up groups of four or more on the streets.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The turmoil increased, more people became involved, the
university partly shut down, and demonstrations continued. On May 20, National Guard helicopters
dispersed tear gas over the Berkeley campus, which spread through the city of
Berkeley. School children miles away
were taken to hospitals for treatment. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Gv4XhODVl94/YJt8bXqzc4I/AAAAAAAAfQw/j4zKdJTs8oIa8va_EkfeAryIevLoiS--wCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/memorial%2Bday%2B1969.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Gv4XhODVl94/YJt8bXqzc4I/AAAAAAAAfQw/j4zKdJTs8oIa8va_EkfeAryIevLoiS--wCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/memorial%2Bday%2B1969.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>After that the unapologetic Reagan government backed off
somewhat, withdrawing all but 200 troops, who nevertheless continued to prevent
four or more people from talking to each other. There was a peaceful protest march on May 30. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> By the time I arrived in August, there was a silent
stalemate. When I first saw the site, I
noted that it was one-third dry earth and a few plants, one-third sod being
drowned by implacable water sprinklers, and one-third asphalt, where a solitary
police sat on a bench guarding it. Some
people drifted through. A helicopter
suddenly flew over, startling me. But
nobody else reacted.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Meanwhile, there was
such internal pressure from Berkeley faculty and a majority of students that
the university was at an impasse. Eventually people drifted back to treating it
as a park (which is what it is today, with both good and bad effects.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But already in August it seemed that Berkeley as a place had
moved on. Most students were gone for the summer, and what was left was
Berkeley’s ongoing experiment in how a counterculture might function.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Not that Berkeley gave up politics. In the few months I was there, I heard
activists Bernadette Dohrn, Angela Davis and Tom Hayden each speak on separate
occasions and circumstances on the UC Berkeley campus. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wi6XwGKNdq0/YJt81bBu-VI/AAAAAAAAfQ4/TZeUFtcY7_oO2ksMT0DJPTOTVFCgzpUTACLcBGAsYHQ/s468/tom-hayden.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="468" height="154" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wi6XwGKNdq0/YJt81bBu-VI/AAAAAAAAfQ4/TZeUFtcY7_oO2ksMT0DJPTOTVFCgzpUTACLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h154/tom-hayden.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>I took notes on Hayden’s talk in a large classroom where he
was introduced by sociologist Edgar Z. Friedenberg, author of a book I’d so
admired in high school, <i>The Vanishing Adolescent</i>, and of the more recent
<i>Coming of Age in America</i>. This
was just before Hayden went on trial as a member of the Chicago 8, charged by
the Nixon Justice Department with inciting violence at the Democratic
Convention in 1968. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Whatever his positions or his image later, Hayden sounded
very militant to me on that day. He
foresaw a long revolution in America of perhaps 20 years, with periods of
violence and periods of peace. When the
revolution is successful, the worst counter-revolutionists, such as racists,
would be confined in their own ghettos.
“The enemy is not in your head,” I heard him say. “The enemy exists and must be dealt with.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In terms of a broader cultural revolution, though he had no
kind words for hippies, he approved the form being developed by people in
Berkeley, of “collectives,” small groups of people who live their politics but
may specialize in a particular activity, like medicine, to support the
community now but also be equipped to take over after the revolution. “If you have any faith in the future,” you
have to plan for after the revolution,” he said. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One such collective in Berkeley, said someone in the
audience, was teaching itself first aid and self- defense, for future confrontations.
There had been quite a few antiwar demonstrations down Telegraph Avenue, and a
lot of injuries inflicted by police.
But there were other institutions responding to the day-to-day needs of
what might loosely be described as the counterculture. There was the Free Clinic staffed by
volunteer doctors, and a similar organization for legal aid. There were efforts to feed people and
distribute free food.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> There was also informal support. The food co-op—basically a supermarket—did not prevent scavengers
from carting away overripe vegetables and fruits that were discarded. Some restaurants fed people out the back
door, and I witnessed individual waitresses placing food left behind where
“street people” could reach it. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> What was the counterculture? Political opposition was a major catalyst—from opposition to the
House UnAmerican Activities Committee at UC Berkeley in the late 50s and early
60s, student issues, to the ongoing and growing opposition to Vietnam and the
draft. In the face of overwhelming
disapproval by their elders, this alone created a sense of separation and
fostered a subculture within especially the younger generation. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J3nU_NCY8DY/YJt9XMk2doI/AAAAAAAAfRA/ziWe8k5DxqYXzJRC-H4asMa1UncQE8TCACLcBGAsYHQ/s480/thegraduate01.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J3nU_NCY8DY/YJt9XMk2doI/AAAAAAAAfRA/ziWe8k5DxqYXzJRC-H4asMa1UncQE8TCACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/thegraduate01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> It was also a more general rejection or at least questioning
of prevailing societal values, expressed at one end by the 1967 film <i>The
Graduate</i> (part of which takes place in Berkeley) and at the other by the
hippies, the political radicals, and their hybrid, the Yippies.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But at its heart,
the counterculture was about an alternative search for meaning. Questioning the value system of the
dominant consumer society (“Work, Study, Get Ahead, Kill” was an antiwar march
chant), questioning the basis for current social mores, for attitudes towards
the body and the soul, were catalysts for explorations of self, society and
reality itself, by means of experience and imagination that were encouraged and
enabled by the “mind-expanding” substances of cannabis and the psychedelics,
but by no means limited to them. Music and other people were major psychedelics
in the counterculture. And sometimes,
even books.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Inevitably it led to spiritual quests and, as I saw in
Berkeley, more formal forays into psychologies. That aspect jumped out at me immediately upon my arrival. But
more on all that next time, plus the bookstores of Telegraph Ave, the Midnight
Movies and the First Annual Holy Man Jam.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-66902382979575038742023-04-05T02:50:00.008-07:002023-05-07T03:12:15.152-07:00History of My Reading: 1969 To Boulder Go (part 2)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mC3NKZaw41I/YEhrNGog3FI/AAAAAAAAfGo/Hmb4qxdXowoW3OfyFsr_9rZvnqSPsJYTgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1000/Hippie%252BBoulder%252BColorado%252Bcaravan.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mC3NKZaw41I/YEhrNGog3FI/AAAAAAAAfGo/Hmb4qxdXowoW3OfyFsr_9rZvnqSPsJYTgCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h266/Hippie%252BBoulder%252BColorado%252Bcaravan.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /> Nineteen Sixty-Nine was a prime year for the counterculture
(in fact, it was the year it got its name, when Theodore Roszak’s <i>The Making of The
Counter-Culture</i> was published), and Colorado was one of its capitals. It would be my first prolonged exposure
beyond midwestern college campuses.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> As music was the counterculture’s living, pulsing heart, it
was also the year of the music festival.
More or less invented on the model of the Newport Folk and Jazz
Festivals by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas when he organized the
Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, music festivals of current and cutting edge
rock, blues and hybrid forms happened here and there throughout 1969,
culminating at Woodstock in August. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> For three evenings and nights over a weekend in late June,
there was one in Colorado: The Denver Pop Festival. I was participating in the writers conference in Boulder until
Friday evening, so on Saturday I took a bus to Denver to hear some music.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I’m not sure why I decided on Saturday, since the Jimi
Hendrix Experience headlined the Sunday lineup. And it turned out to be mildly
historic: the last concert the original Experience ever played. (Perhaps I had other plans for Sunday since it was my 23rd birthday.) But 1969 was a
big year for Creedence Clearwater Revival, and they would close the Saturday
show. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> However I did meet a girl on the bus to Denver who claimed to be a cousin of Jimi Hendrix. She
said the last time she’d visited him backstage she’d seen the drug
paraphernalia, and showed her concern.
He agreed he needed to slow it down. He was really just a sweet guy, she
said. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EDZ1_BWgc7s/YEhrcsXeNNI/AAAAAAAAfGw/vswnYfrNXyQswZvVmupfGdcojDU5FeRFwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1500/denver%2Bpop%2Btix.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EDZ1_BWgc7s/YEhrcsXeNNI/AAAAAAAAfGw/vswnYfrNXyQswZvVmupfGdcojDU5FeRFwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/denver%2Bpop%2Btix.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> It was a hot day—95 degrees in Denver, and still around 90 when
I arrived at Denver’s Mile High Stadium after 5 p.m. I either bought my ticket or already had it ($6 a night, $15 for
three nights) and I was early enough to get a seat in a center section, as
people were still arriving. Still, the stage was set up on the field so I was
separated from it by a considerable distance.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I have specific memories of that event, which I am able to
corroborate and expand on, thanks to a <a href="https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/59304/PDF/1/play/">Masters thesis posted online</a> by Justin
Kite of Rutgers University. He fills in
some of the history and the facts of the evening.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HCWdXR88UfA/YEhry10ggaI/AAAAAAAAfG4/aAJSbB9dcGUpKO36Yb4JtVRtYxzkou0gQCLcBGAsYHQ/s905/zeph%2Bcrowd.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="590" data-original-width="905" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HCWdXR88UfA/YEhry10ggaI/AAAAAAAAfG4/aAJSbB9dcGUpKO36Yb4JtVRtYxzkou0gQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/zeph%2Bcrowd.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> As the time came closer to the scheduled 6:30 start, those
in my section of the stands became aware of a crowd growing outside one
particular locked gate. It looked to be
wood and wire, and thanks to our position and height, we could see at least
part of it. On the inside of the stadium were contingents of uniformed police,
most of them opposite the increasingly raucous crowd outside, demanding to be
let in, because the music was meant to be free.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Though I was unaware of it, there was already a history to
this festival. A similar but smaller
crowd the night before had tried to force their way in, and they clashed with
police, egged on by some of the performers, especially Frank Zappa. Tonight there were more of them, and they
were concentrating on that one gate. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">There was also a longer history involving the Denver police,
and their successful efforts to close down the Family Dog, a club in the city
that featured rock acts.</span><span style="text-align: left;"> </span><span style="text-align: left;">And of course,
there was the ongoing tension between the straight world and the freaks, the
culture and the counterculture, parents and the young.</span><span style="text-align: left;"> </span><span style="text-align: left;">Perhaps we forget how strong the hostility
and suspicion could be.</span></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The confrontation got louder when the first act began, a
Chicago band called Aorta. I could see
the gate bulging as bodies raged against it.
Then the next act took the stage: a new Boulder band called Zephyr,
which eventually made a couple of albums and is noted as the first band of
electric guitar virtuoso Tommy Bolin.
Lead singer Candy Givens was the constant in various versions of the
band into the 1980s.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7A3Gu60ZxBc/YEhs3YBrALI/AAAAAAAAfHQ/DzxO3sujI-IoH7_TKQHhFpn9pIS9pERLwCLcBGAsYHQ/s914/zeph%2Bbest%2Bgirl.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="593" data-original-width="914" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7A3Gu60ZxBc/YEhs3YBrALI/AAAAAAAAfHQ/DzxO3sujI-IoH7_TKQHhFpn9pIS9pERLwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/zeph%2Bbest%2Bgirl.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> Zephyr had hardly begun its blues-rock set when the police
unleashed their first volley of tear gas canisters at the 500 or so on the
other side of the gate. Some of them lobbed
the canisters back. Tear gas came streaming down towards us. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The music was halted as the announcer instructed those of us
in our section to come down on the field and lie on the ground, face down,
until the tear gas cloud passed. So
there I was: reenacting a duck and cover drill with my nose on the grass of
Mile High Stadium. In a few minutes we returned to our seats and Zephyr
finished their set—but this time the band members were reportedly wearing gas
masks. </p>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yItP3jlCVt8/YEhtMA-wxXI/AAAAAAAAfHY/PgdOn5zp4jk-LVJLfrZ14DwpZXmS0vVmQCLcBGAsYHQ/s882/425-Johnny-Winter-Woodstock-Festival-1969-NY.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="882" data-original-width="582" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yItP3jlCVt8/YEhtMA-wxXI/AAAAAAAAfHY/PgdOn5zp4jk-LVJLfrZ14DwpZXmS0vVmQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/425-Johnny-Winter-Woodstock-Festival-1969-NY.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Winter at Woodstock</td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The next band was Poco, the new country rock band featuring
Richie Furay and Jim Messina, two members of the recently disbanded and already
legendary Buffalo Springfield. (Kite’s
thesis asserts that the new band of Springfield’s main members, Crosby, Stills,
Nash and Young was originally supposed to play at this festival, but the
promoter backed out of the deal when the new lineup failed to get their first
album out before the festival.) Things
quieted down enough during their set for me to hear and enjoy it.</p><p class="MsoNormal">But the blazing blues guitarist Johnny Winter got the crowd
outside revved up again, and probably the police, too. They shot off tear gas again, in greater
quantity, and this time successfully dispersed the crowd at the gate. But there was a cost, as during Tim
Buckley’s set the wind caught the gas and blew it back into the stadium. Now people from all over the stadium rushed
down to the field to escape the fumes.
In the confusion, the crowd outside attacked the gate again and some got
through. There was a pitched battle
between them and the police, until the festival producers opened all the gates
to let everybody in. And suddenly there
was nothing to fight about.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> It wasn’t the first time I’d smelled tear gas, and it
wouldn’t be the last. As singular as it seems now, it didn’t impress me at the time as all
that unusual, that a rock festival would be disrupted in this
way. I was more affected by the
distance from the stage. Without my
perceptions artificially enhanced (though there were probably joints making
their way across the rows) I felt too detached from the performers.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oI7di-7yZhk/YEhtw_z9IlI/AAAAAAAAfHg/eKiDeoUDX8oN9lfjmoWp9LhyaCHldnxEgCLcBGAsYHQ/s450/creedencelive.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="354" data-original-width="450" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oI7di-7yZhk/YEhtw_z9IlI/AAAAAAAAfHg/eKiDeoUDX8oN9lfjmoWp9LhyaCHldnxEgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/creedencelive.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> By then night had fallen and just as if none of this had
happened, Creedence Clearwater Revival played a normal set. According to Kite, even some of the police
stopped to listen. As Creedence played
“Bad Moon Rising,” the full moon rose behind them. When they noticed this, they played it again. That’s the story. I don’t actually remember it.
Kite reports that the young Denver Post reporter called Saturday’s the
best music of the festival.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_973gnT90dU/YEhuAYarmhI/AAAAAAAAfHo/JPDNeEt2HDQaUXljzJs5DM_NrusYlhGzwCLcBGAsYHQ/s394/Jimi-Hendrix-Denver-Pop-Festival-June-1969-c.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="364" data-original-width="394" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_973gnT90dU/YEhuAYarmhI/AAAAAAAAfHo/JPDNeEt2HDQaUXljzJs5DM_NrusYlhGzwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Jimi-Hendrix-Denver-Pop-Festival-June-1969-c.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> Much of the Jimi Hendrix Experience set on Sunday night is
preserved on YouTube. Besides being the
last Experience show, its other claim to fame is the pre-Woodstock debut of
Hendrix’s version of the Star Spangled Banner, which flowed into “Purple
Haze.” But apparently the prior hours
were dominated by noisy and constant warfare between police and
gatecrashers. Kite reports that the now
iconic singer Joe Cocker, on his first U.S. tour, was found hiding in his
dressing room. “So this is America?” he
asked.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9YGeJgDMfFU/YEhuWYNEa8I/AAAAAAAAfHw/mvbLkbt4-u0dbnBRPQoeB4XJIp-QouhpQCLcBGAsYHQ/s436/charcoalchef02.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="336" data-original-width="436" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9YGeJgDMfFU/YEhuWYNEa8I/AAAAAAAAfHw/mvbLkbt4-u0dbnBRPQoeB4XJIp-QouhpQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/charcoalchef02.jpg" width="320" /></a> <b>F</b>or me, there was
one further outcome to the Boulder writers conference. After the open reading
at the end of it, a tall man with dark curly hair sought me out to compliment
my poems. Not the Litany so much as the
sound poem. He was Arnold Weinstein
from Yale, and he was accompanied by four or five acting students from the Yale
Drama School. </p><p class="MsoNormal">A few days later I ran into him again. I was having eggs and toast at the Charcoal
Chef, one of those chain restaurants that serves breakfast all day, near where
I was staying in Boulder. I was at the
counter when he came in for coffee. The
jars of jelly for toast in restaurants had recently been replaced with little
plastic tubs which were then, as they are even more so now, nearly impossible
to open. So I simply stabbed at mine with a fork, which for some reason he
really liked.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> It might have been after the reading or there at the
counter, but at some point he invited me to hang out with his group, which was
sticking around for awhile to work on improvisations. Actually it was never clear to me what they were doing, or what
he did, but in fact Weinstein taught playwriting at Yale, was a poet and
playwright, and at that point in a long and successful theatrical as well as
academic career, he had been working with Paul Sills’ Story Theater. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> It also was never clear to me what he expected me to do. At
first he asked me to fool around on piano, and then on guitar, as his students
did whatever they were doing onstage.
This resulted in only one moment I remember. I heard someone on stage say “hello” and I began riffing on it on
guitar. The actors picked it up and
built it until the cast was clustered at center stage shouting a rhythmic and
frantic “hello” to the (non-existent) audience. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> It was an interesting, confusing and somewhat uncomfortable
few days. It’s too bad I wasn’t up to
it, because Weinstein did several theatrical pieces that integrated music, and
took them to Broadway. I’ve also
wondered who those Yale students—and one in particular--turned out to be. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E71jmKxfY9Y/YEh1KpTUMjI/AAAAAAAAfJY/T9ATnlcFCiIoX8HIehZg0R36ELvKFF-IQCLcBGAsYHQ/s475/rudybest.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="267" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E71jmKxfY9Y/YEh1KpTUMjI/AAAAAAAAfJY/T9ATnlcFCiIoX8HIehZg0R36ELvKFF-IQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/rudybest.jpg" /></a></div><b>M</b>y immersion in
the counterculture began in Fort Collins, where (thanks to Joni's cousin Mary) I had my palm
read and my astrology chart done by stoned hippies around a fire. And there was
a lot of talk, from the cosmic to the very personal. People just trying to figure
things out. Especially themselves.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> It continued in
Boulder. I hung out quite a bit at a
bookstore called brillig (“Twas brillig and the slivy toves”—Jaberwocky in
Alice in Wonderland, in which brillig means four in the afternoon, which is
probably when I usually showed up at the bookstore) with their books on
astrology (Dane Rudhyar), numerology, natural health remedies, cosmic
philosophies, as well as books on underground filmmakers, artists,
writers. Scorned or overlooked past
writers were being rediscovered, too—including Lewis Carroll. Brillig was also
a great place to overhear conversations or engage in them. (Somewhere I have a note about befriending a
clerk there, who admitted she was afraid of the customers.) </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mf30RHVRbGQ/YEhusnhFc9I/AAAAAAAAfH4/JLRt59_FAjwlnGLsY_6Jh3KhE3mwpKkAACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/bookofhopi.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1414" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mf30RHVRbGQ/YEhusnhFc9I/AAAAAAAAfH4/JLRt59_FAjwlnGLsY_6Jh3KhE3mwpKkAACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/bookofhopi.jpg" /></a></div><br />There were books reflecting the evolving sexual revolution
and the boundaries of censorship: everything from <i>Everything You Ever Wanted
To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask</i> to newly available novels by Henry
Miller and the illustrated book version of the scandalous stage pastiche <i>Oh!
Calcutta!</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> There was R.D. Laing’s <i>The Politics of Experience</i>,
Norman O. Brown’s <i>Love’s Body</i>, Fritz Perls’ <i>Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.
</i> George Leonard’s <i>Education and
Ecstasy, </i>Postman and Weingartner’s <i>Teaching As A Subversive Activity.</i> <i>Zen Flesh, Zen Bones; The Book of the
Hopi.</i> All breaking accustomed boundaries around mind and body, searching
for new answers and new questions.
Mind-expanding chemicals suggested untapped powers of mind, human
potentials censored by a narrow, rigid society. Cosmic feelings and new intimacies required a stubborn and
sometimes misguided search for conscious and nurturing communities that honored
individual freedom while withdrawing from a culture of self-righteous conflict
that unfeelingly trashed the planet and mechanized non-human life. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The apocalyptic tenor of the 1960s had deepened towards
decade’ end. The unrelenting Vietnam
war, the oceans dying, DDT and other chemicals poisoning food and the
environment, were all in the summer’s news.
So there was interest in arcane takes on the patterns, on the future.
Edgar Cayce’s books and prophesies, and similar approaches were part of the
mood. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VTKPxbx3YZQ/YEhu5fJUqTI/AAAAAAAAfH8/msHfD_1BjmgU0ORdoq49LiIphvKmX9ecACLcBGAsYHQ/s1803/Don-Juan.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1803" data-original-width="1202" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VTKPxbx3YZQ/YEhu5fJUqTI/AAAAAAAAfH8/msHfD_1BjmgU0ORdoq49LiIphvKmX9ecACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Don-Juan.jpg" /></a></div>I browsed the bookstore but unfortunately the only book I can remember reading specifically in
Boulder—and I didn’t read all of that—was Bill Stage’s paperback copy of <i>The
Teachings of Don Juan</i> by Carlos Castaneda.
I didn’t think much of it. It
wasn’t until his later book, <i>Tales of Power</i>, that I got deeply into his
work, and went back to read what I’d missed.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Besides the bookstore, I often gravitated to the
campus. I recall attending a public
lecture by Nobel Prize winning physiologist George Wald, who’d begun speaking
out against the warfare state. He
concluded his talk, accompanied by slides, by referring to the ultimate biological
cause of the Vietnam War. It wasn’t
clear to me what he meant, so I stayed afterwards and asked him. “You’re young now,” he said smiling, almost
teasing. “But soon you’ll have to make
a living and then you’ll understand—Protein!” Very apropos as it turned out, though just what the direct
relevance to Vietnam could be, however, still eludes me.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CBkwOyPZ4Gs/YEhvhlboLiI/AAAAAAAAfII/7yPCnsDwzQMg9O8xMw999zcUOqx-zPkdQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/seagull02.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CBkwOyPZ4Gs/YEhvhlboLiI/AAAAAAAAfII/7yPCnsDwzQMg9O8xMw999zcUOqx-zPkdQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/seagull02.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> A somewhat cryptic surviving note tells me that it was in
Boulder that I saw the 1968 film version of Chekhov’s play, <i>The Seagull</i>,
with David Warner and Vanessa Redgrave—the couple that had debuted together and
had such a strong effect on me in <i>Morgan!</i> a couple of years
earlier. (I’ve now seen at least four
versions of <i>The Seagull</i>, none I can think of on a live stage.)<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> All of my experiences that summer adhere to the music that
was playing in the background.
Everywhere, from Galesburg to Boulder, if a stereo was blasting, it was
the <i>Crosby, Stills and Nash</i> debut album. Or it was <i>Tommy</i>, the Who’s double album. Or if not those, then Neil Young’s <i>Everybody
Knows This Is Nowhere.</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_CV38SWx_pk/YEhvts2W2cI/AAAAAAAAfIM/pKX9q0D264QjLgSYpIY3JoCp3vHVdC0tACLcBGAsYHQ/s754/sink.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="754" data-original-width="746" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_CV38SWx_pk/YEhvts2W2cI/AAAAAAAAfIM/pKX9q0D264QjLgSYpIY3JoCp3vHVdC0tACLcBGAsYHQ/w198-h200/sink.jpg" width="198" /></a></div> <b>I</b>t was one of the
ironies of Boulder that it was legally dry—nothing alcoholic but 3.2 beer could
be served. (Despite my attempts at a
bar called The Sink, I never quite got the taste for it.) On the other hand, pot and psychedelics were
everywhere.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> My surviving notes record that on July 30—the day I heard
President Nixon on the radio declaring that Vietnam was “America’s finest
hour,” I dropped mescaline for the first (and so far only) time. Or what we were told was mescaline. Unless you know the chemist, you could never
be sure. (I seriously doubt that I ever
ingested a full strength pure psychedelic. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure
some of the marijuana had an extra ingredient.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> This event was at a cabin in the mountains about 20 miles
outside Boulder. The cabin was rented
for the summer by John, a friend of Bill Stage’s who had shared the living room
shag rug with me when he first got to town.
Since then he’d bought a truck and a couple of dogs—both blond Samoan
huskies, more or less puppies. One he
named Kachina. And he’d rented this
cabin. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hAyo49wWesA/YEhv-1NDiaI/AAAAAAAAfIY/uVMvzFOxHIQh-AOuswF6u2I55xGNd4siQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1044/meadow.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="783" data-original-width="1044" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hAyo49wWesA/YEhv-1NDiaI/AAAAAAAAfIY/uVMvzFOxHIQh-AOuswF6u2I55xGNd4siQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/meadow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>John was the host for this event, and there were five others
besides me. I’d met four of them,
including (let’s call them) Don and Susan, a couple. We dropped in a meadow about noon, and everyone immediately
left—singly and in pairs. I eventually
walked around, came upon one of the group—the only unattached woman—but she had
such an evident force field around her that my smile faded and I got as far
away as possible.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> So I walked, sprawled in another meadow in the sun, and
heard voices of some of the others but I couldn’t see them. Then when it
started raining lightly but threatening a storm, I returned to the original
meadow and gathered up everybody’s gear—radio, cameras, etc. that they’d
left—and took them into the cabin.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I remember the sense of distance and perhaps alienation from the others. I recorded a certain self-consciousness that
rippled through my experiences, as if I was watching a film or a series of
films, but I was also the lead actor.
My perceptions and emotional reactions were heightened, so when I saw
Don and Susan in an intense couples thing, I felt both sides of that. I had a lot of thoughts, about past and present and ongoing
relationships, among other subjects. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-agS5V24_YVY/YEhwNFjQE3I/AAAAAAAAfIc/EMpPVwu8fgAHuOk2z0QVgNk4-6IWfzKtACLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/rocktexture.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="1200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-agS5V24_YVY/YEhwNFjQE3I/AAAAAAAAfIc/EMpPVwu8fgAHuOk2z0QVgNk4-6IWfzKtACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/rocktexture.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>And eventually,
through the six hours or so, I had one lasting observation. I had enough visual hallucination to see the
whirls and striations in rocks or the rings in wood as if they were in motion. I saw them as process: for example, the
rocks forming from volcanic flow. Everything
seemed to be half growing and half decaying, simultaneously on the way to life
and death.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I was also sick much of the time. I had the sick stomach associated with mescaline but not intense
enough to throw up. Instead I had it
longer. But I wouldn’t call it a
full-blown psychedelic experience.
Afterwards, John felt there had been some speed in it.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b>F</b>eeling sick
wasn’t an entirely new experience in Colorado.
The altitude and the dry air played havoc with my sinuses, and often I felt
lightheaded or suddenly fatigued.
Eventually I heard fluid sloshing around in my good ear, which was
alarming enough that I saw a doctor. He
was a young ear specialist, and said it was the altitude. He asked about my hearing, and I told him of
my deafness in one ear. He tested it,
and thought the problem was in the middle ear.
He got very excited, because, though there was nothing that could be
done for it when I first was diagnosed as a child, there was treatment
now. He was so happy that I might get
my hearing back. But he did another
test and his face fell. No, it was the
inner ear after all, and still permanent hearing loss. I had been on this roller coaster before so
I wasn’t much fazed, but he took it hard.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Throughout all this I kept writing. Either falling asleep or just waking up on
that shaggy floor in Boulder one day, I had the germ of an idea that would
obsess me for decades, and lead to a novel and a screenplay in several
versions. It was a good story and pieces of it have appeared in other people’s
movies and in digital life since then.
But what I wrote then was a story about something happening in Colorado
that summer.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wRlrEyovqTg/YEhwhJNCP5I/AAAAAAAAfIo/U7Fb9v87FNYlPg4P2fa6m3IhJ7pwAv8rQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/Rulison-explosion-Dept-of-Energy.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="964" data-original-width="1200" height="161" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wRlrEyovqTg/YEhwhJNCP5I/AAAAAAAAfIo/U7Fb9v87FNYlPg4P2fa6m3IhJ7pwAv8rQCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h161/Rulison-explosion-Dept-of-Energy.jpg" width="200" /></a></div> Somehow I missed the controversy that summer over a
scheduled atomic bomb explosion in Colorado, the incredible purpose of which
was to test the feasibility of extracting natural gas by exploding 100 to 200
underground nuclear bombs across the gas field. There were protests organized by activists from Boulder and
Denver, but apparently there weren’t very many of them. And in early September, the bomb was
actually exploded underground, with demonstrators bouncing in the air above
it. (I was gone by then.) But eventually voters got it banned, and the
idea failed anyway—too much radiation in the gas, duh.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5DPcrKBL5yU/YEhwyjQTDxI/AAAAAAAAfIw/mcnCtzGRt04N0GjwToJdlTDbVhg44evugCLcBGAsYHQ/s750/rocky-nerve-gas-plant-pg9-p.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="639" data-original-width="750" height="171" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5DPcrKBL5yU/YEhwyjQTDxI/AAAAAAAAfIw/mcnCtzGRt04N0GjwToJdlTDbVhg44evugCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h171/rocky-nerve-gas-plant-pg9-p.jpg" width="200" /></a></div> However, there was another controversy that did get my
attention. Just about a month before I got there, a fire at the huge Rocky
Flats plant that manufactured plutonium components, and was highly radioactive,
got people wondering what other hazards were around them. While I was in Boulder it was revealed that
at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal there was some 21,000 clusters of nerve gas in
explosive bombs—enough to kill two trillion people, if there were that
many. They’d been manufacturing it
there for years. The canisters were basically
stored out in the open and decaying. A
stray bullet or a lightning strike that set off a chain reaction, a scientist
said, could wipe out a lot of Colorado in a matter of minutes.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> It was insanity on such a huge scale that it called for a
kind of Doctor Strangelove approach in the less that successful short story I
wrote towards the end of my stay in Colorado.
Bill Stage read it and liked it, and showed it to a friend he especially
respected when he stopped by. He read
quickly through it and made a face, directing his dour judgment to Stage,
although I was in the room.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I was crushed enough to remember this. It wasn’t just that it was hard to be
objective about new work, especially at a time of fluid standards, but that so
much depended on the last thing I wrote.
It could be the key to my future, which would go a long way to directing
my present.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> That said, reading it now, the guy wasn’t wrong.The main plot was funny, though perhaps not as ironic as I meant it,
and I can see what I was trying to do with the subplot in contrast, but it was
especially awful. It was at best a
shaky first draft.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XxCegy0TdXM/YEhxAdTyEFI/AAAAAAAAfI0/eTOALwyVowcngCGJ01_UeuN6wANR1TBEACLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/1280px-Mule-deer.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="850" data-original-width="1280" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XxCegy0TdXM/YEhxAdTyEFI/AAAAAAAAfI0/eTOALwyVowcngCGJ01_UeuN6wANR1TBEACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/1280px-Mule-deer.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> Besides which, the reality was more absurd than my story,
and became even stranger. Nerve gas
production stopped in 1969, and Rocky Mountain Arsenal eventually became,
first, a Superfund cleanup site, and now, a National Wildlife Refuge.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b>A</b>ll through my
Colorado stay, I saw Joni whenever we could manage it. She visited me in
Boulder at least once, when Stage was away for a few days. She also invited me down to Denver to meet
her sister and her sister’s husband when he came to town. He was a law student at Yale.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> What she didn’t say was that her mother would also be there,
for our first encounter ever. We met at some kind of public swimming pool, so I
was basically on nearly naked view for judgment by the family. Everybody got along fine, it seemed. The only memorable moment was at poolside
when I turned around to look down at the level below. It was lined with people in lounge chairs sunbathing. One was a teenage girl in her skimpy
swimsuit who looked up at me and extravagantly licked her lips. I turned away so she wouldn’t see me
laughing. I was living the theatre of
the absurd.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KjYIbgJSqKo/YEhxNWr_-cI/AAAAAAAAfI8/f45e9jFoCJkw1rM5tCgUm-2LBf886pN2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/boulder%2Brocks.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1202" data-original-width="1600" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KjYIbgJSqKo/YEhxNWr_-cI/AAAAAAAAfI8/f45e9jFoCJkw1rM5tCgUm-2LBf886pN2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/boulder%2Brocks.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /> Another time I remember specifically we were together was on
July 24, the day the Apollo 11 astronauts were scheduled to land on the
moon. Joni arrived with her friend
Kathy, for a drive along mountain roads.
My Boulder days were marked by
the huge flat rock faces visible from Cascade Avenue and the university
campus. Now we were twisting through
what were literally rocky mountains, with little vegetation. Maybe it was my mood as much as the scenery,
but sitting in the back seat while Kathy and Joni chatted in the front, I felt
like I was getting a preview of the moon. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4gLyJQkAp7w/YEhxZcF7ZcI/AAAAAAAAfJE/UNYgQ4mQMyAGc5GZ8zlL64xLeXzTeW0GACLcBGAsYHQ/s618/moon-landing.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="469" data-original-width="618" height="152" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4gLyJQkAp7w/YEhxZcF7ZcI/AAAAAAAAfJE/UNYgQ4mQMyAGc5GZ8zlL64xLeXzTeW0GACLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h152/moon-landing.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /> Kathy drove us to her house, and we watched the moon
landing, and saw Neil Armstrong become the first human to touch another world,
in the basement rec room.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b>W</b>hen we had sold and given away the elements of our
Galesburg household and headed west, the ultimate goal was California. This was a pause on our way to the Bay Area,
specifically Berkeley, where we both had friends. The last patch of the Colorado interlude was waiting for a “driveaway:”
some unknown car a stranger paid an agency to arrange to be driven to
California. High and dry Colorado was
not wearing well with me. I yearned for
an ocean.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V2pyTVsuWwY/YEhxpqVJP8I/AAAAAAAAfJQ/eajee55eKzMwQRY3yORCvzP_dkpDRYOVQCLcBGAsYHQ/s602/wbnod.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="446" data-original-width="602" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V2pyTVsuWwY/YEhxpqVJP8I/AAAAAAAAfJQ/eajee55eKzMwQRY3yORCvzP_dkpDRYOVQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/wbnod.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>At last we scored a car, and we prepared to leave. I took the bus down to Denver to pick it
up. Joni met me there. We were going to leave the next day. She packed an elaborate picnic lunch,
complete with a bottle of wine. We went
to Washington Park in Denver, near the sculpture of Eugene Fields’ most famous
characters: Wynken, Blynken and Nod. In
my perennially ongoing college novel, three of my main characters being swept
along by the tides of the times were Lincoln, Blakely and Nod. Eugene Fields also figured in the mythology
of the Illinois college I’d invented, since he’d been a Knox student for a year and later a columnist in Chicago.
But as it happened, he’d previously worked on a newspaper in Denver. Of course, Joni knew all of this. The sculpture was her surprise.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> We spread the picnic out under a tree near the
sculpture. After I’d had a glass or
two, Joni told me that she had decided not to go with me to California. She was instead going to Connecticut, where
her sister had secured a teaching job for her.
However, she though it was important for me to go on to California
myself. She did not use the phrase “to sow your wild oats” but I thought that
was the basic idea. I could rejoin her
later in Connecticut. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Who could blame her?
California wasn’t a plan. It’s
hard to say what it was. I won't go into the various ways I was a jerk. Still, I drove
the car to Boulder in shock. The next
day I felt worse—lightheaded, queasy, weak. This didn't seem to be the way to start a solo drive for a thousand miles across challenging country I'd never seen. Instead I drove
the car back to the driveaway agency in Denver. Eventually, Joni’s cousin Mary and her boyfriend decided to take
his vacation in California, and they kindly ferried me along with them. Their
camper wasn’t exactly a wooden shoe, but I had definitely sailed off. They dropped me in Berkeley. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-86597175867904546042022-12-31T22:13:00.000-08:002022-12-31T22:13:14.869-08:00R.I.P. 2022<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlTtUzOe36oIVHI8LOKtIDLMImrnERMM4HnTGBFAvK7XkKQ2FwtpOJXH0JMnyb_vHiCZWWhqQYrwWaE2XnQUmFJTAUHrwbUxx9MyvhPJV8KoLGbJDeolkfR_9fHCV2pI6j0aCP8HfR9LuErp571EmbV2AqqNlOjJOmnw3knOLza9sz0SIo6w/s1751/books2201.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1751" data-original-width="1552" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlTtUzOe36oIVHI8LOKtIDLMImrnERMM4HnTGBFAvK7XkKQ2FwtpOJXH0JMnyb_vHiCZWWhqQYrwWaE2XnQUmFJTAUHrwbUxx9MyvhPJV8KoLGbJDeolkfR_9fHCV2pI6j0aCP8HfR9LuErp571EmbV2AqqNlOjJOmnw3knOLza9sz0SIo6w/w568-h640/books2201.jpg" width="568" /></a></div><br />I first knew of Barbara Ehrenreich from a mutual
acquaintance as another freelance writer struggling to get published and
especially to get paid. This puts
additional light on her most cited work, <i>Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting
By in America,</i> in which she documented her own experiences working at
minimum wage jobs. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0my2G-ircKy18SPTO_9ErecMNAqEj-zpXNNvdE254CeGygdk2nJqyLPLsFj2WkHJ0qqGjd-KcBjNMAdZt39jetwvWOWlSuMiCgDvl9Hbf5oK6UO6bdywBfRLwU236JgDzKeGzvySVIcKG362KSx7gBWvzmdx3XN-8UopI19FA8hP1u9fU9A/s802/BarbaraEhrenreichBio.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="802" data-original-width="802" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0my2G-ircKy18SPTO_9ErecMNAqEj-zpXNNvdE254CeGygdk2nJqyLPLsFj2WkHJ0qqGjd-KcBjNMAdZt39jetwvWOWlSuMiCgDvl9Hbf5oK6UO6bdywBfRLwU236JgDzKeGzvySVIcKG362KSx7gBWvzmdx3XN-8UopI19FA8hP1u9fU9A/w320-h320/BarbaraEhrenreichBio.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> But she was also well-educated and well-connected, and was
published in the best newspapers and periodicals. Besides her single subject books, like the aforementioned 2001
volume, her periodical pieces were collected. For instance a volume covering
the 1980s, which was for her (and many others) a grim and disenchanting decade,
as reflected in her title: <i>The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes
from a Decade of Greed. </i>Her 1995
collection is titled <i>The Snarling Citizen.</i> All of these essays exhibit
her wit as well as insight. She spotted important destructive trends which
unfortunately still pertain. Throughout the decades, she wrote with great
acuity about the conditions and injustices women face (and she faced some
painful ones herself), and for that and her lively if uncomfortable reporting
on both gender and class, she deserves to be read and remembered, learned from
and imitated. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b>Greg Bear</b> was a productive and insightful science
fiction writer who I met at a Star Trek convention in Seattle, where he was
based. I especially admire his
visionary novel <i>Darwin’s Radio</i>. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipp1zFBlQHQzYYovHSsZPtxKO5kgXRJh2iG6DDOad75UUa4j8aW7d9_N0UesKTSa_oUhBYOoZzm0oipcMkzy0tIFG-Rp7FQsXRtCVvMIe7ibcNFgqNc9RGdfLjcAhPpPpAwqIk7XjEsHBMKOvgOxiGws_s-Knw1mSp2c-O847K5PBOzThcnw/s259/hazel%20henderson02.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="259" data-original-width="194" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipp1zFBlQHQzYYovHSsZPtxKO5kgXRJh2iG6DDOad75UUa4j8aW7d9_N0UesKTSa_oUhBYOoZzm0oipcMkzy0tIFG-Rp7FQsXRtCVvMIe7ibcNFgqNc9RGdfLjcAhPpPpAwqIk7XjEsHBMKOvgOxiGws_s-Knw1mSp2c-O847K5PBOzThcnw/w150-h200/hazel%20henderson02.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hazel Henderson</td></tr></tbody></table><br />I once saw <b>Hazel Henderson</b> essentially take over a
World Future Society convention. As a
futurist, environmental activist and economist, she was most dynamic in person,
but she reached wider audiences with her books, including <i>Creating
Alternative Futures</i> and <i>Building a Win-Win World</i>.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b>Suzi Gablik</b> was an artist who wrote about art. In 1970 she published the first in- depth
book on Rene Magritte (and helped make him the highly visible artist he is
today), after living with the artist and his wife. In the 1990s she broadened
her conception of art to include Indigenous and other worldviews, publishing<i>
The Reenchanment of Art.</i> As she became more concerned about
self-destructive civilization, she published <i>Conversations before the end of
time</i>, a collection of amazing interviews. Both I consider to be landmark
books.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b>Ted Mooney’s</b> day job was editing Art in America (so
he may have edited Suzi Gablik.) But
his contribution to literature is his individual vision in four novels, the
first being the best known: <i>Easy Travel To Other Planets </i>in 1981, which
an American literary critic placed on his list of the best 100 novels of the
twentieth century. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii5zFBKTTuR2LuiqneQQL1D90PUJJQ011sjgy6nZ7ggC33D8vUMUM8irDaYPwN7y_ODUNkbxFRBZ7uW77KcZh8pdsuXdsnpvj_tsp_NIewo6n7WQscvCYkLOrPSPZojsgkuyT9uk7vYCBGU6J1emwM1rWbJgQvn1em1EtqbeAHEns9SJoh2A/s1100/roger%20angell.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="824" data-original-width="1100" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii5zFBKTTuR2LuiqneQQL1D90PUJJQ011sjgy6nZ7ggC33D8vUMUM8irDaYPwN7y_ODUNkbxFRBZ7uW77KcZh8pdsuXdsnpvj_tsp_NIewo6n7WQscvCYkLOrPSPZojsgkuyT9uk7vYCBGU6J1emwM1rWbJgQvn1em1EtqbeAHEns9SJoh2A/s320/roger%20angell.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><b>Roger Angell</b> was best known for his writing on
baseball in the quintessential New Yorker style, but he also wrote fiction and
other non-fiction (plus the witty annual New Yorker Christmas rhymes), as well
as serving as the New Yorker’s fiction editor for many years. In that capacity he wrote me the most
flattering and most heart-breaking (literary) rejection letter of my life, in
which he said the New Yorker “could hardly bear not to publish” my story. History shows they all managed pretty well.
Angell was 101.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b>Doris Grumbach</b> wrote novels and was known for
literary criticism in the New Republic and other periodicals. Among those she reviewed (approvingly) was
novelist <b>Maureen Howard</b>, a writer I also enjoyed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I admired <b>Nancy Milford’s</b> biography of Zelda
Fitzgerald. <b>Hilary Mantel</b> wrote various kinds of novels and stories but
is most famous for her historical fiction.<b> Nicholas Evans</b> was a British
broadcaster and writer whose best-known book is <i>The Horse Whisperer</i>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b>Larry Woiwode</b> published much-praised fiction, essays,
biography and poetry from 1969 to 2022. Besides writing some 18 books, he
taught writing and ran university writing programs, so his students got the
benefit of somebody who walked the walk. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxPxpmLhTujMHshqZN46cUS2LTtXccJv8B7-pCjne3sQPWA9m232VVJ8Vly-fhSlkOJJwllOcNWyhqlYrFcsizFVpBg02o2DGQQFRgqe4k-JlmE_9kwLD4piyv3zO3iGLkmW5ghNmkkTnU8CwJctP5AS989EdS3QLOk0s3rp9r8bED-BRvQg/s1024/mccullough.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="712" data-original-width="1024" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxPxpmLhTujMHshqZN46cUS2LTtXccJv8B7-pCjne3sQPWA9m232VVJ8Vly-fhSlkOJJwllOcNWyhqlYrFcsizFVpBg02o2DGQQFRgqe4k-JlmE_9kwLD4piyv3zO3iGLkmW5ghNmkkTnU8CwJctP5AS989EdS3QLOk0s3rp9r8bED-BRvQg/s320/mccullough.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Before he was a familiar narrator for historical and nature documentaries, <b>David McCullough</b> was a prize-winning author on mostly historical subjects. Educated at Yale and a model of aristocratic culture, he was born and raised in Pittsburgh, which may have given him particular perspective on the subject of his first book, the Johnstown Flood.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Mike Davis</b> wrote penetrating books about cities and their future,
especially Los Angeles. From 1971 to 2012, <b>Todd Gitlin</b> wrote about mass
media and politics. Peace activist <b>Staunton Lynd</b> wrote and edited books
on political action and nonviolence. <b>William Rivers Pitt</b> is best known
for his reporting and political analysis of the American war in Iraq. <b>P.J. O’Rourke</b> wrote from the other
end of the political spectrum, though he started out as just a funny guy. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmN_oRksbSjCH4a-ZbPKxu21iOWEH9x9ZXYC_fmPgkuqgl8n4RR5y1fsNqf6vYojw_kxMAa40P_1d-V0vgaOdFgQzjl6Anyq72hnqLE5gGf0V_VTFhkqI5NbVswcSP1Q45LXAsGAE5sJIMbmyE6UEaCtslwE_bygRyCR8sl-xsY5Ap7yUbxA/s672/Walters-Barbara.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmN_oRksbSjCH4a-ZbPKxu21iOWEH9x9ZXYC_fmPgkuqgl8n4RR5y1fsNqf6vYojw_kxMAa40P_1d-V0vgaOdFgQzjl6Anyq72hnqLE5gGf0V_VTFhkqI5NbVswcSP1Q45LXAsGAE5sJIMbmyE6UEaCtslwE_bygRyCR8sl-xsY5Ap7yUbxA/s320/Walters-Barbara.jpg" width="229" /></a></div>Then there are those who are prominent for reasons other
than writing, but also published useful books. The latest name added to this
year’s rolls is <b>Barbara Walters,</b> whose death was announced on December
30. She was 93. She was a television news pioneer and an
expert interviewer, and she was famous.
Though I never met her, I once interviewed her on the phone for a piece
on Hugh Downs. Because of her schedule
she had to call me, and I didn’t know when she would. When she called—evidently in the makeup chair for some television
appearance—I was in the shower. So I in
fact interviewed Barbara Walters while naked.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Others who authored books in addition to their day jobs were
former Secretary of State <b>Madeleine Albright</b> (whose penultimate book was
titled <i>Fascism: A Warning)</i>, <b>Mikhail Gorbachev</b>, last leader of the
Soviet Union;<i> </i>and for all I know, <b>Pope Benedict</b> and <b>Queen
Elizabeth</b>. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyvDZbWQIVc9BKnzMG4Rl_S7ZIvb62YTq_OQETRzwXaKzjnS3h9bHeUaOUCMUUt7B9mJdqe6z6nW8ToTyLvmaicC1dKQoxq6WYANbAt2nhOXPRGmrZffzQw_2gOUGaYFPd7LpXfaK8XrR3qpFBRumAnbfP_dY02IFPgrCwLRA_dpAcIKVgkw/s275/lovelock.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyvDZbWQIVc9BKnzMG4Rl_S7ZIvb62YTq_OQETRzwXaKzjnS3h9bHeUaOUCMUUt7B9mJdqe6z6nW8ToTyLvmaicC1dKQoxq6WYANbAt2nhOXPRGmrZffzQw_2gOUGaYFPd7LpXfaK8XrR3qpFBRumAnbfP_dY02IFPgrCwLRA_dpAcIKVgkw/s1600/lovelock.jpg" width="275" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal">Scientist <b>James Lovelock</b> saw Earth as a living
system, developing (with others) the Gaia Theory, and warned of the dire
consequences to the planet of the climate crisis in a series of popular
books. He had 102 years of a remarkable
life. Environmentalist and writer <b>David Foreman</b> founded Earth First!</p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh72xuvxF40mU4f3A7iK5996dDIhCsKz6UtPMhf0Tz_RKS2VKOGx-9fufqeYK6aOyku0vXDa8L1k6oIvNAfCna7MYuQb2odLe3LTsDC1gfZjlQQ4UDzgW4pRP3AXrzO6zem9yXc4guf_8J09afgZegxs-gM-lI3UeSbK37GeAUjhKA3zIqUQ/s1024/tich.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh72xuvxF40mU4f3A7iK5996dDIhCsKz6UtPMhf0Tz_RKS2VKOGx-9fufqeYK6aOyku0vXDa8L1k6oIvNAfCna7MYuQb2odLe3LTsDC1gfZjlQQ4UDzgW4pRP3AXrzO6zem9yXc4guf_8J09afgZegxs-gM-lI3UeSbK37GeAUjhKA3zIqUQ/s320/tich.jpg" width="240" /></a></div> Revered Zen monk <b>Thich Nhat Hanh</b> reached millions
with his lectures, audio meditations and his many books. Stage director <b>Peter
Brook</b> wrote several important books about theatre. Before he made films, <b>Jean-Luc Godard</b>
wrote about them, and continued to talk about filmmaking at book length.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Print and television journalists who published books (and
some who didn’t) but passed in 2022 include: film <b>critic Sheila Benson, Mark
Shields, Bernard Shaw, Bill Plante, Jim Angle, Michael Gerson, John DiStasio,
Francis X. Clines, John Hughes, Ann Garrels, Richard Lopez,</b> <b>Shelby Scott</b>
(who I remember from WBZ in Boston), and <b>Robert Herman</b>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Chronicled in books and other media, the legendary work of
World War II and fashion photography </span><b style="text-align: left;">Tony Vaccaro,</b><span style="text-align: left;"> and of the photos of </span><b style="text-align: left;">Tim
Page</b><span style="text-align: left;"> in Vietnam and afterwards.</span></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidr5ec6ZsVj1fv2NGHMEf3UROSr8bK5vcatU_6be-CZiiNWort9NyHHGjZ8m7fx4xvkST8kR-pGpPjmRs_sQ60UI3_Xk2g9kOE4VFhFXBsWJRUwS4oHdYilPJXQgGe9hTL9KQ8L4i0G7Hi2qiKYIjNUVtN2sXGApVhEdPKHo243pv-A7VVkQ/s640/keane-big-eyes-gallery-03.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="640" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidr5ec6ZsVj1fv2NGHMEf3UROSr8bK5vcatU_6be-CZiiNWort9NyHHGjZ8m7fx4xvkST8kR-pGpPjmRs_sQ60UI3_Xk2g9kOE4VFhFXBsWJRUwS4oHdYilPJXQgGe9hTL9KQ8L4i0G7Hi2qiKYIjNUVtN2sXGApVhEdPKHo243pv-A7VVkQ/w200-h146/keane-big-eyes-gallery-03.jpg" width="200" /></a></div> Some subjects of journalistic and other writing that should
be mentioned but haven’t fit into previous categories include General Charles
McGee, last of the Tuskegee airmen of World War II, and Holocaust survivor
Edward Mosberg; American Indian activist Clyde Bellecourt, artists Claus
Oldenberg and Margaret Keane (those big-eyed figures popular in the 60s);
sportscaster Vin Scully, men’s basketball great Bill Russell and women’s
basketball great Lusia Harris; legal scholar Lani Guinier, co-founder of the
Environmental Defense Fund Art Cooley.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In general, writers don’t get a lot of respect in America,
though they may be celebrated locally or within a profession. So whatever degree of success or failure,
fame or obscurity these following writers had in their lifetimes, as long as
they have a book or a periodical piece in a library somewhere, or something
buried in the depths of cyberspace, there’s a chance some stranger may read it,
and their words will live again.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Also passing away in 2022 were: Andre Leon Talley, Anne
Harris, Barbara Love, Geoffrey Asche, Terry Garrity (<i>The Sensuous Woman</i>),
Carleton Carpenter, Bruce Duffy, Valerie Boyd, Leonard Kessler, Paul Cantor,
Shirley Hughes, Sally Watson, Bethany Campbell, Thomas F. Staley, Sydney
Shoemaker, Francois Bott, Tom Maddox, Julia Powell, Sharon Presley, JFK
conspiracy theorist David Lifton, Stuart Woods, Joanna Clark, Raymond Briggs,
Andrew Hubner, Helen Potrebenko, Terrance Green, Mark Girouard, Michael Malone,
Antonin Bajaja, Sue Hardesty, Luis Agular, Jean Franco.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Poets Gerald Stern, Peter Landborn Wilson, Simon Perchik,
Dennis Wilson, Noah Eli Gordon. Editor and publisher Jason Epstein, and
literary agent Sterling Lord (I was once represented by his esteemed agency.)
Let this list also honor the writers whose deaths were unnoticed. May they all rest in peace. Their work lives on.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-49584029423351121412022-12-07T21:55:00.015-08:002022-12-10T15:19:04.293-08:00Books That Matter 2022<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW4ZqLsPgWn57GipxpzS1nC5ewgs0_MKbH4GOMY-SdQwG4fJkc-GHINaf8y4dsFUtQGCLSAtBsyMFYOYBWFTP76RD3wHWJba-JpVy0dgX3Re4mlyqBdH7087572oFkmcSKgobWGXlSdZwQiMuQgx9jkizGoZqxnUtuioWe8uN64w8uQUqymBg/s1000/books%20bkstore01.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW4ZqLsPgWn57GipxpzS1nC5ewgs0_MKbH4GOMY-SdQwG4fJkc-GHINaf8y4dsFUtQGCLSAtBsyMFYOYBWFTP76RD3wHWJba-JpVy0dgX3Re4mlyqBdH7087572oFkmcSKgobWGXlSdZwQiMuQgx9jkizGoZqxnUtuioWe8uN64w8uQUqymBg/s320/books%20bkstore01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> Lots of books are published each year, and many of them contribute in some way: they inform, remember, correct the record, advance a new idea, edify, inspire and/or entertain. But there are a smaller number of books that matter.<p></p><p>Though what matters can mean different things. Some books matter because of their consequences over time. Novels (like plays, movies and songs) can become beloved, or in the overused term, "iconic" or even "classic." Typically they speak to different people in different ways, saying different things to each. Yet they remain memorable for many, and eventually become cultural touchstones that nearly everyone knows at least a little. </p><p>However, identifying such books is best accomplished years afterwards. Less time needs to pass perhaps to see a novel's influence in the world. For example, Kim Stanley Robinson's<i> The Ministry of the Future</i>, published almost two years ago, has clearly become a book that matters. Not only is it the author's best-selling novel but it has entered into, and in some ways focused, discussions on how to address the climate crisis future, not only in the U.S. but perhaps even more strongly in Europe and internationally. Richard Powers' two most recent novels, <i>The Overstory</i> and <i>Bewilderment</i>, have also exerted strong responses and focused emotions, inquiry and discussion on a range of related topics: not just forest issues, but questions of what constitutes life and intelligence, and the relationships of humans to the rest of life--what is increasingly called the "more than human world." </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxfHnI5NOB1VQfTCibiR2Xde1g_X-eMc09XC9-Ns7W0UCsp_-aEeqQht8RH8ZlJDa8UUXOY7JuWlYxZvgAGB2K3u01W3PwXZVEJy2kONmt6D1_Wvdn4RUlIp_slkUyzGDwJy9owrLWuu-EObeL56Cyb_O5eDDIqgT2Jl_l7w3Sspw-uFBTslE/s680/books%20capital.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="450" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxfHnI5NOB1VQfTCibiR2Xde1g_X-eMc09XC9-Ns7W0UCsp_-aEeqQht8RH8ZlJDa8UUXOY7JuWlYxZvgAGB2K3u01W3PwXZVEJy2kONmt6D1_Wvdn4RUlIp_slkUyzGDwJy9owrLWuu-EObeL56Cyb_O5eDDIqgT2Jl_l7w3Sspw-uFBTslE/w133-h200/books%20capital.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><br />Nonfiction books can perhaps be more easily identified more quickly as books that matter. Published nearly a decade ago now, Thomas Picketty's <i>Capital in the Twenty-First Century</i> is clearly a book that matters. Applying contemporary economic and historical analysis to very basic questions, Picketty both inspired and coalesced important thinking about basic changes in economic structures needed to make a stable and better future. Its analysis of the failures of today's economic order and prevailing conservative philosophy, particularly showing the dangers of the huge gaps between the few at the top and everyone else, has become influential even to approaches less radical than Picketty might favor, such as a simple return to the Keynesian economics that prevailed in the U.S. from FDR until Reagan. That analysis which shows that prosperity is attained by supporting the middle class and public sector investment is becoming U.S. policy again under the Biden administration, in what journalist Michael Tomasky is calling <i>Middle-Out Economics</i>, the title of his new book: perhaps a candidate for a book that matters. (In the meantime, this Politico<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/09/09/how-bidenomics-got-a-lot-more-progressive-00055653"> piece and interview</a> is a good summary.)<p></p><p>But books can matter before their influence is measured simply by being crucial contributions on crucial topics. They are groundbreaking in important ways, though not necessarily unique. Their importance depends as well on how riveting they are to read. I have several candidates for books that matter on this basis, published in the past year or so. It's not an exhaustive list; perhaps the minimum. The order in which I present them does not imply rank. What links them is that they present in a generous if not full way a dramatically new synthesis that tells us something startling about our world that upends conventional wisdom and offers a new framework for perceiving and acting in the world. In that sense, they bring the news.</p><p><b><i>The Dawn of Everything</i>: A New History of Humanity</b></p><p>by David Graeber and David Wengrow</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvrKMaKKld211OlUK7gDZjgZp4wQHPINGRSsVqEXQZgkZ-k6SC72cGTrT-0-XJSWzVk9INIs8B7t4sDYdaZ1vFk8jhtpq8an1Xl8K5uHY3deTQX1m70dVYT6VWL8mVMei-zu0G2R6yTSC83Gl6q3hHVpX6XdGzn_MtBJqQ5MEEjtoGfXcM9OQ/s500/bookdawn01.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="325" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvrKMaKKld211OlUK7gDZjgZp4wQHPINGRSsVqEXQZgkZ-k6SC72cGTrT-0-XJSWzVk9INIs8B7t4sDYdaZ1vFk8jhtpq8an1Xl8K5uHY3deTQX1m70dVYT6VWL8mVMei-zu0G2R6yTSC83Gl6q3hHVpX6XdGzn_MtBJqQ5MEEjtoGfXcM9OQ/s320/bookdawn01.jpg" width="208" /></a></div><br />Published towards the end of last year, this book is already influencing newer work. Its scope is enormous: nothing less than the human story. The linear story of development (or evolution of society) is a comfortable one for many reasons. It simplifies textbook categories, and it leads logically and inevitably to contemporary "advanced" societies, the apex of it all: from caveman to capitalism. Who loves this story? The same type folks who extracted "Social Darwinism" from the complexities of Darwinian evolution. Robber barons like John D. Rockerfeller and Andrew Carnegie saw that it was good, and gave it their monied blessings.<p></p><p>According to the two Davids, both archaeologists, the story is wrong, right from the beginning. Modern humans weren't the sole apex of evolution--other humanoids had real societies, too, with all the elements of intelligence and expression. We carry some of their genes. </p><p>Society did not develop or even change from hunter-gatherer to agricultural to urban. All these forms coexisted and intermingled, and there were many hybrids. There were urban societies without kings or rulers, and tyrannical hunter-gatherers. The Davids may be a little judgey in their descriptions of the varieties of Native (North and South) American societies, but they make their point--they were not simple or primitive or identical; they were often sophisticated, complex, various and sometimes large. </p><p>This book emphasized an historical point that has since been taken up by others: that the form of democracy that governed the Six Nations Confederacy (the Haudenosaunee) that lasted longer than our democracy has so far, was patiently explained to Benjamin Franklin and others by some of its leaders, and informed the formation of the non-Native American democracy. Too bad it didn't also adopt the Prime Directive of the Haudenosaunee: in all decisions take into account the seventh generation to come.</p><p>This book of 692 pages is replete with examples, written with verve and wit, so it can read like a wonder book. We don't really need Marvel or the other purveyors of outsized fantasies: it's there in the histories that have either only recently discovered or studied, or conveniently ignored because they complicate or contradict the main story--the one that has gone a long way towards the fix we're in, on the brink of destroying it all.</p><p><b><i>An Immense World</i>: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us</b></p><p>by Ed Yong </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivcehz1njSyC52v7wfKcDp9Qb8LvCN_1ATg1DIQxbo0jV9McXfmbjQ1mtQ0ADGw36GpoPIZiCkQgcBjp7Mw72DZvojyUHqy2SWq-f9xY_vouPBFgBHdK7r8dUkNSR_JTTKdNzQToF0RneFNLZkGvl3crTRSpatBXQ3RO7JfvQb574x9H-pf5Q/s1200/bookiw01.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="942" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivcehz1njSyC52v7wfKcDp9Qb8LvCN_1ATg1DIQxbo0jV9McXfmbjQ1mtQ0ADGw36GpoPIZiCkQgcBjp7Mw72DZvojyUHqy2SWq-f9xY_vouPBFgBHdK7r8dUkNSR_JTTKdNzQToF0RneFNLZkGvl3crTRSpatBXQ3RO7JfvQb574x9H-pf5Q/s320/bookiw01.jpg" width="251" /></a></div><br />In Richard Powers’
novel <i>The Overstory</i>, the character that most readers noted and
remembered is a woman scientist who discovers that trees in a forest
communicate with each other, and help each other chemically to ward off
disease. She is ridiculed by scandalized
scientists and forced out of academia until her research is vindicated, and she
becomes a kind of folk hero.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> This character is based on a real life researcher, Suzanne
Simard, whose book <i>Finding the Mother Tree</i> subsequently became
popular. But even more popular was a book
on the same theme published a few years earlier by forester Peter Wohlleben,
with the more arresting title <i>The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How
They Communicate</i>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> That book’s success, expanding on revelations about the
complex life of the forest, led to a series of similar books by Wohlleben and
many others, with titles often beginning with “The Hidden Life of” or “The
Secret Life of” various animals, plants and other natural phenomena, including
ice. These books reflected new research
but also observations that had gone unnoticed or derided because they
contradicted established views on the natural world as comprised of simple if
sometimes mysterious living objects, of interest mostly as exploitable for
human ends.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> All of this helped prepare readers for the June 2022
publication of <i>An Immense World</i> by the much praised science journalist
Ed Yong. It turns out that everything has a life hidden to humans, partly
because our current preconceptions block awareness, but also because other
lifeforms experience the world in vastly different ways.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The key concept here is <i>umwelt</i>, named by early 20<sup>th</sup>
century zoologist Jakob von Uexkull. It
refers to the sensory world of animals, determined by what senses they have and
what they can do. As Yong demonstrates
through scientists he visits, these vary considerably. Some creatures taste with their feet, others
hear ultrasound or see into the ultraviolet. They may sense electromagnetic
waves.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Senses that we
share with other animals are used in different ways, and the balance among them
can be radically different. Dogs smell
and hear better than they see—so their world is one of aroma trails. Even their color vision is different, and
one of the more startling illustrations in this book compares the colors in a
typical room that we see, and how dogs see them.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->Though sometimes based on dismissed and forgotten insights, most of the research is new,
as scientists use new technologies to dispel old assumptions. That birds can’t smell is one of them, but
there are many more. Some of these
discoveries are astonishing: for
instance, the vocalizations and communication that goes on out of human hearing
range. We can detect only a fraction of
whales’ songs, and it turns out that mice sing to each other. At some points this book starts to sound
like Douglas Adams’ humorous takes in<i> The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
</i>(that mice actually run experiments on humans, that dolphins can escape human
catastrophe) may have more substance than expected.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Apart from the wondrous details, there are larger points
here. Humans assumed a lot about other
life based on their own sensorium, but we’ve missed quite a lot. “Our Umwelt is still limited; it just
doesn’t <i>feel</i> that way. To us, it
feels all-encompassing. It is all that
we know, and so we easily mistake it for all there is <i>to </i>know. This is an illusion, and one that every
animal shares.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But science and other forms of observation at the service of
human imagination can help us see not only some of the ways other lifeforms
live and communicate, but how our own activities disrupt their lives. Light pollution wreaks havoc on various
birds and other animals; noise pollution in the oceans endangers whales and
other sea creatures. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Despite the book's length, Yong's precise but informal voice and his flourishes of wit make it eminently readable, yet the science reporting itself is admirable. Even the footnotes are interesting reading. It helps that what the science is reporting remains continuously fascinating. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> This research has greatly complicated human conceptions of
what other lifeforms are, and expands the notions, extent and range of
sentience and intelligence. It is this theme that James Bridle takes up in his
book.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><b> <i>Ways of Being</i>: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for
Planetary Intelligence</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">By James Bridle </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidYA8hP_1FHerM-zCHQ0KVhFUecEEuWM8C0yrwn3m8NGxfUdqPuCs5-NugLVho9HjSDGKFOfb1KQwtS7W6zeOxr1e2kqN-l6YHsOkZ9noNgrTGz6hmu1xSQk6O_A4H7N5xMGg4nxaVPvMsSFT6hLS-Aofe-X-_I02roN8_wA3PrtjzCQxQRFw/s2700/bookwob01.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2700" data-original-width="1800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidYA8hP_1FHerM-zCHQ0KVhFUecEEuWM8C0yrwn3m8NGxfUdqPuCs5-NugLVho9HjSDGKFOfb1KQwtS7W6zeOxr1e2kqN-l6YHsOkZ9noNgrTGz6hmu1xSQk6O_A4H7N5xMGg4nxaVPvMsSFT6hLS-Aofe-X-_I02roN8_wA3PrtjzCQxQRFw/s320/bookwob01.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>Bridle writes and thinks chiefly about technologies, and his
disquiet about the direction and limitations of artificial intelligence sent
him to explore other kinds of intelligences in the natural world.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Again, the concept of Umwelt is evoked. Bridle also refers
to both Richard Powers’ <i>The Overstory</i> and Kim Stanley Robinson’s <i>The Ministry
for the Future</i> as starting points for his own explorations. He ranges far and wide, from our humanoid
ancestors to the intelligence of slime mold, and applies his observations to
the new machines. “The idea of forming
new relationships with non-human intelligence is the central theme of this
book,” he writes. “It emanates from a
wider and deeper dawning: the increasingly evident and pressing reality of our
utter entanglement with the <i>more-than-human world</i>.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Bridle’s cogent and provocative musings apply not only to
the possible futures of machine intelligence but, as Yong’s book does, to the
endangered life of this planet and the necessity to actively preserve it. As we discover and admit the extent of
intelligent life and its beautiful complexity, we are close to destroying it.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The singular and expressive organization of information and the inspired insights more than compensate for some slackness and an editorial lapse or two. Bridle's ideas and their expression in this book
merit serious attention.</p><p class="MsoNormal">This recent run of books on non-human life, culminating so far in Yong and Bridle, should end any credibility given to the traditional notion of animals as natural automatons, important only as they are useful to humans, with no feelings to consider or intelligence to respect and learn from. Gaia expanded the definition of life, and now we grapple with kinds of intelligence not only in familiar animals but plants, microbes and other life. We'd better start learning.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> One of the ideas that Bridle interrogates is the notion
promoted by digital industries and other enthusiasts that intelligence is
primarily based on calculation. That is
a theme in the latest novel by Dave Eggers.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <b><i>The Every</i>: Or At Last A Sense of Order, Or The Final Days of
Free Will, or Limitless Choice is Killing The World</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">A novel by Dave Eggers </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifmKwuU3rnJC-Z0rIk0iMvNoevm1qMRL_Ry5zPRm4j5fKnBMMz5M5ndW1B62kKOQfDoK2P7ZHZOopZm-g2GRUcemtK1jkt8hgn2Da9p5wUdgEFQOu-mGxccX8vA8o5InnZ-G39lZc6sTHJ4sPl6jJMa561DhmETxe7MYv4LVDXUp3HuYHutg0/s1000/bookev01.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="713" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifmKwuU3rnJC-Z0rIk0iMvNoevm1qMRL_Ry5zPRm4j5fKnBMMz5M5ndW1B62kKOQfDoK2P7ZHZOopZm-g2GRUcemtK1jkt8hgn2Da9p5wUdgEFQOu-mGxccX8vA8o5InnZ-G39lZc6sTHJ4sPl6jJMa561DhmETxe7MYv4LVDXUp3HuYHutg0/s320/bookev01.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>The Hollywood pitch for this novel might be <i>Alice in
Wonderland</i> meets <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i>, or perhaps <i>Brave New World</i>
would be a closer match to its onrushing dystopia.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In this stand-alone sequel to Eggers’ <i>The Circle</i>, the
Facebook-like corporation has merged with Amazon (referred to here as the
Jungle) to form a monopolistic continuum, not only of business, not only of culture,
but of shared reality. Welcome to The
Every.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Delaney is a young woman intent on destroying The Every from
the inside. She is intelligent,
intuitive, creative and acutely observant, but the plot hinges on her also
being repeatedly naïve about the outcome of her efforts, as she proposes a
series of outrageous changes that turn out to be big hits with The Every users,
which seems to include Everyone.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Eggers is not shy about stating his theme early in the
novel: “the war on subjectivity.”
Everything is objectified to decision by calculation. (This includes the
maximum number of allowable pages in a readable novel, which is 577—as it
happens, the exact length of this book.) Ironically this also results in the
disappearance of actual objects and authentic life, in favor of digital imagery
and ideological judgments. The result
is a society caught in self-referential stasis, that punishes difference. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The novel does not fall easily into political categories. It
exposes corporate conformism, but also its effect of cancel culture. The
reasons (or excuses) given for much of the social pressure to conform are to
save the environment and promote social justice.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Delaney is a former forest ranger, so it may have seemed
natural to her to organize an outing of The Every employees to visit Pacific
Coast seals, but it was a disaster from start to finish, especially when they
were confronted with the realities of these animals and their lives. This incident is outrageously exaggerated
and yet totally believable, and ultimately dystopic, especially given what
these previous books tell us.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> It’s also funny, as is the novel generally, in a <i>Dr.
Strangelove </i>sort of way. It has some characteristics of a satire of a monomanical corporate culture becoming a monoculture at large. Delaney’s best
friend and fellow skeptic is the first to succumb to The Every’s embrace, supplying
a horror movie vibe (think <i>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</i>.) Delaney’s own fate involves a confrontation
with the head of The Every, who was the naïve young woman protagonist of <i>The
Circle</i>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> There are many other related issues raised in the novel, in an
entertaining narrative context that feels real right now. The story is in development for a TV series,
but right now this is a book that matters.</p><p class="MsoNormal">These four books matter because they give us crucial new information that creates a new context of how we see the world, our society and ourselves. Right now there is no more important context that the relationship of humanity to the rest of life, and secondarily to the digital life humans are creating (for if we don't solve the survival problems associated with the first, the second won't much matter.) They are robust enough to generate further discussion, and they cry out for action. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-73311754299441967802022-11-16T22:53:00.001-08:002022-11-16T23:05:20.521-08:00History of My Reading: To Boulder Go 1969 (Part 1)<p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZBodprWwqRA/YDSvDSMHvnI/AAAAAAAAfDs/ZchStdJnxgYVtWMHBzYIHVrTuN7kAX0-wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/fort%2Bcolllins%2B1969.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1677" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZBodprWwqRA/YDSvDSMHvnI/AAAAAAAAfDs/ZchStdJnxgYVtWMHBzYIHVrTuN7kAX0-wCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/fort%2Bcolllins%2B1969.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fort Collins, Colorado 1969</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><b><span style="font-size: medium;">I</span></b>n June 1969 Joni and I left Galesburg and headed west. She had her Knox College degree, though I
believe we left before graduation ceremonies. Our immediate destination was
Colorado, where Joni would visit with her parents and her older sister, who was
also visiting from Connecticut. I had a
bed in the basement of a house in Fort Collins, and then a space on the floor
in a Boulder apartment. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Partly this was because I was not a popular person with her
parents, or at least, they did not approve of their daughter being involved
with this feckless hippie with impractical dreams and dubious prospects. And long hair.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But I also had a reason to be in Boulder: I had applied and
been accepted at a summer writing workshop, officially the annual Writers
Conference at the University of Colorado.
For even with the beginning of my disillusion at the Iowa Writers
Workshop, I had no other direction or vocation. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <span style="font-size: medium;"><b>E</b></span>ven after Iowa, I kept writing and sending things out to
magazines, literary and otherwise. I
still have appointment calendars from 1968 and 1969 that record nothing but
notes of poems or stories sent out on that date and to which publication, and
notes on the dates when they came back with a rejection slip, and notes on the
date I sent them somewhere else.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> In those days there was varied advice on how to manage
manuscripts. The accepted rule then was
you could submit a poem or story to only one publication at a time. Some counseled sending a story to “top
markets” first, and work down to the little magazines. Or (with poems in particular) start with
publications that favor the style or subject of your work.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I tried them both. I
wasn’t very skilled at either, and wound up trusting to luck and serendipity,
especially when desperate, which was frequently. I was also easily discouraged,
so after a few rejections the stories never made it far down the supposed
literary food chain. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> This was when you actually received rejection slips and
letters, instead of an unwholesome silence, a judgmental void. There was a kind of code to rejections as
well. A form rejection slip, usual
polite but impersonal, was the bottom rung.
A note or a few handwritten words indicating your work had some merit
was better. A request for more, signed
by an actual editor, was near the top.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div style="text-align: left;"> The best rejection slips came from a small literary magazine
in the Bay Area called Kayak, edited by George Hitchcock. Hitchcock, Kayak and especially the
rejection slips have become legendary. </div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2smafpvhDYQ/YDS3KiZfPTI/AAAAAAAAfFU/dvcXMrPLhkAOwQu_asJ_88IRZhauvRGZACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/kayak%2Brejectj.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1291" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2smafpvhDYQ/YDS3KiZfPTI/AAAAAAAAfFU/dvcXMrPLhkAOwQu_asJ_88IRZhauvRGZACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/kayak%2Brejectj.jpg" /></a></div><br />The slips themselves used an arcane clip art. Apparently the art itself made pretty clear
when the submission was horrible. (Fortunately I never got one of those, but
I’ve seen them now online.) The others
were funny—or as funny as rejection slips could be. The one I prized did include a handwritten request for more
poems, signed by Hitchcock. (I came across it recently and put it in a safe place. As soon as I figure out where that is, I'll scan and post it. This example is off the Internet.)<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Kayak published mostly poetry by the likes of Robert Bly and
James Wright. Hitchcock liked the
slightly surreal—right up my alley. Though I gave up before getting a poem
published there, in the fullness of years I was grateful to be among the near
misses. And I was able to return the compliment by favorably <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Souvenirs-from-charting-new-waters-in-U-S-letters-2577058.php">reviewing</a>
Hitchcock’s collection of his own work in the San Francisco Chronicle, where I
mentioned the rejection slips. His
editor let me know that Hitchcock, then in his 90s, had gotten a kick out of
it. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> But during that 1968-69 year I only got a couple of poems
published in a really obscure magazine called the Riverside Quarterly, besides
a fiction in the first issue of Knox’s new literary magazine Catch. My first noted literary magazine acceptance
was forwarded to Colorado from the Carleton Miscellany, for, prophetically, a
kind of book review or appreciation of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Check included.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> So a writing workshop in Colorado was another opportunity
for what’s now called networking, and maybe learning something useful, if not
about writing, then about the writing biz.
Besides, going to school was about all I knew how to do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ODaFAIpiQOs/YDSwE98m4qI/AAAAAAAAfD8/7kuaB8tYv_cMKBnwl4qGgUD84nPQkNU5wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1000/harlan-ellison-store.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1000" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ODaFAIpiQOs/YDSwE98m4qI/AAAAAAAAfD8/7kuaB8tYv_cMKBnwl4qGgUD84nPQkNU5wCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h225/harlan-ellison-store.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <b><span style="font-size: medium;">T</span></b>here were several
name writers who taught separate workshops over two weeks in June. I was in the class run by Harlan
Ellison. He came from a different
tradition than the writers in Iowa City, or the ones we read in literature
classes. He wrote for pulp magazines
and now glossy and prestige magazines, primarily science fiction but also
horror and erotica, sometimes under pseudonyms, as well as nonfiction of
various kinds. He went to Hollywood and
wrote all kinds of movies and television.
He won lots of awards, mostly for genre fiction. He wrote a lot. He’d published hundreds of stories by this time, when he was in
the early prime of a long career. His
formal education consisted of 18 months of college.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Ellison was known as a rebel, a gadfly, and an aggressive
adherent and promoter of New Wave science fiction, the latest revolution in the
field. He backed up his Civil Rights
and anti-war credentials with a hip look and attitude. He came into the classroom in bright
colorful shirts of a unique style—maybe Carnaby Street meets Sunset Strip. I remember especially the huge floppy
collars with a kind of exaggerated Peter Pan collar shape. Or maybe the memory
is metaphorical, for that was a major impression I had—that with his boyish
face, his enthusiasm and combative energy, and his small stature, he was a kind
of a countercultural Peter Pan.
Although at the time I met him he was 38.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Ellison’s brash energy and entertaining patter in the
classroom perhaps obscured as much as expressed his actual intelligence. You
can see something of what he was like in his interviews with Tom Snyder on the
Tomorrow Show a few years later, some still on YouTube. (He was one of Snyder’s favorite
guests.) </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> At the end of our first class he gave us an assignment to
write a few hundred words on the old Reader’s Digest canard: the most
unforgettable character we’d ever met.
I wrote about a fictitious person based on someone I’d just met in Fort
Collins, although it ended with a surreal fantasy.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I was still sleeping
in the basement of a house in Fort Collins rented by, among others, the
boyfriend of Joni’s cousin Mary. One
night Mary took me to a mountain encampment of some of her freaky friends, and I set
my story there. It was centered on another
young woman who was there and who Mary had talked about, but it was only vaguely based
on her. The 1968 Roman Polanski film of “Rosemary’s Baby” must have been a hot
topic (though I’m not sure I’d seen it) because the piece was also a kind of
parody of the idea of an unusual birth.
It was called “Geraldine’s Baby.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aFHoc_q2pTc/YDSw4L4CDXI/AAAAAAAAfEM/pJDLXMfe-qwXMKx_rgiv7yLDUwGxEovEACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Nor%2Blibraryj.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aFHoc_q2pTc/YDSw4L4CDXI/AAAAAAAAfEM/pJDLXMfe-qwXMKx_rgiv7yLDUwGxEovEACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Nor%2Blibraryj.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> I obviously had been to the University of Colorado Norlin
Library by then, or at least walked up to it, because I used the motto engraved
in stone above its entrance as a quote before the story: “Who Knows Only His
Own Generation Remains Always A Child.”
But I took from it something other than the intended message. In just
about everything I wrote, I was trying to express the realities and the points
of view of my generation, and why we rejected the past; why we fought so hard
to protect our innocence.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Still, I wanted to live a life as a writer, and so I was of
at least two minds—and about three hearts—about the writing biz. I was repelled by the pretensions and fake
preciousness I’d seen in the academy (and feared I saw in the mirror) but I had
not given up the large ambitions. Still, I’d grown up on science fiction, and
now Vonnegut and the New Wave writers were bringing contemporary ideas and
approaches to it. Besides, what fun it
would be to be published in a pulp magazine!
So I was more than willing to listen to Harlan Ellison.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8ZA_BUk_4zk/YDSxW-1UHvI/AAAAAAAAfEU/sIUQtYdzTs0mD-ryY4SF6WF4t79-1d7_ACLcBGAsYHQ/s620/ellison-dangerous-e1438978544559.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="418" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8ZA_BUk_4zk/YDSxW-1UHvI/AAAAAAAAfEU/sIUQtYdzTs0mD-ryY4SF6WF4t79-1d7_ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/ellison-dangerous-e1438978544559.jpg" /></a></div> These workshops were also useful as a way to evaluate where you were in relation to your peers, and to
professionals. I was pleasantly
surprised that Ellison singled out my story for praise at the next class. But
it also made me greedy. Ellison had
edited the New Wave anthology <i>Dangerous Visions</i>, and he was editing its
sequel. The next day he also praised
the story of another participant in our workshop, and word went around that he
bought that story for the new anthology.
I was determined to make that sale with my next story.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> At some point I moved to a more convenient distance, to a
small but fairly swanky apartment on Cascade Avenue in Boulder, and a sleeping
bag spot on a shag carpet in the living room.
My host was a tall man with a big beard and long hair named Bill
Stage. He had known Joni’s Knox friend
Kathy, also from Denver, and he grudgingly agreed to let me stay one
night. But when he saw me he had the
opposite reaction that Joni’s parents had—which was typical of those days. Once he saw that I wasn’t a frat boy but
another long-hair, he relaxed and told me I could crash there as long as I
wanted.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> My longer story for the workshop was titled “Escape From
Cloud Village.” It was about a young
woman fresh from college who tries to leave her planned suburb but it won’t let
her—lawn sprinklers and hoses, faux antique lampposts, even her own car,
conspire against her. Looking at it now
I see wisps of Vonnegut and Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. But it does anticipate in a way some of the
suburban creepiness of my contemporary, Steven Speilberg. As well as perhaps one way of looking at
future events in my own life.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The story earned me a one-on-one conference with Harlan
Ellison. I got a typed note from him on
the same kind of yellow second sheet paper I used: “Bring this in to talk to
me. It is extraordinarily good. And in some silly ways you can avoid, very
bad. We should rap about this one. You might be able to sell it.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I don’t think my conference was his first of the day, for
when I arrived Ellison was restless and a bit distracted. As I entered the room he put a record on a
tiny record player and began dancing with a young woman companion in her flower
power mini-dress. I didn’t know how to
react to that, except that I recall I had the feeling that maybe he was trying
too hard.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I remember a sentence he complimented (“do you know how good
this is?”), the word he said didn’t mean what I thought it meant (not entirely
true, but he was right that it was the wrong word.) He may have told me that the mother’s speech was too much like a
speech—anyway, he should have. And I
waited for more but...that was pretty much it.
I don’t remember a clear direction or advice on publishing it, and above
all, no offer to buy it for the second <i>Dangerous Visions </i>anthology. He
was ready for another dance.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> So I left, dissatisfied. I didn’t know what to do next. I
was pretty much where I’d been before the workshop. More generally, lost in the big world, I was feeling the
pressures of reality, though I fought them off. Even as I knew my work wasn’t quite there, I didn’t yet have the
experience nor the temperament to know how to make it better. I rejected the uncomprehending, doubting or
dismissive voices from outside, but their echoes were inside, and deep. I mostly had the wild delight of creating,
as I fought off the fear of a budding self or soul being obliterated. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F1ueV69n17M/YDSx5bCnXWI/AAAAAAAAfEc/ehyBGMXYZp0QJM3NpmMo1EtGhzdWuQ8ywCLcBGAsYHQ/s600/Again%252C_Dangerous_Visions_cover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="507" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F1ueV69n17M/YDSx5bCnXWI/AAAAAAAAfEc/ehyBGMXYZp0QJM3NpmMo1EtGhzdWuQ8ywCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Again%252C_Dangerous_Visions_cover.jpg" /></a></div><br /> As for my haughty hopes about the anthology, it would be
several years before <i>Again, Dangerous Visions</i> was published. Scanning
the contents, I don’t think that story from someone in my workshop is in it—at
least I didn’t recognize the name. I
did, however, recognize many names, like Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Gene Wolfe and
other established science fiction writers.
And a novella called “The Word For The World Is Forest” by Ursula K.
LeGuin, which won that year’s Hugo Award and is now one of the immortals, as
well as one of my personal classics. It
makes my greed especially laughable. <p></p><p class="MsoNormal"> <b><span style="font-size: medium;">T</span></b>he workshops concluded with an outdoor evening of readings
by participants. It was an open
reading, so I signed up to read two poems.
I didn’t get on for awhile, which turned out to be to my benefit. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The poems I selected were fairly long, and they were meant
to be read aloud—in a way the culmination of my experiments at Knox and
Iowa. One was a sound poem titled
“Notable American Fascists.” Each
section ended with a name that was well-known then, though mostly forgotten
now, except possibly for J.Edgar Hoover.
The audience loved it, and excited the performer in me. So I took the microphone off the stand and
held it close to make the sounds into it.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The other was called “Litany”: a form I knew well. I especially remember the mornings in 6<sup>th</sup>
and 7<sup>th</sup> grade we spent in the dark, cavernous Cathedral, drowsily
listening on aching knees to one or another of the Catholic litanies intoned on
appropriate days of the liturgical calendar.
I recall writing the first draft of it in Galesburg, possibly alone one
night in Robin Metz’s house the previous summer, on folded gray-white paper
that had been the wrapping of a book.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> My litany was full of word play and extravagant language,
occasionally undercut by a joke (a series of tremulous long lines beginning
with the vocative “O,” then undercut by “O Christmas tree.”) The point of view also resonated with the
1969 audience: “Alkaseltzer of the middle class, you O most mascara-ed of
mistreated infants, of wandering and wounded species, instincts gone weird
beyond recall”/ O blossom of the tentative, frightened flower!”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I don't think it holds up now, but it worked for that moment. It benefited by being preceded by the hushed
lines of short poems grounded in moments of personal experiences. My lines released that quiet audience
tension in recognition and laughter. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> But that was
turnabout—for these poems on a page would likely have been met with embarrassed
silence in a workshop classroom. They
were meant for this, for performance.
So it surprises me now to realize that this was the first time I read my
verses in public away from Knox College.
And it would turn out to also be the last time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6U-NXvdlCwI/YDSytkqj5EI/AAAAAAAAfEo/SHd1gY8300Y0yQplFSc4pgj1tfj1H2CjwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/s-l400.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6U-NXvdlCwI/YDSytkqj5EI/AAAAAAAAfEo/SHd1gY8300Y0yQplFSc4pgj1tfj1H2CjwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/s-l400.jpg" /></a><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Towards the end of the evening, Harlan Ellison swept in with
his entourage, and read a poem he’d evidently just written about ungrateful
students who only wanted a piece of him.
And then he swept out.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> <br /><b><span style="font-size: medium;">A</span></b>nother memory of this writers conference is distinct and
separate from these other memories. It involves a party.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> There were always parties connected with these events
involving writers, and in those days they were drunken parties. This one was at
a private residence. I remember two older writers. One was the novelist Vance Bourjaily, a writer I’d read and
respected (and still respect.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> The other was a man
I’d not heard of, and whose name I can no longer remember. (I should say at this point that in
searching for a photo for yet another writer at this conference, I came upon a
newspaper story about the conference itself that provided his name, which led
me to more information about him. But I’m going to stick to my original plan of
keeping him anonymous. However, I
thought I remembered his first name—and I did.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> He was in his late 40s but seemed older to me. I remember him in a dark suit. He was slightly built, though perhaps a bit paunchy, with a
bristly beard. When I first met
him, he was an easy, nervy raconteur with a wealth of stories and gossip about
other writers, artists and actors—his acquaintances ranged from Robert Frost
and Joseph Heller to Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis-- and especially about
editors, publishers and Hollywood producers.
He’d lived mostly in New York in the 1950s and early 60s. I was among a small group listening to him.
The theme mostly was how corrupt the whole writing game was. Good writing wasn’t valued, it wasn’t even
wanted. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He had done a lot of writing for print—mostly magazines but
also books, and some work for film and television, often using pseudonyms. He
claimed he had ghost-written popular novels, including a giant best-seller by a
woman novelist, perhaps Jacqueline Susann. The manuscript was so bad when he
got it, he said, it nearly drove him crazy.
It cost him more than he was paid to do it. He was funny, acerbic, and
seemed to know a lot. He was smoking
and drinking all the while. We probably
all were.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-g-9dZ1kR-hw/YDS2VirQqfI/AAAAAAAAfFM/I11uaVTqf1w8UmU3xpPOT4JJqmnAOOZhwCLcBGAsYHQ/s580/image.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="464" data-original-width="580" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-g-9dZ1kR-hw/YDS2VirQqfI/AAAAAAAAfFM/I11uaVTqf1w8UmU3xpPOT4JJqmnAOOZhwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/image.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> After the party I caught a ride back to campus. I was in the front seat and he was in the
back with his current girlfriend. I gathered that he’d been divorced several
times. He was still talking. Now the
undercurrent of bitterness in his stories became prominent. He was drunk. We
probably all were.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> There was a funny conversation in the front seat, so I
wasn’t paying direct attention to him.
But I could hear him getting angrier, less coherent. His girlfriend was trying to calm him, but
then he turned on her. He was nasty to her. That’s what got my attention. That’s what made me resolve I wasn’t going
to end up like him, even if it meant giving up this whole idea of being a
writer. I’m not sure all of this was
entirely conscious at the time, but looking back, that’s the substance of that
moment.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> It was only after I came upon his name while looking for a
photo of someone else at the conference that I learned that he died just a few
years after that night. I don’t condemn
his life. He left children and now
grandchildren, he had interesting and accomplished friends, he wrote for high
profile publications and was by most measures successful. But he remained for me a cautionary tale. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4-3Uw00AxLs/YDS0gXOfKLI/AAAAAAAAfE8/aVG0iSl-IOg6q6eGemoP3LO0s9kODr2FgCLcBGAsYHQ/s580/vance%2Bb%2Bolder.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="387" data-original-width="580" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4-3Uw00AxLs/YDS0gXOfKLI/AAAAAAAAfE8/aVG0iSl-IOg6q6eGemoP3LO0s9kODr2FgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/vance%2Bb%2Bolder.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bourjaily</td></tr></tbody></table><br />When we got back to campus, he was not among those of us who
joined a few others in the dorm where some of the guest writers were staying.
We were in some sort of lounge, and I wound up at the piano, thumping out the
blues progressions that were very close to the sum total of my repertoire. At that point Vance Bourjaily got excited,
disappeared for a moment and suddenly returned with a trombone in hand. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> I’ll never forget the expectant look in his eyes as he
anticipated a mellow jazz jam. He
assumed I was an actual pianist. I wish to this day that I had come up with at
least a chord progression to carry him.
I think I tried, but others intervened with their musical demands, the
scene dissolved into chaos again, and in short order I left. I was a few days shy of my 23<sup>rd</sup> birthday. My sojourn in Boulder and Colorado was
just beginning. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-84499177387860110082022-10-19T01:08:00.005-07:002022-10-19T01:29:41.413-07:00History of My Reading: Billy Pilgrim in Galesburg<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VeKTeSgd1ds/X2whrlClWGI/AAAAAAAAek4/wbahxl_98r8ogoX2ZVSdFFw9P_3RM7r5wCLcBGAsYHQ/s512/Standish-Park_1903a.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img alt="Standish Park in Galesburg 1903" border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="512" height="298" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VeKTeSgd1ds/X2whrlClWGI/AAAAAAAAek4/wbahxl_98r8ogoX2ZVSdFFw9P_3RM7r5wCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h298/Standish-Park_1903a.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Standish Park Galesburg 1903<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p> <span style="font-size: medium;"> <b>A</b></span>fter my last draft adventure, and my disillusion and early sorrow in Iowa City, I was back in Galesburg. Joni was completing her Knox College degree requirements the second half of that 1968-69 school year. We lived together in an apartment just off campus, not far from Post Hall, a quiet duplex (476 S. West?) with Skip Peterson’s parents (his father taught art at Knox) on the other side.</p><p> I have a few memories of reading linked to a physical location during this time. In that apartment, in the first floor study, I recall reading Euripides’ play <i>The Trojan Women</i> in some collection, and wanting to adapt it for a contemporary audience of the Vietnam era. It was a great idea but too ambitious for me to actually get very far. However, in just a few years (1971) its anti-war relevance led to a feature film starring Vanessa Redgrave, Katharine Hepburn, Irene Pappas and Geneveive Bujold. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UcqGoIAYyvQ/X2wkricSxrI/AAAAAAAAelI/cLJieZm44_wK2kw2cAJ3ytCtTcgJXi3jgCLcBGAsYHQ/s475/11438945._SY475_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="280" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UcqGoIAYyvQ/X2wkricSxrI/AAAAAAAAelI/cLJieZm44_wK2kw2cAJ3ytCtTcgJXi3jgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/11438945._SY475_.jpg" /></a></div><br />Another physical memory is of reading a fiction paperback called <i>Jesus Christs</i> in a booth at Higgins Diary, which was across South Street from the main campus official entrance. It was a quieter, lower intensity place, not as social as the Gizmo but still within the hum and buzz. I also read Peter S. Beagle’s <i>The Last Unicorn</i> at about the same time. I don’t recall anything about the Beagle, except it was probably the first fantasy novel I’d read since Alice in Wonderland, and that I sometimes felt like the last unicorn (and I was hardly alone in that.)<p></p><p></p><p> I still have that copy of <i>Jesus Christs</i> by A. J. Langguth. The premise was that Jesus returned to earth many times, surrounded by different versions of his disciples and other characters from the Biblical account, often with different outcomes, and a different kind of Jesus. Some of the stories are no longer than a paragraph, others are dramatic dialogues and stories of several pages (one reimagines Jesus as a Vietnamese fighter.)</p><p> The idea appealed to me, still only five years out of Catholic schools, and not quite a year after my own variation in my play <i>What’s Happening, Baby Jesus?</i> Reading the Langguth book again after a half century, some stories seem insipid but others—especially the dialogues—are absorbing. </p><p></p><p><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xyRmA8p37a4/X2wk_oGjq8I/AAAAAAAAelQ/NIiYYuesA_8TweMBxOVfFfU_Zh6DUeTdACLcBGAsYHQ/s1500/Slaughterhouse-Five_%2528first_edition%2529_-_Kurt_Vonnegut.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1029" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xyRmA8p37a4/X2wk_oGjq8I/AAAAAAAAelQ/NIiYYuesA_8TweMBxOVfFfU_Zh6DUeTdACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Slaughterhouse-Five_%2528first_edition%2529_-_Kurt_Vonnegut.jpg" /></a> I was moving farther away from straight naturalistic fiction, although I also recall we had a paperback copy of John Updike’s best seller <i>Couples</i>. This trend in my reading seems related to Kurt Vonnegut’s best seller of that spring, <i>Slaughterhouse-Five</i>.
I’m pretty sure it was after I read it that I tracked down his earlier novels (apart from <i>Mother Night</i>, which I’d already read.)</p><p> I probably enjoyed <i>Sirens of Titan</i> the most, the novel in which Vonnegut had come closest to pure science fiction (the planet Tralfamadore, which starred in <i>Slaughterhouse Five</i>, appeared in it.) I remember beginning <i>Cat’s Cradle </i>on either a bus or a train. Then <i>Player Piano</i>, his first novel. His novel just previous to Slaughterhouse, <i>Good Bless You, Mr. Rosewater</i>, had been his most popular up to then, but it was, at least initially, my least favorite. I probably didn't read all of those in Galesburg, but elsewhere in 1969, though I'm pretty sure I read the stories in a new collection there: <i>Welcome to the Monkey House</i> (which included many in the previous collection I'd read.)<i> </i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hilXLZ5cwWQ/X2wlU0Zq8vI/AAAAAAAAelY/Bf1NPto1WgwWrozpaFSrxHzwt3Du5RVZgCLcBGAsYHQ/s855/140055.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="855" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hilXLZ5cwWQ/X2wlU0Zq8vI/AAAAAAAAelY/Bf1NPto1WgwWrozpaFSrxHzwt3Du5RVZgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/140055.jpg" /></a></div><br /> Vonnegut’s reputation exploded with <i>Slaughterhouse-Five</i>. Fortunately for me, I didn’t know that Vonnegut wrote most of it in the Iowa City I'd just fled, or the irony might have done me in. The evocation of the largely unknown firebombing of Dresden within the story of Billy Pilgrim unstuck in time, was a stunning tour de force, written in an unmistakable voice that resonated with the times. It was one of those books that unites people who love it. It was if we could almost inhabit it together. It wasn’t quite Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but almost. It cast a spell.<p></p><p> This isn’t to say the admiration was universal or complete. It’s easy to forget sometimes that students could be at least as cynical as professors and administrators, though usually on different subjects. I still claim however, that even in those years I was not cynical. I could be sardonic, satiric, less often sarcastic, too often thoughtless of others, and at times despairing. But not really cynical. That’s also how how I understood Vonnegut to be. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;">W</span></b>hile we were in Galesburg, Joni and I both worked part time at the Knox Bookstore. That for me was pretty much the equivalent of an alcoholic working in a bar. I remember for example lusting after J. P. Donleavy’s <i>The Beastly Beatitudes of Bathazar B</i> as it came in, before discovering his earlier books other than <i>The Ginger Man</i>.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-evY2ADiNqO8/X2wnGyFjm_I/AAAAAAAAelg/bMWqsN8P29wiSSM5hF6BXg0cmTSQDcwpACLcBGAsYHQ/s500/519R%252BA-WDRL.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="343" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-evY2ADiNqO8/X2wnGyFjm_I/AAAAAAAAelg/bMWqsN8P29wiSSM5hF6BXg0cmTSQDcwpACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/519R%252BA-WDRL.jpg" /></a></div><br /> Otherwise, a notebook from this period indicates I was reading R.D. Laing’s <i>The Politics of Experience,</i> Thomas Merton’s <i>Zen and the Birds of Appetite</i>, and <i>The Subversive Science</i>, the ecology reader edited by Paul Shepard containing probably his most famous essay, “Ecology and Man: A Viewpoint.” This evidently sent me back to re-reading sections of Shepard’s first book, <i>Man in the Landscape</i>, because I also quote that in my notebook. I also seemed to be attempting—not for the first or last time— Joyce’s <i>finnegans wake</i>. <p></p><p> I must have also been reading John Cage again, because when we invited Robin and Lynn Metz over for dinner, and we played a game of Monopoly afterwards, I insisted on making all my moves with chance operations, by flipping coins. Robin took advantage of any resulting weak moves with a relish that I think scared him a little.</p><p> Meanwhile I was participating in Knox life to the extent that some people might have concluded that I was either enrolled as a student or teaching classes. I went to movies, plays and public lectures, either with Joni or alone. This was probably the year I participated in guitar improvisations with Steve Meyers and Dick Wissler, that Wissler recorded. </p><p> Over those months I wrote reviews and articles for the Knox Student, participated in a poetry reading (noted in that year's Gale), had a jagged short story published in the first issue of the renamed literary magazine Catch, and acted in Sherwood Kiraly’s latest play in the Studio Theatre, “Smokers Cough III,” a comedy in which Norse gods intervene in an Old West poker game, or something like that. The Knox <i>Student</i> theatre critic told me that I was his choice for best Studio Theatre performance of the spring, but fortunately for us both, the final issue of the Student wasn’t published that year for some reason, so his article saying so didn’t appear. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-teDKh16H0wY/X2xfTlzgvbI/AAAAAAAAemI/4Ld72eFd3I4Q2eGz9fahsCF1gAjQi3v2ACLcBGAsYHQ/s499/515V3JSIpsL._SX294_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="296" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-teDKh16H0wY/X2xfTlzgvbI/AAAAAAAAemI/4Ld72eFd3I4Q2eGz9fahsCF1gAjQi3v2ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/515V3JSIpsL._SX294_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" /></a></div><br />He probably did not see the show on the final night, however, because we mercilessly embroidered our performances, literally upstaging each other for laughs. An example: downstage, closest to the audience, was the poker table where much of the action took place. At one point, I (as Old Slim) wander back to the bar (upstage), and silently drink while the poker table action continues. Only this time instead of just pouring myself a drink, I spilled the bottle, sending liquid down on the town drunk, dozing at the foot of the bar under a sombrero.<p></p><p> I got a big laugh, but the actors at the poker table couldn’t see me, and so they didn’t know why the audience was laughing. Then the audience laughed again, and even I didn’t know why. It was because Jim Reynolds as the drunk had upstaged me, by putting a tentative hand out as the water dripped down on him, as if testing for rain.</p><p> If the audience thought that was a planned bit, they gave us more credit than we were due. But basically they caught on to the fact we were improvising and trying to break each other up. They laughed a lot, so it was the most fun I’ve had in a theatre, at least on stage.</p><p> And that wasn’t all. The director was also one of the actors, so with the connivance of the author and the lighting director at the cast party the night before, we changed the ending without telling the director, just to see the look on his face when it was his turn to speak and he had no next line.</p><p> But all this also had its weirdness. From my notebook: “Sitting in the Commons Room after everyone has gone/my life/lived here. Now I am even/quoted here./I sit here/like a vulture/ circling my own life.”</p><p> Since I was still theoretically writing my college novel, this extra residence provided more opportunities to test and refine impressions, which is a writerly kind of vulture behavior I suppose. I noted for example (in my notebook), the feeling of fall: “Fresh warm wind blowing, bright sunshine, the cool air, the love for the people, their faces anticipated. Can’t hurry fast enough to do the next thing, to get to the Giz, see people, mind racing ahead, plotting possibilities in the thrilling wind.”</p><p> I had become interested in writers who had attended Knox. I’d heard stories about Eugene Field, the journalist and children’s poet (Wynken, Blinken and Nod) whose checkered academic career included a boisterous year at Knox. In the 1960s he was a rarely mentioned black sheep. So I read more about him. I had already made that poem a motif in my college fiction, with my characters Lincoln, Blakely and Nod.</p><p><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F0RyNKI6CNk/X2wnuqF2_7I/AAAAAAAAelo/3hpXAIHvuoYjDRxktlrhuvx6dm2-gr5uwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/love-galesburg-springtime-jack-finney_1_d8d7fe389161eab76366fa7139954312.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="810" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F0RyNKI6CNk/X2wnuqF2_7I/AAAAAAAAelo/3hpXAIHvuoYjDRxktlrhuvx6dm2-gr5uwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/love-galesburg-springtime-jack-finney_1_d8d7fe389161eab76366fa7139954312.jpg" /></a>I’m not sure how I learned about Jack Finney (Knox class of 1934), but at the time he certainly wasn’t an honored alum either, nor very well known. That would begin to change a year or so after I dredged up a book of his short stories in the Knox library, not in general circulation (I had to sit in a silent room alone to read it), called <i>I Love Galesburg in the Springtime</i>. </p><p> The title story lovingly described the texture and architecture of Galesburg’s surviving 19th century character, while relating several incidents of the past invading the Galesburg present: like a disconnected old wall phone ringing, and a dead boyhood friend’s voice on the other end.</p><p> Finney had written a couple of novels that had been turned into successful movies, including one of the great science fiction movies of the 1950s, <i>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</i>. He also wrote the episode of the 1950s series Science Fiction Theatre that I remembered best from seeing it at about age 9. It also had an eerie time travel theme, this time from the future to the present. Fittingly, it was called “Time Is Just A Place.” It was directed by Jack Arnold, who made many of the other great 50s s/f movies.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KKFXGw-G4gE/X2woVVwPl3I/AAAAAAAAelw/0WDm-pZxgJEyxLtSeLikwB3Y9et3BuUvgCLcBGAsYHQ/s472/finney.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="318" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KKFXGw-G4gE/X2woVVwPl3I/AAAAAAAAelw/0WDm-pZxgJEyxLtSeLikwB3Y9et3BuUvgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/finney.jpg" /></a></div><br /> But Finney didn’t achieve fame until the success of his 1970 novel, <i>Time and Again</i>, in which the protagonist travels back through time to New York City in 1882. By then Finney had lived in New York for years, and employed the same loving detail about its historic architecture—including buildings no longer existing—as he did in the Galesburg story, though with much more mesmerizing effect. The novel is illustrated with period photos, a technique that later writers (notably W. G. Sebold) also employed. (Oddly, it was never filmed, though science fiction writer Richard Matheson later based his own similar story on it--with appropriate credit to Finney--which did result in an unjustly forgotten 1980 film titled <i>Somewhere in Time</i>, starring Christopher Reeve and a luminous Jane Seymour.)<p></p><p> I was immediately taken with that Galesburg story because I recognized some of the romance of the place that Finney did. Those old Victorian Gothic houses, like Anderson House where I lived my first two years at Knox, did have a feeling about them, and a mystery. In my years there I walked all over Galesburg, especially at night, often with a companion... Under the persimmon trees of Standish Park. Down the brick walks, the wide streets that might lead directly into dark fields, through the cemetery with a thrilling wind high in the trees....Following trails winding next to long sets of solitary railroad tracks...Late night blueberry pancakes at the Q, or in a hidden restaurant seemingly known only to railroad men... Standing at the kitchen door of a house hosting games of chance, to buy one of their tremendous chicken sandwiches... Or eating my first taco from a Mexican place. Sandburg and Lincoln walked these streets, as did the young Ronnie Reagan. I hadn’t yet discovered the great Dorothea Tanning, a fellow editor of the Siwasher. Finney only scratched the surface of ghostly history superimposed on the present.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j8Zhjq1N1Ys/X2wpJCB4_aI/AAAAAAAAel4/jNvA8pVE0P0EdWwi4REo6I-tQYdq1jbLgCLcBGAsYHQ/s512/seylibe.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="512" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j8Zhjq1N1Ys/X2wpJCB4_aI/AAAAAAAAel4/jNvA8pVE0P0EdWwi4REo6I-tQYdq1jbLgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/seylibe.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <i>Time and Again</i> sold very well and was highly praised by Stephen King, Carl Sagan and many others. In 1986 Finney repackaged stories from his <i>I Love Galesburg in the Springtime</i> collection, together with stories from his 1957 collection <i>The Third Level</i> in a new book titled <i>About Time. </i> It includes "Such Interesting Neighbors," which he'd adapted for that Science Fiction Theatre episode.<i> </i><p></p><p> Now Knox honors him as one of their own, or at least students did, by naming a science fiction and fantasy magazine Third Level, after that first collection and its title story in which the protagonist stumbles upon an enchanted level of Grand Central Station stuck in the 1880s, and he tries to buy a ticket to the Galesburg of that era. But in 1969, it was just me reading him in the Seymour Library. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ctJXeaRyP1M/X2xgV2_ylbI/AAAAAAAAemQ/iVQoEFaoMTwXzYiL_XyfvRg_8kZP6WOagCLcBGAsYHQ/s361/about%2Btime.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="361" data-original-width="236" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ctJXeaRyP1M/X2xgV2_ylbI/AAAAAAAAemQ/iVQoEFaoMTwXzYiL_XyfvRg_8kZP6WOagCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/about%2Btime.jpg" /></a></div>With Finney as with Vonnegut, the characters are unstuck in time. It strike me that this describes the situation of college students, and a fundamental quality of academia--one's mind and heart roam the centuries, temporarily inhabiting aspects of another time (including the future), through literature and art, history and other studies, as well as through films and exchanges with others in the community. And these overlap and overlay, often simultaneously. For me this defines one of the more attractive elements of academia, though it requires a great deal of deliberate innocence to feel it and focus on it.<p></p><p>Unstuck in time might also describe readers in a library, including their own.</p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;">M</span></b>y residency in Galesburg that year had itself begun with a strange event. I was at a student party in a large and largely empty house, very dark. Very late in the evening a male student I knew approached me, and said there had been a misunderstanding with some men from town, and his girlfriend had to get out of there quickly. Could I walk her to his apartment several blocks away? I knew and liked his girlfriend (who happened to be a talented writer, and has since published novels) so without needing to know any more, I agreed.</p><p> On our way I could see we were being followed by several men in a car driving slowly behind us in the darkness. I kept walking, my arm around my weeping companion. When I glanced back again the car was gone.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yJLWMn9D2bo/X2wpbCXP45I/AAAAAAAAemA/FrN7QyP1h9M7glaFkHEVc8HJgPvIk00HwCLcBGAsYHQ/s570/updike.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="344" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yJLWMn9D2bo/X2wpbCXP45I/AAAAAAAAemA/FrN7QyP1h9M7glaFkHEVc8HJgPvIk00HwCLcBGAsYHQ/w121-h200/updike.jpg" width="121" /></a></div> I did get a little more of the story later, but still, there were a number of mysterious aspects to this event that I’ve thought about many times since. I guess I prefer to believe I was given this task because I could be trusted to see it through.
In this, I was perhaps following an element of my own nature that I learned to value, as expressed by John Updike in a short story I first read just before my freshman year at Knox. “The Happiest I’ve Been” ends with the young narrator saying, “And there was knowing that twice since midnight a person had trusted me enough to fall asleep beside me.”<div><br /><p></p><p></p><div><i>P.S. The phrase I use in the first sentence of this post ("disillusion and early sorrow") reflects my misremembering of the title of a Thomas Mann novella, Disorder and Early Sorrow. When I was corresponding with Mary Jacobson during the summer after my first year at Knox, she mentioned that she was reading this, so of course I tried to read it, too. And failed. I still haven't read it. But I liked the title.</i></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-37901763385337461372022-09-23T22:46:00.002-07:002022-09-24T04:07:10.360-07:00Project Hail Mary <p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"> Project Hail Mary</span></b></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">by Andy Weir</span></p><p>Ballantine Books</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX8i6acnSwjPsPwJsLNqrb71n4Jrci_snNP3kIRVzZ7VCDq2OCpmZLvd761u25YaZierHzjPOINCwg2mG_2zZ127X_zEyeSIeyRk901JP1D4lA-f-g2NW8baPzxMQCRovuxWqcGZtf_1Zh8sCvZvv2FVdd6A4tOkXx071iwN8YnXrgAZY_9rI/s613/GUEST_c4639dd9-42ee-4652-9fdd-2b81ca52207c.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="414" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX8i6acnSwjPsPwJsLNqrb71n4Jrci_snNP3kIRVzZ7VCDq2OCpmZLvd761u25YaZierHzjPOINCwg2mG_2zZ127X_zEyeSIeyRk901JP1D4lA-f-g2NW8baPzxMQCRovuxWqcGZtf_1Zh8sCvZvv2FVdd6A4tOkXx071iwN8YnXrgAZY_9rI/s320/GUEST_c4639dd9-42ee-4652-9fdd-2b81ca52207c.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>Andy Weir has published another marvelously geeky novel like <i>The Martian</i>, but on larger scales of plot, action and character. Over 478 pages, he tells an interstellar tale with exciting and emotional plot twists, while still sciencing the hell out of the situation. The not unfamiliar voice is perfect for the story, and it doesn't hurt for this reader that the cultural references of the jokes are also familiar. (Bonus points for a perfectly placed line from Rocky and Bullwinkle.) I opened this book knowing nothing in advance about the story, and the narrative itself was so enchanting when experienced that way that I'm not even going to hint at the contents, in case you still have that opportunity of innocence.<p></p><p>The science details and the unlikely hero, who is not a teenager himself but relates to them, reminds me not only of Robert Heinlein's hard science fiction but most specifically of his science fiction for young readers (often with an a young protagonist), a genre he pioneered long before the marketing category of YA. Beginning in the late 1940s, Heinlein wrote a series of what were then called "juvenile" or "juvie" sf novels. Their stories existed pretty much in the same story universe that Heinlein created for his adult fictions, but they tended to emphasize the science aspects more, because (Heinlein commented), "younger readers relish tough ideas they have to chew and don't mind big words."</p><p>I will say this much about the story: when I came to the jeopardy that threatened Earth I was disappointed that he invented a new one instead of dealing with the one that is already here, namely climate distortion, and I got queasy when he seemed to downplay its threat. But then I got caught up in the otherwise satisfying story.</p><p>However I saw him do an interview in which he seemed to not only downplay but disdain the assertions that climate distortion and a mass extinction event are real threats to human civilization and life on Earth as we know it. His views on responses to the pandemic seemed likewise skewed. (He predicts it will be the last pandemic, or if there is another one in forty years we were so good at handling this one that we'll know how to handle that one. Really? All this makes me wonder about other aspects of this novel, like a figure with global dictatorial powers.) He may be a heck of a writer (and he's a hero to me for correcting a network reporter who said "less" when he should have said "fewer"), but I have to wonder what planet he's living on.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-42694045239078063302022-08-18T22:17:00.003-07:002022-09-18T22:20:47.052-07:00History of My Reading: Iowa City Blues <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustration made in the 1960s depicting the Beatles as old men.<br />
I cut it out of a magazine and tacked it to my inside apartment<br />
door on Brown Street in Iowa City. It scared me.</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">B</span></b>y the end of my senior year at Knox College, I was accepted into both the fiction and poetry writing programs at the Iowa Writers Workshop--one of only a handful to be in both, I was told. So I visited Iowa City several times in the spring and summer of 1968. The first time I met George Starbuck, the Workshop's director. I believe I had dinner at his house. He wanted me as a graduate student, and was looking for ways to make it happen.<br />
<br />
On one of my trips I found a way. I talked to a university official who boasted that the Workshop used to get away with giving scholarships to whoever they wanted, but no longer. You had to qualify by university standards. At the moment I didn't because I was without a B.A. degree. Probably on that same trip however I read through the rules and regulations in the administration office, and found a favorable loophole in the fine print: I could be admitted as a graduate student without a B.A. if I could take the courses necessary to obtain one by the end of my first year. Technically that was possible.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George Starbuck with Paul Engle, who'd started<br />
the Workshop. Photo taken some time in the 60s.</td></tr>
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It took several more trips to gather the financing. George Starbuck kindly arranged for a fellowship through the Workshop office, and I eventually obtained a government education loan to cover housing and so on. So by early fall I was back, looking for a place to live.<br />
<br />
Knox classmate Barbara Cottral was at Iowa that summer and fall. She was starting to spend a lot of time with an older student named John Bean (and eventually married him), who was either in the Workshop or knew people who were. It was probably through them that I was told of a place that rented to a lot of Workshop and other grad students.<br />
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I believe they referred to it as Brown's, but in any case my address was 414 Brown Street. There was a large complex of inexpensive housing, and a major part of it, as I recall it, was comprised of old World War II era Quonset huts. I remember walking down an unpaved avenue on a wet evening, with these high-arching metal huts one after the other on both sides. I was taken inside one, and it looked pretty much like a metal-covered tent, housing several scruffy students. It was indistinguishable from an army camp, without guns or uniforms but probably as much pot and booze.<br />
<br />
I was looking for a cheap single room, and was shown one in a large, once noble but now ramshackle house. The space was actually a porch added to the house and walled up to make a long narrow room. One wall was of exposed brick--so envied and fashionable in more recent years, but the bed was against it and the wall was cold. It was in fact the brick wall of the outside of the house. But there was an extra mattress in the room which I propped up against the wall for some protection against cold and damp.<br />
<br />
There was just one other tenant in a nearby room, and otherwise it offered complete privacy. The bathroom with its pathetic shower splashing reluctantly onto dark concrete was at the foot of the indoor stairs. Besides the bed, the room was furnished with a threadbare but comfortable old red chair at the long window, with a decent lamp. A desk and chair were near the door. I moved in, with my guitar, my portable typewriter, a Sears stereo record player, a reel to reel tape recorder made mostly of plastic, and at least a few books and records. Classes began in late September.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">A</span></b>s I've noted <a href="http://dreamingup.blogspot.com/search/label/history%20of%20my%20reading"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">elsewhere</span></a>, during these months I was preoccupied with my upcoming pre-induction draft physical, and then my induction/appeal physical. This involved anxious ruminations and inescapable decisions about my beliefs and my future. Country Joe and the Fish set the stage:<br />
<br />
<i>Come on all of you big strong men</i><br />
<i>Uncle Sam needs your help again</i><br />
<i>He's got himself in a terrible jam</i><br />
<i>Way down yonder in Vietnam</i><br />
<i>So put down your books, pick up a gun--</i><br />
<i>Gonna have a whole lot of fun... </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Also as noted before, I somewhat helplessly split my time this fall and winter among Iowa City, Galesburg and Chicago, including a trip there when Joni--on a teaching semester in a Chicago public school-- was recovering from illness and (relatively minor) surgery. As a result of these and other factors, some to be explored here, I was in a kind of perpetual fog. That must be part of the reason that I have a few sharp memories but little more, of my time in Iowa City.<br />
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So I remember specifically very few books I read, or even had with me, in this Brown Street room. Surviving letters home reveal I requested two books that I'd left behind: my Portable Thoreau and the first collection of poems by John Ashbery I bought, <i>The Tennis Court Oath</i>. <br />
<br />
Apart from periodicals (joined by now by Rolling Stone), I can conjure up some reading of this general period that were influencing my own poetic and fictional aspirations. The previous March, during my senior year at Knox College, I spotted a book in the Knox Bookstore titled <i>The Liverpool Scene, </i>which I bought (and entered the date.) In the 1960s possibly the only reason a student in the American Midwest would know about Liverpool was as the original home of the Beatles. Their success brought international attention to the Liverpool music scene, where working class bands were both a rebellion and an expression of the local culture. I came from a working class culture in a provincial town in western Pennsylvania, not much like Liverpool but more like it than, say, London or Manhattan. <br />
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But I had no idea that the Liverpool scene included poets, and that's what this book revealed. Along with an introductory essay, photographs and snippets of interviews, it presented the work of a half dozen Liverpool poets, most prominently Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten. What especially interested me was that these poems were performed, sometimes in the same clubs as the rock bands, and often with band accompaniment. There was also an LP which I acquired later.<br />
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The poems were lyrical--sometimes close to actual song lyrics--and grounded in Liverpool, but also populated with pop culture figures (like Batman) along with quick literary references and an incisive humor applied to underlying desperation. They often dealt with concerns of the times, like the Bomb and Vietnam. The book's photos included one of a dark-haired girl with haunting eyes. I cut that page out and added it to the wall display.<br />
<br />
The poems included a short one by Roger McGough that became my favorite lines of 1968:<br />
<br />
<i>My Johnny joined the army</i><br />
<i>Deserted me without a care</i><br />
<i>He got shot to ribbons</i><br />
<i>Now I wear him in my hair</i><br />
<br />
<i>The Liverpool Scene</i> paid homage to the Beatles but also to Allen Ginsberg, who had visited with the poets in Liverpool, and provided them with an extravagant back cover quote: <i>"Liverpool is at the present moment the center of the consciousness of the human universe."</i><i><br /></i>
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Alerted by this book, I noticed Roger McGough's name on the cover of a Ballatine paperback, which contained his novella and a cycle of his poems. McGough was a member of the Scaffold, a satirical theatre group, and a contributor to the British satire TV series, <i>That Was The Week That Was</i>. In the many years since then, he became a media and literary eminence in England, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.<br />
<br />
But the Liverpool poet who spoke to me most directly was Brian Patten, the youngest, in his early 20s. I ordered his collection, <i>Little Johnny's Confession</i> from the Knox Bookstore, probably with my last library prize credit. Patten has also had a long poetic career since.<br />
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By 1968 as well, this trio of Henri, McGough and Patten had their own Penguin Modern Poets volume, and in 1969, Penguin included them in larger collection of around 50 poets entitled <i>Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain. </i>That book features a long Afterwords by Adrian Henri, one of the older Liverpool poets, who provided a comprehensive history. As the endorsement by Ginsberg implied, these poets were inspired by the American Beat poets and later West Coast poets like Kenneth Patchen, and more generally by poets who read accompanied by jazz players, and by other poets Adrian named who emphasized public readings, as well as by the Liverpool scene.<br />
<br />
I had been greatly impressed at Knox by how differently Robert Creeley, Gary Snyder and Robert Bly read aloud, and yet all expressed the essence of their particular poetic approach. I was attracted as well to the relationship with rock music, performance and the general milieu of the Beatles. There was a certain McLuhan quality as well, the participatory nature of the oral and including contemporary cultural forms and references, popular and otherwise. I was, after all, a fan of T.S. Eliot and the Bee Gees, the French New Wave and the Smothers Brothers.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">B</span></b>y the fall of 1968, the new fiction I saw was in an experimental phase. I was reading Donald Barthelme's stories in the New Yorker, and Robert Coover and John Barth in a fantastic new periodical, the New American Review, which was published as a paperback book. They were all experimenting in different ways with myth and tales, popular culture and fractured narratives. <br />
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Another writer oddly influential at the time was the San Francisco author Richard Brautigan. He applied a unique, deadpan yet lyrical style to the reportage of the unimportant. Like the Liverpool poets, he impressed with unexpected similes and metaphors. Mostly forgotten now, his book <i>Trout Fishing in America</i> was a late 1960s sensation.<br />
<br />
What Barthelme, Brautigan, the Liverpool poets and even Ashbery had in common, at least superficially, was a kind of literary charm--a sly ebullience, a youthful mix of innocence and irony. Part of it came from successfully responding to Pound's dictim of "make it new" resonant with the times, and from that came energy and delight. Now this work is no longer new and its connection to its times less accessible, but there is still some charm in the use of language, and its evocations of human experience and emotion.<br />
<br />
But to me in Iowa City, it all seemed so distant, so elusive. One of the first conversations I had with another student in the poetry workshop was with a young woman who had been there for at least a year. It was before the school year started. She told me that most Workshop students played the game of influence. The point was to get the most influential faculty writers to pave the way to publication, to write stellar recommendations and otherwise advance your career. That's what the Workshop was about, she said, the name of the game was Career. She said it without bitterness, as a kind of wry report. I guess she could see this would be news to me.<br />
<br />
I don't recall having any choice in my workshop instructors. The big noise in poetry that year was Ted Berrigan (in his only year teaching at Iowa.) Anselm Hollo was another. I drew Jon Silkin, a somewhat older British poet not very well known in the US. In terms of the kind of poetry I was interested in writing, Berrigan or Hollo seemed a better fit, or at least so I thought at the time.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert Coover (far left) with Workshop students in 1967</td></tr>
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As I recall, the big noise in the fiction workshop was Robert Coover, then being published regularly in the New American Review. I'd met Richard Yates at Knox and admired his work, but I think he'd just left the Workshop. In any case, I was assigned to a workshop run by a writer whose name I have forgotten--that's how unsuccessful that experience was for me.<br />
<br />
Given the uncertainty of my tenure due to the draft, and the fragility of my psyche due to ditto, I decided to postpone any qualifying math, science or language course until the second semester, and took a film studies course instead. I enjoyed it very much, when I attended.<br />
<br />
There wasn't anything about the Workshop itself I enjoyed. I didn't make a friend or even an acquaintance in either of my classes. I don't even remember how many students there were or anything about any of them in my fiction workshop, and I recall only one student in my poetry workshop, mostly because he symbolized why I felt so out of place. He was heavy, bearded, with short hair, wore tweed suits, smoked a pipe and never said a word or betrayed any emotion. Likely in his 20s, he looked much older.<br />
<br />
I don't recall a single moment of that fiction class. All I remember is my first one-on-one meeting with its teacher. I was supposed to bring 20 pages of fresh writing to it, which I did. All I recall being said was that I should return next time with 20 more. This is not a bad approach for instructing a young writer, but given my psychological state, that 20 pages had cost just about all I had. Absent anything else to go on, I didn't see how to proceed.<br />
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In my poetry workshop I liked the teacher Jon Silkin, but I couldn't stand my basically comatose fellow students. They seemed a staid and self-satisfied, wary, small-minded and highly traditional bunch. If I had mentioned the Liverpool poets, I was sure, they would have only stared. But then, that's all I ever saw them do anyway.<br />
<br />
Silkin might actually have felt the same way about them. The only moment in class I recall was Silkin asking for a volunteer to read a particular poem aloud. No one did. Clearly annoyed, he slid the book across the table to me. It felt like a challenge, like the coach throwing me the ball, daring me to sink the shot.<br />
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I don't remember the poet or the poem, though I do recall it had some French in it. Though it was by an established author, I'd never read the poem before. But I surprised no one more than myself by reading it perfectly, including the French. "You read that with real feeling," Silkin said, with some wonder. I was embarrassed because the feelings I may have expressed had little to do with the content of the poem.<br />
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But the moment that summarizes my Workshop experience came later, on the day when a group of my poems were going to be discussed by the class. I had deliberately submitted my most daring verses, the craziest ones, including one that ran all over the page, rather than the ones I felt might be the best. I arrived for that day's class a bit early, and stopped in the nearest men's room to gather myself for the battle. That one particular fellow student, the bearded pipe-smoker, was also in the men's room. I smiled at him reflexively. He looked at me, said nothing, and left.<br />
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I proceeded to our assigned classroom, which I saw was empty. I had somehow confused the start time. In fact, the class was just over. I had missed the discussion of my own poems.<br />
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Immediately I thought of the pipe-smoker, and how he must have thought I had been too scared to attend this class and had been hiding out in the men's room. Yet, the worst of it was that he didn't say a word to me. And all of that said everything to me about my experience at the Workshop. I don't think I ever went back.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BdYLx29kiUo/XyUNBbAKn1I/AAAAAAAAeV0/Fwxwl7DKmWMV6oLEE6v42Tuac6iUnJsaQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/s%2Bclinton%2Bst%2B65%2Bkenney%2527s%2Bbar%2Bworkshop%2Bhangout%2Bthen2.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="825" height="271" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BdYLx29kiUo/XyUNBbAKn1I/AAAAAAAAeV0/Fwxwl7DKmWMV6oLEE6v42Tuac6iUnJsaQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/s%2Bclinton%2Bst%2B65%2Bkenney%2527s%2Bbar%2Bworkshop%2Bhangout%2Bthen2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kenney's bar, the historic Workshop hangout</td></tr>
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When I first arrived in Iowa City, I was told the name and location of the bar favored by Workshop students. For decades it had been a place called Kenney's. I don't think it was the bar I was directed to, though it could have been. In any case, on my visits to this bar I did see people from the Workshop, including Ted Berrigan, looking like a member of Hell's Angels. People typically drank beer, ordered in pitchers. It was pretty lousy, watery beer. "Born To Be Wild" played on the jukebox repeatedly. It seemed to be the bar's theme song, expressing the hippie biker ambiance. <br />
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Most of the faculty and most of the students were male. I am not given to a generalized condemnation of the gender I belong to, but it felt oppressive. In any case, for whatever reasons, I was steadily unhappy there. My notebooks of this period contain almost nothing about my experiences with the Workshop or even in Iowa City--just endless notes for the fiction I wasn't writing. But there is one scribbled note on a scrap of paper that has somehow survived. I don't know when I wrote it, but it recorded a moment in that bar, with my glass of tasteless beer sitting on the pinball machine, fighting off the feeling that I didn't like pinball, or the taste of this beer, or this bar. "I stood there, with that layer of heat on my skin, trying to like it all." I failed.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">U of Iowa campus 1968</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></b> remember the cold days--even though I was also there in a sunny fall, I remember Iowa City as cold and snow-covered-- going to campus, negotiating the winding pedestrian bridge, sitting with my coffee in the student union that connected buildings, and occasionally seeing one of the few people I knew. I remember the coffee shop where I sat at the counter and had my pork tenderloin sandwich and coffee before a class, listening to the Moody Blues "Tuesday Afternoon" on the jukebox. The only social occasion I recall was at Valjean McClenighan's apartment (after graduating Knox a year before me, she entered Iowa's theatre program), where she made me dinner, but which regrettably found me in my characteristic distracted graceless fog. <br />
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Otherwise, when I was in Iowa City, I was in my room. I only remember two of the books I read there. At the University bookstore I bought a just-published hardback, the first legitimate book about the Beatles, Hunter Davies' <i>The Beatles: A Biography.</i><br />
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And when that wasn't enough to keep me in their world, I found cheap paperback novelizations of the Beatles' films, and sat in my chair by the window correcting the dialogue--penciling in the lines I memorized from the movies when they were different from those in the book. <br />
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Other than that, I recall listening endlessly to the new Bee Gees album, <i>Idea</i>. The Bee Gees were an even more private obsession. Though they would eventually sell more records than any group in history, at the time and for years afterwards, they were dismissed and derided--at this time, as watered-down Beatles. (Even in the 1970s, my fellow rock critics smiled indulgently at my aberrational appreciation of the Bee Gees.) I bathed in their pure harmonies, playful melodies, strange arrangements, and ambiguous lyrics with private applications. At least until the Beatles finally released their double White Album just before Christmas.<br />
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On the inside of my door I posted a selection of nice things people had said about my writing in official letters and reviews, as encouragement. But I also taped up that illustration of the Beatles as old men, my version of the skull on the desk I guess, a kind of <i>memento mori, </i>and expression of suspected futility.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">University of Iowa Bookstore 1967</td></tr>
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Looking back, I made some big mistakes. I should have confided in George Starbuck, the head of the Workshop who had taken a personal interest in me. I should have sought out Jon Silkin for private conversation (for I would have learned, as I did later, that he knew the Liverpool poets personally, and they respected him.) I certainly should have spent more time with Valjean. Once she brought me to meet some grad students and faculty in the theatre department, and they were friendlier, more interested and more welcoming to me than anyone at the Workshop. One of the faculty even asked me to try out for a part in a Pinter play. That doing any of this never even occurred to me suggests the weight of my distractions.<br />
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Occasionally I would escape to Galesburg. The first time I hitchhiked there I remember walking up a city street from the highway with my duffel bag, wondering what I was doing there, when I saw the first person I knew. I'm pretty sure it was Harry Contompasis. Anyway, somebody who seemed happy to see me. That kind of welcome declined on subsequent visits, as I became a perhaps too frequent visitor with no real business being there. But still, I had people to talk with and laugh with. And I think I actually did some research in connection with my college novel. My notebooks reveal, by the way, my one good idea: to start it with the JFK assassination in 1963 and end it with the RFK assassination in 1968. But that idea somehow got lost in the growing complexity of its conception.<br />
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Galesburg was often a stop before Chicago, where I visited Joni at the Del Prado Hotel in Hyde Park, not far from the Lake. At that time the Del Prado was mostly a residential hotel for students, and she and other Knox student teachers lived there. My visits there were also an opportunity to explore downtown Chicago and the lakefront, even in the cold, sooty wind off the Lake in winter. Once on the L, I daydreamed my way past my Hyde Park stop and woke up at Stony Avenue, which I had been warned was dangerous territory. But for some reason I decided to hitchhike back, and got a ride from two young Black men in a sporty car, who were discussing Zeffirelli's new film version of<i> Romeo and Juliet.</i><div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is what the Beatles really looked like in 1968, in portraits<br />
included in the White Album package</td></tr>
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I remember listening to the White Album with Joni and her very patient roommates, and I remember on an earlier visit, watching election returns in the hotel bar, smoking a cigar, my cavalier pretense fading when Humphrey came up short and Nixon was elected. The assassination of Robert Kennedy remained a bitter thing, and for the only time in my life I made the mistake of not accepting that one of the two party candidates was going to be president, either the lesser of two evils or the more evil, and that I needed to choose. Now it was over and I knew enough of Nixon to know the war would go on. I've been disconsolate on many election nights since, but on this one I was trying to hide a broken heart, even from myself.<br />
<br />What inflected all of this with a patina of the surreal--from Iowa City to Galesburg and Chicago--was its irrelevance to the upcoming life-altering moments of draft induction, and the decisions they would force. Sometimes I felt that to others, having this confrontation in mind was like having a cold--people might recognize it and sympathize once, but then they'd forget it: it wasn't their cold, they weren't saddled with it every minute.</div><div><br /></div><div>My pre-induction draft physical had been in October, and my induction/appeal physical had been scheduled for early December. I got a postponement to finish my Iowa semester. Eventually I had my three day physical at Fort Des Moines, and I was finally found unfit for military service. But I may have already packed up and left Iowa City, without a word to anyone except my near neighbor, who was the only friend I remember making. Earlier my mother had observed in a letter that she'd heard about a lot of things I didn't want to do, but I didn't seem to know what I wanted to do. She was right.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-76249428991995760942022-07-17T02:37:00.004-07:002022-07-18T23:09:23.200-07:00History of My Reading: Vietnam and my (two) draft physicals<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As the summer of 1968 ended and I finally worked out the details of attending the Iowa Writers Workshop in the fall, I faced a more formidable test. I was going to be drafted, at the height of the Vietnam War.<div><br /></div><div>The subject of Vietnam had been a necessary focus of my life and my reading since 1965, growing in urgency as I approached the moment my student deferment ended. Draft calls were high by then--mine was certain to come soon. <br />
</div><div>Vietnam in all its aspects wasn't easy to face, and it still isn't. Benjamin B. Barber begins his essay, which leads off the 1990 compilation <i>The Legacy: The Vietnam War in the American Imagination</i> (Beacon Press): <i>“There is no event in America’s recent history more painful—more memorable yet less remembered—than our long and futile military engagement in Southeast Asia...Vietnam is an invitation only to amnesia—a hard and numb scar we prefer not to notice.”</i><br />
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On a track of Randy Newman’s great 1970 album <i>12 Songs</i>, the singer describes the promising start of a love affair, except that she wants to talk about the war. “I don’t want to talk about the war” the singer asserts.<br />
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By the time I heard this song I was heartily sick of talking about the war. I had been talking about it, thinking about, bewildered and angry, bitter and immensely sad about it, for what seemed like forever, even if, all told, it took up a wearisome decade. In particular I was aware of how it was poisoning my college life and beyond, my early to mid 20s, with all of its immutable experiences and all of its urgency in determining the course of my life. <br />
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For we were shadowed by Vietnam war events until, for a few years we ate, drank, slept, read and talked the Vietnam war, and what it was doing to our personal lives, our generation, our country and humanity, as well as the people living and dying in that faraway land. <br />
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Meanwhile it took friends and acquaintances and distant contemporaries, wounding their bodies, minds and lives, and killing them dead, whether they fought in the war, fought against it, or otherwise witnessed it close up. It deformed the country, turning family members, friends and generations against each other.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Knox History prof John Stipp</td></tr>
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In college, Vietnam also became an education in itself, and eventually central to my education there. The first event I recall was a “teach-in” on American policy in Vietnam given by a group of Knox College faculty in my first year, probably in the spring of 1965. With lots of competition for attention, it drew only about 100 students (according to history professor John Stipp, one of the two speakers I definitely remember. The other was another history professor, Gabe Jackson.) But I was one of the students in the audience, and I’ve never forgotten at least the feeling of that event. <br />
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Our professors placed the American military presence in the context of the geography and history of southeast Asia and Vietnam specifically, from even before the French Indochina war. They described political and moral implications. They provided facts and sources that already contradicted US official statements. <br />
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Their scholarship and analyses (some familiar, some not) were daring to contradict official policy, lambasting the mistaken reasons for a war and its conduct while it was happening. This was academic discourse with a contemporary purpose. It meant something to our lives at that moment. And it was at least a little dangerous for them, as it would be very dangerous particularly for the male students listening, and not listening.<br />
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The amount of scholarship and writing on Vietnam already by 1965 is suggested in <i>The Viet-Nam Reader</i> published that year, edited by Marcus Raskin and Bernard Fall. Reporter and scholar Bernard Fall in particular was a respected voice on Vietnam, since he started out a supporter but became a critic. He had been reporting on the region since the early 1950s and warned the US was making the same mistakes as the French. He continued to report on the war, and was accompanying US Marines in Vietnam in 1967 when they were ambushed, and he was among those killed. <br />
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That spring of 1965 was when the US became fully involved in a war in Vietnam, with the first ground troops, the first search-and-destroy missions and in particular, the first bombing of North Vietnam. Escalation (a word we were learning) continued through the summer, and so student interest also escalated the following fall. In 1965 (either spring of my first year or fall of my second) I took a public position against the war in a debate sponsored by the Speech department, but I remember it as a defining moment for me. <br />
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Then by 1966 and 1967, Vietnam was on everybody’s mind. We saw our time, thought and emotions absorbed by meetings, debates, petitions, marches, demonstrations with four or five people or thousands—in hot rooms, in the cold and snow, in the rain, and a broken-hearted poetry reading in the spring sun. Draft calls began to ramp up, which added to the urgency for those of us facing the draft in our near future. <br />
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Much of the reading I remember was in pamphlets, booklets and periodicals. We relied on periodicals partly because these events were happening rapidly, and books take a long time. But a lot of the press seemed to be simply repeating government and think tank misinformation and lies. We relied on different periodicals, such as Ramparts and the New York Review of Books, which published, among others, Mary McCarthy’s journalism (collected in <i>Vietnam</i>, 1967) and Noam Chomsky’s analyses. <br />
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In The Nation magazine I was particularly reading William Eastlake’s columns from Vietnam, probably before and certainly after he taught a semester at Knox. Esquire under editor Harold Hayes published provocative pieces, as did Harper’s Magazine. I didn’t regularly see the better New York Times reporting while I was at Knox, mostly because the paper didn’t get to the Knox Library for several days by mail. I might read the Sunday Times on Wednesday, if I remembered. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I.F. Stone</td></tr>
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Another invaluable resource (when we could find it) was I.F. Stone’s Weekly. It was unique—the product of one man, a veteran Washington journalist who was blacklisted in the 1950s, but refused to be silenced. He became virtually the only journalist to question the official account of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident that LBJ used as a pretext for war. He was later proven correct. His lacerating critiques of US Vietnam policy and the lies the government told were often based on careful reading of public sources including newspaper stories. A wonderful 1970s documentary on Stone showed him literally tearing the New York Times apart, page by page.<br />
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There are now several collections of I.F. Stone’s work. The two I have are The <i>I.F. Stone’s Weekly Reader</i> (1974) and <i>Polemics and Prophecies 1967-1970 </i>(1972.) Also in the early 70s, when the poet Celia Gilbert, my colleague and friend at the Boston Phoenix, turned out to be I.F. Stone’s daughter, I got the opportunity to meet him several times. <br />
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“It is time to stand back and look where we are going,” Stone wrote in early 1968. “And to take a good look at ourselves.” The students I knew felt this was something we were more or less forced to do just about every day.<br />
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Eventually the periodical reporting got into book form. I read Jonathan Schell’s long article in the New Yorker in the summer of 1967 that became the book, <i>The Village of Ben Suc</i>, a detailed account of the destruction of a Vietnamese village by American troops. <br />
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But the book that had the most direct and profound effect on me in my college years was an unheralded paperback by an unknown author. It was <i>Air War: Vietnam</i> by Frank Harvey, a factual account of exactly what the title said. I read about it in Robert Crichton’s review in the New York Review of Books, and the excerpts he quoted were so horrifying that, when I read them aloud as part of Bill Thompson’s teach-in in the Gizmo, I had to choke back the tears. <br />
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The Bantam paperback was troubling and exhausting, mundane and horrifying—I often had to stop reading, fearful I would fall into a melancholy without end. The incredible damage that this bombing did was almost beyond understanding—I still remember one fact: B-52 bombers—with conventional bombs-- could kill every living thing within a fifty mile radius.<br />
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This book led me many years later to Gerald J. DeGroot’s 2005 <i>The Bomb: A Life</i> (about the atomic bomb) and in particular Sven Lindqvist’s <i>A History of Bombing </i>(The New Press, 2002.) I <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Bombing-Baghdad-into-shock-and-awe-2634349.php"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">wrote about</span></a> the latter book in a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle, on the eve of the bombing of Baghdad that began the Iraq war. Lindqvist’s book further deepened my conviction that arose from Frank Harvey’s book in 1967, that all bombing of civilian settlements is fundamentally immoral. <br />
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When the internal government documents purloined by Daniel Ellsberg—which later became known as the Pentagon Papers-- began appearing in 1971, they confirmed what some of us already knew or at least strongly suspected. The pattern of official lies was there for all to see. In his 1972 book<i> Papers on the War, </i>Ellsberg used them as a basis for his recollections about Pentagon analysis and how it was used, and misused. <br />
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Two of the classic nonfiction books on the Vietnam war appeared near its end. <i>Fire on the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam </i>was a nearly 600 page history by scholar and freelance journalist Frances FitzGerald, published in 1972. Some of it had appeared in The New Yorker. It won a Pulitzer.<br />
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A year later, former New York Times reporter David Halberstam devoted more than 800 pages to a history of hubris-directed policy on Vietnam in <i>The Best and The Brightest. </i> By then I was the books editor at the Boston Phoenix, and interviewed Halberstam on this book (his first) in the Boston Ritz hotel—his energetic eloquence and intimate buzzsaw voice that made him a talk show favorite for decades were already in evidence. <br />
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I also met Frances FitzGerald, when we were both at a futurist convention in Washington on assignment to different magazines, and again in New York. She also had abundant wit and charm, but she was not as much of a media personality as Halberstam throughout a writing career that also resulted in a number of distinguished books on a variety of subjects.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">T</span></b>he memoirs and fiction from the Vietnam war mostly came later, towards the end of the war or afterwards, such as Ron Kovic’s<i> Born on the Fourth of July</i> (which exposed the horrors of the medical care wounded veterans received, years before this became a public issue), Michael Herr’s <i>Dispatches</i> (expanding on his work as a Vietnam correspondent for Esquire) and Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam books. In the 1992 book <i>Vietnam, We’ve All Been There: Interviews with American Writers,</i> Herr and O’Brien both had trouble describing the nature of their books—memoir, New Journalism or fiction? It seems these war experiences required hybrid forms. <br />
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But in the late 1960s, three of the contemporary novels we were reading that had some bearing on Vietnam were actually about World War II. All three employed black humor to expose the deadly folly. <i>Castle Keep</i> by William Eastlake was about the war in France and later Kurt Vonnegut’s <i>Slaughter-House 5</i> was about the firebombing of Dresden. But the novel everyone I knew was reading in my later college years was Joseph Heller’s <i>Catch-22.</i><br />
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Here was a war novel unlike any other, especially for young men like me who had grown up on war movies and war comics and playing at war with our friends using World War II surplus and souvenirs.<br />
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The main protagonist is an American bomber pilot named Yossarian, who is convinced that the American military is trying to kill him. The novel is a model of the painful humor of the absurd. But that insight wasn’t absurd to me. By its actions, I was convinced that my country was trying to kill me, or at least cynically devaluing my life by using me as an instrument for unjustified ends. And though one could argue whether this was chiefly impersonal or semi-personal, even today I can’t see much evidence that I was wrong.<br />
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It was a point of view buttressed by a few other things we were reading and hearing about in the late 60s. One was <i>The Report From Iron Mountain</i>, about a supposed secret government commission that concluded that war was necessary to the US economy and way of life, including the need for combat deaths. Eventually it was claimed to be a satire, that no such commission existed, but its arguments remained.<br />
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The other was a Selective Service memo on “channeling”: the use of the draft and draft deferments to channel young men into desired occupations useful to the military, or—in the parlance of the time—to the military-industrial-university complex. (This language in Selective Service documentation for years has since been confirmed.)<br />
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This spoke to the larger context as well as to a specific subject of great moment: namely the draft and what to do about being drafted.<br />
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I remember talking with draft counselors in Chicago several times. Some were sponsored by American Friends and other pacifist organizations with religious affiliations. Others were more specifically against the Vietnam War, and offered technical knowledge and advice on laws governing the draft, including our rights as potential and actual draftees.<br />
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So I read a lot of associated pamphlets and booklets and books, a few of which survive in my collection, if not specifically in my recollections. One is <i>We Won’t Go: Personal accounts of war objectors,</i> collected by Alice Lynd in 1968 and published, as many of these books were, by Beacon Press. Another is <i>In Place of War: An Inquiry into Nonviolent National Defense,</i> prepared by a working group of the American Friends Service Committee, and published in 1967 by Grossman. It's a thought-provoking thought experiment in a different kind of civil defense.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1967 poetry reading at Knox College. Leonard Borden photo.</td></tr>
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We were also reading—and listening to—poems about the Vietnam War, which were important in both deepening and sorting out my thoughts and feelings. Robert Bly brought his collection, <i>A Poetry Reading Against the Vietnam War,</i> on one of his Knox visits. We had our own such event on the Old Main lawn, as I described in an <a href="http://dreamingup.blogspot.com/2019/06/history-of-my-readingspring-things-1967.html"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">earlier post</span></a>.<br />
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Bly’s collection, published by his own Sixties Press, contained some nonfiction excerpts by I.F. Stone and others, appropriate lines from Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln, and poems by contemporary poets who participated in group readings. They included Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Lowell, George Hitchcock, James Wright, Donald Hall, John Logan, Louis Simpson, William Stafford, Robert Creeley and Bly.<br />
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Denise Levertov visited in the spring of my senior year, and handed out antiwar factsheets as well as her antiwar poems. I was one of the students granted a few private minutes with her, up in Sam Moon’s office. I remember I brought her a cup of tea from the Gizmo, which pleased her. I recall mentioning to her how the barrage of news and necessary decisions relating to the war was becoming overwhelming to “us.” Some wondered, I said, if we could even justify doing anything else. She was startled by this, and quickly affirmed that of course we should still take time to do life-giving things every day, like read, write and “think about your dreams.” It was that think about your dreams everyday that stuck with me.<br />
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(Levertov also edited the <i>1968 Peace Calendar and Appointment Book</i> for the War Resisters League, which interspersed poems among the calendar pages by scores of American poets, including William Stafford, Robert Duncan, Jonathan Williams, Nancy Willard, Galway Kinnell, Sam Hazo, Gilbert Sorrentino and Jim Harrison, as well as these poets who visited Knox while I was there: Robert Creeley, Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, David Ignatow, Mitchell Goodman and Levertov.) <br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></b> left Knox in 1968 without a degree, vulnerable to the draft. I kept changing my official address all summer—a tactic recommended by one of those draft counseling handouts or articles—so a draft notice couldn’t find me. In the fall I became a student in fiction and poetry writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, but I never really settled in Iowa City. I was often in restless transit, to Galesburg, to Chicago where Joni was living in the Del Prado Hotel near the lake on the South Side along with other student teachers for a semester in the Chicago school system. And back again to my narrow winter room, my pork tenderloin sandwich at the lunch counter before class on Tuesday afternoons, with the Moody Blues on the jukebox.<br />
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But my every step seemed dogged by the draft. I was sunk into myself and my conundrum. I learned one thing from responses in every place, from family, lovers, friends and other strangers. That no one knew what I felt as I faced what was before me. Only other young men with a draft physical looming at that moment could begin to fathom it. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Alice's Restaurant (1969)</td></tr>
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A draft physical order finally caught up with me. On one of my preliminary visits to moving to Iowa City, I was warned by Workshop students not to register with the Iowa City draft board, so I remained registered in Galesburg. That turned out not to be so wise either.<br />
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I was called for a pre-induction physical in Chicago. I caught the train from Galesburg, and had my draft physical straight out of a nightmare <i>Alice’s Restaurant</i> movie. I had hearing test results with me that clearly showed I was functionally deaf in one ear, which I’d been assured by a joyful draft counselor would get me out. But it didn’t.<br />
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Among the multiple ironies--none of which I was in the mood to savor at the time--was that my fondest ambition at age 11 or 12 was to become a Naval Academy midshipman. Because Members of Congress could appoint a qualified candidate to Annapolis, I figured I had a chance, since I was known to ours. But I think I can remember the moment--trotting down the steps made of piled rocks from my house to the street-- when it came to me: I could not meet the Annapolis physical standards because of my deafness, and there was nothing I could do about it. And so I had to give up that dream. All that I knew about Army standards now told me my deafness should be disqualifying again.<br />
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But standards seemed to be functionally relative. There were quotas to meet, and it was a high draft call that month. Still, the times were such in the late 60s, and the war so controversial, that substantial disagreement if not dissidence had begun to appear within the military. This was clear at the draft physical. Comparing notes later with others from Knox and Galesburg who had their physical that day, it seemed that its outcome depended more on the luck of the draw than any factual basis. If your line led to a sympathetic doctor, and you wanted out (some even asked), he got you out. If it led to a functionary or an angry true believer, you were in, no matter what. I was unlucky.<br />
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There was a written part to the exam. We started out at school desks in rooms set up like school rooms, filling out forms and taking psychological tests, directed by a no-nonsense young lieutenant. <br />
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After our humiliating physicals we returned to the same room for further forms. When we finished, the lieutenant closed both doors, and told us what it was really like in Vietnam. It was the most powerful anti-war message I had yet received. He told us that in effect our lives were being thrown away.<br />
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Dazed and disoriented, I managed to also get my wallet stolen so I left penniless as well as hopeless. I borrowed a dime for a pay phone to call Joni at the Del Prado.<br />
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But I soon went back to the pamphlets and books, wrote letters and got an appeal physical. Unfortunately it was also going to be my induction physical. If I passed, I would be inducted into the army.<br />
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I also started the process of obtaining conscientious objector status. I’d been corresponding with William Eastlake, and he cautioned me not to let my perfectly reasonable objections to the Vietnam war become opposition to all wars—a justifiable one might come along any day, he wrote. <br />
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At the time, CO status was granted almost always only on religious grounds if you were a member of a recognized church, and only if you were conscientiously opposed to all wars and killing, and not only to killing in this war. <br />
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But this was the only war they were going to send me to fight or support. And potentially killing me wasn’t as infuriating as forcing me to kill others I had no reason to harm. The first might kill my body, but the second would definitely kill my soul. To me this was personally and morally clear. It was defining. <br />
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Still, I was torn about CO status, but I filled out the forms, and I was prepared to use them if necessary.<br />
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And if all else failed, I knew my last step. There would come a moment in which inductees would be asked to take one step forward, indicating they accepted induction. That was a step I would not take. That would set off another process which could send me to prison, if I didn’t figure out how to survive in Canada first.<br />
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My appeal/induction physical was at Fort Des Moines in Iowa. The Obamas stayed at the Fort Des Moines Hotel during his presidency, but it’s a little different from the place where I stayed back then, in the barracks for three nights. My physical lasted three days. <br />
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I took a bus alone from Iowa City. As the only person in my “group”, the Army designated me as its leader, and assigned me the responsibility of filling out the forms and keeping the expense accounts. On the forms I had to keep an accurate count of myself each time I got off and on the bus.<br />
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I got to Des Moines early, and spent a giddy afternoon with a girl I met on the bus, whose name was Trish. She worked at the phone company in a small Iowa town. We walked around in the sunny air and may have gone to a movie. I do remember that we eventually were talking to each other in slight English accents. It was a time when the practice of youth, freedom, sunshine and innocence was summarized by the Beatles.<br />
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I arrived on time at Fort Des Moines, though my actual physical was to be the next day. I was billeted in a barracks for the night with at least a hundred others from all over Iowa, most of them younger and very excited and eager to be leaving Iowa in uniform. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert Bly in the 60s</td></tr>
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But there were a few, identifiable by age and hair length, who quickly found each other, and found me. One of them knew even more about our rights than I did, the first of which was we were still civilians and the Army had no legal right to hold us there. So we went somewhere for a beer, and I got more valuable advice about the physical itself.<br />
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My physical at Fort Des Moines replicated the conflict among the personnel conducting it that I saw in Chicago, but this time more dramatically. My appeal physical was managed by a desk sergeant on the first floor, who was mutely if clearly sympathetic. If I wanted out, that seemed pretty ok to him.<br />
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But that decision was to be made upstairs (literally—I think it was the third floor) by a doctor, a young lieutenant who eventually told me that no matter what I brought to him, he was going to pass me. He’d been drafted out of medical school, and if he had to go, I would have to go.<br />
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This back and forth, this circuit from downstairs to upstairs with occasional trips to off-base doctors, went on for three days. I caught on to the drill early: maybe because this was an appeal, or maybe because of the desk sergeant, they were duly if not actually examining every claim I made. And so I kept making them, and they kept sending me for more tests and evaluations.<br />
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There were a couple of highlights. They sent me to a doctor elsewhere in Des Moines for another hearing test. He was elderly, and had the most primitive equipment I’d seen since my first grade hearing exam. I’d been tested several times since with the latest machinery at the University of Pittsburgh, but this guy’s idea of a hearing test was to stand behind me and ask me to repeat what he said. “One,” he said, and then moved a few feet. “Two...”<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ve3hSiKf24o/Xp6FXuLc_aI/AAAAAAAAd4I/Ok7xTxRrNW4UmVJFXttmRhuxyceGc0_wACEwYBhgLKs0DAL1OcqxDSamYA6iu8pWkcq_EoRXSO5ZgRGZqgq55mjCU1negjRPMDWafqnqWcgjLLFlXrYHDMfaVzUragpvuMx0-kG69hQlDlrhXekYeVhckbYyngLxg1diKAoYemS2cKVgv41J0XnehnQLetLJ1NkpcIYl3uZvrKemurEusvVg1M_LU6Nz3vk_EsuNTo9kLDdZRj3JDJ-HDn4CqIaL-9sS0-PHmc2vr2z9V2IlKffC8_yuIPA5URONaR7zdxXz49kfl0dy1p4gisHpH-SyVkaBodhb_asQ-sRCetd2PoWe0I8SFqBGsKptb9x5CscEE2grvUu7_TpE88kuREsPcDVXOaYOo8DygejiQ9ZChJDk3Bcw6abOx9RrzxRmnqfB--FhVAXwCuMrlMhhkr6FLeuachlulsdfSWtpcJ2OevjmqlfomI4aFKwf9nSOr5Ac-Akh7g65qRLg46w3qUfHrFm_y9YGKVbhcooUBbb6uLXRRjeZI5ne6l5pCsuM0tsccFtXXOBrcEJ8x8ExjE7PCyEOHwsyjdELGE91ACv29dfGIIT86yFtbbEIPzistGLngvO9Gf4ddHjkIXgC32BM0p6W4yOTVc9_AymrN0W8wlZD69AU/s1600/denise_levertov%2B1968.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="954" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ve3hSiKf24o/Xp6FXuLc_aI/AAAAAAAAd4I/Ok7xTxRrNW4UmVJFXttmRhuxyceGc0_wACEwYBhgLKs0DAL1OcqxDSamYA6iu8pWkcq_EoRXSO5ZgRGZqgq55mjCU1negjRPMDWafqnqWcgjLLFlXrYHDMfaVzUragpvuMx0-kG69hQlDlrhXekYeVhckbYyngLxg1diKAoYemS2cKVgv41J0XnehnQLetLJ1NkpcIYl3uZvrKemurEusvVg1M_LU6Nz3vk_EsuNTo9kLDdZRj3JDJ-HDn4CqIaL-9sS0-PHmc2vr2z9V2IlKffC8_yuIPA5URONaR7zdxXz49kfl0dy1p4gisHpH-SyVkaBodhb_asQ-sRCetd2PoWe0I8SFqBGsKptb9x5CscEE2grvUu7_TpE88kuREsPcDVXOaYOo8DygejiQ9ZChJDk3Bcw6abOx9RrzxRmnqfB--FhVAXwCuMrlMhhkr6FLeuachlulsdfSWtpcJ2OevjmqlfomI4aFKwf9nSOr5Ac-Akh7g65qRLg46w3qUfHrFm_y9YGKVbhcooUBbb6uLXRRjeZI5ne6l5pCsuM0tsccFtXXOBrcEJ8x8ExjE7PCyEOHwsyjdELGE91ACv29dfGIIT86yFtbbEIPzistGLngvO9Gf4ddHjkIXgC32BM0p6W4yOTVc9_AymrN0W8wlZD69AU/s400/denise_levertov%2B1968.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Denise Levertov in 1968</td></tr>
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So by the time they sent me to see the psychiatrist I was either hallucinating or seeing some odd things, like a film crew following me, and a nurse smiling brightly as she emerged from a broom closet door I’d been staring at as I waited. <br />
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Eventually, after three nights in the barracks and three days on the first, second and third floors, the desk sergeant was briskly amused and rather pleased to tell me that I’d essentially worn them out, and that I would be reclassified as unfit. The papers I got in the mail merely stated that my appeal—based on my hearing—had been successful. <br />
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My journey back from Fort Des Moines began with hash browns at the bus station eatery, and in the adjoining arcade I bought an old red marching band coat, Sergeant Pepper style.<br />
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It sounds like a Joseph Heller story now, but it was hell at the time. I was so traumatized and conflicted by the years and months leading up to the hours and days at Fort Des Moines that I dropped out of the Workshop, left Iowa, and wound up back in Galesburg, fulfilling my own prophecy in a poem published in the Siwasher my senior spring: “I will hide.” <br /><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-51967585050709036172022-07-04T01:32:00.002-07:002022-07-04T01:44:49.792-07:00History of My Reading: Summer Reading 1968<b><span style="font-size: large;">M</span></b>y summer of 1968 functionally began with the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy in <a href="https://dreamingup.blogspot.com/2018/06/1968-graduation-part-2.html"><span style="color: #9fc5e8;">early June</span></a>, and ended with the police riot in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention in late August. In between these iconic indicators of the contextual chaos, I traveled: to Iowa City, Chicago, Galesburg, Greensburg (PA), Boulder (CO), Libertyville (IL) and Hamilton, Ontario--some of these several times.<br />
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I flew, drove, rode trains and buses, and hitchhiked. I was simultaneously trying to arrange my attendance at the Iowa Writers Workshop and its financing in the fall, while dealing with draft boards, doctors and draft counselors. I was certain to be called for a draft physical soon, which made any other plans as well as my future highly uncertain.<br />
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And almost incidentally, I was also completing two independent studies, my last courses at Knox College, in an effort to obtain more credits towards an elusive BA degree. One of them was fiction writing for Robin Metz. The other--which I'd completely forgotten about until recently reviewing letters from that summer--was a paper on Thoreau for Doug Wilson. So in all that fraught and frenetic summer, the still point in my churning world was Walden Pond.<br />
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I must have done most of the reading and writing in midsummer, when I was back home in Greensburg. While not exactly Walden, it was relatively quiet, and I had hours of solitude.<br />
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I now realize that a surviving manuscript I previously thought was for my Emerson/Thoreau <a href="https://dreamingup.blogspot.com/2019/06/history-of-my-reading-this-dancing.html"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">course </span></a>in my junior year must be a rough draft of that summer of '68 paper. It consists of an introduction and three sections: "Utility As Purification," "Towards an Ecology of Feeling" and "What the Body Thought." The first section was based mostly on <i>Walden</i>; the following sections on Thoreau's journals--or mostly the journal entries contained in the selection <i>H.D. Thoreau: A Writer's Journal</i> by Laurence Stapleton.<br />
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So that summer I re-read Walden and the Stapleton book, if not more. I apparently began by noting page numbers of journal entries of interest, then marked which ones I would use in the paper. I marked a half dozen references to sound and music, though I didn't use any in the draft I have.<br />
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My introduction shows a continuing influence of my spring reading on philosophy of science, not mandated by any classes but in response to two of the science courses I took (supposedly for non-majors), one in which I got<span style="color: #6fa8dc;"> <a href="https://dreamingup.blogspot.com/2018/06/1968-flunking-evolution.html"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">an F </span></a></span>and the other an A. There were also references to the Two Cultures debate from the very <a href="https://dreamingup.blogspot.com/2018/08/history-of-my-reading-two-cultures-part_9.html"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">beginning</span></a> of my Knox years.<br />
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The relationship of art and science, or more particularly intellect and feeling, as methods of ascertaining reality in Thoreau's exploratory writing was the general topic. "Reason is that faculty which is quite fond of producing reasons," I wrote. But intellect infused with feeling was Thoreau's solution. Feeling came from the physical (the body's) response to the physical (nature.) Yet feeling was also formed and informed by the mind, by thought. I'm immediately reminded now of the work of Jung, James Hillman and others I came upon later, in which intellect and feeling, body and mind, are among the orchestrated elements of the human soul.<br />
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Looking at this draft now without the academic fuzz, I see some 1960s concerns, such as revolt against the conventional and the trivial, and against meaning defined by money, as well as countering the cold rationalism that justified the Vietnam War. These included pressing personal concerns, particularly the prospect of a life about to be wasted on the inessential and the ignominious. (<i>"Woe be to the generation that lets any higher faculty in its midst go unemployed," </i>Thoreau wrote.) I quoted in particular a journal entry that Thoreau wrote on a December night, after he made a fire and <i>"endeavored to return to myself....I wished to ally myself to the powers that rule the universe. I wished to dive into some deep stream of thoughtful and devoted life..."</i><br />
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In the midst of a highly political year, in which issues of great pith and moment seemed to require group action and engagement, I was attracted to <i>"live, ah! as far away as a man can think."</i> To the relative isolation and solitude, the living deliberately of Walden. And it would turn out that I fled from one of these opposites to the other for the rest of my life.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">B</span></b>ut what I didn't write about is also interesting. The Stapleton book is titled "A Writer's Journal," and so it contains Thoreau's thoughts on the practices and purposes of writing, something of particular interest to me, especially at that time. The book itself impressed me enough that years later, when I thought I'd lost my copy, I found a more recent edition (and then the old one turned up.) But that summer, I also looked to another book for guidance, or at least solace.<br />
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After finishing my independent studies I returned to Galesburg and Iowa City in July, and then flew off on a borrowed half-fare card to Boulder to join Joni, who was taking classes at the University of Colorado campus there. (I must have flown from Iowa City because I remember a short flight in Iowa with so few passengers that I saw one of the young stewardesses--as they were then called-- watching the sunset from a cabin window.) <br />
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My digs for those weeks were a couple of rooms drenched with the smell of cement on the first floor of an otherwise unoccupied house still under construction, located conveniently next door to Joni's apartment. (She'd charmed the builder, who was also her landlord, into allowing this.) There I set up my typewriter and tried to write, though I often reverted to reading the book that had been a kind of Bible since my senior year: Richard Ellman's biography titled <i>James Joyce</i>.<br />
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Joyce was not much of a naturalist, but "silence, exile and cunning" and his absolute devotion to his work were not terribly far from Thoreau. Joyce's example was enlarging, focusing and also eventually toxic. But I kept reading largely because Ellmann's biography is so well written. (It became the model for literary biographies, at least for awhile.) And at age 22, the romance of it overwhelmed less salutary aspects. With my own identity as a writer unmoored, it was a kind of anchor.<br />
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I remember other books of a literary nature I read in those years, but only one other I associate with that summer, and I'm not even sure the association has exact basis in reality. But I'm pretty sure it was that summer that I read Kurt Vonnegut's novel, <i>Mother Night.</i> <br />
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<i>Slaughterhouse Five</i> and Vonnegut's rocketing fame were still months in the future, but I'd been hearing about him my senior year from Robin Metz, who was at one time his student at the Iowa Workshop. Such is Vonnegut's enormous presence in that period that it's a bit startling to be reminded that he became instantly ubiquitous only in the early 1970s, beginning in 1969. His influence--particularly as an anti-war novelist and spokesperson--seems to blow back into 1968 and 67. So when I associate reading Vonnegut's short stories in the collection <i>Canary in the Cat House </i>with my senior year residence on First Street, it may or may not be accurate. <br />
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But I'm a little more confident that I read Robin Metz's own hardback copy of <i>Mother Night </i>when I stayed at his house on Broad Street in Galesburg for a time or two during that summer. It was a compulsive, riveting, powerful reading experience. Its roots in popular literature were clear, but its voice and point of view were unique. I looked forward with anticipation to his "big book" rumored to be coming out the following year.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></i> returned to Chicago in August in time to visit Bill Thompson in Libertyville, and (with Mike Shain) to drive him and his new wife to Hamilton, Ontario, where he would attend graduate school and, not incidentally, be safe from the draft. Why I did not take the Canada option myself remains a mystery to me, though it probably had something to do with my incompetence at even conceiving of how to survive. Yet it seems now that had I given it seven minutes of consecutive thought, I should have seen it as the best of my alternatives. But thinking clearly about any of this, and not being overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, was not easy to come by.<br />
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Instead I returned to Libertyville with Bill's father's car and trailer, saw the police riot on TV, went to Chicago as described <a href="http://dreamingup.blogspot.com/2018/08/chicago-1968-american-tragedy.html"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">elsewhere</span></a>. Then eventually to Iowa City and the famous Iowa Writers Workshop. However, as it turned out, briefly. There I finally had to confront the draft--something of the inevitable destination of the past several years and the obsession with the Vietnam War forced upon us, which included several years of the reading I include in my next post, along with an account of my three day physical at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-31960351571198937472022-06-05T22:47:00.000-07:002022-06-05T22:47:42.457-07:00History of My Reading: Graduation 1968 (Part II) RFK<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-37qEQEWOLG4/Wxz1gZW-9eI/AAAAAAAAalE/bnjsxNOIpqA5LGXutJoxiZkCJCOu5fdyACLcBGAs/s1600/commencement-2014-aa-71423.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="494" data-original-width="354" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-37qEQEWOLG4/Wxz1gZW-9eI/AAAAAAAAalE/bnjsxNOIpqA5LGXutJoxiZkCJCOu5fdyACLcBGAs/s320/commencement-2014-aa-71423.jpg" width="229" /></a></div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">W</span></b>hen my class of 1968 marched into graduation, I was not among them, for reasons described in the previous post (<a href="http://dreamingup.blogspot.com/2018/06/1968-graduation-part-1.html"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Graduation Part 1.</span></a>) Instead I was on the other side of a wall from the ceremony, in the student union parlor, watching a different kind of ceremony on the television set.<br />
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That was Sunday, June 9, 1968. But this story begins on the previous Tuesday, June 4.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">W</span></b>e had some big parties at our house on West First Street in the 1967-68 academic year, the place that housemate Bill Thompson dubbed the <i>Galesburg Home for the Bewildered.</i><br />
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In the fall I remember a mid-party appearance by our new Homecoming Queen, the radiant Shirley Kishiyama. Several of the Stoney Mountain Boys—Rick Lindner, Tom Stern and Mark Brooks on tub bass—set up and performed, and I got to play some guitar runs with them on an improvised jam.<br />
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Some of our parties were semi-official, like one we had for a blues artist after his concert. I'm pretty sure it was Bukka White. He brought his classic shiny silver National guitar with him, but when people asked him to play he would just look around the room, pick somebody and hand over the guitar. He always found a guitar player, and laughed, claiming he could just tell. It was the only time I ever got to play one of those steel-bodied guitars.<br />
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In the spring, we hosted a party for poet Denise Levertov that drew faculty as well as students. We had the cast party for <i>What's Happening, Baby Jesus</i> there.Then our last party of the year—and the last ever for us—was scheduled for Tuesday June 4: primary election day. It was a Victory Party—we just weren’t sure for who. But Thompson had been working since before the New Hampshire primary for Senator Eugene McCarthy. (He’d even made a halfhearted attempt to get “Clean for Gene,” which basically meant kind of a haircut.) I was supporting Senator Robert Kennedy, and hoped I would be working to elect him President that summer and fall. Both were against the war.<br />
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<i>For although the world’s imperfections may call forth the acts of war, righteousness cannot obscure the agony and pain these acts bring to a single child.”</i><br />
Senator Robert F. Kennedy, in the March 1967 Senate speech in which he broke with the Johnson administration on Vietnam.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">R</span></b>obert Kennedy had been the keeper of the flame after JFK’s assassination in 1963, and President Lyndon B. Johnson knew it and resented it. By 1967 RFK was making speeches on the Senate floor questioning American involvement in Vietnam (which—several historians confirm—his brother President John Kennedy had intended to end in his second term.) But the media usually saw everything RFK did as reflecting his animosity towards LBJ or his political ambitions, or both.<br />
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It has since been reported that RFK wanted to challenge LBJ for the 1968 nomination, but felt frustrated that it would be seen only as expressing that animosity, and not as a principled opposition on both the war and on his signature domestic issue, racism and the plight of black Americans, especially in the inner cities.<br />
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Until early 1968 it looked as if there would be no anti-war alternative in the November election. Then a relatively obscure U.S. Senator from Minnesota, Eugene McCarthy, entered the New Hampshire primary as a candidate opposing LBJ, and the Vietnam War.<br />
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Some at Knox responded quickly. Wendy Saul chaired an exploratory meeting in February. I attended either that meeting or a subsequent one, held in the basement of a women's dorm. I remember being depressed by the discussion, and taking a break from it to sit alone nearby, where I could hear the sound of someone taking a shower. I remember the image because I put it in a poem.<br />
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I wasn’t enthusiastic about McCarthy or his campaign. I didn’t believe he could win. But of course if he had remained the only alternative, I would have supported him. <br />
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McCarthy did shockingly well in New Hampshire, coming in a very close second to LBJ. RFK felt that he could no longer be accused of dividing the Democratic Party: it clearly was already. But reportedly two other factors pushed him. First, that the generals were asking for 200,000 more American troops, and LBJ agreed. Second, that LBJ wasn’t going to even consider the recently announced recommendations of the Kerner Commission to address the causes of racial strife in the cities.<br />
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Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy for President on a Saturday morning in March. It was spring break and Joni and I were visiting Mary Azer and her family in West Chicago. Joni and Mary were Post Hall roommates. I think I met them at the same time the previous spring. I remember Mary, red hair, blue eyes, quietly mischievous smile, showing up at West First Street one night that winter in her Navy blue peacoat to go play in the snow.<br />
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So I met Mary’s parents and her younger sister, Barbara, then in high school—dark-haired, energetic, direct, pretty, funny. I remember watching RFK’s announcement, probably in their basement rec room. I knew that now I had my candidate. RFK had political and rhetorical strengths McCarthy didn’t. And as became apparent in the remaining primaries, particularly in California, RFK had enthusiastic support in the black and Latino communities. <br />
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I was encouraged, wary and dared to be a bit hopeful. I’d followed RFK’s career from the Justice Department to the Senate in 1965. He was running for the Senate in New York as we started our first year at Knox, and I remember lending a paperback book of his speeches and statements (<i>The Pursuit of Justice</i>) to classmate Nina Palmer with whom I shared a class (probably Spanish), because she was from New York. I noted his first Senate speeches, on nuclear proliferation and gun control. My second year I participated in Prof. Dean Torrence’s mock Senate—for that exercise I was Senator Robert Kennedy.<div><br /></div><div>Reading speeches, by the way, had been part of my reading since high school, partly because I was a debater, and partly because John F. Kennedy was President, and his speeches were eloquent and substantive (thanks in part to his main speechwriter, Ted Sorenson. I say in part because Sorenson never achieved on his own or for anyone else this level of writing.) I had two books of JFK speeches before I left for college, and the aforementioned one by RFK. I would add another before 1968.<br />
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Not long after RFK’s announcement and his pledge not to attack McCarthy directly, we all heard that LBJ was going to address the nation that night, on April Fool's Day Eve. Joni and I got to the nearest television, which was a few doors down West First at the home of Robin and Lynn Metz. The moment that LBJ announced that he would not run for reelection was surreal and delirious. Now the chances that the war could end had greatly increased. There was dancing in the streets at campuses across America that night. I didn’t see any at Knox, but our hearts were dancing on West First Street.<br />
<br />
Then in April, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. RFK was campaigning in a black neighborhood in Indianapolis, and he broke the news to the crowd. He spoke softly, from the heart, mentioning the assassination of his brother. He quoted a line from Aeschylus, his favorite poet, from memory. Then he expressed what was to become an unusual campaign theme:<br />
<br />
"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.” He urged everyone to <i>"dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.”</i><br />
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The next day he spoke in Cleveland, on the “mindless menace of violence.” He started with the violence of shootings and riots and the war. “<i>Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created?” </i><br />
<br />
But he also spoke of less obvious violence, hidden, persistent and insidious: <i>“For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.” </i>Today this would be called a reference to structural racism, as well as structural sexism and poverty.<br />
<br />
But he did not stop there. McCarthy got credit for being intellectual, but RFK had the depth derived from classical literature, and so he spoke in ways no other politician could. <i> "The question is not what program we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence." </i><br />
<br />
And then, a statement that must strike terror in the hearts of Social Darwinists, consciously or otherwise: <i> "We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the advancement of all. We must admit to ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortune of others."</i><br />
<br />
RFK won primaries in two states, Indiana and Nebraska, that had few elements of his natural constituencies. He lost Oregon to McCarthy however, and so the next big step in the campaign was California, the last and largest primary. A victory there could mean RFK would be the coalition antiwar candidate at the August convention in Chicago. He would be opposed by the establishment candidate, LBJ’s vice president Hubert Humphrey, who supported LBJ and the war.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">O</span></b>ur festivities started before the polls closed in the West Coast time zone. It was crowded and loud, with the latest Hendrix, the new Cream on the stereo. But we didn’t have a working television in the house, so every once in awhile Thompson would get on the phone with a friend watching a dorm TV to get the latest speculation and then the vote counts.<br />
<br />
I was restless, moving back and forth from the heat and laughter of the party and the cool solitary dark quiet outside. When the call came confirming Kennedy’s victory, I mostly felt relief.<br />
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Joni and I rushed down to the Metz house to watch RFK’s victory statement, even though they were McCarthy supporters. Kennedy appeared in the incredibly crowded ballroom of the campaign’s hotel and spoke briefly. He congratulated McCarthy and spoke about their common effort. He thanked his staff and supporters. He saw his victory but also McCarthy’s campaign as a validation: “The country wants to move in a different direction, we want to deal with our own problems within our country and we want peace in Vietnam.”<br />
<br />
“On to Chicago,” he concluded, “and let’s win there.”<br />
<br />
We went back to the house but I was still restless. Something about that ballroom scene, something about how RFK looked made me anxious. So I went back out almost immediately. I began to walk in the cool humid night, the sidewalks moist from recent rain. I headed away from the streetlights, to dark weedy fields. RFK’s victory in California would signal his appeal to anxious party leaders like Mayor Daley, who was inclined to support him. He’d also won that night in South Dakota, within Humphrey’s midwestern sphere of influence. That also would be noted by party leaders. Could it be that the war was going to end? That there would be a President I could believe in again?<br />
<br />
The walk calmed me, and by the time I got to West First I was ready for sleep. Then I saw Joni running up the sidewalk towards me, alarmed, frightened. I stopped in front of the Metz house. She stood still in front of me and said as evenly as she could: “Bob Kennedy’s been shot.”<br />
<br />
The Metz house was dark but I banged on the door until the porch light came on. When Robin opened the door, I repeated Joni’s words exactly. We both wondered about it later, that we had called him Bob. He was always Robert, or RFK, he was Bobby. <br />
<br />
Later Joni told me how she’d heard. Thompson answered the phone, and through the noise of the party’s remnants she heard him saying: “Who?” and then cry “No! No!” At that moment Joni thought something had happened to me.<br />
<br />
We turned on the television coverage. The bedlam at the hotel. The first medical reports—Kennedy was alive, but in critical condition. It went on all night. First Lynn then Robin went upstairs to bed. Joni dozed on the sofa, woke up and walked back down the street to sleep. I stayed there, watching, the rest of the night. Frank Mankiewicz, RFK’s campaign press secretary, announced that the Senator’s vitals were good but doctors were about to begin surgery. He had been shot in the head. <br />
<br />
The first two plus hours were filled with anxious talk, facts reported and then rescinded and corrected, about the shooting itself, the number of victims and their condition, and the person or people who had done it. There were interviews with witnesses, a lot of talk about a woman in a polka dot dress who had disappeared. For awhile everyone was obsessed with the woman in the polka dot dress.<br />
<br />
I remember the NBC reporter Sander Vanocur trying to look in the camera calmly in the atmosphere of shock and hysteria. At one point he reported that police had a suspect in custody whose last name was Sirhan. They didn’t have a first name. So it became the mystery of the hour, what was Sirhan’s first name. Finally he was able to confirm that they knew the first name now: it was Sirhan. His name was Sirhan Sirhan. Maybe it was the reporter, or maybe it was me, but at least one of us almost lost it at that moment.<br />
<br />
At dawn I turned off the set, and probably after stopping at the house, walked over to campus. I had early breakfast in one of the dining halls (the one on the corner that isn't the Oak Room.)There was something eerie about that breakfast, both bleak and comforting--I still dream about it. In the dream the room is filled with bright gray light, and it seems a miracle, or a mistake, that I am allowed to eat there.<br />
<br />
But for a few moments on that morning it seemed possible that none of what I'd seen all night had actually happened, that nothing had happened to me either for the past several months and I was back at the beginning. But soon I was camped out in the union parlor in front of the television, and it was quickly clear that it all had happened, and was happening now.<br />
<br />
Judging from the times recorded in later reporting, it must have been around five a.m. in Galesburg when surgery started. It went on for more than three hours. So I was probably watching the union TV when the coverage was focusing on the medical aspects.<br />
<br />
Doctors were interviewed, pointing at charts of the brain. They were not optimistic. Then someone brought new information on the location of the wound. One doctor who saw it got excited. He said if that were true, RFK could be out of the hospital in a few weeks, perfectly okay.<br />
<br />
But a few minutes later, that doctor was interviewed again. Pale and shaken, he said that the new information was actually about another victim, Paul Shrade, a California official for the United Auto Workers and a major Kennedy supporter. He’d also been shot in the head, and he did leave the hospital in a few weeks. His was the only apparently serious wound. All five of the other victims survived.<br />
<br />
Then the surgery was over, and just past 9 a.m. Mankiewicz said it had gone well, but the next 12 to 36 hours would be critical. <br />
<br />
The coverage continued and I kept vigil until I couldn’t stay awake any longer. But after a few hours sleep, I was back again. It was Wednesday evening when Mankiewicz returned to the microphones and said that the doctors were concerned that Kennedy hadn’t show improvement. “Kennedy’s condition is still described as extremely critical as to life.”<br />
<br />
So it was now just a matter of time. Time to contemplate, time to look around with different eyes, time to almost forget. Time to relive the nightmarish day that JFK was shot and the weekend that followed. I’d watched it all on television then, too. On that Sunday my family went to church but I stayed home to watch. I saw Lee Harvey Oswald being moved from jail—I was startled by what looked like a gun. But it turned out to be a microphone. And a moment later I heard the shots. I saw Oswald shot on live television.<br />
<br />
At four in the morning on Thursday, Mankiewicz stood on the lawn of twisted cables in front of Good Samaritan hospital one last time to make announcement everyone knew was coming: Robert Kennedy was dead.<br />
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I must have watched stretches of coverage in the following days—the casket arriving in pools of bright light amidst the darkness of the New York airport, the motorcade of black cars to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. There his mother waited, and his friends took turns attending the casket, and in different parts of the cavernous cathedral, red-faced Mayor Daley and ashen Tom Haden wept. <br />
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On Friday the crowds gathered, formed into block-long lines to pass by the casket, to touch the curved cold steel covered in flowers, each with a word of farewell. A reporter noted what words he heard most often: “Forgive us, Bobby.” <br />
<br />
Saturday morning was the funeral Mass, with all the dignitaries in attendance. Senator Edward Kennedy gave a brief eulogy: “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”<br />
<br />
And all day Saturday the funeral train made its slow way to Washington, passing thousands of the unimportant. Many of those gathered, in small groups, families and even alone, or in large groups near the cities, were poor, and many more were black. <br />
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Failing to account for the people on the tracks to see the funeral train, the railroad allowed its regular traffic. Several people were killed, including improbably a woman named Antoinette Severini, who died saving her granddaughter. That’s my aunt’s maiden name, though it wasn’t her. Still, given the woman’s name and her location, it’s possible if not likely she was a relative. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jacqueline Kennedy, her children and her sister</td></tr>
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Then in darkness, Robert F. Kennedy was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, next to his brother, President John F. Kennedy.<br />
<br />
I’m not sure how much of this I saw as it was happening, but probably quite a lot. Yet I felt compelled to go back to the television on Sunday, to see programs that compiled images of the events.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">H</span></b>aving no particular business there I probably should have left campus before graduation weekend, but inertia in packing up to leave was compounded by these paralyzing events. So I was around as families of my classmates arrived. I believe I met Wendy Saul’s father out on the Gizmo patio. I may have seen Barbie Cottral’s parents and her sister Lindsey, who I’d met on a brief visit to Clinton, Iowa the previous summer. <br />
<br />
But I believe it was that weekend that I had a singularly memorable experience, so different from the rest of that week. Mary Azer’s parents and sister Barbara were there, and Joni and I probably went out to dinner with them. Joni flew back to Denver on or before graduation day, so this might have been Saturday night.<br />
<br />
What I remember is returning with them to their motel in what had to be a prearrangement, because I found myself swimming at night in the motel pool out on the highway somewhere with three lovely young women: Joni, Mary and Barbara. It was heaven, and a little torturous as well. But most of all it was peaceful. The effect was not even completely destroyed when I noticed the black night sky was dominated, not by a silver white moon, but by a large red or orange round neon sign high on a stanchion, probably a Gulf sign. It reflected red in the pool.<br />
<br />
But on Sunday, as the graduates gathered, I was back before the student union television. On that day as on the previous ones there were faces and voices on the dotted screen talking about Bobby. Charles Evers, slain Medgar’s brother, with angry tears insisting Bobby did more for blacks than anyone. A longhaired young man claiming that as news came of Kennedy’s impending California victory, Abbie Hoffman was ready to disband the Yippies and call off the demonstration at the Democratic convention in Chicago. <br />
<br />
A young aide said Kennedy behind the scenes was advocating American withdrawal from Vietnam when antiwar leaders were only calling for negotiations. The playwright who said that the day he died, Kennedy praised the Watts Writers Workshop and wanted the federal government to fund others. An American Indian writer spoke of Kennedy’s visits to reservations, said Indians considered him a warrior on their behalf. <br />
<br />
A steelworker who said he was the only politician who might end the war and still get the hardhat vote. An historian who said RFK had been the best Attorney General in American history. Another who noted that Kennedy reveled in poetry, and once completed a couplet that Richard Burton forgot when the two were reciting for each other by heart.<br />
<br />
People really loved him, they said. And people really, really hated him, they said. He knew he was going to be killed, a few whispered.<br />
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And pictures of Bobby, smiling and touching, frenzied hands reaching for him, talking softly to children, joking with campaign crowds, pounding his right fist into his left hand. This is unacceptable, he said. This is not satisfactory, he said. We can do better. <br />
<br />
A student at a medical school asking him where the money was going to come from to pay for his programs for the poor. “From you,” he said. <br />
<br />
Bobby talking about the war, about <i>“the vacant moment of amazed fear as a mother and child watch death by fire fall from an improbable machine sent by a country they barely comprehend.” </i><br />
<br />
And endless repetitions of his last public words, on the podium in California, with people pressed against him, his victory statement. <i>“...the division, the violence, the disenchantment...whether it’s between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups or on the war in Vietnam...we can start to work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country, and a compassionate country. I intend to make that my basis for running...”</i><br />
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At the funeral, young Kennedy children carrying Communion articles to the altar, while Mahler played, and people wept. The cameras had trouble with the contrasting light, so there were dimly visible pools surrounded by recesses of darkness. An announcer noted that the priest wore violet vestments, not black. But on TV they were gray.<br />
<br />
Always present, RFK's wife Ethel Kennedy, pregnant. (There's a label on another of my blogs called "land of guns," for the numbingly frequent stories on gun violence. It comes from a line in a poem I wrote at the time about this week, that ends with the image of Ethel Kennedy "swollen/in the land of guns.")<br />
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I do remember that it was Sunday that I saw more of the long surreal funeral train, and the night burial. Of all the images, the funeral train seemed to say the most, rolling slowly, reluctantly past the once again abandoned, for when it stopped, it marked the end of possibilities.<br />
<br />
Without Bobby, the war would go on. The mad havoc, the mechanical killing would go on and on in Vietnam, and young men here of my age, boys I’d gone to Catholic schools with or played with in the vacant lots of my home town, sons of salesmen, milk truck drivers, factory workers, cooks for the last rich family in town, as well as young men in my college class, now out there with beaming parents watching, would have to face those awful choices.<br />
<br />
I would never have my graduation. But this was my commencement.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-32369072130817222092022-05-09T01:37:00.001-07:002024-01-28T01:31:31.210-08:00History of My Reading: Graduation 1968 (Part 1)<i>“No need to survive.”</i><br />
Nano Sakaki to Gary Snyder<br />
<br />These next two posts are perhaps less about what I was reading in the spring of 1968 than some of the consequences of what I had read within my life and my own writing. In that sense, they are about graduation. But they also center on a literal graduation ceremony--the one that was supposed to be mine.<br /><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a later Knox commencement</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">G</span></b>ray metal chairs were lined up on the freshly mowed, bright green lawn at the back of Old Main. Men in suits, women in dresses were starting to assemble, parents and relatives of the graduates, with younger brothers and sisters dancing and jangling around.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, members of the graduating class of 1968 were buttoning their black robes, at least some of them rented for the occasion, shiny with the wear of generations. Or so I imagined.<br />
<br />
Not far away, with just a wall between them, was the Seymour Hall student union parlor. It was dark, curtains on the tall windows drawn against the June sun. The big squat television set was on. Laughter and chattering voices drifted in from the foyer, but tended to diminish if someone came cautiously into the carpeted room for a moment to peek at the TV, though there were those who had cynical comments to make.<br />
<br />
At first a few people sat watching the television. But as the ceremonies began there was usually only one person there, lost in the sofa’s worn out cushions, hidden from sight behind the ancient couch’s stiff high back. That was me.<br />
<br />
Why I was on the other side of the wall from what would have been my graduation ceremony after four years at Knox was the result of two very different sets of circumstances.<br />
<br />
One set was set in motion at the end of winter term, as related in a prior post, when I<span style="color: #6fa8dc;"> </span><a href="http://booksinheat.blogspot.com/2022/03/history-of-my-reading-flunking.html">flunked evolution</a>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bill Thompson and Joni, enacting an American<br />
Gothic scene in the broken fields behind our<br />
house on West First Street. My photo.</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></b>n the golden green month of May, many things were moving towards conclusion, if not culmination. I was living in a big prairie Gothic house on West First Street, shared with my last remaining housemate, Bill Thompson, and my frequent guest, Joni Diner. I was back in the attic, as I had been at the start in Anderson House. This time however I had the whole floor—basically two rooms, a snug bedroom and down a short narrow passage, a large study.<br />
<br />
I wrote a lot in that room, though it never felt like enough. I had already begun to mythologize my time at Knox, and those manuscript pages—worked over, cut up and reassembled many times over the next decade or so—currently reside in boxes in the garage, along with the detritus of those years that happened to survive. I never did get the manuscript quite right.<br />
<br />
That spring of 1968 I was writing fiction for another workshop course. Earlier in the year I’d written a short story that everyone who read it seemed to like, called “Diamond in the Sky.” Robin Metz was in his first year teaching fiction writing—he and his family lived just a few doors down on West First—and he urged me to send it out to possibly get published.<br />
<br />
So I sent it to my favorite magazine, the New Yorker, which also was pretty much the gold standard, the premiere place for fiction for professional writers. I’d read John Updike and J.D. Salinger in those pages.<br />
<br />
They kept it for an unusually long time. Then the letter from the New Yorker finally arrived. It was from the inimitable <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Angell"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Roger Angell</span></a>, then the fiction editor. Its first sentence has been seared into my brain for fifty years: <i>“We could hardly bear not publishing your story.”</i><br />
<br />
And yet, they did bear it pretty well. In the letter, Angell wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better to just send me a straight rejection, but they thought so highly of the writing...and so on. Highly encouraging in a way, but in another way... I don’t want to exaggerate the effect, but I think it did qualify as being a bit traumatic. It haunted me for years. I never got that close again. <br />
<br />
In April I finished off and collected my fiction, as well poems and plays for the college annual writing awards. Earlier in that attic room I wrote the play I directed in April, <i>What’s Happening, Baby Jesus.</i> I recently found the production script which included some lines I added late:<br />
<br />
<i>SONNY: We gave you everything we had. Where did we go wrong?</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>DRIFTER: Where? Dresden, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Birmingham, Watts, Hue, Saigon, Berkeley... </i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>SONNY: Well, nobody’s perfect.</i><br />
<br />
That’s God speaking, get it?<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I8qPquBbnb0/WxjWwTCMKSI/AAAAAAAAaiU/aqMjApoYKlUoJdzwgiIpEFKPrKs-9WTxACLcBGAs/s1600/scan0003a.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I8qPquBbnb0/WxjWwTCMKSI/AAAAAAAAaiU/aqMjApoYKlUoJdzwgiIpEFKPrKs-9WTxACLcBGAs/s320/scan0003a.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me with Thompson's hat, enacting my version. BT's<br />
camera facing the other way, towards campus, the<br />
field already being prepared for major construction.<br />
All the houses on W. First are gone now.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Also that spring I wrote a twenty page paper, with footnotes, for my Science and Society class. It’s strange what papers survived storage and transport over the years. I’m missing the ones I best remember: my long independent studies paper on three Scott Fitzgerald novels, my paper on a Wallace Stevens’ poem that at the time Doug Wilson thought was good enough to submit for academic publication.<br />
<br />
Instead, I have a junior year paper on Emerson that Wilson thought wasn’t very good, and gave me a B-. I remember it with frustration: I was annoyed that a love affair had interrupted writing the paper, and annoyed that writing the paper had interrupted the love affair. <br />
<br />
And I also have the Science and Society paper, which I recently found. Indeed its subject is how scientific theories are influenced by outside factors and ideas: in particular, Darwin’s theory of evolution and Einstein’s theories on relativity. The citations are from history and philosophy of science, and include Thomas Kuhn’s <i>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</i>, which was later to become quite famous. So I got to research that subject after all, though a term too late for other "evolutionary" purposes. I got an A on the paper and for the course.<br />
<br />
My other course work was in connection with the English comprehensive exams. I remember the frantic reading and studying that shredded that beautiful spring, all the near-panic among the students I knew as the exam date drew near. <br />
<br />
There was a question and answer component, and an essay. The essay seemed to cause the most concern, as we tried to figure out in at least what period or area we should expect the topic to be. The whole of English literature was a daunting expanse to consider. I remember that one of our professors—on his way down to the bookstore or the mail boxes in Alumni Hall—laughed at our anxiety and told us to relax, we would enjoy it.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI29pLNaH-lB5m2YV8tFKLCpy6Z3NtkQHTJAGiTOgl8w-9gf-xhyphenhyphenjjeWggcBqx7-mMfTlUEamRaNDsy6lwIrdLLOKJaL5fdI9EZRT4YcWoKs1UkNUusJIFCbEbI7zxzsIK2UeyS8gTlMsfpCMcQV7eO4RqOTOwdbMDXtGc7Yl-8a1_frsNr_-Bkg/s588/tumblr_mcwxc4AFnj1qed8s5o1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="587" data-original-width="588" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI29pLNaH-lB5m2YV8tFKLCpy6Z3NtkQHTJAGiTOgl8w-9gf-xhyphenhyphenjjeWggcBqx7-mMfTlUEamRaNDsy6lwIrdLLOKJaL5fdI9EZRT4YcWoKs1UkNUusJIFCbEbI7zxzsIK2UeyS8gTlMsfpCMcQV7eO4RqOTOwdbMDXtGc7Yl-8a1_frsNr_-Bkg/s320/tumblr_mcwxc4AFnj1qed8s5o1_1280.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This image of Vanessa Redgrave was not on a<br />Grecian urn but my bedroom wall on First St. </td></tr></tbody></table>Oddly enough he was right. The essay question was to analyze the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats, a surprising choice in that none of my teachers had seemed that impressed with the Romantics. But in fact I did enjoy every minute of discovering elements of the poem that led directly to the famous conclusion: <i>"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know</i>.<br />
<br />
I’d love to have that particular blue book now. Later I was told that my essay “could not be graded high enough,” and that as a result, I had the highest combined score on the comprehensives for my department. Given my grade however, I have my doubts about that. <br />
<br />
At some point in May, the spring edition of the college literary magazine was published. It was still called, for probably the last time, the Siwasher. I was co-editor that year with Wendy Saul. I believe we divided the basic editorial chores in half—she took the winter issue, I took the spring. There was more of a shared process on selection of the material for both issues, involving other students as well.<br />
<br />
For my years at Knox, the magazine looked basically the same: a standard size print magazine with poems, short stories and an occasional play script, with a discrete section of reproductions of student art work, some in black and white and some in color. <br />
<br />
I wanted to try something different. My dream was to someday create a complete art work in a box: a novel with a related musical record album, visual collage, photo or art work, and a film. For this issue I wanted to try a variation of that, and especially to include components or presentations that hadn’t been included before.<br />
<br />
The question was the budget. Though I had (and have) remarkably few practical skills, I had been bringing things to publication since junior high school. I did the grunt work for several issues of the Knox magazine called Dialogue in previous years. Budgets weren’t my forte either but I did figure out how to do this for the same price as earlier issues: a magazine that came in a brown manila envelope. It contained a booklet of print, plus two vinyl records of music and six 8x10 sheets of photographs, and a poster by Steve Miller. <br />
<br />
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Unfortunately that didn’t leave enough money for the usual four color separation for art works. But I figured skipping one issue was worth the additions. We did include a black and white photo of a sculpture by Peter Overton and Recep Goknil, an art student from Turkey.<br />
<br />
The photographs were by Jack Brown (whose photo from the Pentagon demonstration in October was the cover of our fall issue), alumnus David Axelrod, Leonard Borden and Bill Thompson (including a portrait of Lisa Metz, then four or five, looking rapturously ahead at what Robin ruefully admitted was the TV.) <br />
<br />
The envelope itself included a short unattributed poem by Howard Partner. (I was a big fan of his poems. We published two of them in our winter issue.) The booklet inside included fiction by Jeremy Gladstone and Barbara Ann Cottral, a play by Sherwood Kiraly and poems by Nicholas Brockunier, Anne Maxfield, Bob Epstein, Harvey Sadow, Linda Pohle, Wendy Saul, Phil Ralston and me.<br />
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One side of the pink record was comprised of “Allegro Con Brio for Two Pianos” written by Karen Janecek, and performed by Karen and James Pinkerton; “Single Girl” by Four in the Morning and “Baby, Now That I Found You” by the Bushes, a Rascals-style group composed of Knox students and Galesburg residents.<br />
<br />
The other side was the Joni Mitchell tune “The Urge for Going” performed (vocal and guitar) by our star at both, Rick Clinebell.<br />
<br />
The yellow record had three songs by the Stoney Hollow Boys (“Maggie Blues,” “I Saw the Light,” “Mountain Dew.”) The other side was me, singing a long song I wrote, “Nightdove.” However, I used a 60s whimsy secret identity of Captain Toothpaste. I did own up to co-writing the song, but my co-writer was another fictitious alter ego. <br />
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Most of the cuts were from live performances. Rick Clinebell reviewed the submitted tapes for quality, and rejected mine. He was rightly impatient with me and my slipshod musicianship in general. In this case he pushed me into a rehearsal room in the CFA, handed me his guitar (much better than mine), plopped down a tape recorder and told me to re-record the song. I seem to remember there was urgency in getting it done before we were off to Iowa, and I believe I had exactly one take.<br />
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Wendy, Barbie Cottral and I took the tapes to the nearest studio capable of turning them into records, which was in Iowa—Davenport, I think. It was run by an older gentleman and his wife. She thought “Captain Toothpaste” was a scream. Every once in awhile she would repeat it and laugh again. (When I went back to pick up the actual records weeks later, she was still in stitches over it. She said when she brushed her teeth at night she would think of Captain Toothpaste and laugh.)<br />
<br />
While we were there the first time, he played the tapes and fiddled with his dials, to see if they would work. As he played mine he added a little echo and asked if I wanted him to use it. I said sure. That was the extent of the studio production.<br />
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So by May, I was treated to a special experience—walking under an open window at Post Hall and hearing my voice and my song floating out:<br />
<br />
<i>And you turn yourself to magic</i><br />
<i>and fall into the snow</i><br />
<i>you go the way the wind is slow</i><br />
<i>foggy and warm, away from harm... </i><br />
<br />
In mid-May the college writing awards were announced. I got a first in fiction, second in plays, third in poetry. I also won the award for the best student library, for the second year in a row. That streak actually went back to winning a library competition for sophomores only. I won the prize of $50 in books from the Knox Bookstore, which helped me build up the bookcase for the following years.<br />
<br />
I’m not sure when I was accepted into the University of Iowa Writers Workshop graduate program (one of a handful to be admitted into both the fiction and poetry workshops) and given a fellowship. That process must have at least begun in the spring, assuming my B.A. <br />
<br />
All of these apparent achievements bunched together in late spring were distanced by the experiences and feelings of a surreal finality—that this all-embracing and defining madness of our college life would soon be abruptly over, that the next time you saw someone you’d seen many times over four years might actually be the last time. They were also hollowed by the ongoing effects of those few hours towards the end of winter term.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">F</span></b>or though the domino theory was famously not applying to Southeast Asia, it turned out to be working very well in regard to me: I flunked the Evolution final, and so failed the course, failing thereby to complete my distribution requirements, and therefore failed to be eligible to join my class for graduation.<br />
<br />
That fate, and ongoing efforts to somehow avoid it, formed the undercurrent to everything else that spring, especially in May. I no longer remember the exact sequence of events, but the first effort was to find some sort of accommodation that would allow me to graduate. I knew that students in prior years had been granted such accommodations (though I failed to consider that, unlike the one student I knew, my father was not a trustee.) <br />
<br />
The decision was up to a faculty and administrative committee—though I don't think it was the ultimate irony of being the Student Affairs Committee. I petitioned the appropriate committee. I was refused.<br />
<br />
Some years ago I attempted to write about all of this in a short story, and I included an account of a conversation I no longer remember. Still, it has the ring of truth, both in terms of the teller and of my response. If it didn’t actually happen that way (as my Aunt Toni used to say), it could have.<br />
<br />
In this conversation, a faculty member told me that the main reason my petition was denied was because the professor who taught the Evolution course--who was on the committee making the decision-- vigorously opposed it. “When he wouldn’t budge, the others fell in line. You got his back up.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t understand.”<br />
<br />
“You as much as told him his class was a fraud. It made him mad. So instead of punching you in the nose, he just dug in his heels.”<br />
<br />
“But...” I stammered. “He’s a—he’s a teacher.”<br />
<br />
(There's some documentary evidence supporting this possibility: the 1968 Knox Directory (I actually have two surviving copies) shows that the professor who flunked me was also on the committee that decided my fate. As far as I know he didn't recuse himself from the case, which might have been appropriate.)<br />
<br />
A few years later I collected a bunch of poems I’d written in college and shortly after, and labeled the folder <i>Epitaphs of Innocence.</i> As naive as I had been about value-free science, I discovered that I harbored this weird innocence in which teachers put aside ego and anger, and eventually act in the best interests of their students. This situation stuck the epitaph on that particular illusion--though of course there were and are those who do. I suspect others had figured it out earlier. And since I had been attacked viciously and personally by a faculty member in the Knox Student just a few months before, I should have figured it out earlier as well.<br />
<br />
Of course I had also been a well-known loudmouth (though mostly in print) and troublemaker on a range of issues, who particularly (and stupidly but somewhat innocently) insulted the college administration and faculty. I guessed that didn’t work in my favor.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-en0r2RLVP3U/WxjYMzHNiCI/AAAAAAAAaig/yto3NjByfi4aNhHnNjyJRDwfoQcR37TtQCLcBGAs/s1600/Denise_Levertov_edit.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="424" data-original-width="626" height="216" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-en0r2RLVP3U/WxjYMzHNiCI/AAAAAAAAaig/yto3NjByfi4aNhHnNjyJRDwfoQcR37TtQCLcBGAs/s320/Denise_Levertov_edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Denise Levertov</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I had some faculty support, and two writers who visited that spring added theirs. Novelist Daniel Curley, who judged the writing awards, wrote a letter on my behalf. He told the committee what he told me in person: though he had awarded me a first in fiction, he could have just as easily awarded me a first in any of the categories. But the moment I wish I had witnessed was when poet Denise Levertov told off one of the deans, asserting that they were being “irresponsible.”<br />
<br />
There was also some effort to get someone else to give me an independent studies course that would fulfill the requirement, but the only professor available, in math, was reluctant because he had to finish his dissertation, and his continued employment probably depended on it. Robin Metz, who was active on my behalf, was willing to talk to him again, but I called a halt. <br />
<br />
Just earlier this year, when I finally went through some papers left to me after my father died and the family house was sold, I found a letter from Robin to my mother. Evidently she’d written to him about what could be done, and he mentioned this last effort and my deciding against asking this professor (the same one who’d taught my first year math classes) to do what he felt he couldn’t manage. Robin’s very kind letter made me sound like a hero of self-sacrifice, but I remember just being tired of it all. <br />
<br />
I had seen what was coming, at least by early spring when I wrote a poem later published in the Siwasher called “Evolution.” There was a famous and favorite example of natural selection that teachers loved because it perfectly illustrated the principle, and it had happened in modern times. It was the peppered moth that lived in England. <br />
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It was a mostly white moth that suddenly found itself visible to predators when it perched on tree trunks that had been blackened by coal dust and soot generated in the 19th century industrial revolution. Thereafter the moths tended to be black, so they were less visible. The white moths largely died out but the black moths survived and procreated—a neat example and illustration of natural selection.<br />
<br />
The particulars of this example were already being questioned in 1968 by further research that suggested, for one thing, that these moths might not actually cling to tree trunks very much. For awhile the peppered moth as an illustration of natural selection itself died out, but it seems to be back in favor.<br />
<br />
Anyway, it was the prime example in our course, so I could end my poem with the lines:<i> “And I am a white moth/pressed against/ a blackened tree.” </i><br />
<br />
The hardest part of all this was writing the letter home to tell my parents not to plan on coming to graduation after all. They’d driven me the 800 miles to Galesburg for my first year, but they would not be returning. Neither of them had gone to college. I would have been the first to graduate. <br />
<br />
A year or so later, Douglas Wilson suggested various changes to the Knox curriculum, in an article published in the new campus magazine, Catch (which combined the old Siwasher and Dialogue.) His strongest words were in favor of dumping distribution requirements, as "a major source of frustration and resentment," and an expression of hypocrisy by faculty (and one might add, administrators) whose education did not include these courses. I believe at least for awhile, Knox did drop them. Need I mention, not soon enough for me.<br />
<br />
<b>B</b>ut as hard and as saddening and depressing and guilt-inducing as my situation was at that time, it had serious competition in the immediate scheme of things. Whether I graduated or not, I faced the near certainty that I would be drafted within weeks or months. That—and my possible responses--were causing conflict and confusion in the family already. I won’t even get into the uncertainty it added to personal relationships.<br />
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And it was late spring, and there were the gold-green days, the night wind high in the trees around the cemetery, the Toddle House waffles and the Q’s blueberry pancakes, the smell of the first donuts of the morning downtown, the lovely, long-haired girls in the warm light. There were still the pattymelts and endless paper cups of coffee in the Gizmo, the poetry reading against the war on the soft lawn as evening edged across the brick sidewalks. There was music from the open windows:<br />
<br />
<i>Though the dark trees can’t see the sun</i><br />
<i>you walk through the cold</i><br />
<i>before you’re old</i><br />
<i>the day must begin</i><br />
<i>fly above them...</i><br />
<br />
Then it was June and this account of my little drama has told why I wasn’t out there on the Old Main lawn with a funny black hat on my head. But as that day grew closer a larger drama of a larger fate began, which accounts for why that day I was on the other side of the student union wall.<br />
<br />
<i>To be continued...</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-17666155477054986302022-04-30T23:47:00.003-07:002022-06-27T04:05:05.365-07:00History of My Reading: What's Happened, Baby Jesus? Spring 1968<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-shoDwPEtbrM/WuK9aMuGviI/AAAAAAAAaMg/0m4JLX-ymuw-eLUsu7S33jA9rQGLXKJ8ACLcBGAs/s1600/scan0001.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1042" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-shoDwPEtbrM/WuK9aMuGviI/AAAAAAAAaMg/0m4JLX-ymuw-eLUsu7S33jA9rQGLXKJ8ACLcBGAs/s400/scan0001.jpg" width="260" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">program cover by Tarillis J. Seamans</td></tr>
</tbody></table> At some point after I moved here to California in 1996, a then-current Knox College student called me, and said she was researching a paper that involved Knox productions in 1968. She told me that <i>What's Happening, Baby Jesus?</i>, the play I wrote and directed that April of my senior year, was often mentioned by people she interviewed, and had been talked about a lot at Knox for several years after the production. It was discussed, she said, even with an incoming theatre department professor.<br />
<br />
It was a multi-media production, involving film and music. It was in other respects as well, very much of its time--including what I'd been reading as well as seeing onstage and elsewhere.<br /><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hue April 1968</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">A</span></b>pril 1968 was not just another April, just as 1968 was not just another year. More American troops were engaged in the Vietnam War, more young American men were drafted, and there was more bombing in both North and South Vietnam than ever before. Early in the calendar year, the Tet offensive by the Viet Cong caused massive casualties on both sides, and while American and South Vietnamese forces ultimately took back territory--with the city of Hue substantially destroyed-- the offensive exposed the quagmire quality of the war. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New York City April 27, 1968</td></tr>
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Antiwar protests continued to grow--the march on the Pentagon, first national mobilization, and a huge protest in New York on April 27, the day our show opened.<br />
<br />
Earlier that year, Senator Eugene McCarthy nearly defeated President Lyndon B. Johnson in the New Hampshire presidential primary as an anti-war candidate, Senator Robert Kennedy of New York began campaigning for the nomination in following primaries, also against the war. On March 31, LBJ announced he would not be a candidate for re-election. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chicago April 1968</td></tr>
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But that wasn't all. Racial conflicts continued, with a civil rights protest in February resulting in the deaths of three students. The Black Power movement gathered strength. Then Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, and the ensuing riots and destruction in an estimated 85 American cities that night and the next day left 30 people dead (11 in Chicago alone), more than 2,000 injured and neighborhoods burned out and in rubble, with martial law and National Guard on the streets of American cities. <br />
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Three days before we opened, students at Columbia University in New York began occupying administrative buildings, protesting the university's secret ties to a military think tank and the building of a white-only gym encroaching on the black neighborhoods of Harlem. There were other student protests in Europe and in the U.S. all year.<br />
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And if we needed any reminder of the possibility of instant annihilation we'd lived with all our lives, on the day before we opened the U.S. exploded the largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated in the actual United States, at an underground test site 100 miles from Las Vegas. It was the 34th nuclear bomb explosion at that site since the start of our school year (the test on February 21 was code named Knox). There would be six more before my class graduated in June. <br />
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(And when I say "all our lives," it was literally true for me--the first big post- World War II US atomic bomb test was exploded the day I was born.)<br />
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Sequestered as we were in Galesburg, all of this was part of our lives--and our campus. April 26 was national Vietnam Day but at Knox, April 1968 in fact was Vietnam Month. Although there was lots of tension between students and administration on various political issues, Vietnam Month was a consensus project.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Howard Zinn 1968</td></tr>
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It began with History professor John Stipp lecturing on the history of Vietnam (and not for the first time. He and other Knox professors held the first teach-in on campus in 1965.)<br />
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Also that week, English professors Moon, Metz and Douglas Wilson talked about war and literature in the Common Room, while recent Knox alum Stephen Goldberg gave two talks about his experiences with the International Voluntary Services in Vietnam, and the director of the AFL-CIO African American Center lectured.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">poet Denise Levertov 1968</td></tr>
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The following weeks included at least 9 outside speakers, including the Vietnamese counselor for the Vietnamese Embassy, a Brigadier General, a former Green Beret and current antiwar activist (Donald Duncan), a fairly young Howard Zinn, activist and government professor from Boston; and the poet and activist Denise Levertov. <br />
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There were additional faculty discussions, and a faculty and a student debate, and a poetry reading against the war. Though it wouldn't happen until May, the comic and activist Dick Gregory delivered a memorable speech and answered questions in Harbach Theatre.<br />
<br />
In the midst of this came the news that Glenn L. Moller, Jr., a 21 year old former Knox student had been killed in combat in Vietnam. He'd left Knox the previous year, and otherwise would have graduated with our class in June. He was the third Knox student killed to that point (after Merriman Smith, Jr., son of the distinguished United Press White House correspondent, and Thomas Dean, brother of one of our classmates, Willard Dean.) He wouldn't be the last.<br />
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Meanwhile, the world flowed through by means of newspapers, television, magazines. The Knox Student weekly newspaper, as edited by Peter Stetson and Jeremy Gladstone, funneled current Liberation Press Service releases and other material like the notorious "Channeling" document of the Selective Service, outlining how the draft and deferments are used to channel men into careers in "the national interest." Draft resistance was a hot topic in 1968. Knox student Jim Miller ('68) wrote a series of articles on Canada as a haven, for instance.<br />
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Needless to say, complaints appeared in the letters columns. But the newspaper did not neglect ordinary campus news--in fact, it did a better job of it than many students newspapers that I've seen do now.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">S</span></b>o in the bright and wet warmth of April, our campus was sad, conflicted, bewildered, frustrated, angry and helpless all at once, together with the other emotions and experiences of the campus spring. Games were played, movies were screened, concerts and recitals were given, art work was exhibited, and plays were performed.<br />
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A preliminary and editorial word about the Studio Theatre. There were a few big productions on the revolving stage in Harbach each year, directed by theatre faculty. But in the Studio Theatre downstairs, there seemed to be student productions every weekend and sometimes during the week. The plays were usually directed by theatre students. Many--though not all-- of the plays were by contemporary playwrights, and many--but not all--were in some sense experimental.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Donald Davis, the original American Krapp<br />
in 1960. There was likely another actor in<br />
the role when I saw this production in 1965.</td></tr>
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Theatre students got experience in directing, acting, scene and costume design and all the technical areas. Campus playwrights could also get productions. But all of us got the experience of seeing these plays, that we simply otherwise would not have seen. It's where I saw my first Albees, Becketts, Pinters, Ionesco and Genet (I remember Joelle Nelson in a Genet play I didn't understand and still don't) and many more, as well as my first Kiralys and Petersons. I saw seldom-produced plays by Yeats and Eliot.<br />
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There are some plays I saw only in the Studio Theatre at Knox, and some that remain in my memory despite seeing them in more professional settings elsewhere. For example, I saw the original New York production of Beckett's <i>Krapp's Last Tape </i>together with Albee's first play <i>The Zoo Story </i>(the summer between my first and second years at Knox) and just a few years ago, another production of the Beckett. <i> </i>But the performance I remember most vividly was George Otto's <i>Krapp's Last Tape </i>in 1968 in the Studio Theatre--the Expressionist lighting on his hollow cheeks as his long arms reached for the tapes are indelible images. <br />
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I've since also observed that these opportunities for students to make theatre as well as to experience it are not found everywhere. It was free-range theatre of a kind that I doubt exists much at all anymore.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">me in senior year,the fall of 1967 in the Gizmo.<br />
Photo by Bill Thompson.</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">A</span></b> play of mine had appeared in the Studio Theatre the previous spring, directed by Richard Newman. <i>By the Sea By the Sea By the Sea By the Sea</i> was a pastiche comedy, heavily influenced by TV sketch comedy, the <i>Beyond the Fringe </i>LP<i>,</i> British movies (namely <i>Morgan!</i> and the Richard Lester Beatles films), the Liverpool Poets and other aspects of Swinging England, as well as by James Joyce and Marshall McLuhan. Its theatrical highlight was a scene done in pantomime while the entire Beatles song "The Word" played at full volume, climaxed by Willard Dean driving his motorcycle into the theatre and onto the stage, playing a police officer arresting an elderly protester. <br />
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In my senior spring, I directed as well as wrote <i>What's Happening, Baby Jesus? </i>I'd never directed anything, so I made not-even-rookie mistakes like casting it without callbacks to actors who auditioned. But I had a Vision, of a multimedia collision of myth and the moment. So everything about 1968 at Knox I described here, and a lot I didn't, was involved.<br />
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For the multimedia, we used a film collage of mostly World War II newsreel footage that Todd Crandall made. We had about a fifteen minute pre-show as people were coming in, comprised of a music mix, film projection and a kind of light show. I created the music tape, interjecting periodic taped announcements of "the next show begins in x minutes" as they used to do at drive-in movie theatres. 1968 was a great year for music: Beatles, Stones, Creem, Hendrix, Doors, Airplane, Dead, Janis with Big Brother, Buffalo Springfield, Country Joe and the Fish, Dylan, Donovan, early BeeGees and so on.<br />
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Todd's film ran throughout the show, projected on the wall. I believe we had more than one film running on more than one wall. Something like that. My housemate and friend Bill Thompson ran the light show and did the light cues during the show. I did the sound cues, so we were together in the booth each evening. <br />
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We also had music cues during the show, including pieces of "The Baby Jesus Song" which I wrote, sang and played, with additional vocal and instrumental accompaniment by Joni Diner, Marilyn Bell and Ric Newman. We recorded it on one take by sneaking into the band room and taking covers off a few keyboard instruments, plus whatever percussion we could find.<br />
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Bill Thompson was in charge of lighting but he knew as much about theatrical lighting as I did about directing, so without a word, the student previously known as Guy Morose got up in the rigging, fixed our lights and gave us our lightboard cues. He was a hero by any name, though years later I was so happy to hear (from the wonderful Valjean) that he'd changed it (back) to Guyatano Amorosi.<br />
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Our set and costumes were designed by dear sweet Charlie Rice, whose murder in Chicago just months later was a terrible shock. The absolutely perfect program cover design was by Tarillis J. Seamans, Jane.<br />
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Marilyn Bell and Jean Rabinow did the costumes, including a yellow flowered shirt (think <i>Magical Mystery Tour</i>, or Donovan) for me to wear in the booth. I still have it. Sandy Berger did props, Steve Clark makeup. (Peter Overton, a star of the show, showed up at rehearsal with a shirt with those shiny ivory buttons he found at the western store in Galesburg. He wore it in the show, and I liked it so much I went down and bought an identical one for myself.)<br />
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Ric Newman was technical director and Joni Diner was the stage manager. Lucy Mitchell chaired the house committee of ushers: Sherwood Kiraly (whatever happened to him?), Larry Baldacci, Jan Byhre, Bruce Hammond, Henry Keighley, Judy Major, Julie Machnicki, Janie Langer, and two other first years who would be part of my later life, Carol Hartman and Mike Shain. <br />
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<i>What's Happening, Baby Jesus? </i>was set in a timeless Old West town, simultaneously a familiar tv western set and the paradigmatic locale of the American myth. <br />
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The town was run by Marshal Power, played to perfection by Peter Overton. At that point, the Vietnam War was owned by LBJ, who had a way of pronouncing it "Amurican." He was an overpowering personality in those days, and his cruder aspects became identified with his war policy. Many people--especially of my generation, and including me, who worked to elect him in 1964--felt betrayed by his escalation of the war. He'd expressly said he wouldn't do what he did--send American boys to fight in Vietnam.<br />
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So he was the western Marshal, who was also a God the Father Figure. My Catholic education came home to roost with this play, for sure. Some of the speeches I copied right out of scripture. His prodigal son (Sonny), played by Ric Newman, was a go-getter salesman of everything commercial. The real power however was the sexually aggressive Virgin (Celeste Manking), accompanied by her hapless and frustrated husband Joe (Steve Clark.) <br />
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When the Marshall and Sonny have their showdown, their violence creates a third figure: Breath, or The Drifter. He was sort of the Holy Ghost in Catholic mythology of the Trinity, and sort of the human caught in these rivalries, and becomes the object of their projections (though I would have been unable to describe it that way at the time.) My biggest failure as a director was not being able to give Sandy Simon much help in developing his character as the Drifter.<br />
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There were also a lot of bits. The play began with a brief Beckett parody of two bums (Bill Daniels and Dan Murray) talking, which went nowhere except for the payoff: "We're waiting." "Waiting for who?" "Waiting for Godard."<br />
<br />
Because the next scene was a gunfight between the two masters of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut (played by Todd Crandall and Steve Phillips.) Thanks to David Axlerod and Todd Crandall's Cinema Club, we'd seen a number of their films over my years. Truffaut and Godard had a bit of a feud after Godard got more political.<br />
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I don't know how funny the audience thought this was, but a little more than a decade later I interviewed Truffaut in Hollywood, and I actually told him about this scene. He laughed.<br />
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A scene that did get a big laugh was set up by a couple of blackouts--Mike Shain in a business suit would appear and start to say something but the lights went out immediately. The third time he did get to say his piece. It was a pitch by a certain chewing gum company (American Chickle) to recruit Knox students, which I found in my student mailbox. I literally stapled it into my first draft and added the line: "So come on out and keep America chewing." Biggest laugh of the night.<br />
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One of the other interpolated scenes was a sweet but awkward conversation between a male and female student. Steve Phillips was the Guy, and Shirley Covington was the Girl. She was the daughter of an African American minister in Galesburg. He was head of the church that sponsored at least one Civil Rights march or demonstration there that I participated in. She just showed up at the tryouts, and I cast her. <br />
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When I entered in 1964 Knox had, as far as I know, only one black student. In 1968 I believe there were about 20. I may be wrong, but she may have been the first African American to be cast in a Knox production. At least I don't remember another such instance in my time there. Not to mention the first portrayal of an interracial relationship. Her father came to the show, which worried me, given my less than orthodox approach to religious doctrines. I was also embarrassed by how small the part was. But they both seemed pleased.<br />
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Other actors in the show were Cathy Thompson, Howard Partner, John Hofsas and Bonnie Lucas. Jeremy Gladstone and Charlie Rice captained the construction crews.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joni. Photo by Bill Thompson</td></tr>
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Eventually the Marshall and Sonny put the the Drifter and his young disciples on trial (for "self-possession") and they are imprisoned. It's pretty clearly a stand-in for the draft: having them dance to the Country Joe and the Fish song, "I Feel Like I'm Fixin to Die Rag" was a big clue.<br />
<br />
In their cells (pools of light) they made quiet statements and restatements ("Try Paradise Apples. Paradise Apples Get You Off") including a haiku or two, and part of "Rules and Games," a speech written by Fred Newman, a philosophy professor who left Knox after my first year. (I dedicated the play to Fred, and to Joni, my--what word do I use? I prefer "sweetheart." And Muse. )<br />
<br />
(Later, after we'd parted ways, Joni left behind the role of supporting the creativity of others and went on the stage herself, acting in Providence, RI.)<br />
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The play ended with the Drifter finding apples and sharing them with the other prisoners, a blackout, while last lines of Dylan's song "The Drifter's Escape" played: <i>"Just then a bolt of lightning struck the courthouse out of shape/and while everybody knelt to pray, the drifter did escape." </i>Then lights up to an empty stage.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></b>n those years, the Knox Student reviewer came to a run-through and wrote a review that appeared the Friday before the production. Our show was generously reviewed by Rod Barker ('68), especially considering we were ridiculous rivals in our testosterone-riven writers workshops. He was right that the production and the script were experimental, and a lot didn't work; that some lines were good and some were dumb. He was right that it was an unfinished work. But he said it was a fun experience for an audience. "The play and characters are multi-faceted and multi-dimensional and can be appreciated on many levels. Everyone, I'm sure, could find at least one."<br />
<br />
One of those levels was the one--or ones--appreciated by seeing the show stoned. Smoking or ingesting the substance now known as cannabis had arrived on the Knox campus secretly a year or two earlier, but it was more open and much more widespread in 1967-68. And it was a factor in the show's effects (including strobe lights) and multimedia.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jane Langer and Carol Hartman, among the<br />
first year ushers for the play</td></tr>
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But it was also a factor that productions had to face. At the time, those students who indulged tended to know each other, even if they didn't look the part. There were "freaks" and "straights." So I pretty much knew which members of the cast indulged. I got them together at the first rehearsal and asked them to refrain from coming to rehearsals stoned, and if they did that, we would have a "stoned rehearsal" late in the process, so we would all be on the same "level."<br />
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Which we did--one of our last rehearsals before we moved into the Studio Theatre. We held a run-through in the lobby space. It was a bit confusing for those cast members not in the know, though at least one responded to the vibe by loosening up his performance. I asked him later to keep those moments in the show, but it was never quite as good. The rest of us had a great time, and we all saw new dimensions in what we were doing. (One cast member--Howard Partner-- confessed he didn't understand the show until running it again in his head at the cast party closing night.) This rehearsal ended with an unscheduled blackout--the lights just all went out at precisely the right second. We all praised our stage manager for an inspired effect, but she claimed that she had simply collided with the light switches by accident. So in other words, it was perfect.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">A</span></b>lso on campus on that Sunday, our second and closing night, was poet, translator and columnist John Ciardi. He'd finished his talk early enough to get to our show, and came down to the green room afterwards to say how much he liked it. He'd especially enjoyed the line "Why are all my friends allegorical figures?" Since he'd translated Dante--I read at least some of his <i>Inferno</i> my first year, along with his Saturday Review column-- I could understand that. He surprised me--he was known at that point to be unsympathetic to the growing counterculture--and I regret not being more welcoming. But in general I was a jerk way too often anyway.<br />
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<i><b><span style="font-size: large;">W</span></b>hat's Happening, Baby Jesus?</i> was of its time in maybe another way. At about the same time as we did our show, a little musical was opening called <i>Hair. </i>In 1969 I attended a performance of the now big hit <i>Hair </i>in San Francisco, because Ric Newman was in the cast. I was standing in the lobby afterwards when suddenly he was embracing me, and babbling about how we should revive <i>Baby Jesus </i>somehow, it was the perfect time. I was skeptical. Even though<i> Jesus Christ Superstar </i>would open in 1970, I didn't see much resemblance to these pretty conventional musicals, however daring their subjects or themes. But it's nice to think we might have done a better version of it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Richard Newman (right) in the 2005 film <i>Supernatural</i></td></tr>
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I saw Ric a time or two more in San Francisco that fall but lost track of him. Then late one night in the mid 1980s, on the other side of the continent, I was half asleep with the television on a cable movie channel. My eyes were closed and I wasn't following the movie at all when suddenly I heard this voice: I knew immediately it was Ric.<br />
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But by the time I opened my eyes, the scene was over. I made myself stay awake till the credits when I could confirm it. It was <i>Finders Keepers</i>, an obscure movie my old favorite Richard Lester made between his Superman and Three Musketeers films. And there was Richard Newman in the credits. Now thanks to the magic of the Internet Movie Data Base, I found<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0628236/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"> all 181</span></a> (and counting) of his credits as primarily a voice actor but also onscreen actor. <br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></b>t's pleasant to be nostalgic about a common enterprise 50 years ago, with fond memories of people and good moments. But memories of that time and this play in particular aren't real without the complicated context, and I've barely scratched the surface here. <br />
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Looking back on the experience, I enjoyed the collaboration within the process of finding my production. I recall very early in the process, when I was going over casting possibilities, probably with Ric and Joni, someone suggested that two characters could be combined. I instantly saw that possibility, not only to solve a casting problem but to strengthen the play. Later, it was watching what the actors did, and guiding and selecting.<br />
<br /> As the pre-show suggested, the play was highly influenced by the music we were listening to, and the films I'd seen at Knox, as well as the spirit of the Beatles movies, Stan Freberg's historical satires and<i> Beyond the Fringe</i>. I literally copied passages out of a paperback Bible as literature, but the business of the Trinity was straight out of the Catholic Catechism of my schooldays. Literary spirits included Vonnegut, Heller and Farina, with McLuhan presiding as circus master. <br /><div><br /></div><div>Looking back on the script, I see that it was an awkward search for a way out, past despair, joking all the way. It blundered towards integrity, freedom and human warmth, not often reconcilable. But in 1968, that was my life.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-11540273610442105992022-04-13T21:35:00.003-07:002022-04-13T21:43:50.673-07:00History of My Reading: Everybody Must Get Stoned (1967-8 etc.)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">cover of Be Here Now by Baba Ram Dass</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br /><div><i>Throughout the school year of 1967-68 (plus a little before and for several years after), I read books and articles about or partially inspired by psychedelic experiences and related topics. This is a selection in context.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>
<b>I</b> got stoned for the first time in The Temple. That's what it was called--an otherwise unused room in the attic, where the roof slanted down so the ceiling was very low. There were no windows. It was dark and snug and safe, illuminated by candles and small lights. It's sole purpose was to host the ceremonies of the weed.<br />
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This was in the house on West First Street in Galesburg where I lived my senior year of college. I'd unsuccessfully tried cannabis the previous spring, and this setting definitely helped me achieve the desired state. Once the ritual smoking was over--we sat in a loose circle passing the joint around and talking--I was urged to concentrate on the music playing on the stereo. I was told to recline, and the two speakers were placed on opposite sides of my head, near my ears. I knew I was stoned when I seemed to be hearing the music through both ears--basically a physical impossibility in my case (i.e. maybe the bass and drums to some extent.)<br />
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The Temple was gradually abandoned that year, as smoking dope became more open in off-campus apartments. Everyone who smoked dope knew everyone else who did, and they could be trusted not to betray. To the other operative student divisions was added the suddenly overriding one of Heads and Straights. There were exceptions (those that hung out with Heads but didn't indulge, those that played it Straight but took a toke in secret) but mostly they were known, too.<br />
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Around us the culture was bending. Songs were full of high points and stoned puns, stoned humor broke out of hiding to start appearing in public (even on television), while Dylan sang "I would not be so alone/ Everybody must get stoned."<br />
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We rediscovered our senses, as hearing, vision, smell, touch and taste all seemed enhanced, at least in terms of clarity and presence. At best, time slows and the sensory richness before you fills the moment. The delicate movement of smoke through light becomes both more fully and beautifully what it is, and a joyful metaphor made real, an insight into the nature of existence.<br />
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We might have experienced some synesthesia as well, in which the senses crossed in some way. Concepts became experiences: that everything is alive, that it is all one. Before they all became cliches they were vivid perceptions, accompanied by awe and joy: the pure perception of beauty, that beauty is truth and truth beauty, all you need is love. There would be entire stoned evenings when almost the only words spoken were "Oh wow!" <br />
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Mental operations could get a rush, as connections proliferated. Short term memory couldn't keep up (though it didn't disappear: once when a group of us had a stoned discussion and everybody lost the thread, we successfully reconstructed the entire conversation, back to front), and I especially noticed that I had new access to long-term memories. It seems strange to me now, but at 20, I was amazed to suddenly remember my childhood. I recalled radio and television shows, boyhood friends and so on. Once I not only recited the batting order of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates, but demonstrated the batting stances. I mean, it was only 1968! But it seemed an amazing recovery of what seemed gone forever. (Although I can pretty much still do this.) <br />
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Those I associated with were, like me, uninterested in hard drugs, but curious about psychedelics. But we were marooned in a small town in the Midwest, and these were hard to come by. I didn't do any that year--at least not deliberately. And that was a problem I ran into elsewhere later, one major factor in why I stopped: unless you were wealthy and/or well-connected, you never really knew what you were getting.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">T</span></b>hat winter of 1967-68 we hosted a big time cannabis dealer from California who called himself Reverend Jim. He didn't spend much time in the house, as he spread the word all over campus, but as his hosts we got plenty of free product. We smoked it, and made brownies. It was either considerably stronger than we were used to, or it was laced with something else, because once I became a lot more stoned than I intended. I wound up paralyzed in my bed, watching movies in my head. It wasn't unpleasant, but it didn't need repeating.<br />
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I remember sitting around one afternoon with one of Reverend Jim's traveling companions who was quoting the wisdom of someone he considered to be "heavy," or enlightened. "He said, life is a shit sandwich--<i>at best</i>." Not something that we naive love and peaceniks wanted to hear, even if it came from California.<br />
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While seniors like me were just getting our stoned feet wet, some of the incoming first years were already veterans. I remember being impressed by one who said he didn't smoke tobacco, clearly implying he smoked only something else. Their culture was already different, and grass was simply part of it.<br />
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Our campus culture seemed to change remarkably quickly as well. I remember once participating in a couples evening that was as conventional as suburban young marrieds except that alcoholic drinks weren't served, only grass. The main event was an ice cream feast, designed for the blind munchies.<br />
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In the next few years, I tried "LSD" a few times, and "mescaline" once. I place these in quotation marks because I was skeptical even at the time that they were exactly and purely that. My experiences were mixed. But taken all together, they did make a difference, and I did gain some lasting insights and memorable experiences. I dove deep into <i>Abbey Road</i> on "acid" in Berkeley. In the Colorado mountain countryside on "mescaline" I saw the swirl in wood as liquid and moving, the embodiment of its process over time. I peered down into microscopic depths, watching microbes and molecules in motion. Pretty simple visual hallucinations but I nevertheless "saw" profound truths about the substantial but not quite visible support of things. So when the science started catching up, I was ready for it.<br />
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I eventually became discouraged by the unreliability of the product, and by the unreliability of people. On almost every psychedelic occasion, and quite a few cannabis ones, I had to bring myself down to cope with something or someone gone awry. Those stoned conversations also began to lose their charm. Once I listened to two people conversing who were evidently more stoned than I was, because it was very clear to me that they were each talking about something entirely different from what the other person was talking about. And neither of them noticed. It was fascinating in its way, but also disconcerting.<br />
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Eventually "the scene" also got darker, with darker drugs, violent politics and enabled psychotics. But before that, in my senior year, we took cannabis and psychedelics seriously as the keys to a new counterculture--more honest, sharing, hip, fun, loving and open to different sensual and internal experiences, for which there seemed to be some precedent in Eastern religions, western exoteria and indigenous cultures. So in addition to experiencing what we could, we read about it all.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1964 edition</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">F</span></b>irst there was the classic <i>The Doors of Perception</i> by Aldous Huxley. Originally published in 1956, it was an augmented account of his mescaline experience a few years before. It introduced me to the idea that the brain functions as a limiting filter to shape the otherwise overwhelming sense data into usable conclusions (though in some ways this resembles Quine's analysis of language.) Huxley likened it to a "reducing valve." Today's neuroscientists use the concept of models--that the mind has models of the expected reality that perceptions should match or at least be measured against. Psychedelics bypass the reducing valve and the models.<br />
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Huxley took mescaline several more times, and said he had greater and more profound experiences on LSD, which he took for the first time in 1955. His support for psychedelics was striking, in light of the role played by the fictional drug soma in his most famous novel, <i>Brave New World. </i>But he didn't waver, and in the final stage of cancer, fulfilled his intention of dying while on an LSD trip.<br />
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Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner were Harvard professors exploring the therapeutic uses of psychedelics in the 50s and early 60s, concentrating finally on LSD. After being fired from Harvard, Leary became its best known advocate, partly through the enthusiasm of poet Allen Ginsberg. LSD was technically still legal when I first read this trio's 1964 book, <i>The Psychedelic Experience </i>in my senior year.<br />
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Its most influential sections are about preparing for an LSD trip. There was already propaganda around about "bad trips" and the potential dangers of LSD, and I knew it was a powerful drug, so I paid attention. The book recommended having a Guide and perhaps "programming" the trip, and it especially emphasized the importance of <i>set</i> (your mental preparation and attitude) and <i>setting</i> (the place and physical conditions.) Though we basically only did cannabis together at our place, the Temple was all about set and setting. Ironically then, when I first did "LSD" about a year later, I tripped with slightly younger people who had no concept of set and setting, but I deferred to their greater experience. Early on, I found myself in a crowd of people watching a violent movie, while trying to appear normal. Fortunately, whatever I took wasn't all that strong and I was able to bring myself down to a steadier state.<br />
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<i>LSD: The Problem-Solving Psychedelic</i> by P.G. Stafford and B. H. Golightly was a paperback published in 1967. It is a fascinating compendium of research findings suggesting therapeutic uses for mental disorders and the treatment of alcoholism and other addictions, as well as heightened creativity and life-changing insights among otherwise normal people. But this was the last year that LSD was legal, even for research. Medical and other research was basically forbidden and didn't happen for the next fifty years.<br />
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Nevertheless I continued to informally monitor related research. I still have my 1972 copy of<i> Altered States of Consciousness</i>, a collection of research articles edited by Charles T. Tart, and another anthology from that year, <i>Consciousness and Reality </i>(edited by Charles Muses and Arthur M. Young) that has an aura of intellectual excitement and discovery.<br />
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Before he became the gray-bearded guru of natural healing, Andrew Weil was a Harvard student involved (and in some ways implicated) in the Leary experiments and scandal, who published his own take on psychedelics in his book <i>The Natural Mind</i>, also published in 1972.<br />
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And then the rest was silence, except for occasional chapters in such arcane texts as the catch-all <i>Alterations of Consciousness</i> by Imants Baruss, which I reviewed for the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003, and the occasional account of a post-60s trip, as Sting's detailed description of taking ayahuasca in Brazil that opens his autobiographical <i>Broken Music</i>.<br />
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That was the situation until the completely unexpected <i>How to Change Your Mind</i> in 2018 by Michael Pollan, best-selling author of <i>The Omnivore's Dilemma.</i> As research began to cautiously revive around the world, Pollan produced this combination of reportage, interview and personal account that the New York Times named as one of the ten best nonfiction books of that year. <br />
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Pollan covers much of the history, including the scare stories about people on LSD going blind from staring at the sun, which 60 years later is exposed as fake news. He confirms the continuing promise of psychedelics in addressing a range of illnesses and conditions, confirms LSD's power to spur creative re-thinking (many of those Silicon Valley innovators tripped out) and generally updates that 1967 paperback <i>LSD: The Problem-Solving Psychedelic</i>. I found him most interesting on the plant-derived psychedelics, particularly mushroom-based. These substances really do have life-changing and even "miraculous" effects.<br />
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Every study I've seen since Leary et al has confirmed the determinative importance of set and setting. Pollan's own trips were conducted very much to that 60s script: he had a guide, the setting was quiet and had objects to contemplate (though mostly his eyes were masked), music was played and so on. These have become standard in the new, well-organized tripping, governed by a kind of New Age professionalism. <br />
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But the importance of set and setting were established long before Leary. Most plant-based psychedelics were used for many thousands of years by indigenous peoples in serious explorations of the larger reality. These traditional cultures used their psychedelics within ritual settings and with elders as guides--i.e. attention to set and setting.<br />
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What Pollan experienced on his trips made it impossible for him to ignore the so-called spiritual dimension, the beyond-ego experiences. He confirms that the effects of these substances substantiate the descriptions of the mind's workings that have been refined over thousands of years by Buddhist meditators and other Eastern (and a few Western) practitioners. These also are being confirmed by neuroscientists, and explored over the several decades in the Mind and Life conferences sponsored by the Dali Lama (I <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/The-science-of-Tibetan-Buddhism-2768142.php"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">reviewed </span></a>the books resulting from the first seven conferences in 2004, also for the San Francisco Chronicle.) <br />
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This connection has a long history. Practitioners of Eastern religions attain their insights mostly without even plant-based substances, but with fasting and various forms of meditation. Yet the insights are similar. In the decades before he took his mescaline trip, Aldous Huxley studied Hindu and other Eastern texts and consulted with well-known gurus. The Leary/Alpert/ Metzner <i>The Psychedelic Experience</i> was subtitled "A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead."<br />
<br />
Richard Alpert soon became Baba Ram Dass, and his first book <i>Be Here Now </i>(1971) became a revered text in certain quarters. But that takes us into the counter-culture, subject of our next installment in this series.<br />
<br />
To wind up the more specific elements of the substances themselves and their effects, there is now more of a distinction between cannabis and the psychedelics (LSD, and of increasing interest, psilocybin.) Cannabis has been legalized in many states in the US through popular vote, but there is not the same acceptance for psychedelics. In my past experience, at least some of the effects to some extent that are claimed for psychedelics were available with cannabis (assuming that's all I was ingesting.) There may well be a qualitative difference, and in that sense I'm sorry I missed a true psychedelic experience. Even in the lap of the cannabis industry, the likelihood that I'll run into a dependable opportunity isn't great. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-72291335319736765322022-03-12T23:46:00.008-08:002022-03-20T03:11:50.375-07:00History of My Reading: Flunking Evolution (Winter 1967-68)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><br />
</i> <i>“The evolutionary backdrop and the ecological setting, rather than the flashy on-stage protagonists of the drama, are more of my concern. Yet the answers are never simple, in part because the questions cannot be clearly phrased. The shadowed globe continues to spin. We are embedded in our history, in all our personal histories, and in theirs.”</i><br />
Lynn Margulis<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></b>n order to fulfill my distribution requirements so I could graduate in the spring of 1968, I took "Evolution" in the winter of the 1967-68 school year. Among the requirements Knox had then, was a certain number of of math and science courses. I had taken math to the level of my incompetence and beyond, and one science course for non-majors, in Astronomy, taught by Dr. Priestly, head of the Physics department. I did well enough, and Dr. Priestly seemed sanguine about the non-majors part. So I planned to take his two other courses for non-majors, one on Science and Society that would be given in the spring, and one that the course catalog said would be given this winter. But it wasn't. So I was stuck with a Biology department course on Evolution, given by a different teacher.<div><br /></div><div>I recall never getting a handle on the subject, or the purpose of the course. It seemed too technical and disjointed for a non-science majors course, which it was supposed to be. But I believe I was just barely passing. Then it was time for the final.<br /><br />
Two things happened at that point, which were at least partly related. The first—and possibly most fateful---happened in the library. <br />
<br />
I was also taking a philosophy course that term. (I’d taken several, starting my first year, and had considered it as a major, before committing to English Literature and Composition.) Perhaps it was for this philosophy course, but in any case I was reading a journal in philosophy in the library. <br />
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In what I seem to recall was just a book review, I read a sentence that was almost incidental. It said that the Darwin’s theory of Evolution was shaped in part by existing political and economic ideas and ideologies. It suggested that so-called Social Darwinism predated Darwin--and that these ideas and ideologies influenced Darwin's theory. <br />
<br />
It was a sudden bolt of lightning to my conceptual framework, which is what I learned to call it in my first philosophy course. Scientific theories were, we were told and I had believed, based strictly on the scientific method of hypothesis and experiment (or evidence) to test the hypothesis. The idea of pure science, or "value-free science" was a kind of postulate, an axiom, if not a dogma. It was what you assumed as a starting point. The logic of Natural Selection emerges directly from meticulously studied evidence. Darwin’s theory was based on science, and nothing else.<br />
<br /> But in a sentence in a philosophy journal, I was told that it might not be necessarily so. Science might also be guided, consciously or not, by other factors, including unacknowledged ideology. As I learned later, this view of Darwin was neither new nor uncommon, but after a course in Evolution it was still new to me.<br />
<br />
Oddly, although studying the Vietnam War had shown me the tangle of motives and ideology leading to deception and self-deception in politics and government, I still assumed the evidence-based objectivity of science itself, if not the ends to which that science was directed. Especially a science and a theory so remote from weapons development and social control.</div><div><br /></div><div>But it could be I was also receiving an unconscious echo of my high school disillusion with Catholic dogma, and the claims that the Church's actions (like the Inquisition) were based entirely on religious doctrine. All that had also been exploded for me in a library--my Greensburg public library, in the reference room, where I read the eye-opening and hair-raising...Catholic Encyclopedia. <br />
<br />So now this comment in the philosophy journal suggested that even the theory of evolution is not utterly impartial and objective, as piously claimed. I have since learned this view had a long history. But for me this was a discovery. I had just found an opening to this idea, and sensed a glimmer of the other side. I was both stunned and excited. It was like the moment that nearly every first year philosophy student faces when presented with the argument that it’s possible that the world does not exist at all except in our heads. It becomes both an obvious and more complex argument pretty quickly, but at first, it’s a mind-blower.<br />
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So was this. To some, this may now be a commonplace observation: that the formulation, acceptance and rejection of scientific theories, including Darwin’s, are shaped in part by ideas outside of science, as well as ego, institutional power struggles and conventional inertia. To others it may still be unorthodox.<br />
<br />
But to me in 1968 it was a new and electrifying notion. We hadn't learned it in Evolution class. I was very excited by the idea. It filled my head, and I wanted to learn more. I wanted to explore it.<br />
<br />
Too late, as it turned out. Because there were no papers in the course, just this last big exam.<br />
<br />
Which brings me to the second thing that happened.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></b>n the days leading up to the final exam, we were supposed to view an exhibit of bones--fossils probably-- in a room on campus. There would be questions about those bones, and how they illustrate evolution, on the exam.<br />
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I went with a group of friends who were also in the class. The exhibit made no sense to me. I didn’t see how I was going to remember the shape of skulls and tiny white bones. I went into a Groucho Marx crazy scientist routine, perhaps with the help of a white lab coat I found on a hook. Nobody thought it was funny. Everybody was worried.<br />
<br />
The night before the exam I walked around campus. In the library, at tables outside the dining rooms in Seymour Hall, students were frantically studying. It was clear as day to me that none of them expected to remember anything they were studying past the day of the exam. The exam was everything.<br />
<br />
I had done the same thing before—studying for the exam, and the exam only. It was the drill. Play the game, that suddenly serious game. I knew I should suck it up and do it just one more time. But this time I could not bring myself to do it. It was a charade, it was a travesty, it was a tragedy. With the seriousness of what was going on around us, what might be happening to some of us next (like being drafted into the war), it was insane.<br />
<br />
It had nothing to do with education, I felt so acutely, and nothing to do with reality. It even had little to do with the study of evolution as far as I was concerned.<br />
<br />
I was supposed to be concentrating on the patterns of bones. Instead my head was swimming with this new idea that the theory of evolution, that science itself, was not so pure, was complex, perhaps more human. What did it all mean?<br />
<br />
Sick at heart, I expressed some of these thoughts, and my desire to research and write about this, on the back of my exam the next day. Probably not as calmly as I just have. On the exam itself I got as far as the first question on the bones, and stopped. Just stopped. No More. No More.<br />
<br />
There are various ways now to describe this second thing that happened, and its relationship to the first. I tended towards self-righteous anger, and there was some of that. But the emotions were more complex and more complete. It was definitely some kind of crisis. Perhaps in a way, of conscience, or consciousness. So much suppressed, repressed, was rising. It made me suddenly very upset and very tired.<br />
<br />
I failed the exam. That was enough so that I failed the course entirely. Eventually this would result in my not graduating with my class, or at all. All of that wasn't settled until late in the spring, so I will continue this evolution in a future post.<br />
<br /> But the result of that moment in the library with the philosophy journal comment about evolution, I will tell now. Especially because it involves the next several decades of my reading.</div><div><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul Shepard</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">T</span></b>he first story I relate to that moment also leads back to Knox in for me a melancholy way. Three months or so before I hauled my stuff up the stairs to the third floor of Anderson House and began my college residence, a young family packed up their belongings and left Galesburg. The father was Paul Shepard, a much beloved and revered young teacher in the biology department for about a decade. His legacy lives on at Knox in Green Oaks, some 700 acres restored to natural prairie habitat. It was Shepard’s vision, and he directed Green Oaks for its first decade as well.<br />
<br />
At the behest of a mutual friend, Prof. Doug Wilson of the English department, I bought Shepard’s first book, <i>Man in the Landscape </i>(1967<i>)</i>at the Knox bookstore.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure when I read it all. I recall being mesmerized by the writing in just the first chapter for awhile, which set me off dreaming and thinking. But it may not have been until after I left Galesburg that I read enough of the book to understand that it is an ambitious and multi-disciplinary study in the area of what we came to call ecology. It dealt with the relationship of social and cultural beliefs to attitudes about the natural world, and how science was conducted. Shepard apparently taught a course by that title which must have been the basis for the book.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Doug Wilson and Paul Shepard. Photo by Flo Shepard.</td></tr>
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In other words, it was just what would have intrigued and interested me. If our time at Knox had overlapped, I would have taken that course, and the course of my life might have been altered.<br />
<br />
For one thing I would likely not not be worrying about a science course requirement in my senior year. But that realization was to come, for this story is just beginning.<br />
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Apart from two books he co-edited I saw in the 70s, it wasn’t until the late 1980s that I chanced upon another Paul Shepard book on a bookstore sale table near the Public Market while visiting Seattle. <i>Nature and Madness</i> was even more mind-blowing. I saw there were several books between that first one and this one.</div><div><br /></div><div>I found those two in the Squirrel Hill public library in Pittsburgh and was awed by those as well. They were <i>Thinking Animals </i>and <i>The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game.</i> Both dealt profoundly in aspects of animal and human evolution--and in the co-evolution of humans and the animals humans hunted. <br />
<br />
Eventually I mentioned my discoveries and enthusiasm in a letter to Doug Wilson. He brokered the beginning of a correspondence between Paul Shepard and me.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately it lasted only to the extent of two letters from me and one from him. Just after I arrived in Arcata in 1996, I learned that he had died from cancer.<br />
<br />
I learned it by a letter from his widow, Florence Shepard, who noted our brief correspondence. Very soon she asked me if I wanted to write something for an issue of the Wild Duck Review about his work. I met Casey Walker, its editor, and writer Jack Turner (<i>The Abstract Wild</i>) for coffee here in Arcata at Los Bagels, and talked about the approach I would take. My article appeared in that special issue of August 1997, along with contributions by Stephen Kellert, Delores LaChapelle, C.L.Rawlins, Barbara Ras, Barbara Dean, Steve Chase, Joseph Meeker and Flo Shepard, and a poem by Gary Snyder. (I’ve republished a longer version of <a href="http://kowincidence.blogspot.com/2018/01/paul-shepard-ecology-of-maturity.html"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">my essay here.</span></a>) <br />
<br />
By then, yes, I had realized that all the events that flowed from flunking that evolution course would likely have been quite different if Paul Shepard had still been teaching at Knox when I was a student there.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Flo and Paul Shepard</td></tr>
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And even that isn’t the end of the story. In fairly short order, Flo Shepard asked me to create a website about Paul Shepard, featuring biographical information that she wrote and photos she provided; photos and descriptions of his books (including posthumous volumes) with quotes from reviews, plus other information and a couple of short Shepard essays not otherwise collected. So I did.<br />
<br />
Eventually that site became technically obsolete, but it was the basis of a <a href="https://paulhoweshepard.wordpress.com/"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">subsequent site</span></a> that Casey Walker assembled. Not too shabby for the guy who flunked evolution. <br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></b>n that winter in early 1968 we were already awash in dreadful waves of information about air and water pollution and environmental destruction, and in predictions of ecological doom. That became my major interest brushing upon science in the 1970s—when I read two of the first academic collections on the new subject of ecology co-edited by Paul Shepard (<i>The Subversive Science</i>, still a classic, and <i>Enviro/Mental</i>.) <br />
<br />
In grade school and high school I had been interested in astronomy and the sciences of the Space Age, so I later gravitated towards the new physics of the very large and the very small. But all along the way since college I kept my eye on the larger question of what influences a scientific theory. I was reading Lewis Thomas, James Gleick, William Irwin Thompson and others, and watching the Nova programs and the great PBS series' by Jacob Bronowski, James Burke and Carl Sagan.<br />
<br />
Then in the 1990s I became interested in the history of the theory of evolution through an interest in H.G. Wells and the future, and that reading and writing continued into the next two decades. I saw Wells interpretation of Darwin as key to his idea of the future, which became ours. I wrote about all this in my<a href="https://dreamingup.blogspot.com/search/label/soul%20of%20the%20future"> <i>Soul of the Future</i> series</a>. The relationship of Darwin's Evolution and various ideologies over more than a century and a half turns out to be extremely rich, complicated and important. Eventually I read a number of books on Darwin and evolution, and many more on issues these books raised, in areas of natural science, ecology, philosophy, anthropology, Indigenous "science" and so on.</div><div><br /></div><div> (For example, books related directly to Darwin still on my shelves include <i>Before Darwin</i> and <i>Young Charles Darwin</i> by Keith Thompson, <i>Apes, Angels & Victorians</i> by William Irvine, <i>Darwin's Century</i> by Loren Eiseley,<i> Getting Darwin Wrong</i> by Brendan Wallace, <i>Darwin's Blind Spot</i> by Frank Ryan, <i>Alas, Poor Darwin</i> ed. by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, <i>Did Darwin Write the Origin Backwards?</i> (philosophical essays) ed. by Elliott Sober, <i>Life's Solution</i> by Simon C. Morris, <i>Evolutionary Origins of Morality</i> ed. by Leonard D. Kataz, <i>Life on Earth</i> by Stanley A. Rice, as well as other books and authors mentioned in this post.)</div><div><br /></div><div>But this continued reading was more than background for blog posts. Consider it irony, given my less than stellar academic record or experience in the sciences, but in the early 2000s I found myself becoming the go-to guy to review books on science for the general public at the San Francisco Chronicle, and wrote them also for Salon and other outlets. Perhaps their theory was that if I could make sense of it, other readers could, too. But of course the Chronicle has many scientifically literate readers in the Bay Area and down Stanford way, including eminent scientists. So I had to work at it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Back cover of the paperback edition of Damasio's book,<br />
with excerpts from my review at the top.</td></tr>
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Nevertheless, for the SF Chronicle I reviewed a biography of Einstein, and a couple of books on brain science, including one by Antonio Damasio. (His agent later said that an overjoyed Demasio read the entire review to him over the phone.)<br />
<br />
I reviewed a half dozen or so books on psychology, and all nine books in the Mind and Life Series, derived from public discussions held by the Dalai Lama and Buddhist practitioners with scientists in a number of fields, including physics, neuroscience, psychology and biology. One of the Mind and Life Institute cofounders was biologist Francisco Varela, who introduced the concept of autopoiesis, or self-regulating life.<br />
<br />
For the North Coast Journal I reviewed books on the history of quantum theory, on astrophysics, paleoanthropology, two books on Darwin, one on cultural evolution, several more on psychology and another half dozen or so on climate science. <br />
<br />
And partly because publishers kept sending me new books on science, I wrote about dozens more on this blog site.<br />
<br />
Along the way I learned how impure science is. A theory may be accepted because of reputation, or denied because of ego and institutional politics. Those who even discovered information that called the standard view into question had their careers trashed, at least for a time. I saw examples of this over and over, from archaeology to quantum physics, and some seemed pretty scandalous.<br />
<br />
But this is apparently so widespread and so well known among scientists that they can joke about it. One of the books I reviewed for the Chronicle was <i>The Big Bang: </i><i>The Origin of the Universe </i>by Simon Singh. In it Singh quotes physicist Max Planck saying that new ideas seldom win over adherents of old ones—usually a generation must pass while the new idea’s “opponents gradually die out.” He also quotes English geneticist J.B.S. Haldane’s four stages of acceptance for a scientific idea:<i> 1. This is worthless nonsense. 2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view. 3. This is true, but quite unimportant. 4. I always said so.</i><br />
<br />
But the role of ideology in the formation of a theory has also entered into the dialogue. And its clearest example has always been evolution. In my posts on H.G. Wells and his novel <i>The Time Machine</i> I’ve noted the ideological influences on Darwin and the ideologies that latched onto his theories as a triumphant exemplar.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></b>t should be unsurprising—but instructive—that much of the actual science taught at Knox in 1968, including in that evolution course, is now considered wrong. Apropos of bones, dinosaurs were believed to have all been cold-blooded and slow of foot. T.H. Huxley’s suggestion that they were ancestors to birds was derided and forgotten. None of that is considered the true view any longer.<br />
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Life was divided into two kingdoms only: plants and animals. Now there are six (though some scientists are abandoning the entire classification.) Protozoa in 1968 were one-celled animals. They aren’t anymore, and some scientists consider the very word to be obsolete. In other sciences, such basic concepts as plate tectonics had not yet made it into textbooks, and even the Big Bang itself was not the accepted cosmological explanation until the late 1960s. <br />
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What has lasted is the lesson I learned that night in the library: to question, to probe, to analyze theories and how they are made. Seeing them in the larger context of society, history and ideology eventually makes for better science, and—for citizen non-scientists (and non-science majors)—better evaluation of scientific theories and findings. <br />
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But it may be even more important than that.<br />
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In 1968 the latest interpretations of Darwinian evolution were gene-centered. Gene centeredness became both especially prominent and popularized with Richard Dawkins’ 1975 book <i>The Selfish Gene</i>. That book, and the gene as the determinant of evolutionary change via survival of the fittest , took the 19th century ideology supporting the predominant interpretation of Darwin to a condition close to dogma. That ideology begins with the master 19th century metaphor of the machine--lifeforms as cogs in the machine of evolution.<br />
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That ideology further emphasized violent competition, aggression, conquest, and man against nature. Survival of the fittest, the struggle for existence, nature red in tooth and claw, winner take all, the war of all against all--they all were idolized as drivers of natural evolution and as the essence of animal and human nature, with no exception, and no room for compassion, cooperation, or co-existence.<br />
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But in subsequent decades, both the science and the ideological basis came under attack from different directions. (And perhaps I need to say here I am not at all talking about so-called creation science, or a denial of evolution itself.)<br />
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By the 1980s eminent paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould was attacking the Darwinian tenet that natural selection operating slowly over great periods of time is the main or only driver of change, despite the discrepancies in the fossil record (those little white bones presumably.) <br />
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He believed that the basis for this bias was more ideological than scientific: the insistence that natural selection is very gradual was because it came from a politically conservative class and time in England that favored gradual social change. A theory of more sudden change as well as gradual change—the “punctuated equilibrium” Gould favored—was too much like revolutionary political threats to the established order.<br />
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Today variations of punctuated equilibrium are more generally accepted, as is another more recent—and more revolutionary theory—proposed by biologist Lynn Margulis, who found in microscopic life the evidence that crucial steps in evolution were taken by means of symbiosis: separate organisms living together for mutual benefit, beginning with the evolution of microbial life.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lynn Margulis</td></tr>
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Perhaps it is possible that among the periodicals in the Knox library in the winter of 1967 was an issue of the Journal of Theoretic Biology which contained Margulis’ now-landmark first article setting forth the central tenets of her theory of symbiosis within the cell. It had been rejected by 16 other journals. But even when it appeared, it was derided. Though symbiosis is not the same as cooperation, it is close enough. It did not fit the prevailing ideology of selfishness.<br />
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Margulis persisted and found more evidence while the establishment had time to get used to the idea. She later joined with James Lovelock in developing the Gaia Theory, which is symbiosis on a grand scale. It is, as another biologist described it, symbiosis as seen from space.<br />
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Life, Margulis wrote, "does not 'adapt' to a passive physiochemical environment as most neo-Darwinians assume; instead, life actively produces and modifies its surroundings." The biosphere is not "determined by a physical universe run by mechanical 'laws...the metabolizing biosphere is physiologically self-controlled."<br />
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If science survives for another century, Lynn Margulis will be recognized as a major figure. Far from being a war of individuals or species, or objects that operate according to 19th century machine metaphors, she has shown that life is completely interdependent. The earth is not only our home--it is our body.<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhl1YpjajKLCzac6VX_uaWa7wMo2wfg8PzKnJ4aWi8hScfWQou43b6NsFY34GHZ8y8tjkzxpUi2KnO2D3M6B1CWduQFJKIFBehYwGcDRhkvSUGBr1DCcqPfCKY2Zd4pzd46TJUP3lbqmTDWHpSHyOq0mBWZF0mdeGdITJL_BahTDiJmymctnM8=s759" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="759" data-original-width="550" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhl1YpjajKLCzac6VX_uaWa7wMo2wfg8PzKnJ4aWi8hScfWQou43b6NsFY34GHZ8y8tjkzxpUi2KnO2D3M6B1CWduQFJKIFBehYwGcDRhkvSUGBr1DCcqPfCKY2Zd4pzd46TJUP3lbqmTDWHpSHyOq0mBWZF0mdeGdITJL_BahTDiJmymctnM8=s320" width="232" /></a></div><br />E</span></b>volutionary theory in the 21st century is moving towards multiple explanations. In their 2014 book <i>Evolution in Four Dimensions </i>(MIT Press), Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb examine not just the genetic (itself a vastly more complex subject than got fixed in the public mind in the 1990s), but the epigenetic (non-DNA inheritance), behavioral (animal learning passed on) and symbolic (human heritage though language and other systems.) <br />
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Science is based on evidence, but evidence can be a tricky thing. Sometimes people see the evidence they look for, and they fail to see it if they are not looking for it. That includes scientists. One of the primary reasons for not seeing the evidence is that it does not fit into the current theory, or the current ideology.<br />
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This has been shown to be true countless times in the study of animals, when evidence of intelligence, tool-making and communication have been overlooked, because of the ideology of human exceptionalism, which itself derives as much from the ideological right of capitalist humans to exploit and lay waste to the rest of existence as it does from any religious or scientific dogma. <br />
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One important illustration is the work of primatologist Frans B.M. De Waal, who documented patterns of reconciliation behavior in primates (after fights, the participants would seek each other out and engage in friendly behavior.) Previous researchers hadn’t seen this because prevailing beliefs emphasized aggression and competition, and so they missed the signs. <br />
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It does not seem a coincidence to me that many of these beliefs—the selfish gene, animals as aggression and competition machines, human exceptionalism and so on, are all major underpinnings of capitalism, and its exploitation of the planet. Nineteenth century capitalists were at least conscious of co-opting evolution, and thereby guiding any science that deals with animal or human behavior. By the modern age, these sciences were functional captives of that ideology.<br />
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Contemporary British philosopher Mary Midgely has written eloquently on this broader subject of the ideology often unconsciously assumed in scientific theories, particularly in her book <i>Evolution As A Religion</i>. (Margulis also refers to the orthodox neo-Darwinism as "a minor twentieth century religious sect.") Midgely points out that scientists attack others for basing their beliefs on ideology or religion, while failing to see the cultural myths and assumptions that underlie their own scientific views.<br />
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“Social Darwinism or Spencerism is the unofficial religion of the west,” Midgely writes. <i>“And it is widely believed that the theory of evolution proves this kind of narrowly self-assertive motivation to be... fundamental, universal and in some sense the law of life. Mystical reverence for such deities as progress, nature and the life-force is then invoked to explain and justify cut-throat competition. As we have seen, such a view of the natural motivation of our species is simply a mistake, a projection of current interests.”</i><br />
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Many new discoveries run counter to the 19th century ideologies of man against nature rather than humanity embedded in nature, of capitalistic selfishness as natural but cooperation for a common good as unnatural in human or animal nature, and even human intelligence as entirely separate from animals. And, the argument goes, this is all so embedded to our nature that it is useless to believe we can resist or change it. What could be more basic than your selfish genes? You can't fight it because it's human nature. These ideologies survive and try to rule science as well as the rest of us, in Ted Carpenter’s phrase, “like a watch ticking in the pocket of a dead man.”<br />
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There are those who are tempted to inappropriately use the new research to support a different ideology, but animal research for example does find support for the existence of cooperation and altruism, perhaps even the empathy and imagination that are clearly survival tools for our species. But taken together, the implications of this research are necessary correctives to the one-sidedness and especially the destructiveness of the ruling paradigms.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">W</span></b>hat does the new science regarding the origin of species tell us? That we must be talking about origins plural, for evolution is much more complex and involves several different pathways than suggested by Darwin and mandated by Dawkins. This is even truer in regard to evolution in a larger sense.<br />
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We must see this as the ideology it is, and what it means. Insofar as it is a rigid explanation of animal and human behavior, this ideology of complete selfishness, acting only in one’s self-interest, life as a war of all against all, all the time—is wrong. For more than a century it has excused human destruction that has led us to the brink of mass extinctions and an unrecognizable Earth. And it is still leading us there.<br />
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Failure to see this ideology for what it is—an ideology—is a major failure of science in the modern age. That the ideological underpinning of predatory capitalism are the same as those of evolutionary science is no coincidence. Capitalists at least were conscious of co-opting evolution, and thereby guiding any science that deals with animal or human behavior. <br />
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This dogma of evolution fit wonderfully well with capitalist economic theory—and why not? Capitalists were paying the bills. Although some scientists tried to refute these interpretations, the scientific mainstream continued to aid and abet this view.<br />
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All of this contributed to the seeming present inevitability of predatory capitalism which rules the world, and which has proven unable to modify itself in light of the findings of science, most conspicuously climate science.<br />
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Fredric Jameson is reputed to have observed today it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. Evolutionary theory and dependent theories of human nature have contributed to this stranglehold on the imagination. Yet predatory capitalism continues to bring the end of the world closer. <br />
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All our ecological "doom and gloom" of the late 1960s led to change, but not enough, and not fast or widespread enough. With the onrushing climate crisis, with mass extinctions and multiple ecological catastrophes underway or in the offing, time is running out.<br />
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Ours remains a crisis of consciousness. If humanity doesn’t fully commit to an ideology of interdependence and the science that supports it, then humanity as well as the world that supports it are in danger of extinction. Human civilization will turn out to be a bloody but hopeful experiment that didn’t quite make it far enough to respond to this challenge, largely if not entirely of its own creation. We’ve taken this course of evolution, and we’re flunking it, and taking the planet we know with us.<br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707173.post-34245525733296676092022-03-07T23:28:00.001-08:002022-05-15T23:42:59.551-07:00History of My Reading: Hazy Fate of Winter 1967-8<i>“The real job of the computer is not retrieval but discovery. Like the human memory, the process of recall is an act of discovery.”</i><br />
Marshall McLuhan<br /><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Knox College winter 1968. Photo by Kowinski</td></tr>
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In another post, I describe the stranger from northern California who called himself Reverend Jim who showed up on campus (probably from Humboldt County, CA) with a small retinue and a quantity of weed the likes of which nobody there had experienced before.<div>That was the winter of 1967-1968, my senior year at Knox College.</div><div><br /></div><div>Besides the wandering philosophical discussions (often enough the product of misunderstood words--somebody riffs on "presents" while somebody else responds about "presence"), the personal journeys of observing smoke curling into the lamplight, etc., there were the surprising memories and perspectives, especially a return to childhood modes.</div><div><br />
We heard new sounds, saw new sights and seemed to see the old ones more clearly...and saw what we’d blinded ourselves to, for survival’s sake. Perspectives shifted suddenly, as when I was walking to campus on a frigid day and saw the grass below me as if from an airplane over a forest...It could have been a forest in Vietnam, where a B-52 could destroy 50 square miles on a single run. Recall the chant at protests that year: <i>Work. Study. Get Ahead. Kill.</i><br />
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For all the altered consciousness and raw emotions, some of us had been studying Vietnam, the war and the various political and historical contexts, sometimes with more rigor than devoted to course work, for several years. Our texts were the New York Review of Books, Ramparts magazine, the I.F. Stone Weekly and other periodicals, as well as books like Frank Harvey’s<i> Air War: Vietnam</i> and Raskin and Fall's <i>The Viet-Nam Reader</i>. So when the Pentagon Papers were finally made public in 1971, we pretty much already knew much of what was in them. Again, this is discussed in more detail in another (future) post.<br />
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The war was heavy upon us that winter, although heavier on some more than others. With recent changes in the Selective Service laws, I faced the imminent prospect of being drafted immediately after my senior year concluded. This was before the lottery, and when draft calls were high. There were many reasons for my resistance, but the possibility and prospect of being forced to kill others for no compelling reason was my paramount concern. I wasn’t going to participate, but what the hell was I going to do?<br />
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At the same time, I was supposed to be planning my immediate future, which given the lack of other alternatives, meant continuing my education for an at least temporary academic life. So I was supposed to be applying to graduate schools, knowing that it was unlikely I’d even get to begin.<br /><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></i> went to draft counselors in Chicago that year, including one who reacted joyfully when he saw the results of my hearing tests. Being deaf in one ear should disqualify me, he said. But given the high draft calls and the brutalities of the system, it wasn’t a sure thing. Another counselor told me to prepare for the worst.<br />
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There’s more to be said about my hearing impairment, which I’ve thought more about in subsequent years. It was not something that I (nor most anyone else) noticed much, but I've realized that it had its effects on daily life. It meant I had to expend more energy in listening, in sorting out sounds, and filling in imaginatively for what I didn’t hear distinctly. I got no rest from this attentiveness except in the assurance of silence, or complete control over my auditory environment. It’s part of what made having roommates so difficult without a solitary retreat, though I had that this year. It also increased my fatigue, for which substance indulgence also likely played a role. <br />
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But day after day, confronting an array of uncertain choices and awful alternatives was forcing itself into my unwilling life. I was just beginning to learn that, even though I had various degrees of support amidst incomprehension and hostility, when it came down to it, absolutely no one around me not faced with this imminent prospect could fully understand it. In this I would be completely alone.<br />
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But I did know that my nagging, dragging-down sense of futility was shared by others. Wasn’t this show of dutifully taking courses just a useless farce, given what was to come? I remember the student who said—or howled—what difference does it make if I die with a good head? (Ironically it was Peter Overton, who later became a pillar of Bay Area Buddhism.)<br />
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At times, the only shelter, the only safe harbor, was in the music. From a Simon & Garfunkel single, "Hazy Shade of Winter":<br />
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<i>Hang on to your hopes, my friend</i><br />
<i>That's an easy thing to say</i><br />
<i>But if your hopes should pass away</i><br />
<i>Simply pretend/ that you can build them again...</i><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">T</span></b>here was also everything going on around campus. Glancing at what I wrote and said at the time (much of it now looking less than cogent), it’s apparent that I was increasingly sensitive to the pain and confusion of other students, and anguished when nothing effective was being done to alleviate it. Over the years perhaps we’ve forgotten just how hard it all was, as apparently pampered and privileged as we were. (A situation that is<a href="https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/how-to-be-happy.html"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"> recurring</span></a> apparently.)<br />
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In January I resigned my appointed position as a student representative on the faculty’s student affairs committee. I ended my frustration with those meetings—a kind of frustration that would recur over the years in similar settings—with a flourish, by giving a long interview to the Knox Student. I did so partly because Jeremy Gladstone and Peter Stetson were becoming the co-editors and this provided a “big story” for their first issue. <br />
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The interview ran off the bottom of the front page. Towards the top of the page there is a hazy photo of a small group of us, silently protesting the Vietnam War (says the caption.) It's very fuzzy but I'm there, wearing a borrowed hat, in my much maligned corduroy coat with dodgy fur collar, cord jacket underneath, shirt and flowered tie. I was still getting my style points from the Beatles, though my look was more of a melange of Beatles and Young Professor. I can't make out all the other figures, but I see Bill Thompson peeking out from behind me, Jack Herbig in the background, and Mike Shain standing to the right--I recognize him only by his scarf. It appears to be snowing.<br />
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Leaving aside the question of how much of a jerk I was being in this interview, a key question was revealed. Reading this interview recently, especially between the lines, I notice that my complaints got more focused and emotional concerning Honor Board cheating cases. However I never got around to talking about the case that really distressed me. It would take me probably another decade before it became clearer to me what that was all about.<br />
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For sometime shortly after I’d joined the committee in my second or third year, we were called upon to decide whether a couple of students should be expelled (or perhaps suspended for a semester) for cheating on an exam. Cheating seemed to me a pretty clear-cut offense, although even the few details I remember about this case suggests it wasn’t so simple. I eventually joined in the unanimous guilty verdict.<br />
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Shortly afterward, a letter appeared in the Knox Student taking the committee to task for expelling a male student and exposing him to the military draft. (Even a suspension exposed him.) As a student representative I was singled out for my vote.<br />
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My first reaction to this letter by a student senior I knew by sight was anger that he hadn’t made this case to me before the vote. It would have made a difference.<br />
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Memory is a tricky thing. For years I was sure that this draft jeopardy wasn’t mentioned or discussed in the committee, but I’m no longer sure about that. I do know that the idea of making a moral choice based on the draft exposure jeopardy simply hadn’t occurred to me. I frankly had not conceptualized that I could (let alone should) make a decision based on this fact. But once I heard it, I was immediately convinced. If I had been presented with this argument, I would have argued for it in the committee, and would not have voted as I did.<br />
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It’s unlikely that argument would have prevailed in the committee, and my one vote wouldn’t have made a difference. But the consequences of that committee decision turned out to be very serious. One student expelled or suspended was drafted, he was sent to Vietnam, and he returned without one of his limbs.<br />
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I don’t think I consciously faced this as my war crime until years later. But even that winter it’s clear I felt I didn’t want to be even ignorantly implicated in such consequence again. It added to my distrust of institutions: the military-industrial-academic complex.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">M</span></b>eanwhile I was also supposed to be concentrating on my studies of the moment. In particular that winter, I was scrambling to complete my “distribution requirements” in order to graduate. <br />
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Knox had extensive requirements in my years, more than it did in later years, or perhaps now. For some reason, requirements for foreign language, science and math requirements were lumped together.<br />
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I’d managed a year of Spanish and a year of math. I’d taken two years of Latin and two of French in high school, but I don’t think Latin was offered and I knew my French was inadequate for higher-level courses. So I took beginning Spanish my first year.<br />
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Our instructor—a native Spanish speaker from South America who I don’t recall seeing after that year—began the first class by saying that if we came to class and did the work, we would get no less than a C. And any girls in the class who wore short skirts and sat in the front row would get As. Was he kidding? We didn’t think so, but who knows. Anyway there were always girls in the front row.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">language lab 1960</td></tr>
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I still shudder when I think of that class. It was held in the language lab, and we spent all of our time at partitioned desks with earphone on, either listening to tapes or engaging in “conversation” with the instructor. By second semester I was losing it. I could feel my sanity under attack.<br />
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I’m not qualified to say this system is bad for learning a language, but it was bad for me. The language lab was sterile, without human context. The language was disconnected from any human reason to learn it. I felt I was being indoctrinated, in some ostensibly friendly <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i>.<br />
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It was made worse because I wasn’t predisposed to learn a new language—as far as I was concerned, I was still learning English. That was enough for me. <br />
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Even so, I wasn’t incapable. After all, I learned enough Italian as a child to entertain my grandparents’ friends. My mother thought that I was essentially bilingual at age 4. (And of course, Italian wasn't offered.) But I hadn’t learned to speak French in the classroom, and this was worse. There was no cultural or human context or motivation in that dark room. <br />
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I managed a C+ both semesters, but when I went to my first class in the next level of Spanish my second year—in a real classroom, with students really speaking the language-- it was apparent that I’d learned very little, and I was too far behind the level of other students to survive there. So I dropped that course.<br />
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My high school math had been spotty. I did well in geometry, mathematical logic and set theory, but poorly in algebra, and missed trig altogether due to an administrative botched experiment. But I managed to pass two semesters of math my first year at Knox, though barely. I have no idea how. I don’t remember anything about it, other than the mannerisms of the instructor, who I liked.<br />
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The only science I had in high school was biology. I wasn’t at all interested in the basic technicalities. I had been deeply interested in astronomy in grade school, and largely taught myself. So in quest of the remaining requirements in the fall of my senior year of college, I took the course known by generations of students as “Stars.”<br />
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Largely due to my early fascination with science fiction, astronomy was the one science I liked in grade school. I kept a brown notebook in the fourth or fifth grade with all the known information about each planet in the solar system.<br />
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The Knox course was formally called “The Universe,” taught by the magisterial and well-named Dr. Priestley. I’d been tipped off that the key concept he hoped non-majors would get was that there is order in the Universe. (This was a simpler universe that science now sees.) So I made sure to get the phrase into all my papers and tests.<br />
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And even though I sometimes showed up for class wearing a sign on my Lennon cap that said Captain Space, Dr. Priestley tolerated me, and I knew enough stuff to pass. (It was the first course I took on the new pass/fail system.)<br />
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After that, pass/fail couldn't be used for distribution requirements anymore. However, when I took "Science and Society" in third term, which I believe was also Dr. Priestley. I got an A. <br />
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But I needed just one more course to complete my requirements. Unfortunately, several other sciences for non-major courses in the catalog weren’t actually offered. So in between these two, in the winter term, I took the only available course, Evolution. <br />
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<i>To be continued...</i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0