Volume 5 - Issue 2

Volume five, number two/ November 7, 1971

,.

*'S 1 "ON lfWJOld ·uuo3 ' UOlA~H MOlN

.

P!~

•iJd J!JO.Id UON ~d - S"O

Comment:

Volume five, number two November 7, 1971

YNFAC Election Bruce Howard

Editors: Richard Conniff Suzanne Wittebort Associate Editors: Ron Roe! Joel Rogers Executive Editor: Michael Csar Designer: Judith Fletcher Business Manager: Ray Rund Contributing Editors: Daniel Y ergin Jonathan Marks Stephen Thomas Sam Miller Susan Holahan Dan Mcintyre Leo Ribuffo Michael Lerner Steven R. Weisman Staff: Rachel Hooper, Kiki Gordon, John Gussman, Suzanne Wofford, Roople Hacher, Tom Joseph, Kathy Lally, Dee Siegelbaum Publisher: Paul Goldberger Third Class and Non-Profit postage PAID in New Haven, Conn. The New Journal is published by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, Conn. 06520, and is printed at The News Press, a division of the West Hartford News.

The New Journal copyright 1971 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. , a non-profit corporation.

Telephone: 776-9989 Letters are welcome. Unsolicited manuscripts should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Opinions expressed in the articles arc not necessarily those of The New Journal.

/,arry: Where were you when I needed you. Lady

In February, 1966, Bill Berndtson, an employee at the Department of Epidemeology and Public Health, saw workers planting trees and shrubs beside the new EPH building. When he asked why , he.was told that the architect thought the trees were necessary to enhance the EPH facade. Berndtson, a Yale employee for seven years, was making $375 a month. The trees cost $40,000.

"That was the last straw," Berndtson says. "I was sick of Yale's regard for things and disregard for people." During his lunch hour the next day he went to the Union Temple in downtown New Haven and walked into the first office he came to. It belonged to Vincent Sirabella, who was then the business manager of Local 21 7.

"Just try and get them to sign union cards," Sirabella advised.

That night Berndtson wrote Yale that he intended to unionize the EPH workers. In March , Yale asked Leonard Marcus, then working for Inland Steel, to come to New Haven to consult on "matters of employee. relations." By the time Berndston came back to the personnel offices in June with union affiliation cards from 65 per cent of the EPH employees, Marcus, with 15 years of management experience , was Director of Employee Relations. He refused to recognize the union on the grounds that it was an inappropriate unit.

Berndtson and the Yale Non-Faculty Action Committee challenged this decision three years later before the National Labor Relations Board, and lost. The NLRB ruled that only a campus-wide unit would be appropriate for a recognized union, and thus began YNF AC's two year campaign to unionize all Yale's white-collar employees.

The campaign ends in one week with the November 17 election.

In the election, Yale's 2500 clerical and technical employees will vote to accept or reject YNFAC as their official bargaining agent. If a majority of the voters accept YNFAC , then the union will form a constitution and elect officers to negotiate a contract with Yale.

If the majority vote no , then the "hired gun'' from Chicago, as Berndtson calls Marcus, will have dealt with the whitecollar union a severe blow. "A whitecollar union at Yale is inevitable," says Berndtson, "but a defeat on the 17th will mean a long delay."

More likely , a defeat will be YNFACs deathblow , for it'll mean that Yale's employees bought Marcus's arguments. YNF AC's leaders are idealistic, with hopes of a purely democratic labor union. Marcus is trying to create an atmosphere of suspicion, "caution" as he calls it, and if he succeeds, this suspicion will stain YNFAC's idealism to death. On the other hand , YNFAC pro-

bably won't lose. It's been working too long. Its leaders are too sincere, its International too helpful. And Yale's white-collar workers need a union too much.

When YNFAC voted unanimously last spring to affiliate with the National Council of Distributive Workers of America (NCDWA), they got the money to put three of their top organizers on full-time salaries. They got Jerry Grote, a top union lawyer, to represent them in front of the NLRB. YNFAC gave NCDWA nothing but the promise that every member of the union would pay the International $1.15 a month, 80 cents of which is returned to the local for further organization. But they gave Yale its major anti-union argument.

Marcus spends a lot of time talking about NCDWA's largest local, District 65 , a New York-based affiliate which created the International in 1969, and whose membership still makes up 95 per cent of NCDWA. Marcus stresses the role of this NCDWA affiliate for two reasons. First , the more he talks, the more he fosters the common employee fear that their union is being controlled by "outside forces." Second, District 65 is composed of unskilled and semi~skilled laborers, while YNF AC hopes to represent whitecollar workers. Marcus knows the average skilled employee doesn't want to be associated with the"'working classes., in NCDWA 's biggest local.

There is no evidence to support Marcus's argument. For YNFAC to disaffiliate from NCDWA all it has to do is give NCDWA 30 days notice of the disaffiliation vote, and allow a representative of the International to speak at the meeting at which the vote is taken. A majority vote of the membership at that meeting woud break YNFAC's affiliation to NCDWA. NCDWA can 't afford YNFAC's disaffiliation. "A happy, autonomous union at Yale is crucial for the success of NCDWA 's building and expansion," said AI Avenoff, a NCDWA national representative. '¡Yale will be an inspiration for other white-collar campaigns, and losing YNFAC would be disastrous."

Marcus contends that, if YNFAC wins, an eloquent spokesman from the New York-based union will come to its first meeting and persuade the "few hundred people present" to accept whatever he tells them is in their best interest. It is doubtful that this would happen at Yale. The people YNFAC represents are generally well-educated and less easily influenced by labor rhetoric. Marcus's prediction violates his oft-repeated first commandment, "Don't ever underestimate the Yale worker."

The potential risk involved in YNF AC's success comes from the idealism of its leadership. This is best evidenced by their atypical insistence on not writing a constitution until after the election, with the intention of allowing the members to choose their

own means of governance. The Yale employee must vote in the election November 17 without knowing what the constitution will be; he will then help determine what it will be himself.

What the voters must consider is that a vote for YNF AC is a calculated risk, and not a submission to a powerful New York union. If they vote for YNF AC, they should be willing to work actively in the union's democratic selfdetermination.

If Yale employees reject YNFAC on November I 7, they will be resigning themselves to a future of their present inadequate salary and benefit conditions. They wiU be free to believe in their "educational mission," "uniqueness,'' and "personal relationship" with Mother Yale. They will be left with empty pockets and in some cases, the complacent snobbery of being a whitecollar worker at a prestigious, though tight-fisted. university.

..

Dear Mr. Mcintyre: Ed Zelinsky I must take issue with both th\! sui.>stance and tone of Dan Mcintyre's analy~is of the recent New Haven Democratic mayoralty campaign.

Mr. Mcintyre's central thesis is that reform candidate Henry E. Parker abandoned principle and avoided controversy in a single-minded (but unsuccessful) quest for power. Vincent Sirabella 's campaign. on the other hand. was an inspired. quixotic "coalition of working people of all races." . There is only one word for such surrealistic political reporting: bullshit.

Mr. Mcintyre (somewhat unethically) did not tell The New Journal readers that he was an active participant in the Sirabella campaign . Readers were led to believe that they were confronting an impartial news analysis when , in fact , they were reading a partisan apologetic.

Mr. Mcintyre complains of Hank Parker's alleged lack of interest in "enfranchising the dispossessed." A paragraph later, he discusses the highly suecessful voter¡ registration effort conducted by the Parker forces. Only one of his assertions can be correct.

The truth. of course. is that Parker and his supporters were acutely sensitive to the need for extending political participation. Many of the key people in the campaign were themselves fairly new to politics. Hundreds of other people, previously unpoliticized, were attracted to the Parker campaign, thereby gaining their first exposure to government and political self~etermination.

In addition, the Parker forces recruited new people to run for municipal office, many of whom had little or no history of political involvement. An officer of the New Haven Welfare Moms

continued on paxe 15

to;

.

'

Summer in South Africa .,.

Michael Freedberg

;.

Sport, particularly rugby, is a way of life for most South Africans; this has been the one sphere (besides heart transplants) in which South Africa has been able to maintain preeminence. I returned to South Africa this summer, after three years in America. On Saturday mornings we would cluster around our radios (there is no television) and listen to reports of riot. torn rugby matches in Australia. "Our boys" were subjected to physical attacks. smoke bomb assaults, and chanting anti-apartheid demonstrators. Clearly, much had happened to South Affrica in my absence.

It became apparent over the two months I stayed there that startling changes were taking place in a society where change occurs very slowly. if at all. Tremendous political turmoil appeared as groups re-defined themselves or broke away from more traditional groups. This is a traumatic time for South Africa, where the role of the Afrikaner has always been rigidly defined: where a complex political structure has been built up to fulfill what the Afrikaner saw as his divine mission in Africa; and where race attitudes have become innexible and hardened over cent~ries of bitter connict and struggle.

Thousands of black and white South Africans had either been exiled or had exiled themselves from a society which since 1948 (when the present Dutchdescended Afrikaner government came to power} had become progressively repressive and anti-democratic. Having left in frustration and disillusionment, they could hardly have foreseen the present developments: the splitting open of a previously closed political system.

Certainly I could predict little change when I left South Africa over three years ago on the wave of the fust significant student protest in twenty years of National Party rule. A I 0-day sit-in at the University of Cape Town over the government's blocking of a black faculty appointment had provoked outspoken and vicious reactions from the prime minister and a variety of cabinet ministers. More importantly, it had generated larger-than-usual marches and demonstrations at other student centers in Johannesburg and Durban.

Despite government intimidation of students who were sitting-in (removal of parents from jobs, withdrawal of passports, denial of scholarships, detention, and even, in some cases, imprisonment), it was not the government or its police

which had ended the action. Only when faced with a thousand hostile Afrikaner university students bent on evicting us violently from the building did we evacuate.

Anyone opposed to apartheid must first come to terms with the Afrikaner's profound sense o f his uniqueness. The Afrikaner's historical mission is clear.

Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa until he was assassinated in 1966, described it in these terms: "It was intended that we should have been planted here at the southern point within the crisis area of western civilization so that from this resistance group might emanate the victory whereby all that has been built up since the days of Christ may be maintained for the good of all mankind."

Because of his supposed uniqueness, the Afrikaner believed that he was right, whatever criticisms came from the "outside world." His moral righteousness resulted in a crude nationalism which made apartheid its slogan and racial superiority its foundation. By 1970 the ideology had managed to fashion a powerful state machine , repressive and coercive in the extreme, with a bureaucratic structure having control over all aspects. of the society.

Apartheid became ''separate development ," which envisaged a number of black nations, called "homelands," independent of the white nation. Both blacks and whites would then retain their geographical, historical, and cultural integrity. ''As long as domination of one race by another exists there will be resistance and unrest," argued Verwoerd.

"The solution should be sought in a policy which is calculated te eliminate domination in every form." The policy made no allowance for the facts that the blacks. about 80 per cent of the population. would receive 13 per cent of the land. and that increasing economic integration in the urban areas makes whites vitally dependent on cheap black labor.

In a new "outward-looking policy," the new prime minister, Halthazzar Verster, who had been interned during World War II for his Nazi sympathies (along with many of his present cabinet) wooed African states to the north. The courtship fjnally bore full fruit this summer with Kamazu " kill-apartheid-with kindness" Banda, Prime Minister of Malawi. Placing politics above principle, he became the first black African head of state to visit South Africa.

His visit took the country by storm.

Throwing his arms around white cabinet ministers, hammering the Organization of African Unity for its anti-South African stance, fondling blonde-haired babies, and speaking in favor of a new rapprochement, he was what the country wanted to see. Here was a black leader who had finally come around to accepting if not the philosophy of apartheid, at least its pragmatic value. Banda received standing ovations everywhere, most strikingly at the University of Stellenbosch, which · has been the very bastion of Afrikaner nationalism , and has produced every single prime minister in South African history.

Here were its students applauding a black man; a black man who, as the newspapers happily told us, had once been imprisoned by the British in East Africa for nationalist activities. More remarkable was a photograph spewed across the front pages of the same newspapers of Prime Minister Vorster seated between two Malawian women at a state banquet. A few months earlier a national scandal had arisen when fourteen leading citizens of a small, conservative town in solid Afrikaner country had been charged under the Immorality Act , which holds sexual intercourse across the color line illegal , and which carries a possible death penalty. The mayor commited suicide, and the

charges were dropped. In this context the sight of the symbol of white purity bravely chatting with two black women was strange indeed. It shocked many.

A transvaal farmer said. "There are two things a white man must never do with a kaffir: he must not eat with him and he must not have his photograph taken with him. A photograph is a kind of memorial, not so?"

As this statement suggests, the Banda visit did not indicate any significant attitudinal change among White South Africans; if anything it provided a vindication of their views.

In another of those peculiar juxtapositions which South Africa seems to specialize in, the American Charles Diggs arrived in the country while Banda was wowing his former enemies. Diggs, Leader of the Black Caucus in Congress and Chairman of the House Sub-committee on Africa, was the first prominent American to visit the country since Robert Kennedy in 1966. In a statement on arrival he accused the South African government of ··not having the guts" to allow him into Southwest Africa (Namibia). The accusation provoked swift and predictable reaction from the Afrikaner press. Hy is Aanstootlik! headlined Rapport, a government weekly: ''He is Revolting" (loosely translated). If this is what we can expect from blacks, let them stay at home , ran the argument.

Diggs provoked the ire of sugar farmers

when he secretly spoke to their workers, irritated opposition politicians by arriving late for dinner appointments; annoyed the government by refusing to meet with cabinet ministers: and cancelled inte rviews with them. It was clear that South Africans were prepared to accept only those who toed the line. If ever a tourist was hated, it was Diggs in South Africa.

The lack of respect with which Charles Diggs viewed South Africa seemed to characterize an increasingly common attitude among non-whites. At the Colored Representative Council. which the government had given the Coloreds in lieu of parliamentary representation or a homeland of their. own, chaos reigned. Packed with government stooges, the CRC has limited powers and a limited budget. At the sessions which I attended even the pro-government men found it difficult to defend the government. From the opposition (anti-apartheid) side came a steady , never-ending stream of interjections, insults, comments, and jokes: the chamber was transformed into a circus as the speaker desperately tried to maintain order.

Here was a legitimate context in which to criticize the government.

To hear a black politician call the "group areas act" (which allows wholesale removal of communities to create "racial balance) "the most inhuman law which has ever been created by any government anywhere in the world at any time in history" was new in the South African context. ·'If white society has to be protected by measures like post office apartheid and toilet apartheid, is there any sense in saving it?'' they asked. One of the more radical council members made the point to me that both black and brown people are retreating from the whites, and are regrouping around the power points provided by the separate development.

In many ways the most remarkable figure on the South African political scene at the moment is Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, whose logic is similar to that of the Coloreds. When I spoke with him . in September he had become the most quoted politician in the country, and perhaps the most important. As chief minister of the Zulu "homeland", he had become an outspoken critic of apartheid in a novel way: by taking the government at its word. If you are really serious about our independence, give us more land. and arms. he argued. If you are having dialog with blacks to the north. then you must have dialog with · blacks inside the country as well. '"When we are promised self-government." he told me, " it must be clear that we do not expect a sham self-government but the real thing ... we expect a sympathetic application of the policy from the Afrikaners, who themselves claim to have a recent history of being oppressed. One of the facts which the Afrikaners have to face is that we have also contributed towards the production of South Africa. We will not take independence if it will be in the spirit of "since you Wllnt independence take it and starve."

He recognizes that given present realities the homelands will never be given independence: but at the same time by exploiting the institutional structures of apartheid he can not only make his voice heard legitimately but can also push the government into positions it would not have taken otherwise.

Buthelezi too, spoke at Stellenbosch University, and received as remarkable a reception as did Banda. He told the students that •'the success or otherwise of all these attempts to promote the homeland policy will depend on the extent to which blacks in urban areas, the most articulate group of our people, are given security of tenure in the urban areas. As long as their future is insecure and uncertain. our whole future is insecure and uncertain."

As I hitched through Zululand. an isolated. traditional part of the country , it became clear that not only did Buthelezi have massive and active support from blacks, but - more surprisingly - he was admired by many whites. A charismatic figure, he is South Africa's Nyerere or Nkrumah, a new type of radical who feeds on the inherent contradictions in the political structure and, in the process. widens them. He cannot afford to be a Marxist in a society

"'

)

5/The New Journal/November 7, 1961

which holds Communism to be the worst of all evils ; but he has clearly been influenced by black radical activity in the United States. The day after I saw him he spoke at what could only be described as South Africa's first black power rally at the University of Zululand, one of the black colleges.

Buthelezi's actions and tactics - as well as those of other black leaders whom he has pushed into a more outspoken stance against apartheid - have ¡ ted to a re-questioning of government policies by all segments of the populatiOn. Throughout my stay in South Africa a debate raged as to the future of the Colored people , who, because of their close cultural ties to the Afrikaner, have always occupied a special position within the political spectrum. :..~ The debate was not restricted to politicians, but opened up to intellectuals. businessmen. industrialists, and the Coloreds themselves. One hundred thirty-eight Afrikaner academics produced a statement calling for "political integration" of the Coloreds, while the Afrikanese Student bond, a rightist student movement, called for the establishment of a Colored homeland. Even the National Party congresses were divided on the question. The prime minister said the Colored question would simply nave to be settled by "our children." Because the resolution of this question is central to the success of all governmental policy, it has prompted a rethinking of further questions related to apartheid.

The fact is that the nationalist leadership seems no longer to have the intellectual or political ability to resolve the evident inconsistencies. As Afrikaner nationalism becomes a dying force (if it is not dead already) , allegiance to the party is showing signs of weakening.

The recent Transvaal party congress complained fewer youths were attending church and party rallies, and even boeremusiek was losing its grip among the Afrikaner young. Even the official opposition, a dead and redundant political party, made gains in this year's general elections for the first time since 1948.

Wanted: Used Ten Speed Bike in Excellent Condition. Will pay up to S I 0.

Call Bill: 432-1470.

Clearly a vast gap has emerged between ideology and reality. On the morning of my departure, the local opposition newspaper's editorial was headlined IDEOLOGY IN RUINS: "As the grand design of apartheid crumbles, each day brings further evidence of what is in store unless ideological blueprints are scrapped for practical political policies in the country:" With the growing dichotomy between political promises to blacks in the homelands and the economic viability of these units, it is quite conceivable that a potentially revolutionary situation might develop. Growing economic interdependence in the cities must clearly ' conflict with the increasing political separation which the government policies suggest. Those in the most volatile areas (the cities) can be expected to be influenced by the growing political consciousness in the rural homelands, a consciousness which was quite clear to me when I travelled through Zululand.

They recognize there that blacks are at least in a position of potential power; power to gain greater control over the institutions which the Afrikaner¡ government has given them.

But at the same time optimism would be foolish. I will not forget my conversation one early morning on Pietermaritzburg station with a hard-core Afrikaans policeman, who described in graphic detail how he had shot this kaffir, and that munt through the jaw, in the leg, etc.

The white South African will fight to the death for his God-given place in Africa, and for the dominant position within society. As the myth of apartheid continues to be laid bare, the Afrikaner ruling elite can be expected to resort, in fact , to more "practical," less "ideological" methods of maintaining his position. South Africans have been peculiarly ingenious in this respect before ; they will have to be more so now in the face of a policy they have created which does not work.

For despite the profound stirrings within the political structure, the society must remain personally abhorrent to all those who are opposed to apartheid.

I breathed easily again when I left Johannesburg. For on the surface, very little had changed: newspapers still only sl5-etchily presented news of the outside world, as if it had no relevance to life in this southern tip of Africa - as perhaps it had not. The state-controlled radio still indulged in blatant propaganda.

As the culmination of a growing feud be~ tween church and state, the Anglican Dean of Johannesburg was on trial on charges of treason, with a steady parade of secret agents and distorted evidence.

A terrorism trial was in process.

Still the signs of cultural stagnation: nudes banned, Leary's Politics of Ecstasy, the cover (but not the book) of a paperback on The Body banned, as well as the vast array of Marxist or radical literature which .has never reached the bookstore shelves; from Marx to Marcuse. from Sweezy to Althusser. Still the parkbenches marked WHITES ONLY/ SLEGS BLANKES. Still the segregated buses. the segregated restaurants, the separate libraries, cinemas, stores, toilets. payphones, beaches, hotels. Still the rigid division of labor, unskilled and skilled according to race. Still the marks of a police state: raids on student offices, massive arrests on " pass law" violations.

Still the trappings of a closed society remain.

Michael Freedberg is a.Senior in Branford College

Death of a (Cold) Warrior •

. . . sadness that a man of such extaordinary intellectual ability, and the finest master of the English language to serve as Secretary of State since Jefferson, should have .applied his talents to waging a form of war rather than searching for peace.

Gaddis Smith

Dean Acheson, who died October 12 at 78, was the fiercest of American leaders during the formative years of the Cold War. As Under Secretary of State and Secretary of State for President Harry S. Truman, he was (to use the arrogant but perfectly accurate title of his memoirs) Present at the Creation of the basic policies which guided American foreign policy for a quarter of a century In most instances he was principal author of those policies.

Should we view his career with the unstinting admiration naturally expressed by his old boss, Harry Truman, and by President Nixon? Or with condemnation for his militant role in perpetuating the Cold War? More appropriately, we should feel sadness that a man of such extraordinary intellectual ability, and the finest master of the English language to serve as Secretary of State since Jefferson should have applied his talents to waging a form of war rather than searching for peace. One can argue that Soviet behavior when Acheson was Secretary of State left him and the American Government no alternatives, although even on that I do not agree.

The greater tragedy is that what were at best temporary necessities became permanent policies; spreading insecurity, suffering, and war through a generation.

The obituary writers have listed Acheson's achievements. In 1946 he advised President Truman to take a tough and threatening stand toward the Soviet Union 's continued presence in northern Iran . In 1947 he was the most important contributor to the formulation of the Truman Doctrine, which promised American support for any regime anywhere in the world threatened by internal or external Communist attack .

Also in 194 7 . he coordinated various strands of thought in the American Government which ted to the Marshall Plan for the economic reconstruction of Western Europe with American aid .

In 1948. momentarily a private citizen, he was a leader in the effort to persuade the American public and Congress to accept the Marshall Plan.

In 1948, as Secretary of State, he negotiated the North Atlantic Treaty with the other member nations and with the American Congress and won approval for the rearmament of Western Eurooe by the United States. He then encouraged the formation of the West German government system. of European defense against the Soviet Union.He learned with dismay that the Soviet Union had exploded an atomic device; advocated the development of the hydrogen bomb; watched unhappily as the Chinese government won control of mainland China; kept foreign policy in balance white the nation fought a costly limited war in Korea without abandoning Europe as the area of primary concern ; supported the French colonial war in Indochina; sought to mediate between declining British power and strident nationalism in the Middle East; neglected latin America; endured accusations of treason from irresponsible domestic critics; and at all times fenced warily with Moscow in the conviction that the nation's security would be preserved by the creation of positions of strength against the Soviet Union, but never by genuine negotiation.

Acheson looked on the Soviet Union as an implacable and permanently hosti le enemy, a true successor to Nazi Germany as a threat to the free world.

For him Western relations with the Soviet Union were a zero-sum game. He applied a simple test to every American move. That which strengthened the United States against the Soviet Union was good ; that which simultaneously weakened the Soviet Union was very good. That which weakened the United States was bad ; and that which simultaneously strengthened the Soviet Union was disastrous. It was inconceivable to him that any development which was of advantage to the Soviet Union could also be of advantage to the United States. His favorite slogan was " negotiation from strength ." The slogan was misleading. He believed that the United States should never enter a negotiation from a position of weakness. On the

other hand , when the United States was stronger than the Soviet Union, negotiation was unnecessary.

He once likened the Soviet Union to a force of nature, a great river flowing inexorably on its course. You cannot reason with a river, he said. You can apply superior strength to contain and divert the flow but you can never reason with it. Acheson believed that settlements with the Soviet Union (for example, the lifting of the Bertin blockade in 1949 and the armistice in Korea in 1953) were the result, not of genuine negotiation, but of superior American strength. The Soviet Union simply recognized that its power position on these issues had become too costly to ma intain. The facade of ni!9Qtiation was erected as a face-saving device, but that was all. In a later year he argued that only superior military strength would solve the Cuban missile crisis.

He believed that President Kennedy made a serious mistake by not bombing the missile installations. Similarly he believed that a demonstration of American military superiority was a prerequisite for a successful solution of the Vietnam problem .

"He believed that it was impossible for the United States to have too much military strength. He was impatient with those who had qualms about the size of the American thermonuclear arsenal. He was skeptical about the possibility of international control of atomic weapons.

Acheson did not believe in the democratic control of foreign policy. He considered the press a mischievous and irresponsible institution , Congress illinformed and narrow-minded, public opinion fickle and unreliable. In his ideal world great decisions of foreign policy would be made by a small elite of highly intelligent and highly trained professionals to whom God in His infinite wisdom had imparted the necessary vision and intelligence.

He considered the United Nations a disorderly and inconvenient body which excited Utopian expectations on the part

of the naive and on occasion gave to weakling nations an unjustified voice in decisions which would have to be carried out by others.

Acheson's heritage illuminates his policies. His father was a British Army Officer before becoming an Episcopal clergyman and eventually Bishop of Connecticut. His mother was Canadian.

The British Empire of the late nineteenth ,~. century was the standard of excellence by which he judged American behavior.

He saw that Empire bringing law and order and economic stability to much of the world. He saw the United States of the mid-twentieth century carrying Britain's former burdens in backward areas and in holding the world balance of power as Britain had once done (al 路 though to Acheson, "balance of power" really meant predominance.) He weighed the importance of nations by the test of economic and military power.

He felt little sympathy for the new and undeveloped nations of what came to be called "the Third World." He gave no more than lip service to the ideals of self-determination and national in路 dependence. Some people, he believe~ were too inefficient or corrupt to deserve independence. He preferred the crisp militarism of Pakistani leaders to the senti1mental moralism of Prime Minister Nehru and other Indians.

In early 1950, Acheson briefly entertained the expectation that Communist China and the Soviet Union would have a falling out and would thus balance each other to the advantage of the West. He said then that the worst . thing the United States could do would be to engage in some foolish adventure which would divert on to its own should路 ers the na(ural hostility which the Chinese felt against foreign encroachment, hostility which deserved to be directed against Soviet territorial ambitions on the Chinese-Russian border.

But this attitude was expressed before the Chinese entry into the Korean War. He was incapable of seeing that the Chinese came into the Korean War in defense of their own security. He belived that they, like the North Koreans, were acting exclusively as puppets of Moscow. After the Chinese entry into the Korean War he became as implacable in his opposition to China as he was to Russia. He abandoned his former theory and adhered to the myth of the monolith of international Communism just as fervently as did his successor as Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles.

In the 1940s he was mildly critical of French colonial policy in Indochina, but he rapidly came to support the French military effort there. All the later assumptions which guided American policy in Vietnam were developed during the Truman Administration under Acheson's presiding genius: the belief that the Viet_Minh, later the North Vietnamese, were tools of the international Communist conspiracy; the belief that Vietnam was a key to all of

Asia (if it fell to Communism so would the rest of the continent followed by the Middle East and even Europe) ; the belief in a spec1a1 American talent to teach the Vietnamese people to want what America wanted and to fight for it; and the assumption that the war in Indochina could be won on American terms if enough military power and political ingenuity were applied.

For the last eighteen years of his life Acheson combined his-first career, the practice of law, with a third career as a man of letters and public oracle on international affairs. He became an increasingly outspoken exponent of rigid Cold War attitudes, condemning Willi Brandt for seeking an accommodation between We.st Germany and the Soviet Union; lamenting the declining importance and militancy of NATO; praising the roles of Portugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa in Africa; supporting the anti-ballistic missile system; criticising President John F . Kennedy in retrospect as too weak for the responsibilities he faced;oend, above all, supporting the American war in Vietnam witflout question, although in 1968 he did raise some doubts about the ethicacy of the American bombing campaign.

Other men of his generation, Averell Harriman, for example. continued their education and changed with a changing world. Acheson did not. He died in 1971 with the same attitudes that he brought so staunchly to bear as a warrior in the Truman era. Measured by how clearly he articulated and carried out his policies he can be called the greatest Secretary of State in American history. Measured by the value of his assumptions as a permanent guide for American foreign policy, the verdict is different. Like the government of which he was such an important part, he acted with more courage than wisdom, more a"ogant self.路confidence than toleration and understand-

ing.

*

Mr. Smith is a Professor of History.

He teaches American diplomatic history and has just completed a study of Dean Acheson as Secretary of State.

"Good therapy" in a "cowardly whorehouse"

$9.25 plus the agenbite of i'nwit

John Arlow

Perhaps the stifled souls of New York find in it some kind of unholy sanctuary. Walter Kerr, for instance, calls it good therapy (though Stanley Kauffman, demurring, says It's a "cowardly whorehouse." It is The James Joyce Memorial Liquid Theatre, is currently at New Yo rk's Guggenheim Museum and defmes itself as, "an alternative to the cold , harsh urban environment." Certainly this is nothing to be sneezed at.

The price of admission, which is comparatively stiff, entitles you first o f all to a nylon laundry bag. Into this, you place the shoes, wallets, watches, and other cumbersome tokens (not, however, your clothes) of the ordered, worldly realms to be left behind.

Yo u recline in an inflatable armchair, your feet dug into fake-fur bath mat, while the company creeps about, mimicking exotic bird calls.

A young actress bends over and whispers in your ear, ( " We're ready for the green bag people" ) and you move , with a dozen other members o t the audience, to an alcove bathed in light-bulb p\nk. ''We're going to play a few sensitivity games to get to know one another ," says the group leader, producing a beach ball. What follows is a series of acting warm-ups, of the type codified by Viola Spolin , subsequently stolen by group therapists, and eroticised by the Esalen Institute. In one game, the ball is passed around the circle, and starting with the letter "a" each individual thinks of a word beginning with the letter that falls to him. At first , this results in General Electric College Bowl tension, but the answers soon become spontaneous and stunningly unpredictable - the Le Drugstore hippy with forty dollar velvet jeans from Bloomingdales gets the letter " 1" and says " love ," and the guy who's just come in from San Francisco to rig a lightshow surprises everyone with his remarkable association for the letter "f." " We've just been told that they' re ready for the people with green bags," the leader announces, and you are herded down to the basement theatre lounge where you check your laundry bags. Tea is next - half a cup (they're going to move you out in a few seconds) and again you wait on plastic blow-up chairs, relaxing in polyester luxury and imagining the sensual delights ahead .... The Maze is next.

I had gotten my complimentary tickets and the background story on the Liquid Theatre earlier in the day from an actress in the company who had gone to drama school with my companion a few years before. When she greeted us at the door, she was all smiley and zaftigbouncy . overjoyed to see someone from the stable past.

(Actors have to be mo bile to keep up with the rapidlychanging trends these days; they tend to lose their roots.)

The Liquid Theatre evolved in a similiar atmosphere of instability. When its parent repertory company had director problems and found itself without a play to present for a scheduled, opening date in mid-season, the group threw together a minstrel show - very hip and cool and with-it - which bombed . It bombed, the company decided , because the audience was not ... warmedup for the experience. To remedy this, the actors began the performance by playing theatre games with the

spectators, and the result was overwhelming. The minstrel show was dropped, the concept grew, and Liquid Theatre became the hottest ticket in Southern California. " Husbands and wives came to abandon each other and find someone else," the girl said, laughing ruefully. " We were sold out weeks in advance." A producer became interested in the group and brought them to New York fo r a trial pe riod. A score of dancers was hired and trained to accommodate the anticipated crowds.

This, of course, is only a beginning. If success is forthcoming, the Liquid Theatre format will be franchised . like MacDonalds' hamburgers, across the country.

That's when the money will come in. In the meantime. the perfo rmers are getting room and board and something like five dollars a day. " It mounts up." the actress said 路路or course I'd rather be using my training for legit shows or movies. but in the interim ... " "But how do you feel about touching all these strangers every night?'' my friend asked.

"Oh. it's all right, it's really not that bad . Once in a while I get a few grabbers."

Well . I'll be good, I thought, as I waited in my inflatable chair before entering the maze , I' ll be good and try not to grab anybody .

The empty teacups were collected. and one by o ne the audience was led out of the waiting room. A tall young man who looked as if he'd just walked off the chorus line of Applause took my hands and hissed. "Clowse yer eyes and trussst me!"

And so it begins. There's no denying that it's fun .

As you move from hand to hand in the eyelid darkness, the actors snuggle up to you, waft incense toward your nose. stuff grapes into your mouth . hum into your ears, draw lace across your face. and rock you in a cradle of what Abbie Hoffman calJs "cuddly humanity." When you're told to open your eyes. you've got your arms around two Zefferelli children who say in unison. " You are now entering Magic Land. Make it whatever you want it to be."

In Magic Land路 the theatre games get more intimate. like find a partner. have him (or her) close his (or her) eyes and lead him (or her) around the room. Get your partner to touch things. the beard on that fat actor 路 freak who's dressed in a velour monk's robe. or the fabric of the double-knit jacket that poor Dr. Rosen is wearing as he stands, alienated and disgusted. in an empty corner with his wife.

This is all very entertaining (although I did hear some crassly materialistic people object to the S9.25 ticket price). but by this time many members of the audience have had their sensory circuits so overloaded that they want just to sit down and talk. Many people improvise their own games. of the sort that were seen in the box scats of the Italian Opera in Balzac's time and may still be observed today at college mixers. The actors encourage the audience in this activity; get to know each other. they say.

But wait a minute. Actors? Audience? Certainly this isn't radical theater talk? We know. after all . that These Divisions Must Cease To Exist Since We Are All Creating A Group Environmental Experience Together.

"9/The New Journal/November 7, 1971

~·

Maybe it's that the Liquid Theatre wants to· show its independence from any rigid theory, because the next thing that happens is that the audience is seated on the floor while the actors put on a dumb-show.

In this mime , the players metamorphose into animals that perhaps were left out in the rain when Noah Sills took his Story Theatre ark to Broadway. The beasts create an apocalyptic situation; a solemn moment of silence follows, and then comes a reconstruction of the cosmos in the form of a sort of Adam and Eve couple. Adam and Eve realize profound truths about each other along the lines of "oh-you 've-got-two-of tlwse-and-l've-got-one-ofthese, "and then a band ap-. pears and everybody is pulled up for a fertility dance cum-hora. I got a silly notion at this point that I had fallen into a concentration camp for New York intellectuals, and that the showers would be our next mandatory activity.

But I was wrong. More theatre games are played, a few Hindu mantras are chanted, and then a second set of dancing ends the two-and-a-half hour performance.

I smiled at one of the actresses as she handed me my bag. and she smiled at me. Thank you for flying with us. Have a good day: and do come again. With another show to do that evening, she really couldn't stop to talk. I slipped on my shoes and walked to the exit. There was. I realized, something sour about Liquid Theatre.

Ordinary theatre depends on a shared set of pretenses between actors and audience. We know that what we watch isn't real, but we agree to accept it, for a time, as reality. The Liquid Theatre pretends to give us more, to engage us directly and deeply. The ·result is that when the illusion is dropped, as in the end it inevitably must be , we feel betrayed, mocked, and made fools of, because we have had the trust we willingly give to the theater cruely abused.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with radical theatre. Dionysus in '69, a few seasons back, was a play about the loss of-emotional control that worked a similar loss of actor-audience distance into the story line with devastating power.

But The James Joyce Memorial Liquid Theatre has no such unity or purpose. It has nothing to do with James Joyce either, except, perhaps, that one feels the agenbite of inwit for having attended.

Jon Arlow is an undergraduate in Jonathan Edwards College.

One Dead, Awakened. Inquire: 457.0023.

Bob or Maryann.

The New Journal Needs an Advertising Manager and salesmen

Commission negotiable

Call 776-9989 anytime

PRICES SOAR, BUYERS SORE; COW JUMPS OVER THE MOON Hard times at the copy desk of New York's Picture Newspaper Jerry Adler

The desk is large and U-shaped, suitable for answering telethon calls, maybe, or for assembling bomb-sights. You and your co-workers take your seats around the outer rim at two o 'clock in the afternoon. You wait. The action dribbles in at first , and then , for the next six or seven hours it overwhelms you. Fidgeting like delinquent children in the principal's office, you play a difficult, nitpicking game .concerned largely with out-witting libel lawyers. It's called copyreading.

A hawk-faced man called Chilly sits above you and broods or barks orders like a foreman in a steel milL He hands you a story marked for a No.5 headline ; three lines of twelve counts each, and • you pounce on it greedily_ You think and then write slowly: "Mines Bureau/ Held Negligent/ In Fatal Blast. "You begin a second story and Chilly interrupts; his head for the mines story goes this way : "House Probe/ Hits Mines Unit/ In Fatal Blast... " There's plenty of room, he explains, to add the fact that a House subcommittee is doing the charging. Your next head (police , acting on tips, arrest three for selling drugs) reads: "Tips Help Nip/ 3 Drug Dealers. " Chilly stops; yes, cold. Anyone who's seen a 1930's newspaper movie knows you don't convict people before their triaL He changes the bottom line to "3 on Drug Rap. " Such is the work at the copy desk of New York's Picture Paper , and from the men who work there come some of the shortest. most splendid flights of fancy any newspaper anywhere serves up for its readers.

lt isn't a glamorous job. Certainly if you learned your journalism at the Yalie Daily. you 'II be happier tracking down the latest wrinkle in women 's lib for Time-Life, or stalking the ghetto schools with The Times' Joseph Lelyveld. But if you've spent say_ two years as a copy boy and another six nursing your beer belly and sharpening your eye at the Paterson Call , you can reach your apotheosis at the dirty steel desk in one corner of The Daily News' vast and untidy seventh floor city room. Such men can glance down a column ot close gray type and spot a mis-placed comma as surely as if it were printed in fluorescent green.

Copyreading is a curious kind of backwater. skilL Eternally in demand, it rarely commands much respect even from the people who practice it. "It's a dirty goddamn business," one of the temporary readers at the News told me, "and if I had a kid who went to Yale and wanted to go into it I'd put his head against a wall and beat some goddanm sense into him. " Of the million decisions made each day at a daily paper, the copy desk makes the 900.000 least significant ones. If the day's story is about air pollution. the city desk decides how it should be covered , the reporter arranges the facts and puts them into words, the news desk decides how much play to give the story. and the copy desk decides whether to use an "f' or a "ph" in ·•sulfur dioxide." With the exception of business and sports news, the copy desk has the final say on every word that runs in the paper, from the lead story on down to the pollution "airdex."

Copyreaders are there because reporters are largely incapable of exercising critical judgement about their own work. They can't spell, either. Give a reporter free rein and nine times out of ten he11 write something like: "The sharp increase in crimes of violence w-.1s attributed to an increase in drug abuse by top police officials." A copyreader must catch something like that, because

its next stop is the composing room, where it gets cast in hot lead , plated onto a thick sheet of spongy cardboard and sent forth. two million strong, to show up a month later at the bottom of a column in The New Yorker.

Then there are the technical rules of style. like when to capitalize " boy scout" and whether to abbreviate "East" or ··west" in street addresses.

The important thing isn't necessarily ..1 to conform to common sense, which usually has nothing to say about whether " Mr. Smith" (Times style) or just ''Smith" (News style) in second reference is the preferred usage: The important thing is to be consistent, even consistent in absurdity. The cumulative ef-

11/The New Journal/November 7, 1971

feet of doing it differently every time is unsettling to readers ... one of the un~eralded reasons that you always feel you've skipped a paragraph when you read a story in The Post.

The News runs a shirt-sleeved kind of desk, full of real newspaper machismo , where one's proudest boast is that he's a "working stiff," and the competition for overtime is now and then fierce. t!I>These heavyset guys from Staten Island and Flushing know more about the Engush language than any of those book editors from Amherst having lunch at the Italian Pavillion, no question, but when Chilly sends the self-respecting News copy-reader off for lunch at six o'clock in the evening, he heads for a corned beef sandwich and three beers at the Louis East bar, on Second Avenue and 41st street. Nor does anyone on the desk talk about how much more fun it must be to interview Joseph Gallo than to copper-rivet an "alJeged" to every phrase that crops up in apposition to his name in the resulting story. Still, there are some signs that the readers now and again question whether the rewards of the job , including salaries that reach into the mid teens or higher , really make it worth it. One sign is the extremely high turnover rate. Because people are -rconstantly leaving for a better deal and because it takes The News longer to hire a single $300-a-week copyreader than it takes the average college to select a president, half the people on the desk on a given Saturday will be temporaries, moonlighting from their regular jobs or picking up a few odd dollars between 1obs. For a newspaper. a notoriously insensitive category of employer, The News seems curiously aware of the need to compensate copyreaders for the anonymit: and frustrations of their wor~ : ~y putting their names in twoinch high letters on the backs of their chairs, for instance ... a distinction denied reporters. More concretely, every week some $75 gets divided among the authors of the six or seven best headlines of the week. and a good copyreader can make a steady fifteen or twenty dollars that way .

Headline writing is what The News pays you for , really. If you don't read The News much you possibly have the idea that it's just like The Post, with its "$$"whenever it can't fit ..Money" on, to a line and its irritating habit of using ''OK'd" when something is approved and "KO'd'' when it's vo ted down . But The News is sui generis in headlines.

Test yourself. Write a three-line, onecolumn head (twelve characters and spaces per line) for a story about a girl who felt sorry for the inmates of a northern Italian jail and rented a room across the street to perform a striptease for them. Assuming you don't break any of the basic rules of copyreading, you might have come up with something like : ''Girl Strips/ For Prisoners/ InN. Italy. "This is a competent headline. and if The Times ran the story

at all it was probably underneath something bland like that. The News had a transcend~nt headline that day ; it read: "She Offers/ Cons Tease/& Sympathy," or a story about a jump in beef prices {this is a News classic): "Prices Soar, Buyers Sore/ Cow Jumps Over the Moon. "An oil slick threatens Coney Island? "Bad Tidings Drift Up For N.Y. Bathers," A girl is born after a record 13-month pregnancy? "She Was A Baby in Waiting. "Of course.

The News takes intense and personal pride in it all. "We do some fantastic things with heads," modestly admits day slotman Chilly Allan, He's called a slotman because he sits in the middle of the "U", in the slot between the two arms.

No one seems to know why he's called Chilly, but the name is appropriate enough ...he's been a newspaperman (no one at The News thinks of himself as a "journalist") for 40 years or so, and he's skinny and sardonic like David Brinkley left out in the sun too long.

Chilly is one of the top men in the country in his particular job, which on a brisk day demands the powers of concentration ordinarily required only of astronauts docking in space. He re-reads every piece of copy that crC?sses the desk, every head written there gets checked by him for style, appropriate¡ ness and length , and many of those he doesn't like he re-writes himself.

The routine :tt the copy desk varies little from day to day. The f'ust hour is slow, maybe Chilly flips an early pr_oof of the editorial page at you to check and

that's all you do for a while. If you're new you may question the self-conscious capital letters in references to Eastern Europe (which News editorials solemnly refer to as "Captive Nations") but that particular battle between the desk and the editorial writers has been fought out long ago, and Chilly says to let it go that way. It's helpful at tirnesrlike that to consider that the news staff is usually in a kind of guerilla dialectic with manaaement anyhow. Late in June someone tacked a city room wall copies of a News editorial as it appeared in the fust edition and as it ran in subsequent editions around the time of the Pentagon papers. The original version read , in part: "The Times decided it had a professional duty to publish large wads of the stuff; a decision on which we do not see how The Times can be faulted. In a free country, a newspaper is supposed to act like a newspaper." In later editions, it was changed to read simply: "The Times decided it had a professional duty to publish large wads of the stuff, apparently in the belief that it did not threaten the security of our country or endanger the life of any soldier." Above this someone had scrawled: "We believe the phrase is: 100% chicken shit."

Chilly pushes across a handful of short stories torn from the UPI wires and marked for the "In The Nation" or "In The World" sections. Actually they were long stories when they came over the wires, and tomorrow's. Times quite probably wiJI give each of them a full column on an.inside page. But at New York's Picture Newspaper the telegraph desk ¡clips and pastes together three or four sentences and runs them into one long paragraph. They're a nuisance because the copy comes off the UPI wire aU in caps and you've got to mark where you really want the composing room to use upper case letters. The News' style book, which should guide you on this, is no help at all : one of the slimmest in the business, it devotes half a page to an admonition not to use "pretty" in a picture caption unless the subject really is-pretty (" 'Comely, attractive' will often serve the purpose ... "). but the information that's really important for copyreaders to have. like whether to capitalize "post office" in second references, or which Oriental names have the surname ftrSt, is left to the reader's imagination.

Fortunately. Chilly makes it his business to keep aU these rules in his head.

j 12/The New Journal/November 7, 1971

You set to work on your stories: There's one about the army in East Pakistan burning down rebel villages, and one about an investigation of the 39 marines who went to the hospital after being made to do pushups for an hour. The first one is sort of a subtle . thing, not too easy to fit into the space; you toy with "Burn Rebel Villages" for a while, which is okay except that it doesn't say where, and finally settle on "Pakis Scorch harth " which has a nice evocative verb and a News-y ring to it. The second one gets a real tour de fo!Y€: the perfect headline is stamped on the white newsprint of your mind: "Pushup Probe Pushed. " Just the sort of thing to make Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. sit up and take notice, you think happily , and a money-winner at The News for sure. Chilly takes both stories wordlessly and passes them on as written; the highest form of praise.

Have a copyboy bring you a coffee and wait nervously for the next one; a story marked for a No. 2 head {two Hnes of about 14 counts). The story, this time from Reuter, quotes a newspaper in Greece which claims that the head of the junta there desires an eventual retun~

Tag Sale: Woodbridge , Assumption Church Hall , on Center Road. Saturday, November 6th from Ten A.M. to Four P.M. Miscellaneous and quaJity items offered. Some old. some new. No trash. all treasures! Follow arrow on Amity Road. Route 63 to Route I 14. Turn at Red Barn and Blue Check Grocery.

to democracy. Tricky, you think to yourself grimly, as you tuck a pack of Chesterfields into your rolled-up short sleeves. Ideally , the head should indicate that the story deals with an allegation , rather than a fact. The second line can be "Newspaper Says," maybe, but then how do you fit all that stuff in the first line: Greece , elections, prime minister, future tense, all in 14 counts?

Glance at your watch and inspiration will come. Make the first line: "Say Greek PM." Then : " Will Hold Elections" is ideal but too long. You play it for a minute: what's a shorter way of saying it, not necessarily a mere accurate way, a more clever way, but a shorter way ... you hit on " Will Liberalize. " "Say Greek PM/ Will Liberalize. " There's a name for a headline like that, among newspapermen, and the name is "wooden," but what the heii...Chilly spindles it for future study and you turn to the next story.

When he finally gets to the Greece head-

line he scowls ever so slightly and your bowels turn to water ... what a miracle everyone on the desk doesn't stare when he asks you when was the last time you saw a News headline starting with "Say ... " and he.reminds you that "PM" means ''post meridian.'' In a tenth of the time it took you to tear from your soul these five awkward little words Chilly scribbles "Democracy Held/Goal in Greece" which says it all so well ...why doesn't he do all the work. you wonder glumly.

Quickly the daily struggle to fill a hundred pages with type nears its climax. copyboys feeding the desk with stories, and ripping the scoup of Chilly's · hands to send them speeding down the conveyor belt to the composing room.

A steady stream of orders from Chilly, ·decisions back and forth and everyone on the desk is thinking, thinking so hard you can feel it all around you, the palpable. wall of intellect.

Then, without your even realizing it, more copy is leaving the desk than is coming in; a few orders for substitute heads drift back from the composing room; make them shorter or longer to fit the new requirements, but otherwise it is quiet. You go to lunch sometime before six, and when you get back at seven the one-star "Night Owl" is there to greet yo\.!. You spend another hour making corrections in it for inclusion in the later editions. and then you go home and turn the desk over to the lobster shift, which will keep an eye on New York until three in the morning. On your way home, you pass men clustered at street corners waiting for The News to show up so they can get ·The Number, and if they see one of your stories and notice the headline they quite possibly will think the reporter wrote it , though it's not very likely they will care.

)

Jerry Adler, Yale 70, spent last summer as a copy reader for the New York Daily News.

t

Near the end of the first act of Ibsen's When We Dead A waken, Rubek, the sculptor-hero, says to Irene , his former model and inspiration, "There is something hidden behind everything you say."

He is calling he r a mystic or a symbolist at best, and we might complain that it is yet another example of the artist preempting the critic's role. Ibsen's play resounds with t his sort of vague and final sounding criticism, and rightfully so. for it is o ne of that rare and difficult b reed, the artistic creation in which the true artist confronts himself and his work. This type of work is necessarily self-critical. and in the case of Ibsen's When We Dead A waken the complexity is compounded by its status as a last play. a final work. Ibsen subtitled the play. "A Dramatic Epilogue," and though he planned to write more, he .-did see the drama as a summation of the series of plays which began with A Doll's House. When We Dead A waken is in the grand tradition of Shakespeare's rorpances and Beethoven's late quartets, and it is equally difficult to grasp.

In his seminal essay. "No More Masterpieces." Antonio Artaud wrote, 路"If ... a contemporary public does not understand Oedipus Rex, I shall make bold to say that it is the fau lt of Oedipus Rex and no t of the public." "No more masterpieces!" has since become the ral.ying cry of too many self-proclaimed disciples of Artaud , and the Yale Repertory Theatre, itself hardly insensitive to Artaud , has wisely added "Know more masterpieces," as well.

Ibsen's When We Dead A waken. the play which opened this season at the Yale Rep . is unquestio"nably a masterpiece . It also will not be understood by the contemporary public. Yet I shall make bold to modify Artaud and say that it may be the fault of the play, but it is certainly its purpose as well.

Were the questions Ibsen raises under1standable o r easily articulated, there would have been little point to the writing of the play and virtually none to performing it.

The setting of the piece is a spa, which for the European imagination (as we know from Alain Resnais, Frederico Fellini, and Thomas Mann) has precious little to do with health. Steve Rubin 路s decor is minimal, yet evocative.

A rear wall of polished wood路 panels calls to mind Danish modern/ do-it-yourself sauna. Scandianvia at its most bourgeois. A hovering parachute serves as umbrella. mountain , and symbol of an

Can the Rep bring off an Ibsen play that's beyond understanding? .Not quite .

Lawrence Eilenberg

uncertain stasis. Two tables and a few chairs, sculpted either grotesquely o r primitively. complete the scene. And in this scene, the grotesque (the artist) tries to come to terms with the primitive {life) - or shall we say that the primitive artist tries one last time to face his grotesque life.

Rubek, the sculptor, is old and famous and has returned to Norway after a long self-imposed exile. (The parallel to Ibsen himself is obvious, though the Yale Rep is perhaps too helpfu l in making up Rubek to look like the playwright.) His wife, Maia, is younger than he, uninterested in his work. and inadequate as a companion.

At the mountain resort, Rubek meets Irene. the model for his greatest work. whom he had rejected in love and life and used solely for his art. Both the woman and the art she had inspired in Rubek have become corrupted since she left him years ago. Irene is now mad and is followed everywhere by a Nun who watches her closely in silence.

Finally. there is Squire Ulfheim, a bear hunter, with "not a trace of the artist in him." Ulfheim attracts Maia with his artlessness; Rubek holds Irene with the memory of his art. Both couples ascend the mountain. one in search of fleshy game and fleshly pleasure , the other for a more spiritual fulfillment. A storm

arises; the hunter and the young woman descend to safety while the artist and his inspiration climb higher to their dream and doom.

The human situation is necessarily schematic, for the characters of this play are not characters at all, but abstractions. The relationships among them are more like the princ iples, theories, and postulates whjch link ideas than the emotions which serve to tie human beings. All of which leads to the central problem of the current production, which is the awesome task of finding an acting style for this problematic play . When We Dead A waken reads well. but then so does Either/Or. In the Ibsen, unlike the Kierkegaard, some difficult philosophic and aesthetic notions must be presented by human agents and the results, at least for this production by the Yale Rep, are uneven .

Tom Haas, who has directed tlus production, seems to have failed to exercise his proper and necessary directorial control. Previous productions by Haas ( Woyzeck, Donner. Subject to Fits) have all been characterized by singleness of vision . consistency of style, and most of all by a strong point of view toward the plays themselves. In Wizen We Dead A waken. which by its very abstract nature needs this input, the actors have been left to find their own styles by their own

devices, and they don 't seem to have consulted with each other.

David Hurst is a powerful Rubek, a pleasure to watch and to hear. When he speaks of the torment of the artist, we can believe that he knows what he is saying, for as an actor Mr. Hurst is an artist indeed. During Act II of the play, I rene dismisses Rubek as a poet. Hurst has caught the truth of her condemnation and used it in his characterization .

Though Ibsen wrote When We Dead Awaken in prose, the language, according to Michael Meyer, his biographer and translator. is a sort of heightened poetic prose. Although the language of Michael Feingold's new translation is not part icularly heightened (it is at times actually quite prosaic) Hurst plays for as much poetry as he can get from it.

By stressing this highly theatrical trait in the complex Rubek . Hurst grounds the abstraction "Artist'' in a dramatically and literarily recognizeable reality, which is nevertheless not so idiosyncratic as to preclude the more abstract and symbolic play of ideas. He is neither too specific nor too general in his acting; he allows us the freedom not to understand in a meaningful way.

The two women. on the other hand. demonstrate the two directions in which the acting of this play can easily fall down, and in this case does. Nancy Wickwire, as Irene, has failed to deal with the abstract quality of the role she plays. In her extremes of mannered madness. she seems obsessed most of all not with art or love or life. but with the craft of acting. Her self-conscious twitching is all too reminiscent of the bravado perfo rmances in Peter Brook's production of Marat/Sade. She offers us a complete surface. the well-made character with mo tivations and explanations. suffering perhaps most of all from the fact that there is no one else on stage to whom she can relate. no one in her play .

We have nothing to penetrate in her Irene. no distance to overcome. We understand her all too well.

Sarah Albertson. as Maia. does not ground herself anywhere. While Miss Wickwire is too specific. Miss Albertson is too general. She speaks her lines as if they were coming from somewhere outside her body rather than from within.

Almost as a marionette. she makes herself simply another voice in Ibsen's internal debate. and wh1le this may be intellectually and interpretively correct. it does not play.

Stephen Mendillo路s Squire Ulfheim

14/The New J ournal/November 7 , 1971

0 \

looks right but sounds wrong. Mr. Mendillo continues to be an extremely strong presence on the stage, but in this production he seems unsure of what he wants to do with his actual words.

One is tempted to blame the director: some more direction would surely have made a great difference. Carmen de Lavallade is fine as the Nun, properly chilling and mysterio us, with just the right amount of float to her steps. She and Miss Albe rtson, the program info rms us. will be alternating the roles of Maia and the Nun. A word about children and animals, of which there are both in this production. With few except ions, neither ever reach the level of true professionalism in acting and are usually painful injections of amateurism into a professional production. In this Yale Rep production of When We Dead A waken. we worry about them, and this concern distracts us from the play. Neither children nor dogs were really necessary. except perhaps as auxiliary pro ps or as illustrations to throwaway lines. They could have been, mo re judiciously, cut altogether.

While acting is the central problem of this production - and it is a big one -the Yale Repertory presentation of When We Dead A lvaken should not be dismissed or d isregarded because of it.

This is a rare opportunity to see a masterpiece which is not often performed.

The very mounting of this play is a laudable act in itself. and although the translation is no t brilliant , it is also not

castrating. Ibsen comes through, and the Ibsen who does will be a revelation to those who know him from Hedda Gabler. This is the Socratic Ibsen, constantly questioning himself, able to do so at the very height o f his accomplishment. There is none o f the brash moral certa inty of Peer Gynt or the considered o pinio nating o f Ghosts about this play. When We Dead A waken has no message. It simply poses the most fundamental questions. What does it mean to be a man? ... to be alive? ... to die? '¡You don't really have a clear idea what it's like inside an artist's mind." says Rubek to Maia in the middle of the second act. She re plies. ''My God. I don't even know what it's like inside my own mind." Ibsen embraces the attitudes of Rubek and Maia . of Irene and even Ulfheim. He knows his mind and yet he does not: it is his knowledge and his ignorance which he bares to us in When We DeaJ A waken. It is a wisdom which knows the foolishness of answers. ..We only see what's wrong with our lives." says Irene. "when we dead awaken."

And what we see. sh e tells us, is that we were never alive. Ibsen o riginally concluded the play with the artist and his former model reaching the mountain peak in the midst of a violent storm. He ch~ nged that ending to have them die in an avalanche . Perhaps he was hoping to metaphorically restore life through death . but the metaphorical resolution is lost in the attempt to transfer it to a

reality. The play remains beautifully beyond understanding.

~.

Larry t:ilenberg is a Ph.D. candidate in \~: theater his"tory and did his undergraduate work at Comell University.

iS/The New Journal/November 7, 1971

f'

continued from page 2 ran for alderman on the Parker ticket in one ward. A local plumber was recruited to run for alderman in another . neighborhood.

Mr. Mcintyre cites the issue of the state income tax as an example of Sirabella's moral courage - contrasted with Parker's alleged refusal to take control'ersial positions. Interested observers should review the newspaper statements and literature of the two candidates to see whether Mr. Mcintyre's analysis contains any truth. Hank Parker issued several statements supporting the state income tax passed by the Connecticut General Assembly during the summer.

He coupled his support with a plea for modifying certain rate brackets in order to increase the progressivity of the tax.

As most New Haven proponents of the income tax already backed Parker, his clear defense of the generally unpopular levy yielded no new support, and risked alienating potential backers.

Sirabella's position was much less clear. In a display of nimble-footed semantics. he denounced the Assemblyapproved measure as a "phony income tax." Sirabella 's literature attempted to

harness the conservative backlash generated by the state income tax, and was unclear about his alternative plan.

Mr. Mcintyre compares the Sirabella campaign "without an organization and without money" to the " reform machine" of the Parker effort. Translated into less self-righteous terminology , Mr. McIntyre is saying that many people volunteered to help Parker while many less people offered to help Sirabella.

To this charge, we must plead guilty.

The Parker candidacy did stimulate board citizen participation which resulted in a doubling of Parker's vote from his 1969 total.

As far as campaign spending is concerned, the official financial reports indicate that the two campaigns spent roughly equal amounts. More enlightening is the fact that approximately threefourths of Sirabella's campaign expenditures was financed by a single individual, a wealthy Woodbridge industrialist.

In contrast, Parker was heavily dependent on several small and moderate size contributions. These facts contradict Mr. Mcintyre's analysis of the campaigns' respective supporters.

Finally, we must deal with Mr. McIntyre's assertion that Sirabella formed

"a coalition of working people of all races." Ultimately, his claim to a moral victory rests upon this premise.

The results of the primary show that the black wards, and the poorest black wards-in particular, voted overwhelmingly for Parker. Even more damaging to Mr. Mcintyre's position is the fact that in many of the Italian and ethnic working-class wards, Parker, a black, did as well as Sirabella, an Italian labor leader. Thus, on a man-to-man basis, Parker battled Sirabella to a stand-off in the white, working-class wards where Sirabella claimed to have great strength.

Parker was the pre-eminent candidate of students and academics; and he ran far ahead of Sirabella in all of the Jewish wards. Parker's total vote was five times that of Sirabella's.lt was Parker who emerged from the primary as the builder of a broad-based, left-liberal coalition, which included workers and the unemployed.

One is struck by the self-righteous tone of Mr. Mcintyre's article. His statement is essentially a defense of Sirabella's continuation to the bitter end of his hopeless effort ; despite the resulting division of the left-liberal commut'ity. By discrediting Hank Parker,

Mr. Mcintyre hopes to justify the kamikaze-style of the Sirabella campaign.

I do not doubt the sincerity or ability of Mr. Sirabella, Mr. Mcintyre, or Mr. Sirabella's other supporters. Many of us in the Parker campaign hoped until the last moment that some form of accommodation could be reached with Vincent Sirabella and his supporters.

In my contact with Mr. Sirabella, I have found him capable, engaging, and sincere. I hope to work with him and his backers in the future.

However, the refusal of the Sirabella camp to work with Hank Parker canRot be jusitified. After Professor Robert Abelson's public opinion poll demonstrated the overwhelming preference of the left-liberal community for Parker, the inevitable effect of the Sirabella CaJ1?paign could only have been to split the reform vote. hurt Parker, and help Guida. That is precisely what happened on election day. It is regrettable that New Haven will not have a mayor with the ability, compassion, and capacity for personal growth of Hank Parker.

Mr. Zelinsky was campaign coordinator for Henry Parker.

--

Vale Student Typing Agency offers complete typing service from short papers to dissertations . translating and computer p_rogramming overnight service available

Model100 " The Standard"

hours, 7 a.m. til 9 p.m.

Sunday thru Thursday 116 Elm Street

436·0610

Hendrie Hall

562·1209

A Good Book Break •

cafe 1n commons

Audio Showcase 347 Whalley Avenue 562·5177

sandwiches shakes soft serve ice milk t .v. pin ball

Open, 11:30 a.m. until 12:30 a.m.

Sunday, Thursday and Friday closed Saturday evenings

This is our first and most popular loudspeaker.

Its accurate tonal bal ance combined with ex· ceptional dispersion (the ability to radiate music in all directions equally) makes it a natural choice of people who enjoy live music, and its low price falls within the budget of most people who are seeking a moderate cost stereo system.

II

Gag Jr's Liquor Shoppe Free Delivery 57 Whalley Avenue (opposite Holiday Inn) New Haven, Ct. 776·0120

your favorite wine and Liquors

8-8 Monday thru Saturday Mary & Vincent Gagliardi

FrankMerrlweU is back.

The original Frank Merriwell stories which thrilled untold millions in previous generations now return. In paperback, hard cover and a ~pecial commemorative issue. .,...:u ..._.,.. ..... • Order yours today!

Fran" M.nr\w\'\ \'.,

' I

t _.•

- - - - --

- - - - -\

Smith Street Publications, Inc. (Subs. of National Learning Corp.)

Deparunent N-106 20 D uPont Street Plainview, New York 11803 (516)935-5800

Cross Country skii ng Alpine skiing Winter M ountaineeri ng Fin est Equ ipment a nd Service 1 5 Whitney Avenue

-

---

•

\ ,

X\

Send m e Frank M erriwelfs Schooldays _ paperbound copies@ $.95 each. _ hardcover copies@ $3.95 each. _ commemorative copies@ $5 each . rm including an addition al 35 cen ts for each book to cover JX)stage and h andling. (Personal ch eck or m o ney o rder- no cash or stamps, please.)

Ad~es•~------~------------------------

Wi lton

865 1659

-

Nama~---------------------------------

Keeler Bldg .

New Haven

l

Seh~\\\a)\o\

6\l\\"t \... S"t I'I.ND\S\\

'\

762 8324

Ci tyc.____________,.;, tatcc::.e_ _ _ _-" Zipr_ _ _ __

Tyco

Arnold's Boot Sh et

opp~ite Varderbilt

America 's Favorite Boot'makerl

by Frye

\ I .

Here's t he Fam ous Frye oot. he Jame authentic b oot d esign ed and mad of ru ged atural cowhide by th e very sam com a that made t hem 100 years ag o. W a -rep II nt nd reinforced with leathe r linings.

Stop in and D1"1r"Ml~ selection o f bflFet:!!P.l~rttl'ftr

SaDJ.e D a y Service Free Pick-up a nd & Delivery Hours, 8 a .m. - 9 p.m. daily 8 a.m . - 5 p.m. Saturdays 5 9 B road "Wa y

562·97 23

Typing_and Copying Service Handmade leather - pouches. belts. vests. tapestry bags, cand les, jewelry, straw fl owers hard to f ind paperback books incense, incen,se burners, essent ial oils, selective magazines, underground c omics. posters. patches, cards. leather sandals, made t o or der pipes; w ater. w ood, glass, stone lighters, stash boxes, papers of e:very variety

EXCLUSIVE Hartford distributor f o r Neptune Waterbed complete line of water bed frames and accessories.

Stiky Fingers at 101 Whalley Avenue, New Haven