Volume 2 - Issue 4

TheNewJoumal

l l

Volume two, number four I November 17, 1968

The scandalousVoice from his past,entered and shrieked, "God damn!.Aintyou one big sweet black motheii.!!,and Jefferson rushed out of one room and whispered, · "Christ,man! not now! some.bodv here!"But theVoice,thinking past was present,said, · 'M.an,wewas looking for you for a crap gan\.e last Sar'd~baby!

Man,those fellas drink whiskey like water!!~.

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21The New Journal I November 17, 1968

Contents 3

Four stations in his circle

by Austin C. Clarke

8

Life in death: the immortal Mao

by Mary C. Wright

10

Fragments of a Saturday afternoon

by Jonathan Coppelman and Kenneth Cavander

12

Unmailed letters

by Malcolm Boyd

15

Letters

In Comment: Brewster puts himself on the line for them, Dr. Morris wishes them a good night's sleep, J anis gets hung up on their hang-ups, and the dramat sticks 'em in a brothel. Ah, women.

A vi With only days to go before the girls arrived, the little office above Dwight Hall Chapel pulsed like a nerve center. Call from Smith. Vassar on the line. Sarah Lawrence wants to know if.... Sifting through the decisions, quickly delegating and accepting responsibilites, Avi Soifer, chairman of the Coeducation-Now Committee, was told that Kingman Brewster was on the line.

"Oh no, not now. I'm much too busy . . . tell him I'm not in."

A vi, congratulations and thanks.

After Dr. John Morris i!:> generally known as the man who invented the "morning-after birth-control pill." A professor of gynecology at the Yale Medical School, Morris is a member of an increasing group of physicians who are practicing the "New Medicine."

As with the New Politics, there is an intense recognition in medicine of the failure of the old schemC: to deal efficiently with a problem before it becomes a crisis. The population explosion, Morris explained at Silliman College last week, is just such a crisis; for it is our children who will share the world with thirty billion people, ten times the present population, and there are already a billion people living on marginal nutrition.

This, he claimed, is the doctors' fault, for while they lowered the death rate, they showed no concern for the birth rate. The medical specialty of gynecology remained concerned only with obstetrics. Family planning and abortion are for the rich; we haven't even penetrated the ghettoes yet.

In a New H aven study of I 00 unwed mothers under the age of seventeen, the following was demonstrated for a five-year period: The mothers, only nine of whom were eventually married, gave birth to 340 babies, 238 of which were on the welfare roles. 95 percent of the mothers had more than one pregnancy, 60 percent in the first year, and 89 percent were of the ghetto population. A similar group in another state's study cost the government S20 million by the time they had reached thirty-five.

Several years ago, birth control was a crime in Connecticut. In a test case sponsored by Yale-New Haven and several planned-parenthood groups, the law was thrown out. At the trial, however, each time a doctor rose to testify, officers of the court rose to save the delicate ears of those present and, in unison, raised and lowered the window shades, creating a

clamor which made the testimony inaudible.

Dr. Morris believes that abortion should be entirely a matter of the woman and her physician. (In communist nations, it is a woman's right to have an abortion if she so desires.) It should be taken off the criminal statutes, as has been done in Maryland, and all of the archaic sex laws, which are embarrassingly unenforceable anyway, should be flushed away.

In order to deal with poverty, Morris believes, we will have to reduce the birth rate first. India recognized that they could not possibly build schools, create communities and produce food at a rate equaling the expansion of their population. The general revulsion to birth control fell; now there is a national policy for family planning.

The question of religious ethics may not be as difficult to transcend as is presently believed. In Chile, where the population is predominantly Catholic, the doctors are inserting more intra-uterine devices proportionately than in New Haven; and at the moment, the IUD is the most effective birth control for poorly motivated populations.

The liberalization of abortion laws remains the tensest debate. In the majority of the states the only legal means of terminating a pregnancy caused by rape is the "morning-after-pill," Dr. Morris's own contribution. It is a large dose of estrogens which causes the lining of the uterus to be unsuitable for implantation of the fer~ tilized ovum. H owever, very few people are aware of this "pill," and thus we find yet another example of the need for a national standard of sex education.

Unless the people of the world make a conscious educated effort to curb the population explosion. Morris said, we will see in our time federally policed population control.

Richard I. Levin

-----

Comfort Janis Joplin and Big Brother were discussing New Haven after their Saturday-night performance.

"In some of the towns we play in, all of the girls wear bras, and in other towns, none of them do. In New Haven they all do. " I was surrounded by a lot of goodlooking chicks tonight," said Janis, "but they all had their tits pointing straight out."

She was drinking a bottle of Southern Comfort. Between her two performances, she had consumed one pint and had kicked away everyone within fifteen feet of her. During the second show, she openly cursed at the band.

"Those cold drinks, sometimes you can't hold out on stage for more than thirty minutes a show.

"Two years ago 1 used to love this stuff," Janis said, "but now ... "She coughed a little, her eyes watered over, and she sneezed three times. Turning to the guy next to her, she a~ked, "This doesn't have acid in it, does it?

"Did you see me spit on stage in the second show? Never thought I'd have to do that. But you've got to if you want to drink and hit some of those notes.

"I never was known for being too refined, anyway.''

A Yalie was downstairs admiring Janis.

He had a little brown derby which Janis rested on her fri1.zy hair.

"Can I have it'? Last night in Providence someone gave me a gigantic sculpture, an

enormous penis. I'm going to put it in my living room."

The Yalie asked Janis if he could come see her over C hristmas. " I won't remember you then," she replied. "After a couple of hours in a performance, I start to forget, and then I don't remember anything until the next morning."

Herb Wright, who promoted the performance, says that the performers will get $15,000 for the night, of which Janis personally will get ahout $8,000.

"She's a greedy bitch," says Wright.

Janis is going to leave the Holding Company some time within the next month and pick her own group. She has a few people lined up already, but won't commit herself about it. One of the people she tried to get was Eric Clapton, but that didn't work out.

"I need real workers," she says. ''I'm one of the hardest workers in the business right now."

Jim Mann

Brendan's Be-in The Yale Dramat's production of The H ostage, being their first production since the departure of Leland Starnes, is a milestone in their recent history. While Mr. Starnes bad his strong points, Dramat audiences had been subjected to his consistent weaknesses. for a good many years.

It is disappointing to see in this new production again a competent performance that in the end lacks the depth and resonance it would need to be a memorable experience.

Brendan Behan set The H ostage in an Irish brothel populated by a motley assortment of irregular characters who squabble constantly, take their quarrels directly to the audience and always end up by singing someone's favorite song. The Dramat company, under the direction of Charles Maryan, handles the minor characters competently but without great originality.

Amusing and lively these little people may be, but thev are unfortunately familiar; and somewhere between Behan and the Dramat stage, the dynamism of the Irish spirit has leaked out. Instead of a hard-drinking Irish brothel that lets off steam in bawdy jokes and songs to the audience, we are left with something that resembles a small-town music ball on amateur night.

But Brendan Behan did not write this play as a moment of light satire. He wrote a boisterous and richly textured, biting criticism of Causes. Not all causes, perhaps, but two at least: devout Catholicism and Irish nationalism. Both were tightly woven into his own past. He was educated in Dublin by the French Sisters of Charity, and he joined the Irish Republican Army at the age of fourteen. The good Sisters would not want to claim him, but he spent almost nine years of his life in prison for political crimes connected with the IRA. There is some deep feeling behind his mockery of both these causes, a feeling that comes out in the rough boisterousness of his attacks on them. The Dramat seems to have missed this feeling, so the boisterousness they manage comes out tame and one-dimensional.

The Hostage is a play of tradition trying desperately to ignore the present, of people trying desperately to hold on to traditions in the present by viewing them with heavy irony. But the people of The Hostage, no matter what sarcasm they may be able to lay on their own traditions, are continued on page I 5

Volume two, number four November 17, 1968 Editors: Jeffrey Pollock Jonathan Lear Business Manager: Jean-Pierre Jordan Executive Editor: Herman Hong Art Director: Bruce Mcintosh Associate Editor: Lawrence Lasker Advertising Manager: K. Elia Georgiades Copy Editor: Paul Bennett Photography Editor: Robert Randolph Circulation Managers: John Adams Steve Thomas Contributing Editors: Jonathan Aaron Susan Holahan Mopsy S. Kennedy Michael Lerner Leo Ribuffo Staff: Dennis Evans, Marty Davis, Joseph Fincke, Anna Fleck, Kathy Grossman, John Hull, Rodger Kamenetz, Laurie Overby, Michael David Rose, Barney Rubin, Scott Simpson, Nancy Vickers, Warner Wada, Michael Waltuch THIRD CLASS PERMIT: Third Class postage PAID in New Haven, Conn. The New Journal is published by The New Journal, 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, Conn. 06520, and is printed at The Carl Purington Rollins Printing-Office of the Yale University Press in New Haven. Published bi-weekly during the academic year and distributed by qualified controlled circulation to the Yale Community.

For all others, subscriptions are $7.50 per year ($4.50 for students) and newsstand copies 50ji!.

The New Journal Š copyright 1968 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., a non-profit corporation.

Letters welcome. Unsolicited manuscripts should be accompanied by a stamped, selfaddressed envelope. Opinions expressed in articles are not necessarily those of The New Journal.

Credits: Ron Gross: cover Herman H o ng: page 11 Robert Randolph: page 10 David Schorr: pages 3, 6, 7

Four stations in his circle

by Austin C . Clarke

Immigration transformed J efferson T heophillis Belle, and after five years made him deceitful, selfish and very ambitious.

It saddened his friend Brewster very much; but he had to confess that Jefferson was the most successful of th em all. Still, Brewster pitied him . H owever, Jefferson had qualities which Brewster tried to emulate, even though JTB was not a likeable man.

H e was too ascetic, and pensive; and his friends hated him for it. But J efferson had his mind on oth er things: a house and a p iece of land round the house. "I must own a p iece o' Canada!" Every morning going to work, as the Sherbourne bus entered Rosedale, he became tense. T he houses in Rosedale were large and beautiful; and as far as he could guess, they each had a fireplace . .. because, man, I couldn't purchase a house unless it got a fireplace ... that fire sparkling, and playing games on my face in the winter nights, crickcrack! . .. and sometimes at night, Jefferso~ would go to Rosed ale (once, he went Born in the West Indies and residing in Canada, Austin C. Clarke teaches black literature at Yale and is author of anumber of novels, the most recen t being T he Meeting Point.

""':::::---- -

at three in tbe morning) to watch the house he had put his mind on. But this house was not for sale! Gorblummuh! that don't ¡ deter me, though! 'cause one o' these mornings it must go up for sale, and I will be standing up right there, with the money in my hand.

One Friday night in the Paramount Tavern with Brewster, Jefferson had a great urge to see his property. He paid for the drinks, said he had to go to the men's room, slipped out through the back door, and nearly ran into a taxi driver hustling women and passengers. He raised his hand to call the taxi. But he realized that he had already spent a foolish dollar on Brewster; so he changed his mind, and mentally deposited that dollar b ill to the $10,000 he had in the bank; and he set out on foot. The wind was chilly. Look, how I nearly throw 'way that dollar 'pon foolishness! I am still a very strong man, at forry. I could walk from Spadina to Rosedale, man; and when he heard his own voice say how wise he was, he walked even faster. Anxiously. he grabbed his left back trousers pocket; "Oh!" he said; and a laugh came out. H e didn't trust anybody; certainly not Brewster. H e was very glad the money was in his pocket; and yet, for a second, he imagined th at the money was actually stolen, and by Brewster. So, he unpinned the two safety pins, u ndid the button, and took out the money, wrapped in a dirty black handkerch ief. His experi-

ences with money made him uneasy. A ny day, he might need it for the down-payment (although he could not have k nown what it would be); and if he wanted a house in Rosedale, he must be prepared.

He walked slowly now (there was money in his hand); and when he came under a light, he counted it. Nine hundred dollars.

This money went to work with him ; went to church with him ; went into the washroom at work and at home with him ; and when he went to bed, it was pinned to h is pyjamas. "Nine! Right!" H e had so m uch money now, he counted on ly in hundreds.

He put the money back into his pocket; pinned it, twice; and buttoned it down.

And l:?eforc he moved on, he made a promise to change the handkerchief. Five years! five years 1 come to this country, with one pair o' shoes!

Sometimes, in weaker moments, he would argue with himself to get some education, too. Coming through the university grounds, once, by chance, he saw a line of men and women crossing the lawn, with the lawn strewn with roses and flash bulbs and cheers and laughter, and a few tears to give significance to the roses and the bulbs; and he felt then the power of education and the surrounding buildings.

And he had shaken his head, and run away. T he three hours following, he h ad spent forgetting and getting drunk in the P aramount. That was five years ago. Now, he did not have to run. He walked through the grounds jauntily this time, because he had nine hundred dollars in cash, in his

pocket. And as he came out, to enter Queens Park, he saw two sh adows; and the two shadows grew into two forms; and one form was raising the skirt above the thighs of the other form; and when they saw him coming, the man covered the girl's reputation with his jacket. They remained still, pretending they were shadows, until a passing car pointed its finger at the girl's back; and J efferson saw "University of T oronto," written in white letters on the m an's jacket. Goddam, he's so broke through education, he can't afford a hotel room!

Far along Bloor Street: the boasting water van is littering Toronto and making some pedestrians wet; and a man holds half of his body through the driver's window, and says, "Night!", and this greeting carries him into Rosedale, quiet as a reser vation. Five years of hard work has brought him here, tonight, in front of this huge mansion. I going have to paint them windows, green; and throw a coat o' paint on the doors ... the screens in the windows will be green like in the West Indies ... I going pull up them flowers and put in roses, red ones; and build a pailing, and build-up my property value .. . and he goes up on the lawn and tries to count the rooms in the four-storey house. i magine

41 The New Journal I November 17, 1968

me in this house with four storeys! and not one blasted tenant or boarder/ Be be cannot count nll the rooms from the front, so be goes through the alleyway, to look at the backyard, -and the rooms in the back, and ... (a car passes; and the man driving turns his head left, and sees a shadow; and he slows down, and the shadow becomes a form; he stops, says something on the radio in the car; parks the car; walks back, and waits) ... Jefferson comes humming back to the front lawn and tries again to count, and four men pounce upon him and drag him along his lawn, with bands on his mouth and some in his guts and drop him in the hack seat of the car. He can bear voices, talking at the same time, coming through the radio speaker. "Good!" a living voice says. "Take him to Division Two." And they did that. Jefferson Tbeophillis Belle, of no fixed address, unknown, labourer unskilled, spent a very long time before he convinced them that he was not a burglourer; and in all that time, his head was spinning from the questions, and from the blows: because you were walking round this respectable district, this time o' night, with all that money on your person, and you're not a burglar? to buy a house, eh? that doesn't even have a "For Sale" sign up? who are you kidding, mack? and they gave him one final kick of warning; and with his pride injured ("God blind you , cop! so help me God!") he woke up Brewster, to see what be thought.

"They should still be kicking-in your behind i" Brewster said in his heart, as be ¡

rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Without compassion, he left Jefferson; and when be got back into bed, his blanket was rising and falling from the breath of his laughter and wishes ... should have kicked-in your arse, boy! Brewster couldn't wait for morning and the Paramount to talk about it.

After this, Jefferson decided to visit Rosedale in the daytime only. When pay days came, every cent went into his bank; and his balance climbed like a mountain; similarly, his hate for black people. A week later, he took out a summons against Brewster, who owed him twenty dollars from three years ago. He tried to get him arrested; but his lawyer advised otherwise; so Jefferson settled for a collection agency.

The collection agency got the money back; but Jefferson gave it back to Brewster.

This success convinced him further that business was more important than intellect; money more important still. He bad seen Jews in the Spadina garment district; be bad seen Polish immigrants in the Jewish Market; he had seen their expensive automobiles going north after a beautiful day of sweating profits; and he said, Me, too! soon I going north, tam bien/ He stopped drinking at the Paramount.

He stopped going to the Silver Dollar for funk, rhythm, blues and jazz. He didn't want to see any more black people. He spent more time in his room, alone. On weekends, he watched television and drank beer; and re-checked his bank book, because anybody could make a mistake, but be-Christ! they ain't making no mistake

with my money! His actions and his movements became tense, more ordered. His disposition became rawer; and once or twice, he lost his temper with his supervisor at the Post Office, and almost lost his job; but he lost a slice of pride apologizing.

The germ implanted upon his sensibilities by the police presuming him a burglar, that be was burgling the house of his dreams ("God blind you, Mister Policeman. I am a man, too!") that he, Jefferson Theophillis Belle, a' black Barbadian, could only through crime possess nine hundred dollars in cash ("Double-blind you, Mister Ossiferl When I'm working off my arse, where are you ...?") was systematically eating away his heart and mind. In isolation, he tried to find some solace. He would tell himself jokes, and laugh aloud at his own jokes. Still, something was missing.

The boisterousness of the Paramount was gone. He no longer enjoyed Saturday mornings in the Negro barber shop on Dundas, where he and others, middleaged and cronied, would sit, waiting for the chair, laughing themselves into hiccups with jokes, with the barber, about women they knew when they were younger men.

He went instead north, from Baldwin Street to the Italian barber on College. The haircuts there were worse, and more expensive; and time did not improve them.

He had almost walked away from his past, when on that bright Saturday morning, "Goddamn, "baby!" the Voice picked him out, sneaking out of the Italian barber's, brushing the hair out of his neck. He

squirmed, because be recognized the Voice. It came again, loud and vulgar, "I say, goddam, baby!" Jefferson pretended he was just one of the European immigrants walking the street. And be walked on, hiding his head in invisible mounds of shame. The Voice disappeared. He relaxed and breathed more easily. And suddenly, he felt the hand on his neck, and "Goddammitl baby, ain't you speaking to no niggers this morning, you sweet black motherfuckerl" All the eyes in the foreignlanguage heads turned to listen. Then in a voice the eyes couldn't hear, "Lend me a couple bucks, baby. Races."

Jefferson Theophillis Belle made a mental note right then, never again to speak to black people.

He found himself walking through the campus grounds again; spending long hours pondering the stem buildings; the library crammed with knowledge in print, and the building where he had seen the lines of penguins dressed ¡in black and white, like graduate scholars. Education is a funny thing, heh-heh-heh! and I had better get a piece o' that, too. He argued himself into a piece of education; but he held fast to the piece of property, too. He visited some institutions, and took away their prospectuses, to study ... these things make me out as if I don't know that two and two is four, that the world round, that Columbus discover it in 1492, that that bastard sailed down in my islands and come back and called them Indian, hahhah! . .. if it was me make that mistake,

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S 1 The New Journal I November 17, 1968

my boss would fire me, tomorrow! I am an educated person, therefore. And he began to see himself in the diplomatic service. He telephoned the university to see how he could become a diplomat; a nd after the initial silence of shock, the voice advised him to read all the Histories of the World.

He saw the Histories of the World, in an Atlas of the World, and be turned on the television set. Mr. Jefferson Theophillis Belle was written on each of the four envelopes that brought the prospectuses. He felt inferior that nothing was behind his name. So, be wrote on each envelope, behind his name: BA , PhD, MA, MLitt, DLitt, Diploma in Diplomacy, Barbadian Ambasador to Canada. And he laughed.

Then he got a basin, a new one, lit a match and burned everything. (The last to burn was the prospectus from the Department of History in the university.) He watched all the knowledge he might have had burn and consume; and he laughed. This was on a Sunday; and he went on the couch, drinking and watching television. He fell back on the couch after a while, quite suddenly, as if the string that regulated his life was cut. The half-empty bottle of warm beer was still in his band. The landlady, passing through after bingo at her church, pushed the door to say "Nightnight," and saw him on the couch. She turned off the television; she put the large Plan of the Grounds and Lecture Rooms of Ryerson over his face; she took the bottle from his hand, and drank it off. She put two others in her coat pockets; said, "Bringing them back," to the two beers; and she left.

Monday came too early. He could feel pebbles of hangover in his eyes; and the raucous shouting of his landlady, "you really tied one on, last night, boy!" was like an enamel plate banged on stone against his temples. And then, suddenly he came to a dead stop before his Pontiac.

Somebody had scratched FACT YOU, MUCK, in shaky inebriated grease paint, on the frost of his windshield and trunk.

A thing like this couldn't happen in Rosedale. It couldn't. All that day, and all that night at the Post Office, be was tense.

He soon discovered that his energy was being sapped from him. He wondered whether he should quit his night job; he had enough money now; but, no, man. the house in Rosedale, man! He worked harder that night, and when he went home, did twenty-three push-ups. And then it happened! A "For Sale" sign appeared on the house beside his house. This threw him in a fit, trying to decide whether to buy that house, (it was empty, no furniture, and had thirteen rooms), when a letter came from home. He recognized his mother's handwriting on it, and refused to open it.

The tension came back. He took the letter to see if he could see the news inside, without opening it ... Look, Jeff, boy! opportunity does knock only one time in Rosedale ... And that was it. He called the real-estate agent, and arranged the purchase. The tenseness left him. He could see himself cutting red luxuriant roses he planted; waving his band at a beautiful woman; calling her, and pinning a rose on her bosom; but the rose be held in his hand, was the real-estate agent's number; when he realized this, be tore it up. The paper petals fell without a noise. But be was now Jefferson Tbeophillis Belle, Esquire, Landowner and Property Owner, Public School tax-payer (be had no children!) ... be would give his occupation in the Voters List as "Engineer , retired" ... the letter, though, Jeff! stop this dreaming

'bout house and land and see what the Old Queen have to say, and don't let sorrow fall 'pon your head; and remember where you beginned from , 'cause a mother is a mother, son, 'cause .. . "Dear Jeff, when you left this island I ask God to help you.

Now, I want you and God to help me. I know he help you. because somebody tell me so, and still you have not send me one· blind cent. But God understand. You did not know I was laid up eight months with a great sickness? I have a new doctor now, a Bajan, who studied medicines in Canada, where you is. H e told me you can help me, because they is a lot of money in Canada.

I need a operation. I feel bad to ask you, though. But, I am. Your Mother, (signed): M other. Postscript: House spots selling dirt-cheap now in Barbados. Think. Love, Mother. Don't forget to read your Bible, Jefferson; it is God words, son. Love, again; still, Mother.

Months after, in Rosedale, he would see the page burning; and the words would haunt him, in whispers; and he would tell himself that he should have torn up the letter only; and not the Bible too. But when be put his hands to it, that day, he had no idea it was such a fragile book ... and he should have sent the money to his mother, sick, then: dead, probably, now ... the page, the last page before the Bible cried out in the fire ; and the line: remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions . ... ... But life in Rosedale flourished like a red rose. An invitation card of gold embossed print was dropped through his letterbox. He did not notice the address on it; but he read that "Miss Emile Elizabeth Heatherington was engaged to ~- Asquith Marlborough Breighington-Kelly, and they were having a party, at Number 46" -next door. This pleased Jefferson. The next day, he joined Theophillis to Belle, with a hyphen. For three days, he sunned his suit to kiJJ the evil fragrance of camphor balls. He dressed for the party, and waited behind his curtains made of newspapers, to watch the first guests arriving.

Everyone was in formal wear. They came in Jaguars, in Lincolns and Cadillacs. He took off his brown suit, lit his fireplace, and spent the evening sitting on an onion crate. Long after he bad return-posted his invitation in the flames, in anger and disappointment, he could still hear the merriment next door. He wondered why nobody called him. But the fire died, and he was awakened by cramp and a dream of his mother. He puttered round his house; and he drew some parallel lines on the walls of three rooms, as bookcases; and he drew books between the lines, until be could get some real books from the Book-of-theMonth Club. Before going to bed, he decided to change his car. He must buy a new car, because living in a district like this, and being the onliest man who does work with his hands, and, and-and ... that oil company president, Godblindhim! comes along, limping on the weight of his walking stick, and smells the freshness of the grass and water and roses, and looks up and smiles and says, "Evening! have you heard when they're coming back?"

Jefferson pretended be didn't understand.

Another time, the old oil man said, " You're a darn fine gardinner. Best these people ever had ; and better than those Italians, too!" He said this on the afternoon of the party ... and suddenly, Jefferson decided he bad to see that invitation again to see something very important on it. He had burned both the envelope and invitation already; and he vowed never again to

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burn anything. There were many invitations printed in blood ink, and many Bibles with remember not the sins of my youth printed in gold, on every page.

He traded his car for a 1968 Jaguar, automatic. It was long, sleek and black.

After this, he dressed in a three-piece suit for work; with a black brief case. In the brief case were old shoes, work shirt and overalls. He would change into these, in the men's room of East End Cafe, near East End Paints Ltd. where he worked as Janitor & Maintenance General. He bo,Ught a formal morning suit, and an evening formal.

Sometime after, the stick that walked out with the old oil man next door tapped and stopped and said, "When? Are they coming back?" Jefferson got mad, and told him, "I own this! The name is Jefferson Theophillis-Belle!" The man of oil stretched out his hand, grabbed JT-B's, and said amiably, "I'm Bill!"

Jefferson had just come home on Friday afternoon, and was changing into his night-shift clothes (th ere was no danger of being caught at night) when the doorbell rang. It was his first caller. He looks at the half-eaten sandwich of peanut-butter, and wonders what to do with it; (the doorbell is ringing) and he can feel himself losing weight; and he wished he had filled the prescription the doctor had given him, for tension ... he stopped before the mirror he hung in his imagination on the wall in the hall, to see if peanut butter is between his teeth ... but it is only Bill's wife, who came to invite him, for the second time, to the party on Saturday, when the scandalous Voice from h is past, entered and shrieked, "God-damn! Ain't you one big sweet black motherf ... ",and Jefferson rushed out of one room and whispered, "Christ, man! not now! somebody here!"

But the Voice, thinking past was present, said, "Man, we was looking for you for a crap-game, last Sar'day, baby! Man, those fellas drink whisky like water!" ... and Bill's wife came out, smiled and said, 'You're busy, but don't forget. Satteedee."

And she left. J efferson jumped into a r age; but the Voice merely asked, "What I

do?" And after looking through the first room, and the second, the Voice exclaimed, "But wait! J eff, where the blasted furnitures, man?"

In the J aguar, speeding out of Rosedale, the Voice was silent. "You ask me what you do?" Jefferson said at last. "But it is more like I should ask myself, What I do?"

The Voice took a long pull on his cigarette, and said "Baby, you made your bed.

Now, goddam, lie down in it!" And he slapped Jefferson goodby, and said, "Let me off here. I want to get blind drunk, tonight!" They were opposite the Paramount. Jefferson had forgotten the landmarks on this street; he had forgotten the smoke and vapour from Southernfried chicken wings fried in fat, in haste, by the Chinaman whose face never showed a change in emotion; and in forgetting all these, he had forgotten to have time, in Rosedale, to enjoy himself ... a party of rich, educated people of Holt Renfrew tastes; he, always ill at ease, "Now, Mr. Theophillis-Belle, as a P. Eng., structural, I ask you, What do you consider to be the structural aesthetics of our new City Hall?"

In less champagned-and-whiskied company, his answer of ign orance, "That?", might not have brought cheers. And the Jewish jokes and Polish jokes, and he, Structural and Jefferson and Engineer, dreading every moment, in case the jokes change into Negro jokes; or walking beneath a crystal chandelier and praying be won't touch it, and break it, and have to offer (out of courtesy) to replace it (and finding that he had to!); and standing before the mirror on Bill's wall, and suddenly seeing, that he was not, after all, the fairest reflection of them all; and running out through the door ... Jefferson turned off the car lights, and sat thinking; and Brewster appeared from nowhere with a white woman on his arm, sauntering to the "Ladies. and Escorts Entrance." Since he has lived in Rosedale, Jefferson has not taken a woman-nor black nor white nor blue-up his front steps. He blew his horn.

Brewster looked back. The woman looked, too; and said, "Piss off!" He closed the car door. H e started the car. H e drove beside

71 The New Journal ! November 17, 1968

Eero Saarinen Eero Saarinen on his Work The revised and completed edition with 23 new illustrations edited by Aline B. Saarinen Here one of the twentieth century's foremost architects tells what he believed and felt about architecture. The first editton (1962) was descnbed as : .. The most beautifully designed architecture book of th e year...- Christian Science Monitor... The most fitting, per1ect tribute to Eero Saarinen .. superb reproductions of drawings and well-se lected photographs..._Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians... Handsomely Illustrated:· - New York Times Book Rev1ew. $17.50

~ Yale

Art Gallery

French and School of Paris Paintings In the Yale University Art Gallery A Catalogue Raisonn6 by Fran~olse Forster-Hahn Extens1vely illustrated. this catalogu.e provides a permanent record of an important segment of the collection at Yale's famous Art Gallery. It includes work by Claude Lorrain, Hubert Robert. Cwot. Millet, Courbet, Manet, Cezanne. Puvis de Chavannes. Degas. Seurat.

Van Gogh, Renois. Vuillard. Bonnard. Matisse. Gris, Villon, Leger. Picasso, Braque. and others. cloth S10.00; paper $3.75

Labor law Labor and the Legal Process

by Harry H. Wellington Collective bargaining has occupied a central position in national labor policy since the 1930's, but major strikes and the terms of settlement have recently strained this method of solving labor problems. Here, a Yale Law School specialist in labor law takes a close look at national policy toward labor. particularly the role of law and legal mstitutions in the development and execution of that policy. Offenng penetrating and realistic comments on the roles of Congress, the courts. the Labor Board, and unions, Mr. Wellington presents a close knit. well-sustained study that goes to the heart of the major issues of national labor policy. $10.00

i• I

Labor law The First British Workmen's Compensation Act, 1897 the Paramount, hoping to see Brewster.

But only a drunk came out; and when he saw him, he raised his hand, and coughed and vomited on the gravel beside the "Ladies and Escorts" ... well, he might turn West for Baldwin Street, to see his exlandlady, to see if the house is still there, or if the City or Tepperman has ... but he turned East, for the Post Office. That night he forgot to notice the letters addressed to Rosedale; he spent his time thinking of formal parties. All of a sudden, he had a very disturbing vision which destroyed his joy of formal suits; instead of being at Bill's party, dressed and formal as an undertaker, he saw himself in a funeral parlour, laid out, tidy and dead, prepared for burial, with his hands clasped on the visible cummerbund; a nd on the cummerbund, his gold ring and gold pocket watch. Jefferson wondered who would dress him for his coffin; would the person include both formal suits (he was thinking evil of Brewster); who would get his life insurance on his death? and his life savings, $300 and descending, because of the new Jaguar and the formal suits and the new curtains, and the true-form mattress he had ordered yesterday from Eaton's because the canvas cot was leaving marks and pains in his back ... his hands trembling with the letters in them, for twentythree minutes; and before he knew it, the supervisor was there. "Come with me!"

Ten minutes later, three hours before his shift ended, he still could not understand why he hadn't killed the supervisor; why he had stood like a fool, silent, without explaining that he was a man under doctor's prescriptions, for tension; and why, goddammit! he didn't flatten his arse with a right! or smash-in his false teeth, because I've been o n this P ost Office job m ore than four years, even before that bastard ... but he was entering tranquility and Rosedale, now, and the only person he saw on the road was a black man, a black man, in my R osedale, at this time?

And then he saw her, close as a leech, walking beside him.

His house was empty and quiet. Tired now, he undressed, and stood for a while,

thinking of what to do. He put on his pyjamas. He got into his cot. He got out of his cot, and dressed himself in his evening formal. It was two o'clock, Saturday, A .M.! He walked up to the life-sized mirror on the wall, and smiled at the reflection the wall and his imagination threw back; and he adjusted his hat in the wall; straightened his shoulders and started walking in and out of each of the thirteen rooms, smiling at women-black women, white women, blue women, and it was such a go(Xi evening, Miss Jordan . .. good evening, Bill, th anks ... lovely party ...

Lady H awgh-Hawgh, the name is Theophillis-Bel/e, engineer, structural and retired, haw-haw! ... oh Mr. Stein, I can now purchase four thousand shares at five ... my solicitors will contact you, tomorrow, M onday ... hawgh-hawgh! of course! it's Sunday ... and don't call me, I'll call thee, lrah-hah! ... Well, you see, Lady Hawgh-H awgh, I was having cocktails in the Russian Embassy, discussing the possibility of granting nuclear weapons to Barbados and other Caribbean Territories, when ... Brewster entered. Only later, did JTB notice a woman there.

Brewster was saying, "Jesus God! Jesus God!" over and over. And the woman's mouth was open, in terror and pity. Comrade, may I introduce my colleague, the African delegate from ... " What the bell you playing, boy? You don't know Brewster! It's me, Brewster! I just pass you on the street!" ... and his charming wife, also from-Africa? ... Brewster had to laugh. "Look, you!" be said, "Take this."

The telegram fell in front of J efferson.

"Your landlady sent that. She opened it. 'cause she couldn't find you. It's your mother. She dead, boy!" ... thank you, Comrade, for these tidings ... and Jefferson Theophillis Belle continued to walk up and down the hollow bouse (Brewster and the woman still staring) muttering greetings in whispers to his guests, and answering himself, himself; and holding the telegram in his left hand, that hand resting militarily, on the black cummerbund, as he bowed and walked, walked and bowed .... t.l€

by David G. H anes A law results from the actions of legislators. and the figures associated with the Workmen's Compensation Act included some of England 's most prominent statesmen: Herbert Asquith.

William Gladstone. and Joseph Chamberlain. The author draws upon their political backgrounds and the educational and social forces that shaped them to explain the position taken by each. S5.00

Japan

Yale University Press New Haven and London

Big Business In Japanese Politics

by Chltoshl Yanaga The close relationship between big business and government that enabled Japan to reemerge after World War II as a great industrial and trading nation IS the subject of this study.

Mr. Yanaga provides the most penetrating analysis yet made of the nature. function . and role of the Japanese bureaucracy. He clearly shows that the Japanese governing process 1S a jomt effort of big business. party government. and administrative bureaucracy. $8.75

Islam

Islam Observed Religious Development In Morocco and Indonesia

by Clifford Geertz Using an approach at once anthropological, sociological, and historical. Mr. Geertz compares the experiences of Morocco and Indonesia from the beginnings of their Islamization in order to determine how one established and theoretically homogeneous religious tradition has w orked in two w idely different social, cultural. and natural

Rene Wellek

The Disciplines of Criticism Essays in Literary Theory, Interpretation. and History edited by Peter Demetz, Thomas Gree. .. af?d Lowry Nelson, Jr. This remarkable gathering of 26 original essays by colleagues. friends. and former students of Ren~ Wellek on tl'\e occasion of h is 65th birthday is designed as a tribute to the range. coherence, and clarity of his work. The w ide range of topics and problems analyzed reflects the unique and strenuous scope of the mind of the eminent and humane scholar to whom the book is dedicated: hence the collection presents a strikingly comprehensive survey of contemporary trends and concerns in literary criticism. $15.00

O.O.Howard Yankee Stepfather

General 0 . 0 . Howard and the Freedmen

by WIHJem S. McFMiy Th1s biographical study of 0. 0 . Howard provides a new understanding of the historical relationship between the American Negro and the federal government by discussing what Howard sought to accomplish as commissioner of the Freedmen's Bufeau. His hopes and plans lor the freedmen are seen in light of both the aspirations of the freed slaves and the reluc tance of Andrew Johnson's white America to allow them to be reached. $10.00

Robert Jay Lifton, R evolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, New York, Random House, 1968, 178 pp.

"How can a pragmatic people like the Chinese have gone off the deep end this way?" asks a Yale undergraduate, reflecting in his question a stereotype of Chinese "character" that is widespread among intelligent and generally well-informed Americans. "I am beginning to think that there was something after all to the old idea of the Yellow Peril," writes an alumnus of ten years ago who had thought, until the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, that the Chinese were working things out in their own incomprehensible ways but that the rest of the world could probably live with the result.

For many of the middle-aged and older who felt personally involved in the Chinese civil war, old wounds have been reopened and debates of forty years' standing revived.

For one group, the events of the past three years have been the final workingout of a tragedy with themes that were clear from the beginning. For another, these same events have undercut the fight of a lifetime to bring the Chinese communist movement under a rational light, in the expectation that tensions could be eased if American s could only understand.

To the new radical youth of the West, the Chinese Cultural Revolution has posed different but no less divisive problems.

Glancing fragments of Maoism are picked up out of context wherever a group senses an empathy with what it finds : the open horizons of romantic anarchism, intense discipline and struggle in the name of varying ends, young "wanderers" playing chess in the sunshine as others argue the issues of life and death. There is no more effort to put Maoism in its own setting than there is to reconcile these rationally . opposed goals. Neither history nor linear logic is considered relevant.

These varying reactions to the Cultural Revolution have one thing in common: they stem from a continuing Western selfpreoccupation-individual or collective -with our problems. We condemn the administration, both major parties, organized business and organized labor for refusing to attempt to get beneath the surface of what is happening in China, for projecting their hopes and fears onto a screen and calling it China. Yet much of the academic and serious journalistic writing on China today suffers from precisely this flaw, Jess crudely expos~. In a shrinking world more than one-quarter of which is Chinese, this dominance of old assumptions reflects a failure of the imagination, a rigidity and inadaptability to altered circumstances that portends catastrophe.

Dr. Lifton's superb essay points the way to a fresh examination that makes these sterile preoccupations irrelevant. It is not the first study of the Cultural Revolution; easily a hundred serious and substantial articles on the subject have been published. The author has taken account of these without attempting to summarize them. The seminal importance of this book lies in the way questions are formulated and possible answers suggested.

Probing into fundamentals, it is an essay which no specialist can ignore and which at the same time offers an excellent springboard into the study of contemporary China for thoughtful adults with little background on the subject.

The central question is this: The Chinese have a millennia! record of the highest accomplishment in every field of human endeavor, a record of an ability to discipline their vast energies toward millenary goals. The Chinese tradition of dealing

Mary C. Wright is professor of history at Yale and author of The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism.

with crises of politics, technology and nature through psychic cultivation, based on a belief in the malleability and teachability of man is today reinforced by China's need for the highest morale and discipline. Yet paradoxically, Mao's supreme effort to this end, the Cultural Revolution, has ended in a paralyzing loss of discipline and morale. Why did Mao try anything so fantastic and what effects may we anticipate?

Dr. Lifton scarcely mentions problems of politics (in the usual sense), economics or social structure. He recognizes their importance but argues convincingly that we have been bewildered by a welter of specific but disjointed data on these subjects because we have not looked at the problems of psychohistory, which in his view underlie the present Chinese social structure or any other. He attaches no real importance to the rumors of personal cliques and their favoritisms and quarrels - rumors that pre-empt most of the little space the American press can spare for news of China. He is basically concerned with two main questions: the contours of Mao's personality as a revolutionary leader and the psychohistorical dynamics of the Cultural Revolution. He treats these not only as problems of a specific time and place but also as illustrations of phenomena that may shed light on individual and group behavior in all times and places.

The central theme of the treatment both of Mao and of the C ultural Revolution is revolutionary immortality: the passionate conviction that the lives and deaths of the pioneer generation of guerrilla revolutionary leaders will be meaningless unless they live on in a continuing uninterrupted revolution that returns perennially to its sources in the Chinese countryside. Dr. Lifton does not argue that this is the only theme one could choose.

"Large historical events cannot be attributed to a single c<tuse, nor grapsed by a single explanation." I am persuaded by this book, however, that the compulsion to find revolutionary immortality is probably the most significant element in the Cultural Revolution. It is certainly the freshest and one which no scholar other than Dr. Lifton could have formulated.

Who else can use psychological and psychoanalytic concepts without being constricted by them, finding his science no more infallible than others, and is at the same time versed in history and intimately familiar with Chinese (and Japanese) reactions to the problems they and their cultures face?

Dr. Lifton deliberately avoids discussion of Mao's sharp conflict with his father, for that would lead to a full psychobiography of Mao. He finds the theme of conquering death more central than the Oedipus complex to the development of the heroic personality. The reader will find here staggering evidence, in brief compass, on Mao's repeated escapes as his wife, son and old comrades were killed in action. Mao's reactions to this cumulative experience became comprehensible when viewed as illustrations of survivorguilt. To overcome this guilt, and increasingly with age to find the end of all men's rainbows, Mao has sought revolutionary immortality not merely as a legend -although he has long since been onebut as part of a revolutionary process that can be immortal only if it continues and accelerates.

Hence the re-emergence as early as 1957 of the idea of permanent or uninterrupted revolution and the inauguration at that time of the Great Leap Forward-an effort to vault over the stages of development in the history of other countries and to achieve overnight by sheer will-power not just what it has taken other countries generations to accomplish, but far more, and to use each new peak of triumph as a base for the assault on a higher peak, on into the infinite future.

After the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s failed, why then, after a brief

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Life in death: · byMa

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immortal Mao

'.Wright

period of relaxation, did Mao and his inner circle feel impelled to order a far more daring leap, the Cultural Revolution? To Dr. Lifton, this decision was not a symptom of madness in any clinical sense nor of senility, and certainly not the product of the intrigues of wives. He suggests that Mao, facing certain and possibly imminent biological death, despite his show of swimming the Yangtze at age 72, became obsessed with symbolic immortality. The revolution must go on, yet the younger generation knew guerilla warfare only as history, tens of thousands of technocrats struggled with problems that did not lend themselves to solution by struggle and selfcriticism, and even Party cadres were settling into established routines.

It should be :remembered that the government apparatus, dominated by Liu Shao-ch'i's "right-wingers," had been responsible for the first Five Year Plan and for tremendous gains in most spheres of public and private life. But the free criticism invited during the Hundred Flowers Period resulted .in open expressed demands for uninhibited, self-propelled development in all the arts; systematic, "bourgeois" scientific procedures in scholarship; more consumer goods and some little pleasures and comforts in life. As one worker put it, a hard day's work, a good dinner with wine and to bed with my wife.

This was the end of the Maoist dream: embourgeoisement.

To keep the whole picture in proportion, Dr. Lifton might also have noted that further forced-draft development was probably necessary before most Chinese could reap any such rewards and that the foreign policies of both the Soviet Union and the United States gave credible grounds for what many outsiders have interpreted as paranoid fears of foreign attack.

The party apparatus had been in charge of the Great Leap that failed. With State and Party machinery both compromised, Mao turned to the People's Liberation Army, a living reminder of the glorious tradition of the revolution. He also appealed directly to the very young, not only youths but children, to form themselves into Red Guards and to smash the "revisionists," " capitalists" and other enemies of the immortal revolution. With schools closed, the young roamed the country, finding enemies everywhere-in state, Party and army.

Mao's solution was to open all the floodgates and loose the revolutionary fervor of the very young, whipped to a fever, against what had become a revolutionary establishment: "In place of his formerly sensitive applications of personal passions to China's desperate historical experience, we encounter a misplaced faith in his own psychic state, a substitution of his own psychic history for history at large. Because he and a few around him fear the death of the revolution, China must be made to convulse."

Dr. Lifton does not argue that Mao's intrapsychic struggles fully explain the course of the Chinese revolution since Mao's ascendancy in 1935 or its latest phase, the Cultural Revolution. What he does argue is that " they now spread confusion and antagonism rather than the illumination they had in the past." It is important to remember that this very drive toward the unattainable, this "psych ism" in Maoist thought-the belief that the subjective can overcome the objective-has always been an essential factor in what is, aJI in all, the spectacular success story of the Chinese revolution. The Chinese Communist Party has used every resource at its command, but it early discovered that lacking economic incentives, psychological incentives could literally work wonders.

Claims that the "thought of Mao Tsetung" has been responsible for everything from the victory of the Chinese team in an international table tennis tournament to the development of thermonuclear weapons have been greeted with derision abroad. Yet Dr. Lifton quotes the presi-

dent of the United States Table Tennis Association: "The writings and spirit of Mao invade every match the Chinese play. The national team, before beginning play, recite Mao quotations to give them courage, and in the middle of a tense game a Chinese crowd will often chant Mao's sayings to spur their heroes on. It has a terrific psychological effect, seeming to drive them to feats of endurance and other exceptional efforts."

Table tennis is a vivid but trivial example.

The record of the Chinese revolution is full of well attested instances where the words of Mao have literally inspired men to achieve what observers declared impossible. The point these observers missed is the "psychism" (something considerably more potent than the extreme voluntarist strain in European Marxist thought) that Dr. Lifton finds central to Maoism and the Cultural Revolution. The achievements, in his view, are almost enough to "take the fallacy out of the psychistic fallacy."

Almost, but not quite. This extraordinary leader, building on an age-old heritage of belief in the central importance of the indoctrinated mind in governing man and nature, can evoke responses that lead to quadrupled effort; but he faces modern technology. He may-perhaps must-believe that through his ideology his "pure" young followers can become "absolute conquerers of men, technology and death."

For Mao is both attracted to technology and repelled by its social consequences.

An outmoded factory may multiply its output if devoted men not only give all their strength but all their minds to doing the best possible job with the means available.

Manpower may be harnessed to build dams in record time. But although high morale never hurt a physicist or an economist, Dr. Lifton regards it as patently absurd to regard China's achievement in nuclear physics as a result of political indoctrination or "to treat capital formation as a type of guerilla warfare."

These are the factors behind the recurrent "Red and Expert" controversy. Is it more important to be a zealous believer ("red") or to develop professional competence? A country of "red experts" is the ultimate but unattainable goal, and so the official line has swung at intervals from one extreme of encouraging expertise and telling the cadres to leave the professionals in peace to work, to the other of proudly declaring that redness is expertise: "The redder the more expert."

Dr. Lifton relates this tension to the tension in Chinese history between "essence" and "function" (t'i-yung). He does not believe that "redness and expertise" can be combined without mutual transformation, any more than the reformers of the century preceeding Mao succeeded in using the t'i-yung formulation as a way of rising to the Western challenge without accepting the implications behind that challenge.

The idea of "Chinese values as the foundation or essence, Western skills for practical or functional use" (Chung-hsiieh wei t'i, hsi-hsiieh-wei yung) led to a long and tortuous tragedy that achieved neither of its goals.

Dr. Lifton seems to me to be saying that although the Cultural Revolution was bound to fail, it was not an anomaly and it should not have come as a surprise. Nor are Mao's pronouncements the ravings of an aged madman. both represent the newest and most extreme of a series of efforts of the true believers to couple the pure hearts and bare hands of the Chinese peasantry with twenty-first century technology.

This particular effort has failed, but we do not yet see the technocrats back in control, in spite of the efforts t9 pacify and discipline aroused youth and to restore the authority of the Party. I suspect that what Dr. Lifton repeatedly refers to as "immortalizing visions" are likely to recur.

Their roots lie deep in several strata of Chinese tradition. Further, and here I disagree with Dr. Lifton, China's present continued on page 15

Fragments of a Saturday afternoon

by Jonathan Coppelman and Kenneth Cavander

The bands of alumni in station wagons roll down Route 34, bowing to the altar-like facade of the Walter Camp Archway and moving across the road onto the grass.

They eat their lunch beside parked automobiles as portable bars and picnic baskets magically produce sustenance for the game to come. The widespread use of liquor helps to break down the mind's resistance as these initiates try to get themselves totally smashed, that is totally involved. There is a desire to recall the myths of an earlier time of racoon coats, hip flasks- "total belief."

As they eat, in this prelude to the Ritual, the Bowl looms through the pillars like an enormous receptacle, its contents a mystery. The many entrances to the bowl are like long dark tunnels-transitional passageways which clearly divide the game world from their daily lives-rites de passage moving these initiates from the real into the surreal. A burst of color at the end and they are born again.

When these followers of the game finally manage to tear themselves away from their banquet, they move in a long procession into the stadium. The seats are assigned; even in this mass event there is careful control and situation of participants. There is an unusual amount of contact among people, who sit on long, wooden planks.

The contact of the bodies creates a circuit that seems to run around the stadium. /otUJthan Coppelman, a second-year critic at the Drama School, is a candidate for a Doctor of Fine Arts degree.

Kenneth Cavander has reported for the London Times, has written television screenplays for the BBC and has been associated with both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court Theatre.

He presently teaches in the classics department as well as the Drama School. His adaptation of The Bacchae will be produced by the Yale Re~rtory Theatre in March.

The Stadium. The task is to create a unified, self-contained, completely autonomous setting for violence, in which the spectators face the opponent's followers across the field. In between the two groups is the zone (the killing zone) where the game takes place. The design both separates the two groups and unites them in a common interest. The symmetry of the field with its clear, even demarcations, marks the exclusive area where the violence will occur.

Through different sight lines and a different relationship of spectator to event, the focus of energies could be dispersed throughout the crowd, creating an enormously explosive situation. In this less insulated structure the opposing factions might tear each other apart. Thus the design of the present Bowl manifests an ancient understanding.

Football is a completely autonomous world, totally self-contained. It has its own limits of space and corresponding boundaries of time. The game is played in four 15-minute quarters-an arbitrary but rigidly enforced span; the space is one hundred yards of grass, marked off in fiveyard intervals.

In this autonomous world, the players are identified through certain conventional characteristics. By the nature of the Ritual, these characteristics help the spectators bridge the gulf between the idealized world of their heroes and their own unglamorous existence. Through identification they can share in the exploits of the players.

First the players are given a number, for immediate identification in the course of the afternoon's events: success, mistake, injury. Second, place of birth and education: the origin and roots of Saturday's heroes, with a slight suggestion of the sources of development which led the heroes to move beyond the limitations of ordinary men. The players from far away, vague territories (Wyoming, Ohio) are the most interesting.

The final and most-observed characteristic is size: Bigness is a central mystique in football; the players for the most part must be bigger than life, for the experience they engage in is extraordinary, clearly of a different magnitude than daily life on campus. Aside from their practical use, shoulder pads and helmets enhance the size of the players and create an impersonal, ritualized appearance-the equipment in football is more imposing and impersonal than that of any other competitive sport.

The pattern of action is as follows: one party tries to open holes into which a member projects himself; the opposing role players respond by attempting to close any such holes and knock down the intruder, who tries to remain erect as long as possible. The conventions of blocking and tackling, the methodology of advancing the ball, involve an aggressive relation to an opposite member-a basic pattern of penetration-response rooted in the sexual act itself.

With all their size and strength we have only a very slight sense of the heroes' vulnerability. Clearly, these men are mortal. Achilles had his heel, the halfback his ankle, the quarterback his knee--everyone is susceptible to injury, and it seems the best players are in the most precarious position: as the toeam's fortunes rest largely on their well-being, they are singled out for attack by the opposing forces.

"KILL 81 !" they chant as an overzealous defender crunches the home hero five yards out of bounds. There are severe limits to the application of force, and the opposing player has violated them. But the coach simply whisks the player out of of the game; once out of play, he is out of reach, untouchable, and in some sense no longer real. The crowd remembers him and invokes vengeance for a short while.

But concentration always returns to the given moment, and memory is short-lived.

The half-time is a completely failed experience. It is an attempt at comic relief, somewhat like the satyr play used in Greek tragedy. The contrived, sophomoric quality of the humor is simply contrasted . to the heroic magnitude of the event that surrounds it. The marching formations and the irony are simply inadequate to the energies focused upon them-energies derived from the game that surrounds the half-time show. In attempting to fill a void (the time-space continuum of the game itself is suspended), the bands simply call attention to the void and make it obvious that the low-comic organization of numerous people in formation is non-heroic.

Late in the game a malaise permeates the supporters, though their team leads by many points. There is a feeling of some vague, immense failure. Winning was not the fruition, the culmination it is supposed to be. Conversation turns from the game to the parties and dancing to follow. The game itself is only part of a series of experiences designed to regenerate the body.

The football weekend is rooted in the week that precedes it. It comes out of the monastic structure of the life with its tightly organized time, its ascetic demands and continual self-denials. All week the individual must repress an entire aspect of his existence in order to survive and excel.

The football week-end is a direct response to the week-an opposite generated by five days of insanely regimented existence. The weekend must be everything that the week is not: free, sensual, erotic. A time for the body.

We know that Greek theater, perhaps all theater, began as a fertility rite, to make the grapes grow. What happened-people went out into the fields and had an orgy, and then they said to the grapes, "Go on, now you do it!" and that way they hoped the crops would keep coming up year after year and not die every fall. And out of this came theater. It's a ritual, basically, theater-a ritual in which we all go out into the field and get smashed. tolE

Unmailed Letters

by Malcolm Boyd Malcolm Boyd, author of Are You Running With Me Jesus? is a resident Fellow of Calhoun College. This article is taken from As I Live and Breathe: Fragments of an Autobiography, which will be published by Random House in 1970.

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1~,

yo• llwo

Boca••• I . . wory clooo \o yo• and becaueo bl ood Ia euc h a atraaco ay.bol or lifo and doath, I wondered what . , thoucht.e • o• ld be lf I opon' a .oraln1 wl~h yoa ln tho hoapl\al, WR\chl nc you aa your blood wae p.-pod ~hrouch tho •achlno. Witho•\ tho .achlao, yo• woald be doad Ia a ohort tl... Wl~h It, yo• hawe atayed aliwo. I round, that . .ralnc in \he hoapltal, that yo• are . . re intenaely a friend to •• \hat I had ower hotoro beoa ablo h r ealtae . I diacowerod oryaelf breathlnc OKYIOD with y.. , be inc coaacioaa ot th., flow or blood Ia ory body •• well •• yoara, aajoylnc life (yeel) with yoa, torcettin& the ..cbln• escort \ba\ I waa protoand ly &r&tefal ror,l\, What. h I\ llko, bolnl •• cloee to deatW J \hl ak yea aro elo .. r, \oo, h ll~e \han yo• hawo ower booa before. Yo• \ell . . that. yoa appreciate life each now . .rata& with an al~e\ rierco cra\itado. Slaco life and de ath are both oo cloae to yoa now, what woald yoa deocrlbo •• the ••betan\lwe dltlor•nco between th... I wond e r II 1\ •l&ht al\laat .. ly . . an a difference betweeft the laaowa and \he ankuown. Yo\ 0 Ia all boaoat.y 0 Ia lite 'bown, A• II I• and death are al~o\ lnoeporably elou now wl\h la yoar owa lite, how can we prea. .e they will be Irreparably

1JJJ7Jr..

afterward~

Yoar wery atra««l• to llwo ha e conatltated a &reat dr..a which J bawo watched fro• .y own life. J an oare that J woald, uder etailar clrcaaot.ancea, lack you r coura&•• patience and h...r. With the nuaeroue opera\lona to plaee n•w t•b., a lnalde "'1 .....Jl belhwo that •Y capacH.y fa• huaor wo uld llko ly «'•• way \o deapalr or bltt.era•••· Y•t. t.he rooorYeo or h. .or within 10• are now a bo.tc part ot your oplrltYallty.

I cannot, I real he, apeak or yoar .,.aitb" in uy traditional t.er.o.

OV.d .. ot the paot which wo abored le, b)' eo-• aoeent, dead. (llo alwayo wae.) Suroro~l\loa and aore op tl•i . . bawo, I . . aware, been harned out or yoa. Your opirltuallt.y to dooply ha8&Dletl thlo, roo~od Ill the -rotary of Joouo' h,..anne aa •

n.

May I t.ell yoa that your etylo or lite, deweloJ•od In tho clou \oaoloD botwoOD lifo and doat.h, Ia one of tho &real. thtnco wbtelt I hawe aeon Ia rocoat yearo' To• hawe let. 10 or llweo cleu \o yoa, oo \bat thoy hawe boon ablo ol•ply ~o bloo• In an anbolio~ably clean frood... Yo• qalt ..klllC do. . .da on t.h. . wh ich would inhibit \heir own crowt.ha you

let t.... know t.bat. tholr Jaatlflcatlo• dld aot depead oo wiaftlnc your fawor, \o be beat.owod or wltbdr• • • at wbl• · How did yoa achlc•e t.ht• wl etory ower oolt" '1/>J/#/J~/ It to llakod, I auppoae, t.o t.bat aadacioaa, •plODdld ab•ence of oolrplty wlt.ltla yoaraelr. Confr oa t.od by death, yoa bawo lookod out.aldo yoar life and oquarely into otb&r poople'o 11•••· I• death, t.hoa, a llborat.lnc t orro' Ao J hawe wat.ched yoa liYe tn dtalocae with It, I tend to think I\ ta poeolble. Dell\b-r-•1•• a .yot.,ry \o • · t•ooatbly t.he word 'Veatb" to altocetb.,r -ttDin&leaa. Howower, for the pre ..nt, we uoa to be ot.aelt wlt.b it. Maybot ..eath," ao Uly~hlnc elae In lifo, can be confronted and dealt with rt&bUy or wron& ly. Jf oo, tear or death woal d .... . denial or life. 0. tho other ...... t.o uadorotand 'Vea\b " ae • creatiwe part or HYing would lndtc .. t.e aru ...at.ton or life.

You ...., wl\b a otran«• co•biDtttioa of bard dlaclpline and apontaneouo Joy, t.o be atriralnc it, All I kilo• ia that ao "'1 tboachta ••t.o•atically t.urn toward you when I thh1k of dea~h, ao they do wbeD I think of llfeo

r¡

131 The New Journal I November 17, 1968

Let us be your mother-away-from-home .....

Established in 1932, Blue Jay Cleaners is the only on-campus, all purpose laundry. specialists in: men's and ladies' alterations dry cleaning laundry

everything processed on premises. same day service upon request owned and operated by the four Vitagliano brothers

51 Broadway 777-2546

Yale Law School Film Society

Monday, November 18 LE BONHEUR, V arda A sensuous hymn to the happy life.

Monday, November 2 5 KNIFE IN THE WATER, Polanski A cinematic treatment of the conflict between the sex and ego drives of a domineering husband and a rebellious wife.

Coming December 2, HELP

Showings at

101

L-C, 7 and 9:30

141 The New Journal I November 17, 1968

the mr. 1111kolm bovd ..ALCO<M BOYO

3438 Y•M StatiM Nfflf H ...,, COt'ln. 06S2'0

Dear A. ' Th1s ls a hard letter to wrtte. I •on•t atnoe words. When you got talllng-down drunk tn the restaurant and had your publlo outburst as a celebrity , I gaYe up on you. A aoralistlo seltrtghteousneas surged up ~ throat llke unexpected •oatt. Thla haa lett ae tarr1t1ed or unlo.tng daaena wh1oh, I failed to reallza, aa'- thelr not unooarortable hoae tnstde ~ otherwise ( of course) lo.lq traae.

It didn ' t ooour to me, as I looked 1n pur1tan1cal dlsgust at you, to aak ~ you were lousy drunk 1n that publlo place. Yet , I said to arse~ln a gll . . . r of reoogn1t1on , 1t wasn ' t tun and saaea tor you. Bully tor ae. Chalk up a userul nuaber or ae;rus to help ae out or goddaa burnlng hell.

All right . The potnt ta I haYen't thought or .uoh alae slnoe the Inotdent when you alaply blew up and went to plaoee wtth a lot or people looking on. Aaong other thlnga, I realtse I had ataply not mown you betore and aa n - queat1on1ng to what cle.,._ I'•• known araelr. Y~ broke •••ry place or ohlna tn the ah~ "You aade ae . wonder 1r I indeed poaaeaa what I'a arrald I shall~ to call a tooua . .,.

I had long ago deflned and ore. .ted you. You exlated taase to encounter oooaalonallY• Loneltneaa a•.nd.,~;R~· exUt after ore•tlon. But.. looking at you Ill JOUr heart saYe you no warntng lU lt broke hurt . . . suddenly there 1n front ot you. so-called lnnooent-pirion (was 1t I?) a a helcl , hatlus lt) labaddad deeply w1th1n 1 how lous.

1968-69 Season

Yale Symphony Orchestra John F. Mauceri, Director

Second Concert-Saturday, November 16 The Contemporary Scene Four New Haven Premieres Peter Sculthorpe: Sun Music No. 1 ( 1965) John Cage: Atlas Eclipticalis (1961) Humphrey Evans: Night Sky Music No.2 ( 1968) World Premiere A mold Schoenberg: A Survivor from Warsaw ( 1947)

Woolsey Hall at 8:30pm Admission Free

When you exploded. we -re all caught ott ~rd . You wail.e aurprtaed, I'• sure, as anyone alae at the ta~1~· Suddenly shattered peace and IIUtllated people's feellngU~ut what of peace had ax1atad aaong ua? If~ own teell~-.. 4ad t1Ye of other people ' s , there really waan•t INCh to 1Ntl1a~ You ware raapondtng , I bel1aYa, to aoaethlng actual whlch caused a aartea ot reaponaea 1n JOUr aeaor,. It eee . . , loolrlng beck, that you were orylng out tor what you saw ln your own aind and around that tabla. So, tor the first tlae , we could really haYe aet one another.

The atllJ , aurraoa halt- th1ng were all doing ooulcl haYe beooae one hall or a huaan encounter. RowaYer, n all aeeaed to • " a qu1olr, tapl1o1t daolaton uot to hear you. lfow I - t break that ooYenant. Your •chine- •nufaotured laaga , properlJ dead , 11M had a strange reaurraotlon. You are, I see, hu•n· The tact that you are what ta taoltly called a celebritY U not an tnalgntttoant part of the ep18ode. The celebrity thing

ta ao dangerous tlw.t tt U alaoat 111P0881bla to desor1be ln any rational RY• A oalebrtt:r 1a aoaeone no ta known, by one 111hanoa taase or another, wlthout procraa notes. A oalebrlt:r la pr1Y1lesed b:r be1ng placed at the center of the otrole, and therefore also dOOJMd• You -ra. troa tlw. a.taat or the nentas. placed at the canter ot our olrcle. Vhan the Ino14ant oooUI'Ted, tt took plaoa ta aoaeone • s ald-aaateaoa alld an:r;rbody elaa•a utnterrupted aatle.

It was tun'll:;r . bltoh:r alld Yar:r 4trt:r• You nra audtlanl:r paranoid .

A klllar potaed lll ~· olrola (a nloa su:r) , . . halplaaal:r lntOKloated b:r the aaell ot llft8ean 'blood. B;Jataalora kneW that - uooatrolla'ble ato'll:aaaa bed . . . . the otrole a Placu•• ftl!lra 'llilra aayaga, 'brutal thruata .

Irreparable daa.aa . . . tiona, tor a.otloaal ttaauaa ore qutokl~ aaYB:r.d • I thooP\t , lll ratroapeot. ha. ~·-- atlht laTe - b a e d ayer;rbod:r elsa la the otrola troa the IUV!t•re 'b;r ea:rtas ~t oao word or •••n -llrlng a~. 'b1at the otrole r~. .\y held. Vlthln the aoou.ulatlllS rase there . . . no tasue whloh can eYer be taolatad or polntad to, •there , that'• what ta - • aboUt·• But laauea there ware, haYtns connections wt th trlghtenlaa threats to 1dant1tF• ~ •~a•~rt by now pure laesa . . . . ~tuatlnc and oelabrattns 1. . . . fighting tor peraonboocla ao the battle waa a lost one except lnalde :rourselt.

If you ar e receiving The New Journal free, you can fly to Europe for almost half the price. For further information on eligibility, rates and dates for the seven Air France and Pan American jet flights scheduled for 1969, inquire: Eli Inte rnational Inc. 211 Park St. (Stude nt Ce nte r) Room 2b Office hours: 1-5 :30 Mon-Fri Pho ne : 776-8522

It . . . at nlsht, aoaewhat 'boocf; the talk would flll aany ~ae•~~ (An Pll atatlon aight P~7 the tapes tor 1nteraatlnc Sunda:r progra-ing, perhaps ahead ot t:ha ClaYalalld S:raJ*OIIJ'• ).II 0... wolldera h - a sood reporter would break lt lnto t~trae sara&rapha, SiYe it a lead eantence and autt1o1ant perspeotl. . tor a haadllDIwriter to work on tt. The nazt da:r. tbe pain ot tiN Jnotdeat - • ph;raioal. llaaor;r, haYing been out , - • t blaed o The onl;r talk lett aow ia soaaip b7 othere who atoo4 in the on·ole.

(Gat aora tapes; cancel the Cle.aland S:raphon;r. ) Thera . . . . I thlnlt, ao. . particular oruotal need tor ;rou to be drunk ln that public place . Your celebrity - • at the root of lt .

Then a our1oua ela . .nt, related to lt . . . . present in the circle.

Th1a trtggered ;rour . . aor:r, the outburst and the response to it that ignited the circle. It ia the raot ot :rour celebrit:r whloh ao threatlngl;r accentuates the etrugale in you to aaaert yourself aa hu-n instead or iaege. One INSt reoognl&e there la a reason tor your oelebrlt;r , this grounded in a aens1t1Ylty and talent within ;rou which ;rou haYe channeled aa a disciplined artlat into work which people haYe accepted, alons wlth yourself aa iaage.

In co...nc1ng to look at the . .aning of thia, I t1nd a;raelt b7 iaagaa which ha•e aucceaatull:r lrept • a-7 troa ~ own hu•nneaa. The other e.aning taught ae this, when I scandallead a;raelr b:r ao oaauall:r ;ret t1ral7 judging you.

--•ad

~~

IS MAKING HISTORY! .

MARIE A NTO IN ET TE says:

11

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IS J The New Journal! November 17, 1968

Mao continued from page 9 international position makes these visions and the consequent "irrationality" almost a necessity. The "pragmatists"-embodied in the pilloried Chief of State Liu Shao-ch'i --cannot win over the ideologues as long as China's margin of survival seems precarious to Chinese. The belligerent posture of the United States and the Soviet have in my opinion been a prime factor in tipping the balance in favor of redness and nonrational psychism over calm, evolutionary pragmatic professionalism. It is worth remembering th at the first great burst of Chinese "irrationality" coincided with the advance of troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur to the Yalu River reservoirs and the Manchurian frontier.

Thus far, the outside world has been fortunate. The threats and pressures of outside powers have led to internal convulsion only. Chinese foreign policy has been marked by extreme caution. But if our present attitudes continue, we may face psychism in Chinese foreign policy, with the consequent death not only of the Chinese revolution but of the human race. t.fi.E

Comment continued from page 2 trapped by them. And a person who is trapped is never simple, never without a certain inner tension.

In making for The Hostage the series of choices that constitute a director's interpretation of a play, Charles Maryan has consistently chosen the tamer and simpler way. Bunny Cohn's quiet ferocity and Drew Denbaum's placidy Irish observance of the passing world are competent performances taken for themselves. The hostage himself (Perry King) and the IRA officer (Jeff Pressman) play only slightly below the level of intensity that seems called for by the situation and the script. No one of these interpretations would make a tame play, but together they systematically pull the play's teeth.

Behan is more careless of the sharp side of the play than any production can afford to be. He lets the seriousness of the situation go unmentioned for such long stretches of playing around that when the claws do come out, they have to be felt.

A friend of Behan's once commented, "Brendan would drop his trousers in church for a laugh." Little that is sacred

The Yale Dramat presents Brendan Behan's

the Hostage

to the Irish is sacred in the same way to an · American audience, and the Dramat has not managed to overcome the culture gap.

Their production is more like someone opening his fly in a railroad station. Amusing if you're in on it, but not shocking, not a real gas.

20¢ per word Ads may be mailed to: Classifieds, The New Journal, 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut, 06520.

· Paul Bennett

Tell me that you love me, Junie Moon

Classifieds

.

,

Tony--call Mr. Hart 212- 287- 1401

It may not light in the dark but it is an ELECTRIC YO-YO. Send only $2.50 to the Night Owl, 118 W. 3rd St NY

Letters To The New Journal: Come off it, Bonnie McGregor! Your highly personalized and warped impressions of the life of a Yale female graduate student don't deserve a serious refutation.

Chop down your self-constructed pedestal, cultivate your deprived sense of humor, relax and enjoy a good thing.

Joyce Irwin third year graduate student

GEORGE KANNAR THINKS PRETTY DAMN FUNNY

HE

IS

Dede-you left your fireman boots here. Jeff.

Blondie-keep your filthy lascivious hands off A vi. Mer. Meredeth-if you don't send my key back I'm changing my lock. Phil.

Janetha- you threw up all over the living room rug, but we want you back anyway. ~he gang.

Jeff- you had damn well better send back the fireman boots and the hook and ladder too.

Dede.

At KLH, we believe that music, g iven a proper introd uction, always w ill speak for itself.

Dir.ected by Charles Maryan University Theatre For reservations 865-4300 Evenings at 8:30 November 14, 15, 16 Matinees at 2:30 November 9 + 17

L:::··~

r .. .....

1···-1

J' tnfl Coodfti~ Colle<t•M

MAKERS OF HICH-PERFOR.MA.NCE STEREO EQ U IPMENT

david dean smith Corner of Elm and York

a new coffee house theatre for the Yale community 217 Park Street (Old Phi Gamm House)

Through November 16 M artha Schlamme Alvin Epstein s1ngmg Kurt Weill Songs under the musical direction of William Bolcom Open Wednesday through Saturday evening 9:00p.m. until I: 00 a.m. for entertainment (theatre games, improvisation, new plays, music, film) and food and drink (coffe cheeses and other delicacies)

jiini hendrix sunday, nov. 17, 3:00 & 7:00 at woolsey hall also: the soft machine seats: $4, $5, $6. available at Yale Co-op and box ofFice on concert day ;\pp ~.J~::>uo::>

uo

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Membership is open to the Yale Community and to subscribers to tl Repertory Theatre. Annual fee $3.00 ($2.00 for Yale students).

Memberships for sale at door, Repertory Theatre box office and the Co-op.

For information call562~038 or write Yale Cabaret 1903A Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut, 06520.

Yale Cabaret is operated by the Yale School of Drama on a non-pro basis as a service to the Yale community. Entertainment is provided by the students and faculty of the School of Drama. members of the Repertory Company and occasional guest performers.